big t’anks go to Joel for sliding this one-of-many-gems across the virtual table.
::
look right and make sure you check out david’s link at ::peer pressure is forever:: for a _great_ cornel west interview. (*serious contender)
right, pj’s are on, hot choc malt is made, time for a book and my duvet.
keep thinking…
LB
ironically longer than main post post-script…
:: i like to stand firmly in the question::
– (the ever-welcoming) jules, over on queermergent. one of my favourite quotes of the week. and maybe ever.
meant to say earlier in week and didn’t get around: if ACNA, FOCA and Anglican Mainstream aren’t your theological cup of tea then there’s some interesting thoughts continuing lately over at Queermergent, (see side bar on right) which encouragingly is building its archive of LGBTQA stories and essays from a range of theological and denominational perspectives (but all beyond homophobia and misogyny). from the iconoclasts to the more orthodox, i’m liking the diversity, as whatever this thing that gets called the emerging movement might be or not be, to say all are singing from exactly the same hymn sheet would be misrepresentative. the latest 2 posts are exploring aspects of covenant theology and sexuality – from voices within Anglican (UK) and Presbyterian (US) contexts. i’m enjoying seeing the often (very) different paths folks trace that bring them all into the same inclusiver space on the map.
in a not wildly dissimilar vein, i see glaad has a piece on radio and “Godcasts” that are exploring faith from LGBT perspectives.
interrogate everything – ikon, lessons in evanDelism, ’08
i’ve been listening to david’s talk at ffm 09. which is about as frustrating a thing as a person can do for pleasure of a rainy sunday. my brother said he enjoyed it because it’s like having david in the room. a comfort in a familiar voice. and that’s why it’s frustrating. david peppers all his talks with, does anyone have anything they want to throw in on that?
and david means it. which is one of the reasons i like him so much, why he’s one of my favourite people to be in conversation with. he’s got, what seems to me, something like an instinctual Ricoeur thing going on. it’s all about the space inbetween, in the exchange, in the Q&A, the back and forth of that inbetween where things get electric. that to me is the space of divine happening. so i’m speaking to the laptop. saying, yes, i do… i wanna talk about this. wonder around this. i want to see the space spark and breathe. i want how i envisage it to be expanded. see its edges perforated, where my limitations only now see solid boundaries. i want cracks to appear so that more light comes in… but all i have is the laptop and me responding to an audio recording…
perhaps when we have a space in between that’s closed, small… claustrophobic, only reaffirming of what we already think or finding ways to reaffirm what we desire to achieve, then the possibility of divine happening is being squeezed out. it’s the kind of space in which politicians sit with lawyers and find doublespeak loopholes that will make, pervert, justice to be synonymous with brutality. that’s a space that’s not opening up room for revelation, for truth. in those spaces, people become bodies. and we become God, rather than G-D being revealed… and i don’t know what to do with that… not a fucking clue other than to pray… and praying to G-D i pray is outside of my head… the G-D that suffers here:
david quotes Marx,
religious suffering is at one at the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature the heart of a heartless world and the soul of souless conditions.
the man who also said, “religion is the opiate of the masses”… and david poses a question about how we define religion. global consumerism as religion perhaps…?
and so i’m there speaking back to the laptop and asking, what happens if we say it’s democracy that’s the opiate of the masses? or maybe, the drug’s a two party system played out in the media as a false dichotomy of left v. right, that reduces what should be moral action to mere party political? what is it that’s keeping us asleep?
because religion, when it’s weak, when our G-D is weak, by which we might mean self sacrificing, might help us speak to power… i’m trying to make sense of how interrogate everything without adding to the brutality… faced with this cross, what do we stand for…? what will i stand for?
i was reminded of this:
If anyone asks: "How did Jesus raise the dead?" kiss me on the lips, say: like this!
- Rumi, Like This, translation from Rumi's Divan by Fatemeh Keshavarz
when i heard this:
justice is what love looks like in public – cornel west, ffm09
that’s about as religious statement as i’ve ever heard. we need this space for the apocalyptic, for the conversations from the war room to the campus to the check out aisle to the hospital room waiting room to the prison to keep being broken open with our questions, out interrogations. i know i need it, ’cause i don’t know what to do with all of this.
and so by way of cornel west and solomon burke and all the other poets, i find those edges of the conversation that david and others keep bringing to the table, that i talk to as i stand at the kitchen counter with coffee and scrambled eggs… those edges are pushed out wider for me… this, i say, i believe:
it’s not the religion of Jesus that keeps me numb… that’s what keeps me hoping there’s something impossible around the corner… that justice, which is beyond any impeachment, but looks like heart rending change in the name of full force goodness… it keeps me questioning everything, even when i’d rather sleep easy and not have to look this cross in the face.
