Moving as a foreigner through the land named THEOLOGY
As voice I move through a landscape of words. Voice is my name. Voicing is my praxis.
Arrived to what I have begun to call my new home land. Safe and yet unsafe. It is a landscape as much as a soundscape. And every word is a milestone where I dare to rest. Where I contemplate. Where I tend to long for being. Simply being. It is a spacetime where I lose my self. Disappear. It is the land where I need to find my strategies, my steps, my wishes, and longings needed for moving on, for finding a way towards priesthood.
This land is sometimes harsh, sometimes wonderful and sometimes extremely dry. I try to make it flower, by watering it with its own matter. With poetics and fact, quotes and realities. The way I move, always trusting in what will come forth.
Theology is the land. Theology is its name. Theology is the language I try to master. But I come from a different region with a different language. A language making me a foreigner. An outsider. What can I expect? Coming from a different country... From a different land and land/sound/scape... From a different world... Yet, I am allowed inside. Perhaps on a special permit. An immigrant-alien visa. Not yet trusted. Perhaps never trusted. I won't leave the way I have found....
I am part of a pilgrimage – for everyone who is in need of trust, love and belonging. I am a Christian. A voice on its way. I am. Therefore, I aim. Here to learn to understand the language I may never master. Listening with what I know. The vowels I know. The consonants I know. The structures I have studied and mastered in my previous home. Singing. Allowed to be practiced through and as prayer...
What is clear, is that I am longing. Longing is my guide. As much as wonder. This guide tells me: mastering is not about being an expert, but about being open enough to love and to hear the other. To learn. To make sense and mattering out of that which is encountered. To meet and search in company. To look, to see, that which I have not yet tasted. To share – body, blood, flesh and thinking. Words becoming flesh. Word and body - both cut together-apart[1].
I am. He said. And that language, must be the sign towards my destination.
This language of mine, is shared with many. It is perhaps incomprehensible. But if you wish to meet me halfway [2], I am convinced we will learn together. Become aware together. Are you ready? Are you there with me?
I am here. I trust we are meant to walk on this road together. For the sake of what we believe in. For the sake of love. For the sake of knowing. For the sake of learning. Of living the world, which is more than word. A world which is about living the life of a body – dead and risen. Telling, I am. Incarnated word.
For this reason, I wish for us to move together. Never alone. Even if left in silent movement. While we are learning to meet. Learning to see, and become touched and becoming surprised, with all those fragments we didn’t yet meet. Meeting together apart. Cutting the bread together apart. Sharing that which is broken while healing. Suffering while hoping. Dying while living. Living while Dying. I am. I hear the word. I am. Are you ready?
[1] The sharing of Christ’s body and blood in the holy mass points towards a wonderful example for how the Karen Barad’s agential realist theory can be understood, especially the terms ‘cutting together-apart’ and ‘intra-action’ rather than inter-action….
[2] ”Meeting the universe halfway” by Karen Barad from 2007 has become a strong influential theoretical framework in my vocal performance research, but also in the way I encounter theology, existential care and more or less any aspect of meaning making in everyday life …….(develop)
A mon seul desir (Laasonen Belgrano & Price 2023)