Writing for Life
"What good is love if it is not shared?"
(from "This Bitter Earth" by Dinah Washington)
Writing—like love—is nothing if it is not shared. Even the most private diary has an audience—an imaginary other to whom it is addressed. To write is to find words for the half-formed realm of private thoughts, fears, and imaginings, to send them out into the world as an incarnate love offering. Like love, writing makes us vulnerable and exposes us in ways we would rather keep hidden. It sometimes goes wrong and brings disappointment and a sense of betrayal. To write is to reach out in trust to an unknown other with a yearning to communicate and to be understood, knowing that one might be rejected. But the ecstasy of communion is always worth the risk of rejection.
A Theology of Becoming:
Body, Blood, Birth, and Sacrament
My new book - free to read online at this link.
"If there is a discernible method to what follows, perhaps it is best read not as a failed attempt at theology or phenomenology, but as the shaping of an unfinished narrative that is part memoir, part creative writing, and part theological reflection, leaving many questions unanswered. How could it be otherwise, when the quest leads us to the birthing (of) God? There should always be a little madness in our method when we risk speaking of the unspeakable."
Modern theological approaches to birth have been filtered through an androcentric lens, focusing more on ethical questions of contraception and abortion than on the significance of birth for what it means to be human. In the Catholic tradition, this has been influenced by doctrines and traditions surrounding Mary's virginal conception of Christ and painless birth. This Element considers the challenges posed by maternal life to ideas and theories about pregnancy, childbirth, and the relationship between a woman and her newborn child. Reflecting on her maternal experiences through the lenses of feminist theory and Marian theology, the author sketches the contours of an incarnational theology that endows the birthing body with sacramental significance. She concludes by asking what it would mean for theological anthropology to adopt this as the normative model of the person reborn through baptism into the body of the maternal Church.