“French Model Ines Rau Is Playboy’s First Transgender Playmate” by Dan Avery

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“It’s the most beautiful compliment I’ve ever received,” says the 26-year-old.

10/19/2017 (newnownext.com)

French model Ines Rau has become the first openly transgender Playmate in Playboy magazine’s 64-year history.

Rau, 26, first appeared in a May 2014 issue, shot by fame photographer Ryan McGinley. “It’s how I celebrated my coming out, actually,” she says in the new issue. “I took that chance, and then I signed with an agency.”

The self-professed “party girl” has walked the runway for top designers like Balmain, in addition to appearing in Vogue Italia and W magazine.

She’s too busy living her best life to bother with transphobes.

“People have said that being transgender goes against the laws of nature, but they’re the same people who aren’t doing anything to help nature,” she says in her profile. “If I want to get a sex change, it’s between myself and my body. I could hide it, but I don’t, because I respect people.”

Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for Desigual

Coming to accept herself, though, was a journey.

“I lived a long time without saying I was transgender,” she says. “I dated a lot and almost forgot. I was scared of never finding a boyfriend and being seen as weird. Then I was like, You know, you should just be who you are. It’s a salvation to speak the truth about yourself, whether it’s your gender, sexuality, whatever.”

Growing up in a Parisian ghetto, Rau says, she knew she had a special destiny waiting for her—”a little voice was telling me, ‘You’ll see. Patience.’ ”

“When I was doing this shoot, I was thinking of all those hard days in my childhood,” she recalls. “And now everything happening gives me so much joy and happiness. I thought, Am I really going to be a Playmate—me? It’s the most beautiful compliment I’ve ever received. It’s like getting a giant bouquet of roses.”

Playboy recently returned to nude models, a move Rau supports. Nudity should be embraced, she says, not made taboo. “Nudity means a lot to me, since I went through a transition to get where I want to be. Nudity is a celebration of the human being without all the excess. It’s not about sexuality but the beauty of the human body, whether male or female.”

Playboy 

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“Being a woman is just being a woman.” Meet November 2017 Playmate Ines Rau, the first transgender Playmate. http://ply.by/i8Dv7E 

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Her pictorial will grace the November/December issue, a special 100-page tribute to the late Hugh Hefner. It’s fitting, given Hef’s early contributions to LGBT rights: In 1955, Playboy published “The Crooked Man,” a sci-fi story set in a world where homosexuality was the norm and heterosexuals were persecuted.

Transgender actress Caroline “Tula” Cossey appeared a Playboy pictorial in 1981, and returned to the magazine in 1991, a decade after being outed as trans.

After Hefner’s death earlier this month, Cossey tweeted a message praising the publisher: “Thank you for allowing me to share my story and for your support and platform that helped my campaign for trans rights and visibility.”

Hugh Hefner’s Surprising Contribution To The Early Gay Rights Movement

Editor in Chief of NewNowNext. Comic book enthusiast. Bounder and cad.

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Book: “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari

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A Summer Reading Pick for President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg

From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.”

One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?

Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.

Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?

Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem.

(amazon.com)

“LGBT History Month: Lyon, Martin paved the way for lesbians” by Alex Madison

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Published 10/12/2017 (Ebar.com)
Del Martin, left, and Phyllis Lyon are married by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on June 16, 2008. Photo: Associated Press

In a time when President Donald Trump has directed a ban on transgender individuals from serving in the military, his administration has rescinded protections for trans students in public schools, and the advancement of LGBTQ national historic landmarks are in question, the stories of those who fought for equal rights in an earlier era seem to be more important than ever before.

One such story is that of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, who ushered in the modern lesbian movement and made history by becoming the first same-sex couple married in San Francisco – twice. Their accomplishments as activists and the love they shared have become a symbol of perseverance, strength, and hope for the LGBTQ community.

“If you got stuff you want to change, you have to get out and work on it,” said 93-year-old Lyon. “You can’t just sit around and say I wish this or that was different. You have to fight for it.”

Lyon is still a beacon of strength, wit, and charm as she reminisced about her younger years. Although Martin died in 2008 at age 87, Lyon still lives in the couple’s one-bedroom home nestled in the hills of Noe Valley, which they shared for more than 50 years.

