For the past three weeks I’ve included guest bloggers.  The posts ranged from baptist/catholic orthodoxy to feminist, queer, and heretical posts.  This series has been a great way to socialize folks into the intersection of theology and technology with a nod to critical pedagogy.  How really do we deal w/ classic texts like Aquinas’ Summa in today’s postmodern world?  One way was to pitch the question to folks trained in theology and other social science and humanities disciplines.  It was a great series, I think, that left many with the provocative thoughts concerning G/god and who G/god is.

I’ve resisted adding my own voice to this series.  I have several reasons, none of which I will go into now.  Elsewhere I’ve talked about my own theological position(s), and one does not have to pay too careful attention to know that I’m thoroughly enamored with all things theological.  I’ll pass on adding my voice to the series in terms of adding a blog post, but can affirm the following paradox:

God is and is not

God is simple and full of parts or complex

God is in the liminal spaces and beyond these spaces

I hope you enjoyed the series.  I think I’ll try to do this again in the coming months.  I’ll think of another series to have on the site.  If you have ideas, please do comment.  If you’d like to see a series, send me a message!  I’d love to know your thoughts on these matters!

Regular blogging should resume.  I’m considering beginning a series on the ideas of body as text and space.  Perhaps not as tantalizing as the iGod series, but nonetheless important!  If you’re interested in the body, text, and/or space, I’d love to be in conversation w/ you.  Perhaps I could have you guest blog during this series!  Leave a comment or contact me directly!

I know Lara Leigh from social networking.  In fact, I know her best as conservadora on twitter.com.  We know several of the same people in Chicago, but we’ve never crossed paths face to face, only virtually.  Conservadora is a queer, radical, poly, public & academic historian pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois Chicago.  She’s also an educator and a yogi.  She twitters about all things queer, danes, and has a particular affection for westvillagedyke.

god is a highly impoverished word for the energy, the connection, the holy space made when two or more people truly come together & truly see the world through another’s eyes, profoundly listen to another’s experiences.

two people making space for mutual recognition & gentle vulnerability possess the power of creation, cultivation, and destruction. three or more exponentially increase this. while our modern nation-state is based on the isolation of the nuclear family, those who have defied the proscription of monogamy know the potency of multiple connections.

this spirituality, this link to the human universal is also present in a quiet communion with a play, a film, a photograph or piece of sculpture. the radiant humanity of the viewer can connect through art with a soul that is no longer there, that has left this mortal coil, or at least the same time/space axes. it is a holy communion and site of godliness in which the mediation, rather than serving to distance, functions to partner two souls, if only for a tender second.

how do i know this? i know it ‘cuz i saw. or, more accurately, i know it ‘cuz i felt.

I met Joe thru the Postcolonial Theology Network, a Facbook Group committed to collaborative work in the area of Postcolonial studies.  We’ve since began collaborating, along with another person, on an intersectional project that we call TheoTech.  Joe is great.  I love our exchanges and I look forward to seeing his dissertation published.

I am a 53 year old white man who grew up in a working class Irish Catholic NYC neighborhood.  My parents were very faithful Roman Catholics who were married for 50 years before both took sick with neurological diseases and passed away.  My entire family through multiple generations is and has been Roman Catholic.  I am the only protestant in the family, the first and probably the last. Both my sisters have been Roman Catholic nuns for over forty years and in my family tree are bishops, priests, nuns and monks.

I studied to be a Jesuit priest and have had a twenty year business career as a consultant. I spent a third of my adult life trying to become a priest, but always struggled being a round peg in a square whole. I have studied at one of the most conservative Roman Catholic seminaries in the US and one of the most liberal Protestant seminaries.  I found that seminaries share more in common than they are different.  The seminaries that I have attended take one form or another towards insisting on compliance to an institutional God consciously and unconsciously viewed as litmus test for ordination processes.  My ordination was a sheer miracle after years of struggles in different churches.  I have great empathy for people wherever they are in their journey of faith resisting labels that overly simplify faith between God and persons.

