Post-Catholic Midrashim

Midrashim are Judaic interpretations of scriptures, which often elaborate the stories found only in skeleton form there. In this spirit, contrary to the ways of Roman Catholic dogma, Lutz examines the social-spiritual effects of historic Catholic interpretations, including a child’s mind’s understanding. She turns the biblical stories on their head, with then pierces them with a deeper, more authentic meaning of the gospels’—including Mary Magdalene’s and the Yoga Sutras’ and Buddha’s—message of nonviolence. At the same time, the poems expose the Church’s patriarchal and punitive thought systems and contradictions.

The scriptural dissections alternate with poems of a fraught relationship between a rebel daughter and a pious mother, ranging from the pathos of the mother’s loss of faith when her parish priests’ pedophilia is revealed to the sweetness of the daughter’s joy when her mother gives up self-punishment for Lent. Lutz spins tragicomedy from imagined fills in the gaps of the gospels and from the increasing absurdity of the mother and daughter’s debates about birth control and abortion as the mother sinks into dementia.

Careening between sass and earnestness, the poems rail against religion, while struggling to recover an authentic spirituality. Lutz doesn’t argue with God as much as she argues against religions’ big lies.

It’s kind of like Oscar Wilde and Richard Rohr walk into a bar/monastery, which is something like a bookstore/café, and find God’s glass is more than half empty(ness).