“I can’t be out galloping around like I used to, getting stuff done,” said Lyon as she sat in her living room during a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter. Decades ago, the room served as a gathering place for lesbians during a time of social conformity, when the lesbian community only had a handful of bars in the Castro district in which to meet and socialize.

“Oh, gosh, we used to have dance parties here all the time,” Lyon recalled, smiling.

Although Lyon said she has not considered submitting her home to become a national or local landmark after she passes, one step inside the cozy abode reveals the couple’s history-making life seen through countless pictures, knickknacks, and newspaper clippings.

Kendra Mon, Martin’s only child from her first marriage, remembers spending summers at the couple’s home when she was a student at UC Berkeley. Over the years, Mon has come to understand the important role her mother and Lyon played in the lesbian community, something she didn’t quite grasp as a young adult.

“Lesbians would call the house from all over the world,” said Mon, a retired mother of two who lives in Petaluma, California. “A lot of their friends were scared at that time. Mom gave them a place where they could feel safe.”

Wedding bells

Phyllis Lyon stands in the living room of her Noe Valley home in San Francisco. Photo: Alex Madison

When former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered city officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in February 2004, the “Winter of Love” was unleashed, as images of happy gay and lesbian couples lined up outside City Hall were beamed into living rooms across the country, and around the world. But that day, February 12, started off with a quieter ceremony inside a City Hall office, where Newsom married Lyon and Martin as LGBT community leaders and others looked on.

Ultimately, the California Supreme Court ruled several months later that those 2004 marriages were invalid because Newsom had exceeded his authority. Lyon and Martin – and the thousands of others – would have to wait four more years, when the same court in May 2008 overturned Proposition 22, a same-sex marriage ban, and said that denying marriage rights to same-sex couples violated the state Constitution. Wedding bells began ringing in the Golden State in June.

(The same-sex nuptials were halted in November of that year, after state voters passed the Proposition 8 marriage ban. After years of legal wrangling, the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2013 tossed out Prop 8 on a technicality and same-sex marriages resumed in California.)

Martin and Lyon were the first same-sex couple to be married in the city in 2004 and 2008. Framed, yellowed San Francisco Chronicle articles of the couple’s historic marriages grace the walls of Lyon’s well-lit living room. The headlines read, “Wedding Bells to Ring in a New Era,” and “The Wait is Over.”

“We got it started for everybody else,” Lyon said of her 2004 wedding. “We didn’t get married just for us. We knew it was important to a lot of other people.”

Although their first marriage ended after 181 days, it didn’t stop the couple from continuing their fight. Martin and Lyon exchanged vows again on June 16, 2008.

Martin died August 27, just 74 days after again making history.

The matching pink and blue suits the couple wore are now in the permanent collection in the archives of the GLBT Historical Society.

A longtime friend of both women, Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, personally asked Lyon and Martin to be the first same-sex couple to wed in 2004.

“I called the house and Phyllis answered the phone. I told her I needed them to do one more thing for the movement,” Kendell said, recalling it to be a humorous conversation, after Lyon put her on hold to ask Martin. They said yes a few minutes later.

Kendell attended both marriage ceremonies, an emotional experience for her.

“I burst into tears, as did other staffers,” she said. “You knew you were a part of something historically very important standing there.”

For someone who grew up in a time where lesbianism was seen as “immoral, sick, and illegal,” Lyon said she never believed she would live long enough to marry her “sweety-puss” and the love of her life, as she called Martin, let alone see same-sex marriage legalized nationally. But sure enough in a landmark decision on June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples could marry in all 50 states.

“I think we’ve made tremendous progress,” said Lyon, laughing about how she is still amazed that people don’t fall over dead when she tells them she is a lesbian. The incredible accomplishments of Lyon and Martin no doubt played a role in the progress of the LGBTQ community in San Francisco and beyond. When Martin died, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) famously said, “We would never have marriage equality in California if it weren’t for Del and Phyllis.”

Earlier days

Martin began working as an activist after receiving her degree in journalism from UC Berkeley. While working on a newspaper in Seattle, Martin met Lyon in 1950 and the two began working on behalf of lesbians in their community, health care access, advocacy on behalf of battered women, and issues facing elderly Americans.

Together more than 50 years, the couple founded the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955, the first social and political organization for lesbians in the United States. In 1956 they started a newsletter called the Ladder, which grew into a publication about lesbian politics and culture and became a lifeline for hundreds of women isolated and silenced by the restrictions of the era.