I am an Episcopal priest who is now completing a PhD at the University of Manchester in England.  I am working at developing a postcolonial ecclesiology in an Anglican context.  I am also the founder and liaison of the Postcolonial Theology Network on-line and off-line.  I am married to Stefani, who is also an Episcopal priest and Rector of a parish where we both live in Reno, Nevada.

I struggle answering this question, but I wanted to graciously accept Robyn’s invitation.

My earliest memory of God is when I was four years old and my mother found me sitting alone in our darkened living room one late afternoon in the winter at 5pm.  Mom asked what I was doing sitting all alone.  I said and she so many times reminded me of this, “Oh nothing mom, I am just talking to God.”  All throughout my childhood I loved going to church, so that I could sit and talk with God.  I did not rattle off prayers as young Roman Catholic children were taught in those days, I just sat quietly.  This has been my experience of God throughout my life even now as a priest.

My deepest experiences of God have always been felt not through knowledge.  As a result my faith has in some ways always been radical and threatening for those for whom faith is based on knowledge.  My life of faith has never been based on having the right answers though I grew up with that expectation.  My faith was and still is built on questions.  Yet it took most of my life before my questions were honored.

I remember sitting in a Roman Catholic seminary class one day and I had just asked a challenging question of my teacher.  A friend said later, “Joe be careful, they have something we want”.  I had no idea what he meant and so I asked him.  He said, “they have the power to make us priests”.  Without even thinking I said “no, only God has the power to make priests”.  Throughout my life I have known that God and church were two very different things.  We can know the church through theology but God is beyond our knowing and might only be fleetingly felt.

Knowledge of God is misleading.  Be still and know that I am God often leads to us knowing ourselves and remaking God into who is included as who is loved and who is excluded or to be condemned.  The Church for centuries has presumed that it knows what it means when it has said, “Be one as the father and I are one.”  Unity of God has been the basis of the unity of the church.  Churches all too often glibly state each week, we are the Body of Christ.  There are ways this can be said and others way that is just down right idol making.

My sense is that God’s heart is porous but the church often comes with firm identity boundaries.  All of ecclesiology is based upon I believe a misunderstanding of the way the church understands God due to its seeking knowledge of God. An affective relationship with God begins and ends with the heart. There is something about the claim to know God that has always felt violent to me.  Simply I resist knowing God. I am content being in the presence of God who I believe is everywhere without distinction between sacred or secular or any other binary.

I met Heike not long after arriving to Denver.  She also studies with Miguel and is a Miguelito/a.  Heike is in her second year of the  Joint Doctoral Program at the University of Denver/Iliff School of Theology.  Her interests are Religion and Violence and Sexual Ethics.  She is a German-Thai co-production, white person of color in the making, genderqueer, organizationally challenged neat freak, ecologically conscious hot-shower lover.  She is also a German Mennonite, and I’ve very much enjoyed getting to know Heike.  She contributes a great deal to my own theology and constantly gives me food for thought.

God is in the in-between spaces and I can’t know

“…Look at me, you say, turning
my chin into your hand
what do you see?
It is
my face, wanting
and refusing everything.

And at that moment
For a moment, I want
to take that slender hand
and place it between my breasts
my hand holding it there.
I want to feel
your touch outside
my body, on the surface
Of my skin.

I want to know, for sure,
where you leave off
and I begin.”

–From Cherríe Moraga “Fear – A love poem”–

There’s this space between me and you
When we meet
And I can feel you in a way so I can know
That I am here and I am not you
I am inside my own skin

I feel on the outside of it
We are meeting, seeing, transcending ourselves,
Mindful, knowing?, that there is an in-between

Touching is entering the uncertain
Fear. Desire. The need to
Feel, to feel more than just myself
But feel, to know the other

In-between
The encounter, the embrace
There is marvel and care
There is desire and danger

There is marvel at the other
There is tender care, if there is love
There is desire to know
There is danger to destroy

I lose control, yes, perhaps
The need for control over who you can be
There is this space in-between
Between you and I, between you who I know, and the you that remains different

God is in the in-between places
God is in the everchanging, the evermoving in-between
God is in the difference, the wonder, the you
That remains hidden

And I know
I know of you only through the spaces where we touch, where we connect
And even as we embrace
I can never swallow you up, else you disappear

God is in the in-between places
The place where distance turns to touch
Where I know myself
Because I know where you leave off and I begin

God is in the in-between places
Where it becomes possible to experience the difference
Of you and I
Of love that respects and nurtures difference

That is how I can’t know God
That is how I can know
That there is God
Who is different and difference
Who embraces us both
Who makes meeting, transcending
Possible
Dangerous
Creative
Divine? Possibly.

