a word from claus

Last night, on the advice of my spiritual direction group (no kidding) rachael and i went on a date. We later figured out that it was the first time we went out to dinner (just the two of us) in over a year. Too long.

Anyway, first we went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was great. If you live in Chicago: it's free til November 14th, and after that you can get a pass from the Chicago Public Library. I suppose you could even pay, if you had to.

The thing I want to post is a quote from Claus Oldenberg, which was the body of one of the descriptive plates by a work of his in the museum.

Here goes:

"I am for an art that is political-erotic-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance to have a starting point of zero.
I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap & still comes out on top.
I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.
I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists, and extends, and accumulates, and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself."

So: swap "theology" for "art", and that's pretty much how I'm feeling these days.

Below: Rachael with my favorite Oldenberg piece. Oberlin, Ohio.

David in Nicaragua #4: theoillogical

Three things about the Purple Church and its pastor, accompanied by photos that are not of either of these things: I really admire Rachael’s host dad. I knew the first day I met him that he was a great guy, and he continued to impress me with his warmth and gentle faith. We also get similarly excited about worship; we shared some giddiness as we discussed how best to celebrate Pentecost. (He doesn’t usually celebrate Pentecost in his church, but decided it would be cool since we do it in my tradition.) He also let me preach in his church.



So, I feel like the theology that I most often heard preached in this particular church is pretty simple. The words of comfort are powerful in their neatness: God will get you through the hard times, when you are sad, buck up and have faith.
This is very different from my faith life, at least lately. It’s not about that kind of certainty for me, though it is clearly sustaining and life-giving for many of those folks. I was talking to Rachael about it, as she talked about the difficulty of doing such difficult work and having so few resources to fall back on. I talked about sitting in front of the White House waiting to be arrested, and I talked about praying through the Good Friday Walk for Justice in downtown Chicago. Both times I was really cold, and in both of those, I felt something in the depths of that cold emptiness and mourning. People who study mystics talk about kataphatics and apophatics; mystics that seek a fullness in union with God, an overflowing overwhelming totality of God, and mystics who seek to empty themselves utterly, and meet God their in that bareness. This second part is the kind of faith I have lately been running with. The God who lives uniquely in the coldness of shivering despair and a pleading world. It seems like a much more difficult God. It doesn’t feel simple at all; usually it feels stupid. But that’s what I’ve got now.



Also, I preached. At this lovely purple church. Rachael translated for me. It was Pentecost, and a preached a liberationist, post-colonial Pentecost sermon. I talked about cicadas. I talked about the threat of people being able to understand each other, in their native languages. I talked about the dangerousness of it all. I felt a little ridiculous- me, a white guy from the US, coming to Latin America to preach liberation theology? That’s a little absurd. But afterwards a woman came up and said that she had heard a lot of sermons about Pentecost, but none that named that reason for the importance of Pentecost. (That Pentecost would enable the oppressed Jews living under Empire to united, to be in solidarity with each other.) So, there’s that. Huh.