Martin also became an activist for the feminist movement in 1963 when she was the first out lesbian to serve on the board of directors of the National Organization for Women. The women were pioneers, tireless activists, and together a symbol of what it means to fight for equality and love in the LGBTQ community.

Their many contributions over the past five decades are credited with shaping the modern LGBT movement.

In 2005 Lyon and Martin were inducted into the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association’s LGBT Journalists Hall of Fame.

“No, we are not back in the 1950s, but we are facing some of the most threatening and dangerous times, certainly in my lifetime,” Kendell said of the Trump administration’s lack of support of the LGBTQ community. “Phyllis and Del are examples of how you live during difficult times. I look to them as an inspiration, a north star of how you show up, you fight, and be present.”

Lyon plans to donate some of the items in her home to the Smithsonian Institute after she is gone, but, as Kendell said, the memory and legacy of Martin and Lyon live on through their writings, perseverance, and love for one another.

(Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin were also long-time students of The Prosperos.)

“To Court Workers, Japanese Firms Try Being More Gay-Friendly” by Jonathan Soble

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Shunsuke Nakamura, 33, came out as gay to his co-workers at a major financial institution. “There was silence,” he said. Kazuhiro Yokozeki for The New York Times

TOKYO — Once a week, the Japanese insurance company where Shunsuke Nakamura works tries to enliven its morning staff meeting by having employees give personal presentations. The topics tend to be mostly innocuous: hobbies, pets or wine recommendations.

Mr. Nakamura used his turn, though, to come out as gay.

“There was silence. People were surprised,” Mr. Nakamura, 33, said of his talk, which he gave to a group of about 50 colleagues last year.

His company, like many in Japan, is trying to become more gay-friendly. It recently extended family benefits to employees’ same-sex partners, and said it would allow its gay customers to name their partners as beneficiaries of its life insurance plans, something previously limited only to legally sanctioned, opposite-sex spouses. Such changes have proliferated across the economy in recent years, with a rising number of goods and services targeting the gay community in what many Japanese describe as an “L.G.B.T. boom.”

It is a striking trend in a country where departures from the norm, sexual or otherwise, have long been something to keep hidden — especially at work. Being openly gay was something for niche transgressive pop stars; for the average gray-suited “salaryman,” it was all but unthinkable. And when it comes to the government, marriage for same-sex couples remains off limits.

But a combination of evolving social attitudes and competition for talent is forcing businesses here to adapt. As Japanese companies expand overseas, and increasingly face off against Western businesses at home, they are having to change how they hire.

“In Japan, the image of L.G.B.T. people is in transition, from invisible to open,” said Ken Suzuki, who studies sexuality at Meiji University in Tokyo and is active in Japan’s gay-rights movement.

Yet the reality for gay Japanese workers is only starting to shift, and unspoken expectations of secrecy remain the norm. Mr. Nakamura said that his colleagues had been supportive, but that coming out at work was still seen as peculiar enough that his supervisors asked him to keep his company’s name out of this article. He reckons that despite his employer’s efforts to be more inclusive, he is still the only one of the firm’s roughly 5,000 employees who is openly gay.

Professor Suzuki said the prevailing attitude toward homosexuality in Japan had long been “indifference rather than hate.” Where traditionalists in the United States have sought to root out gays, for example, with anti-sodomy laws, “in Japan, people just don’t want to know,” he said.

Vibrant gay clubs operate freely in big cities here, but it remains relatively rare for people to come out to their families, let alone their co-workers and bosses. While surveys show the public is evenly split on gay marriage, organized political campaigning on the issue is still marginal. The government, which is dominated by conservatives, has mostly steered clear of the issue. Gay marriage has received no serious political debate.

“As far as the law is concerned, homosexuality doesn’t exist,” Professor Suzuki said.

Acceptance of this “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach is declining, however, as younger people insist on living more openly. Japan is also facing a painful shortage of labor, largely the result of low birthrates and limited immigration. That shortage is forcing employers to compete harder to attract workers, and advertising tolerance appeals to young people generally, not just sexual minorities.

Kento Hoshi, a 23-year-old law school graduate, has seen that competition firsthand. He pitched his idea for Job Rainbow, an employment website aimed at gay people, in a business contest sponsored by Japanese tech companies two years ago. He won 1 million yen, or about $9,100 at the time, and set up the site with his sister.