Sela Finau says the following concerning social signifiers:

I dislike having to identify myself because I hate to be labeled. Nevertheless, I was born and raised in my native country of Tonga in Oceania. I grew up in Hawaii, where I attended elementary and middle school. I now live in the Dallas/Ft Worth area, where I have taken up residence for the last 20 something years. BBA, Finance from UT Arlington. MTS from Brite/TCU. Currently enrolled in MDiv @Perkins/SMU, and seeking Ordination in the UMC. Goal/Interest: to pursue a PhD in theology as an “out of place feminist Oceanian drifter.” (this title, in part, was part of my MTS thesis.

To answer the question, who is God and how do I know, is to first answer the question of who/what am I and how do I know?

Regardless of my response, I think my answer will never be complete.  This is because of two reasons:  first there are many facets to my ontological being that to give an account of Who/What Am I is an impossible task to achieve in one setting. Second, Who/What Am I is a question or process that is always in the making but never complete.  Once I make a statement, by the time I finish making such statement I could change my mind, and change again many more times.

The change becomes part of my “self” composite adding to my historical record as a human being, and will no doubt affect how I define God.  As a human being, I occupy both a real and ideological space that continues to unmask and unravel through time.  However, I recognize that Who/What Am I is closely tied to my family and my ethnic community.  Although it may not be my daily reality, I still locate the mosaic of Who/What Am I as belonging to both a communal and individual identity that is both situated, yet transcendent.  As a non-white Christian immigrant female living in the U.S., I do identify more with people that are just like me, which is more or less situation dependent.

Whether God or gods exist in the heavens is not my concern; rather, I fully accept my human finitude that I simply cannot know.  I can only attest to the many times little miracles have occurred in my life, the many transforming and defining moments that I encounter daily throughout my life journey. Therefore, Who/What Am I in relation to God need not be argued. In this regard, it is something personal and something that is between Who/What Am I and who God is to me. With that said, my relationship with God is also very public, as I work towards equality and justice for all of creation.

In conclusion, the fragmented aspects of Who/What Am I are only part of a larger multifaceted identity that I hold, and will continue to create, and unfold.  Who/What Am I cannot be limited to the “self” nor be confined to any particular time, place, space, or anything at all for that matter; rather, I am always on a forward move. I can situate and engage with the past, live in the present, and anticipate the future. Who/What Am I is not stagnant, rather it simply revolves. So, if my statements above were not clear, who God is and how do I know, let me summarize it in one sentence. God is because I am; I am because God is. Or in the words of Mary Daly, God is Be-ing.

Nezha Hamid is my student mentor.  She’s a Ph.D. student in the Joint Doctoral Program at the University of Denver/Iliff School of Theology.  She is an American-born Muslim.  She taught high school for many years before beginning the doctoral program, and she continues to teach in the Community College system in the Denver Metro Area.  We have some of the best conversation, Nezha and I.  i absolutely enjoy our time together as we sometimes talk about Islam, Christianity, gender, sexuality, men, women, and jazz.  She’s amazing and thoughtful and smart.  She is also the best Muslim woman I know.

An American-born Muslim,

I know there is a God because

I have a mind, and a brain, that is capable of learning

that there is blood flowing through my veins

this very second.

I know there is a God because

when I look up into the dark night’s sky

I see a light that magically, –effortlessly!

…lifts my spirit.

I was taught that this round shape, full of light

is called the moon.

I know there is a God because

He brought me safely home this evening,

at the end of a perilous day..  I was enclosed in a metal box

atop moving, spinning rubber wheels, which miraculously carried me

from point A to point B, in a busy, dangerous thing called a city,

in a rich, powerful thing called an empire.

Upon arriving in a structure I call “home,” there was

nourishment.

There was water, clean and running water,  to quench my thirst.

I thanked my God.

