* I received the book
for free for review purposes from Wipf & Stock.
This is not quite a book review. Nor is it a book report. But I really want to tell you about my experience reading A Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer by L. Callid Keefe-Perry.
I don’t find it to be a coincidence that I ran across a
quote from Toni Morrison this week. In Beloved,
she wrote, “Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” This quote,
as well as a litany of verses from scripture and hymnody flowed through my head
as I read Way to Water: A Theopoetics
Primer by L. Callid Keefe-Perry. Morrison’s quote from Beloved came to mind (and while formulating this review) as I was
curious about how Callid would define theopoetics. Through Callid’s extensive
writing and exploration, I found that theopoetics cannot be limited to a
confined prosaic definition. Theopoetics is not something to be hoarded by the
academic; it is instead a field that calls for creation and (re)creation within
an active community of faith.
And that’s when I head the voice of Jedi master Yoda in my
head: “You must unlearn what you have learned” (If you read Way to Water, I hope you hear Yoda’s
voice, too. And God’s.). I went to graduate school to study rhetoric and
professional communication. I then converted to Christianity from Hinduism. I
then went to a non-denominational seminary and a Lutheran seminary to study
theology. I then became a parish pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America. I would like to think of myself as a learned person, which is why unlearning
is a terrifying concept for me. Because of my life experiences, I’m very
interested in how people talk about God and contextual theology. But I’ve also
used my studies in rhetoric as a binky of sorts; it’s one of the many shields
I’ve hid behind in explaining theology to others and relying on the confines of
definitions. Heaven forbid we place God in a box, yet I’ve inadvertently done
that on many an occasion. But an exciting aspect of unlearning is relearning.
In Way to Water, I
was reminded that I’ve been living a half-life of sorts within boxes and
confines, and that experiencing God in our lives is something much more than
needing an explanation. A reliance on concrete definitions. A reliance on
needed tidy answers and conclusions. A delusion of grandeur that as a
“theologian in residence” of sorts in a parish, I know more (well, I don’t). That
the ways we talk about God can become our own idols and golden calves that we
hold near and dear. Through Way to Water,
I’m (re)learning that it’s more about exploring the work of a living and
resurrected God in the world with others. I had a St. Paul the Apostle moment
when scales fell from my eyes (see Acts 9:18-19, “And immediately something
like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and
was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength”) and I
could imagine seeing the God-created world differently. Reading this primer has
opened my eyes not just to how people talk about God, but taking conversations
further in how people share with on another how they experience an experiential God.
As an ordained Lutheran pastor, I deeply resonated with
theopoetics being more that just flourishing language to talk about God. In
reading Way to Water, I felt in my
bones the need to realize that God’s Word is the Living Word, the Word made
Flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. It’s lovely and amazing to re-encounter the
Living Word in a new area. Christianity is meant to be lived and experienced;
otherwise, why would God come to us in the person of Christ if God didn’t want
to truly know and live our experiences? Words can communicate, but learning
through experience and lived-ness... interwoven with words can be profound. Way
to Water also made me realize that theologians have a particular vocabulary
(click here to see what I'm talking about),
and that how we communicate our experiences with God and with one another can
be exclusive. If we are to share our experiences of God with one another
(laity, ordained, seeker, conversation partner...), we must not be afraid to
stumble where words might not be able to contain such an experience, because we
just might find the words, the expressions, the experience of God alive, and
perhaps God anew. Way to Water also
brought me back in touch with my experiences with the Living and Loving God and
made me excited about hearing and sharing with people on their experiences of
God in their lives.
Reading Way to Water
led to new discoveries in how I think about experiencing God, inviting
conversation about how others experience God, and forming the words of those
shared experiences into a holy and communal place. As Callid’s work is a
primer, it whets my appetite for more conversation and more dialogue. As an
ordained minister who is a woman of color in a predominately white
denomination, I would love to see dialogue between theopoetics and the
embodiment of race in theology. I appreciate Callid’s emphasis on safe spaces
and hospitality in the area of theopoetics, but as a woman of color who’s
pretty good at identifying as “other,” I wonder about how invitations are
extended? Who extends such invitations? How are spaces deemed as “safe”? Who
works to make such spaces “safe”? How can we work with concepts of hospitality,
especially in a time when people feel they may be encountering inhospitable
environments? As for a fleshy incarnational embodied experience, I also wonder
how theopoetics will be in conversation with social media?
After reading Way to
Water: A Theopoetics Primer, it feels fitting to have questions on
conversation.
Review of Way To Water: A Theopoetics Primer, by Callid Keefe-Perry,
is published by Cascade Books. More reviews of this book will be
published here, this coming week: http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2015/02/25/theopoetics-book-blog-tour/
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