Job Rainbow initially only offered information and tips about companies perceived as gay-friendly, but today has 50,000 registered users and around 40 companies that pay to advertise job openings. Though it remains small compared with Japan’s main job sites, Mr. Hoshi works on it full time, and its rapid expansion illustrates the changes underway here.

Mr. Hoshi said he had been bullied for being gay at his all-boys middle school. On the internet, he read an article saying that around 5 percent of people were gay.

Kento Hoshi, 23, founded his own company, Job Rainbow, which offers job-hunting and career resources to Japan’s gay community. Kazuhiro Yokozeki for The New York Times

“I thought, statistically, there must be one more in my class,” he said. “I felt relieved.”

Mr. Hoshi joined a group for gay, bisexual and transgender students while in college. But when it came time to look for jobs, he felt pressure to conform. “I sometimes said I was part of an international relations club,” he said. “When I told the truth, the interviews went nowhere.”

He ended up taking a summer internship at Microsoft, where some of his Japanese colleagues were part of a company-supported network for gay employees. Outside of his small university circle, Mr. Hoshi said, it was the first time he had met openly gay Japanese.

“There’s a lack of role models,” he said. But he believes things are changing. “Three or four years ago, if you came out, people would say, ‘Huh?’ Now at least everyone knows what you’re talking about.”

Foreign companies are seen as easier places to be openly gay. And as Japanese companies expand, they are increasingly being pushed toward inclusiveness.

Yusuke Kitamura runs the diversity and inclusion team at Nomura, Japan’s largest brokerage firm. Nomura introduced policies to accommodate gay employees and their families after it bought the European and Asian operations of Lehman Brothers following Lehman’s collapse in 2008.

But so far, according to Mr. Kitamura, only a handful of its 14,000 staff members in Japan have registered same-sex partners for benefits, something he blamed on ingrained aversion among Japanese to standing out and seeming disruptive.

Even if their symbolic value is great, the material rewards on offer are mostly small, meaning that employees who are reluctant to come out openly are unlikely to be swayed by them. Mr. Kitamura referred to a common custom whereby companies give employees cash gifts of 30,000 yen, or about $270, when they get married, a benefit that some businesses now extend to same-sex couples in established relationships.

“No one’s going to come out for 30,000 yen,” Mr. Kitamura said. “We have a system in place. Now it’s about changing the culture.”

There are signs of that happening. This year, at the urging of an activist group led by Professor Suzuki, the northern city of Sapporo began issuing partnership certificates to same-sex couples, a first for a Japanese city. The move followed the introduction of a similar system in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo in 2015.

The certificates carry no legal weight — in Japan, marriage law is determined by the national government, not local authorities — but they have provided a degree of official sanction to the emerging equality movement and brought some tangible benefits. Public housing authorities in Sapporo and Shibuya, for example, are required to recognize as spouses any tenants who have acquired the certificates.

Still, the pace of progress has been slow. That is something Mr. Nakamura, the insurance worker, linked to Japan’s general emphasis on conformity.

“There’s this idea that everyone has to line up in a neat row, not just when it comes to sexuality,” he said.

Mr. Nakamura said life at the office had been mostly normal since he came out. After his colleagues got over their initial surprise, many offered encouragement. He has been treated well, he said, with only a little bit of awkwardness.

“Sometimes people can be overly conscious,” he said. “At least people have stopped asking me if I have a girlfriend, or when am I going to get married.”

“Does the Language We Speak Affect Our Perception of Reality?” by Philip Perry

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  • December 4, 2016 (BigThink.com)
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Cartoonist’s portrayal of Ali Abdullah Saleh, former president of Yemen.

 

Ethnobotanist and hallucinogenic scion Terrence McKenna said in one of his lectures that, “Culture is your operating system.” Through hallucinogenic drugs, McKenna posited, one could shed that operating system for a time and gain union with nature, other humans, and even an ancient mode of thinking which could give us insight into modern life. He wanted to bring about an “Archaic Revival,” which would end estrangement from society and reconnect us with one another.