I reveled in the mystery of HE, who provides this warmth of a shelter

to cradle me with softness, allowing me to

rest.

To prepare for Worship…

I could worship in comfort.

In ease.

Maybe my worship would be more worthy

if I were in rain, elements, lightening from ominous clouds above.

I  bowed my head in peace.

In safety.

Allah ho Akbar!  (“God is great”)

To whom do I owe such gratitude??

I know there is a God because

I have the ability to experience sadness.

I saw a crying child, whose house was crushed

by a rumbling which oozed danger from the bowels of the earth.

Upon seeing the crying child, I too cried.

Tears arose from my eyes.

Did God put those watery tears in my eyes?  –An outpouring of something

happening inside the blood in my blue veins?

The child found his mutilated parents under cement crushings.

I am taught these heavy pieces are called rubble.

My parents mixed the powdered cement with sea-water.

My teacher taught me that the water from the sea was composed of salt, which

would make the cement crumble with emotions from shaking; tribulation.

My parents didn’t learn.

They hadn’t the faculties.

My God taught me to learn.

But my God didn’t teach me to learn, because

my parents didn’t learn.

My vision blurred.

I had a way to manifest my dreariness,

temporarily.

I dabbed my useless tears.  A good diversion.

A momentary solace.

By no longer thinking of the crying child,

I now had only to comfort my

self.

And this was wrong.  But I had the faculty, or was it my brain, or was it my God’s mind,  to recognize what was happening.

But I cannot recognize anything that is happening.

I am incapable.

I am merely human.

“And if all the trees on earth were pens

And if all the seven oceans were ink,

Even then there would not be words

enough

to praise Allah,

Exalted in power

Full of wisdom.” (Holy Qur’an 31:27)

I know there is a God because

I know that I don’t know

if there is a God.

To know for sure

would be to know

that

maybe

there

isn’t a God.

I met Margaret this past year at the American Academy of Religion in Montréal, Quebec, Canada.  We attended many of the same panels and struck up conversation about all things related to theology, ethics, sexuality, religion, and the like.  We exchanged information and have corresponded with one another since meeting last November 2009.

Margaret is a recent graduate of the University of St. Michaels College  at the University of  Toronto  and holds a Ph.D. in Theology.  Margaret is a feminist scholar and bisexual activist based in Toronto.  Her research interests include sexual ethics (her area of specialization), religious prejudice, sexual identity development and queer theologies.  She has published on theological representations of gender in film, same-sex marriage, sexuality in new religious movements, and religion-based homophobia.  She is co-director of the Toronto Bisexuality Education Project.

Margaret’s research interests include:  Christian sexual ethics; religion and politics; feminist theology; gender and sexuality; GLBTQ issues in religion; GLBTQ activism and community formation; religious-based prejudice (esp. anti-Judaism and homophobia); queer studies; gender and film; and identity politics.

Margaret’s story is an important one.  She is a First Nations Person.  She was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1973 and was raised in Sheet Harbour, a small village (pop. 820) on the coast, 120km east of Halifax.  For many of those years we lived without running water or plumbing.  Her parents were writers who encouraged reading and creativity.

She says:  I am a member of Generation X, and a third wave feminist.  The year I turned sixteen also saw the fall of the Berlin Wall, the crash of the Exxon Valdez, tanks rolling over students in Tienanmen Square, and the Montreal Massacre. My first sexual education class included a discussion about AIDS. The year I came out as bisexual the World Health Organization removed “homosexual” from their list of diseases, Nelson Mandela was freed from prison, and the world wide web was invented. I can’t take credit for any of that.

She currently lives in Toronto, at the corner of Chinatown and Kensington Market, with her partner.  They have two cats named Archie and Nero.  In her spare time she writes, paints, sews her own clothes, and tries to change the world.