::
this i used to believe. 4 very different stories on this american life. all worth hearing.
edited to add: as is this sobering conversation between bill moyers and co-creator of the wire, david simon on the truth about what he calls the war on the underclass.
“If you don’t need ’em, why extend yourself? Why seriously assess what you’re doing to your poorest and most vulnerable citizens? There’s no profit to be had in doing anything other than marginalizing them and discarding them.” ::
pete’s posted up a summary of ikon::recalls Judas, including our recordings of the reflections.
the live version of mine ended up being more like as i intended it – more pitching and heaving, fast paced and well… angry than the earlier recorded version. that said, the table was so crowded with folks that there was no room to gesticulate. my body felt like a coiled spring and there was no room to physically express as i’d have liked. jonny was behind doing the live mixing underneath our voices and commented afterward, it’s a shame you couldn’t stand. and this is what i love about the whole collaborative experiment, that we try stuff and it’s okay for it not to be perfect… (i toned it down to a much more meditative level for the audio-only version. but, as an experiment, i’m glad we have kept a record for once. )
in the ’08 gathering, Satisfaction, and in our workshop at gb08, lessons in evandelism we recognised that it is disatisfaction that keeps artists making art, not success. you keep trying to make it better and learning as you go. it was a real treat to back at the ikon table after leaving the cyndicate 6 months back and taking a break. i loved what everyone brought to the table, it really provoked me. i can’t wait for whatever we’re gonna try next. even as an ikon::recalls, this was *so* different from the 2002 version of Judas, that it was still a one off. we prepare, we do it and we move on to the next… Sunday night really got close to embodying what i think theodrama might be about…
on a not unrelated front, i haven’t watched all the videos, but in thinking over Easter about what the heck it is i actually mean when i say, i believe, i came across this theopoetics site, which i’m really enjoying exploring. and in a way, this gets the closest yet to articulating how i understand my belief, without making me feel boxed by the technicalities of labels such as Christian Agnostic or a/theist. this breaks something open for me. this video on bruggemann’s dialogue with the emerging church really did it for me. i kind of want to pull up a chair with david and sarah and this guy, and several folks besides. actually, no kinda about it.
i’ve been wondering for a while what would develop from my journey through deconstruction and the psychoanalytic, and have been in increasingly finding suggestions of narrative and the unsystematic and the poetic coming out of my mouth… embryonic unformed questioning attempts with several nouns and adjectives increasingly taking on a verb form. which probably stems from exploring in ’07 the idea of “G-D as event” (rather than as being) in The God Delusion. and i think it’s also been an attempt to wonder what category to put what i did at Vanderbilt last October into… i’ve been filling out a college application and trying to describe what i’ve been up to on the ikon journey has been wrecking my head.
the experience of ikon is very often doing something that i don’t know how to describe. and i’m willing to confess that it can be bloody intimidating when the kind of people who typically describe what you’re doing are philosophers like Jack Caputo. (there’s a reason why when someone approaches and says they’ve been reading Pete’s work and Caputo’s and they’re a big fan of ikon although they’ve never been and would love to talk about what we do that i typically respond, “let’s get a pint”. thank G-D we do a lot of stuff in pubs!) i love the conversations but man do i have to work hard at them. and i don’t say that to imply i’m stupid or ignorant, or that i have a problem with the philosophy that’s been used to describe and inspire ikon. it’s just i’m more comfortable with, and have been in want of, an alternative language set that allows for all the provisionality but which flows more freely rather than making me feel tongued tied beside the academics.
i suspect of a fair few of us collaborators in ikon have at this stage enough knowledge in our heads and have done the stuff enough times to get an honourary PhD in Philosophy but don’t realise it because we are doing it without the need, or indeed in some cases desire, to articulate or even understand it philosophically.
so anyway, all that is really meant to say, some helpful dots are being joined through this theopoetic stuff… this all intrinsically seems to make sense to me in a way that feels potentially liberating and worth exploring more. and my brain’s not hurting.
Reknitting our creeds light in hand We are liberated by our uncertainty Our fragile belief where G-D is the wound, the hole in the weave We discover the world We face the other Undergoing, Listening, Wondering, embracing Asking, Is this how it could be? …
Let our stories unravel and be told without conclusion Let us knit our lives together With meaning that cannot be grasped by our words
(from the liturgical poem i wrote for The God Delusion. seems to fit. somehow.)
Brook, if you read this – l’engle gets a mention on the theopoetics site, which brought you to mind.
Little Bird @ Left of Narnia 