That puts a lot of emphasis on the power of language and culture. To some experts, language is considered a technology, perhaps the most powerful one of all. Eminent explainer of Zen Alan Watts said that in our culture, we often mistake words for the phenomenon they represent. “The menu is not the meal,” he said. Another insight, “We seldom realize…that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”

For centuries, linguists have more or less been split into two camps on the subject. One argues that language shapes thought, while the other claims that it is impossible for language to do so.  American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf, modernized this debate. The idea that language shapes reality has henceforth been known as “Whorfianism.”  He famously said,” Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.” Language in his view shapes the way we think, and determines what we think about.

Whorf studied the language of the Hopi of the American Southwest, and determined that their and Anglo-American culture were vastly different. This was due he said to differences in language. For instance, their perception of time was completely different. With English speakers, time is broken up into units, such as minutes, hours, and days. It’s a resource or a commodity. For the Hopi time is a never-ending stream. In this view, a phrase such as “wasting time” is impossible to conceive. How can you waste that which never ends?

A Hopi man in Arizona.

Whorfianism fell out of favor. One reason, as The Linguistic Society of America cites, is that we are able to remember and experience things for which we have no words. The taste of an unknown fruit is no less sweet. What’s more, changing the phonetic sounds of a word doesn’t change the facts about what it represents. Because of this, in 1994 psychologist Steven Pinker proclaimed Whorfianism dead. Pinker contends that we all think in images and bits of audio which our brain interprets as language. But it doesn’t end there.

Consider the interpretation of The Literary Society, who perceive thoughts, language, and culture as three strands braided together that make up human experience. They are hard to parse out. Whorfianism is starting to see a resurgence among some in the linguistic community. This is due in part to the work of Professor Lera Boroditsky, an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience, and symbolic systems at Stanford University. Whorfianism was considered untestable. Boroditsky wondered if it actually was.

She and fellow researchers at Stanford and MIT traveled the world collecting data, and comparing as divergent language systems as Greek, Russian, Chinese, Aboriginal Australian, and more. Boroditsky and her team found that those who are multilingual think differently from those who aren’t. The professor wrote that, “…when you’re learning a new language, you’re not simply learning a new way of talking, you are also inadvertently learning a new way of thinking.”

And within any language system subtle changes in grammar, even mistakes that are accidentally carried on, have a significant impact on that culture’s worldview. “Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience,” Boroditsky wrote. “Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity.” Simply put, different cultures emphasize different aspects of experience. It is this change in emphasis that makes learning a new language difficult, especially one so different from our own.

Students learning a second language.

Boroditsky along with colleague Dr. Alice Gaby at Monash University, came up with an empirical method to test the influence of language on thought. The Pormpuraaw were selected as subjects. This is an aboriginal community in northern Australia. Their native tongue is Kuuk Thaayorre. Instead of direction words like left and right, their language uses only the cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west. Instead of saying, “Please move your plate to the left” for instance, in Kuuk Thaayorre you would say, “Please move your plate south southwest.” Another example, “There’s a spider on your northeastern arm.” Without being constantly aware of your geographical position, you simply cannot communicate in this language, past a few simple words.

The result Boroditsky writes is that “Speakers of languages like Kuuk Thaayorre are much better than English speakers at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes or inside unfamiliar buildings.” But it goes beyond this. Their focus on spacial relations influences many other aspects of life including, “…time, number, musical pitch, kinship relations, morality, and emotions.”

The researchers set out to find how this emphasis on geographic location affects the Pormpuraaw’s outlook on time. To do so, they showed volunteers a set of images depicting time’s passage, such as a crocodile growing up, a banana being eaten, or a man aging. Researchers wanted participants to put the pictures into their correct order. Each volunteer was given two separate occasions to do so.

A Pormpuraaw man during a traditional dance.

The direction a language reads in is pivotal for this exercise. For Anglophones, the images would be placed from left to right, while a native Hebrew speaker would arrange them from right to left. All the Kuuk Thaayorre speakers arranged the pictures from east to west. If they were facing south, the pictures went from left to right. But if they were facing north, they went from right to left. Such arrangement held true whether the person faced east or west. It didn’t matter whether the researcher mentioned what direction the subject was facing or not.

But these findings go beyond better understanding of a specific community. Boroditsky said that they have much broader implications for “…politics, law, and religion.” Truly, if we can account for cultural differences properly, we should be better at bridging the gaps between peoples, and can deal with individuals and groups from different backgrounds more fairly.

Beyond her research, “Other studies have found effects of language on how people construe events, reason about causality, keep track of number, understand material substance, perceive and experience emotion, reason about other people’s minds, choose to take risks, and even in the way they choose professions and spouses.”