Who is God and how do we know?
I should begin with a warning. Although I hold a doctoral degree in theology, I am a heretic.  Almost every time religious authorities have drawn lines in the sand, I find myself on the wrong side of the issue.  I would have voted against extending the Jesus community to the Gentiles. I agree with Novatian’s point about readmitting the lapsed too easily. I think the Arians were correct that “there was when he was not.” I agree with Pelagius and not Augustine on original sin.  The list goes on an on, with the latest horror being that I am an out bisexual who disagrees with almost everything Christian Churches have asserted about sex.  It is for this reason that I see myself as a queer theologian in the tradition of Marcella Althaus-Reid, who pioneered heresy as a theological methodology.  So when I approach the question “Who is God and how do we know?” I do so as someone who embraces the scandalous nature of my genuine convictions.

AIDS activist Larry Kramer (2005) asks, “How do we claim the God that they have gobbled up for their own private reserve?” (p. 83). This is a question I think about often.  In many ways, it is the essence of queer theology.  More specifically, how do we claim God as one of our own in the way that previous generations of men have claimed God as a Father?

The source most people turn to first in their attempt to know God –the Bible—is problematic for queers. Certainly, gay and lesbian exegesis has revealed much of the queer content of the Bible.  They have also done a good job of contextualizing the sections that some read as condemning homosexuality.  Despite this work, there’s just too much sexism, racism, homophobia, and violence for me to see it as the revelation of a deity I’d want to know.  And the parts that aren’t offensive are often boring.  The simple fact is, I don’t trust that the Bible is an adequate expression of God’s will. I don’t trust that the direct revelations recorded within it aren’t the product of mental illness, delusion, bad food or a calculating desire for political power.  If they can be so wrong about the nature of queer sexuality and of female identity, then what else might they be wrong about?  I don’t trust the messenger and therefore don’t trust the message.

A God that is accessible only through the Bible is not of much use as deities go.  Harry Potter seems more immanent; at least he’s also available in DVD.  If God is truly present now then the attachment of so much importance to the Bible seems unnecessary.  After all, why should a collection of reflections on dead people’s relationships with God be more authoritative than the one you’re having with God now? That is how I view the Bible – as a collection of blogs and tweets about someone we both claim we know.

Many Christians claim to know God through their personal relationship with Jesus.  I simply don’t relate to this experience. I identify with Jesus as a fellow activist, but I don’t agree with everything he said or did.  In some cases, he comes across as a bit of an asshole.  But Jesus doesn’t need to be perfect. My Christology is an adoptionist one, and extremely low.  Adoptionists know that the people God selects are often flawed, to put it kindly.  A classmate once proffered that Jesus could have lectured on nuclear fission if he had wanted to do so.  This is ridiculous. That’s not a human being; it’s a god in a man suit. Being fully human doesn’t include having super-powers or omniscience. I find Carter Heyward’s concept of Christ as a verb more useful than a magical Jesus.  Christ means anointed. I agree with Heyward that there can be many Christs.  Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela—all these people seem to have an anointed quality.  In my own time I’ve met people who certainly had anointed moments.  Heyward suggests that we can all be Christic, and ought to try.

When it comes to Jesus, I feel that Christian theology has gone horribly wrong.  Sacrificial theology undercuts the significance of Jesus’ execution. The resurrection is a forced happy ending akin to those tacked onto Hollywood movies in response to test screenings.  My Gospel of Mark would end as it originally did, with the women finding the empty tomb.  That preserves the reality of Jesus’ death—which should be horrible because being executed for challenging an occupying force is horrible.  When the queer community valorizes the Matthew Shepherds, we must never allow this “happy ending” dynamic to obscure the horror of torture and the permanence of death.

So if we eliminate the Bible and Jesus from the equation, how do we know God? My answer is that we know God in community, and in those moments when we are alone with ourselves.  One element that distinguishes us from the sex-phobic theology of mainstream Christianity is that queers also come to know God in the I-Thou relationships they have with their partners.  Access to God infuses queers with our own authority to assess religious experience, discern the just and the liberating, and weigh the good and the evil. Fundamentalists do not trust queer individuals in their claims about divine experience, nor do they trust the queer community’s ability to assess such claims.  I, on the other hand, am part of the queer community. For all its various shortcomings, I trust my community. I certainly trust it more than I trust the reportage of men from a time and place far removed from my own, especially when interpreted and preached by men who have proven themselves to place a low value on queer lives. As their own book says in Matthew 7:16, “By their fruits ye shall know them,” and the fruits of conservative Christianity have often been deadly for queers, particularly for queer women.