Boroditsky said that people from different cultures diverge according to “patterns of metaphor” within language. These surface in art as well. For example when it comes to symbolism, “German painters are more likely to paint death as a man, whereas Russian painters are more likely to paint death as a woman.” In 85% of all artistic renderings, the sex of the figure portrayed relates directly to the grammatical gender of the word in the artist’s native tongue. The next step according to Prof. Boroditsky, is to find out is whether it is culture that shapes thought which language only conveys, or if it is language itself that does the shaping.

To learn about how language changes the brain, click here:

 

Heavenly Authorities Arrest God For Leaving Children In Overheating Planet (theonion.com)

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THE HEAVENS—Charging the supreme being with felony reckless endangerment, heavenly authorities placed the Lord our God, Divine Creator and Ruler of the Universe, under arrest Monday for leaving His children trapped in an overheating planet. “While it’s possible for even the most attentive deity to momentarily forget how quickly a planet’s temperature can rise, that’s no excuse for such horrifying negligence,” said the archangel Selaphiel, noting that The Almighty had put not just one of his children at risk, but billions. “Frankly, we’re lucky we got there and pried open the atmosphere when we did or they would have all been gone in less than 100 years.” At press time, a tearful God said He had only left to run a brief errand just on the other side of the galaxy and said He would never forgive Himself.

Xi Jinping, the crazy environmentalist

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“Any harm we inflict on nature will eventually return to haunt us.  This is a reality we have to face.” 

–President Xi Jinping speaking at the opening session of the 19th Communist Party congress on Wednesday (Oct. 18).  Xi Jinping (born June 15, 1953) is a Chinese politician. He is the current General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, President of the People’s Republic of China, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission. Wikipedia

A LETTER FROM THE MONKS OF THE TIBHERINE by Dom Christian de Chergé

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On May 24, 1996, a group of Islamic terrorists announced that they had “slit the throats” of seven French Trappist monks whom they had kidnapped from the monastery of Tibherine in Algeria and held as hostages for two months. Prior to the kidnapping, the superior of the monastery, Father Christian de Chergé, had left with his family this testament “to be opened in the event of my death.”

If it should happen one day—and it could be today—that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to encompass all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to this country. I ask them to accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure. I ask them to pray for me: for how could I be found worthy of such an offering? I ask them to be able to associate such a death with the many other deaths that were just as violent, but forgotten through indifference and anonymity.

My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I share in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world, even in that which would strike me blindly. I should like, when the time comes, to have a clear space which would allow me to beg forgiveness of God and of all my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down.

I could not desire such a death. It seems to me important to state this. I do not see, in fact, how I could rejoice if this people I love were to be accused indiscriminately of my murder. It would be to pay too dearly for what will, perhaps, be called “the grace of martyrdom,” to owe it to an Algerian, whoever he may be, especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam. I know the scorn with which Algerians as a whole can be regarded. I know also the caricature of Islam which a certain kind of Islamism encourages. It is too easy to give oneself a good conscience by identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideologies of the extremists. For me, Algeria and Islam are something different; they are a body and a soul. I have proclaimed this often enough, I believe, in the sure knowledge of what I have received in Algeria, in the respect of believing Muslims—finding there so often that true strand of the Gospel I learned at my mother’s knee, my very first Church.

My death, clearly, will appear to justify those who hastily judged me naive or idealistic: “Let him tell us now what he thinks of it!” But these people must realize that my most avid curiosity will then be satisfied. This is what I shall be able to do, if God wills—immerse my gaze in that of the Father, to contemplate with him his children of Islam just as he sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, the fruit of his Passion, filled with the Gift of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and to refashion the likeness, delighting in the differences.

For this life given up, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God who seems to have wished it entirely for the sake of that joy in everything and in spite of everything. In this “thank you,” which is said for everything in my life from now on, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you my friends of this place, along with my mother and father, my brothers and sisters and their families—the hundredfold granted as was promised!

And you also, the friend of my final moment, who would not be aware of what you were doing. Yes, for you also I wish this “thank you”—and this adieu—to commend you to the God whose face I see in yours.

And may we find each other, happy “good thieves,” in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both.  Amen.  Inchallah.

Algiers, December 1, 1993

Translated by the Monks of Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, Leicester, England.

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