Because theology and Scripture has not included queer experience (especially that of queer women) I feel strongly that we need to begin the Scriptural process again, among ourselves. We need to foster an oral tradition, write about our experiences, and test their worth through community use and ongoing assessment. This undercuts the power of the “texts of terror,” and eliminates the need for torturous apologetics. It also opens the possibility for the development of new Scriptures.

The god that will emerge from this process of reflection and discussion may look very different from that of heterosexist theology.  I am drawn to Marcella Althaus-Reid’s idea of the Queer God, whose face has been suppressed by heterosexual theology. This God is not a reformer of the current Church but is an alternative to fixed structures of any kind.  The Queer God is a diverse, and dynamic deity whose presence is felt among the marginalized and outcast, and within intimate human relationships. Althaus-Reid (2003) argues that the Queer God is able to be moved, and far from being absolutely independent and transcendent, “depends heavily on our intimate relationships to configure Godself” (p. 53).  In short, the Queer God needs us, and thus sacralizes the extent to which we need each other. Some will object that this Queer God is simply an invention; a projection of our own queer image.  But the truth is, everyone, even those within Christian denominations, picks the parts of God that fit their experience and ignores the parts that don’t fit. That’s what being unknowable is about; surpassing our ability to comprehend. While queering is a critical theological step, we mustn’t forget that none of us have the complete picture.

Kramer, L. (2005). The Tragedy of Today’s Gays. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin.

Althaus-Reid, M. (2003). The Queer God. London: Routledge.

Heyward, C.  (2004). Chapter 2: Christ. In Miguel A De La Torre (Ed.), Handbook of U.S. Theologies of Liberation(pp. 16-30).  St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press.

I can’t remember how I first met Jesse.  But, our email dialogue and conversation over beer and dinner in Chicago was always a treat.  I wish I had more time with him, but he’s in Chicago finishing up a Ph.D. in Theology, and I’m in Denver just starting a Ph.D. in Theology/Ethics.  His reflection is thoughtful and honest, and I hope you’ll give it a charitable read.

Situating Jesse socially is the difficult part.  But, some social signifiers are:  Roman-Catholic Male , citizen of the United States of America, Primarily of Italian and Northern European Descent.  He’s one of these guys who I’d want to be my best friend.

The prompt for my following reflection is “Who is god, and how do we know?”  I hope that I have done some justice to both of these questions, and if I have not then please excuse me.  I present to you my latest thoughts on these matters as I often find myself redefining metaphors and re-answering these questions as I move through life.

“Who is God?”

There are two poles, or images, of God that I vacillate between.  The first is God as the unrequited lover.  I imagine the heartbreak felt by God every time we turn our faces away from the outpouring of love and creativity which is God.  What must it be like to be the one who tries to give oneself over and over to be constantly rejected?  This is the God who feels our absence in God’s own life.

The second image that I have of God is that of Job.  In this instance, the absence is that of a just and right God in our lives.  I like the interpretation of the book of Job that describes the end of the book as a trial where Job is the plaintiff and God is the defendant.  Job cries out, “I cry to you and you do not answer me; I stand, and you merely look at me,” and then again, “When I looked for good, evil came; and when I waited for light, darkness came” (Job 30: 20, 26  NRSV).  Job struggles to understand how one could even have a notion of a just and loving God amidst such unimaginable suffering.  I think this is a struggle that should not be brought to an easy conclusion, or any conclusion…at least until death.

In the last couple of days an unimaginably destructive earthquake and its consequences have struck Haiti.  I do not believe that God interferes with the daily events of the world in such a direct manner, but I still find myself yelling out to God “No…this will not be allowed anymore…you have to stop” in manner similar to Job.  I have read accounts of this tragedy where people explain how food has lost its taste and how they feel as if all time has stopped.  This has led me back to considering my first pole though. If I want to be in a relationship with God how can I describe God as completely other?  Has my absence from this relationship brought about suffering for myself and others?

“How do we know?”

I’m not exactly sure how to respond to the question of “How do we know?”  It can mean so many things from how do we know God is there, how do we know our descriptions of God are correct, or perhaps another entirely different question.  No matter what the specific intention of the question, “How do we know?” is a question that looks for some sort of proof or substantiation.  I know that I, along with many others, now speak of God in terms of lover or at least in more personal terms than lawgiver, judge, or sovereign.  I think this shift is beneficial for many reasons but it makes the “How do we know?” much more difficult.  One can at least seem to offer proof of a lawgiver by the laws that surround us.  However, it is impossible to offer a proof of love.  One might point out a “loving” act but it is impossible to prove that an act was truly motivated by love instead of some other intention.  I do not think one can offer a proof for God through any metaphor, but I think the descriptions of God that employ some notion of love make the concept of verifiability so much more difficult.

Anne Dunlap is a thoughtful, deep-thinking, social justice type pastor.  I’ve enjoyed connecting with Anne at La Communidad, a church plant of the United Church of Christ.  But, to use social signifiers and situate Anne more concretely, she says herself the following:

I am a 39-year old woman, although sometimes I feel like I’m 27. Or 6. What does 39 feel like? Heck if I know. I still like to splash in mud puddles, play catch, and eat popsicles.

I am a graduate from Iliff School of Theology in Denver, CO  and ordained minister in the United Church of Christ (UCC), which welcomed me with open arms after thirty years in the Presbyterian Church (USA). As a progressive, feminist, peace-and-justice-loving, I’ll-speak-my-mind-if-it-pleases-me, lesbian woman, it’s good to have a place I can call home with my whole self. I pastor a base community made up of Latino immigrants and gringos that is trying to change the world.

I Give My Heart to God

“God the source of goodness cannot be conceptualized in images and terms that serve to maintain either sexism or racism or any dominance of an elite class of beings at the expense of the other.”¹

^{The voices of the martyrs, the voices of the suffering, the voice of the earth herself, cry out, “There must be another way.  There must be another way than violence and domination and terror and starvation and killing, profits and dogma before people and earth and animals.  There must be another way.”  My search for another way, and a theology that reflects that way, begins with this claim, echoed in the quote above: The God who loves us refuses domination.}

I give my heart to this God, to the Divine who is at the center of the creation of the universe, who set natural processes into motion and yet took the time to imagine the whirling geometry of the packed seeds of the sunflower, the never-the-same spots on the giraffe, the mystery of the color blue, and the intoxicating smell of the back of my beloved’s neck.  I believe that Alice Walker’s claim that “the universe responds and takes care of us, no matter which god we believe in,”² is reflected in the tender, intimate detail of the second creation story in Gen 2, when God molds the earthling out of the very earth⁶ and has to kneel down so close as to breathe the Divine Breath into the earthling’s nostrils, and that this same God yearns for our well-being and the well-being of all creation.  The “rules and regulations” (as arcane and odd as some of them may be) of the Torah and the rantings of the prophets portray a God who is deeply concerned about our life together as a healthy community, a God who desires no one to be poor or outcast, who desires everyone to have a voice and a vision for peace and love and wholeness.  Regardless whether we believe Scripture is divinely written or mere historical artifact or something in between, our sacred text records the longings and struggles of a people who somehow know that there is a different way than violence and subjugation: there is God’s way, a claim cried and sung out by generations of oppressed peoples ever since, no matter how they name the Divine (or don’t).

Our tradition’s sacred text records the human perception of Divine interest and involvement in creation, an interest and involvement which rarely spill over into domination.⁷ One might describe the story of the flood in Gen 6-8 to be God’s regret for using domination over creation and promising never to do so again; incredibly, several stories find humans talking God out of dominating behavior (Gen 18, Num 14).  The narrative arc of the Torah finds God less and less utilizing power-over and opting instead to work together with humans,⁸ such as in the liberation of the Hebrews from Egypt, where we find God hearing the cry of the oppressed and deciding to do something about it –  and yet, rather than simply speaking the slaves into freedom (a la Gen 1), the Divine works through humans (Shiphrah, Puah, Moses, Aaron, Miriam) for freedom.  God works with humans through the voices of the prophets, the life and ministry of Jesus, and the communities that Paul urges to embody the subversive ethic of love in the midst of empire.  “God’s own being, then, is seen as one characterized by relationships of self-giving, reciprocal compassion, respect, and sharing.”⁹

^{If God is the creator of all, so powerful as to concoct an unimaginably vast and mysterious universe, why cannot God simply intervene to stop the empire, stop the earthquake, stop the man putting his fist upside the woman’s head yet again?  This is the eternal problem of theodicy: if God loves us so much, why do we suffer?  I am not sure there can ever be a satisfactory answer,10 but for me the answer is tied up somehow in God’s refusal of domination and our human free will.  In our faith tradition, we are offered a choice, as individuals and as communities: to follow God’s way or not – God sets before us the choice between life and death (Gen 3, Deut 30:19) – but God will not force our choice.  God refuses to dominate us, and I can only attribute this to God’s love for us, even though we choose death over and over and over again.  God refuses domination, coercion, violence.  God chooses non-violence as God’s way of being, and invites us into that way of being as well.}

²Paraphrase by Kwok Pui-Lan, Post-Colonial Imagination and Feminist Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 229.

⁶Gen 2:7.   “Earthling” as a translation of  hmda comes from Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), Chapter 4.

⁷The Bible, of course, is often captive to its own domination-, imperialist-, and colonialist-oriented context, and those layers must be sifted through.  I find that certain narrative arcs (for example, the conquest of Canaan is in many respects a failure) and the outbreaks of prophetic imagination to be correctives to those elements of the text.

⁸Or even animals, as in the story of Balaam’s ass in Num 22!

⁹Jones and Lakeland, 55.

¹⁰In fact, I have said on occasion that eternity is so long because we have so many questions to demand of God…God has a lot to answer for.

I have the pleasure and opportunity of working with Debbie Creamer.  By far, she is one of the highlights of my time thus far at Iliff School of Theology.  She is a professor and Associate Dean for the School of Theology.  She is trained as a theologian who specializes in feminist theologies and is a leading scholar in Disability Studies.  She is a disruptive feminist theologian!

Some more proper social signifiers for Debbie Creamer are:  white, female, middle aged, single, economically comfortable, and yet invested in living in ways that disrupt privilege, cultivate relationships, imagine possibilities, and offer space for co-construction of a better world.

Who is god?  I ordinarily wouldn’t even try to answer this question – in part, because I know how damaging definitions and labels can be, particularly when we try to name something that holds as much value for some people as “God” does.  But I’ve been playing with the idea lately that I might think about god as being the empty spaces.  I don’t mean that god is “in” the empty spaces – as if, sitting quietly in an empty space, we might find or become aware of an entity or substance that we would name God – but rather I wonder what it would mean if we were to say that god *is* empty spaces.   By this I’m thinking of potential and possibility, of fissure and disruption, of questions and the next moment and all that is gone or is not-yet.  In a way, this evokes images of peace, or hope, or even eschatology in ways that might be familiar to those coming from Christian perspectives.  But I like that it also evokes change, uncertainty, and even the openness that comes out of fracture.  This leaves issues of justice, community, and relationality in our hands, rather than naming those commitments as part of god – this makes me a bit anxious, but I think I’m okay with that for now.  Anyhow, I’m not sure I’d answer the same way tomorrow, but for today, I’m enjoying trying on this image.

And, as far as your question of “how do we know” goes, I think that we don’t.  That’s part of god for me, too –  that god is something that we experience or make sense of at a significant level in ways that are fleeting and elusive.  That’s overstating, because I know that god is sometimes felt or known in deep and concrete ways, but more often than not, for me at least, god is somewhat akin to memory we have of a dream as we wake up.  Or, god is something that we build only to deconstruct and then build again, which is where my picture of “trying on” a definition comes from.  And beyond that, I think, it all needs to be worked out in community – where we together share our own tentative constructions and imaginations, and together weigh the consequences of any particular definition or description; where we repeat traditional stories as a way of holding ourselves together, and create aspirational pictures as a way of moving ourselves forward.  Which, I guess, is why I’m feeling bold enough at the moment to give you this description, not because it is anything solid in and of itself, but because it will then go out to community for further reflection, evaluation, discussion, exploration – keeping it active and lively, instead of static and oppressive.