IF THEOPOETICS IS A genre concerned with bodies, it must also be concerned with where the bodies of those who are defining, playing, and exploring the contours of the discipline exist. One may track the works of Amos Wilder, Stanley Hopper, Rubem Alves, Melanie May, Mayra Rivera, and Callid Keefe-Perry to gain a better sense of the field writ large. That is not to my task here. Rather, I want to address the questions of Theopoetics and its unique contribution to conversations that are sometimes parallel to theological aesthetic discourse or theology and art. Simply, what can I (you) accomplish within Theopoetics that we collectively could not accomplish in another field?

I begin to answer this question by first turning to Rubem Alves, whose passing in 2014 has left a void in the field. For Latin@ theologians, his contribution to theology, education, and pedagogy in Latin America and beyond are widely known. He opened a space for us to do theological thinking differently with an open invitation to explore the contours of theological knowing and imagining. Whether through metaphor, education for children, play, or deep theological prose that is interrupted by poetry and short stories that continue for pages, Alves taught that there was beauty in allowing both the space for our theological imagination to breathe and there is magic in the mundane. In The Poet, the Warrior, and the Prophet (1992), he gave several metaphors and definitions that are most helpful. To do theology Theopoetically, one must “peer over the void” and to “unlearn” those things that tether us to our learned, dogmatic, and systematic thinking about God. He claims we must be birds without cages, free to fly. He offers stories about prophets and how to tell the story of Jesus within a community, and how that story disappeared when scholars layered a hermeneutic of “truth” on top of the lived experience of the community. These images and metaphors were coated with writings from Lao Tzu, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Octavio Paz, and references to other theological texts.

He then would turn to physical bodies, describing the contours of the flesh. Whether in I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body (1986), Transparencies of Eternity (2010), or his earlier works like A Theology of Human Hope (1971) or Tomorrow’s Child: Imagination, Creativity, and the Rebirth of Culture (1972), his language about the body was largely illustrative, but done so the words became tactile. Other theologians that followed him found new ways to explore the body poetically. Take Mayra Rivera’s Poetics of the Flesh (2015). Rivera engages thinkers who underscore the importance of the body in knowing, such as Michel Foucault, Franz Fanon, and Judith Butler. She reads them alongside biblical texts like John. Further, she follows Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation (2006), in that poetics is an exploration of “not only styles of writing, but also modes of knowing, being and acting in the world” (Rivera 2015). Like Alves, bodies are leaping off the text and the reader is confronted with the “poetics” of interpreting that raw reality. And when the reader is confronted in such a way with bodies, she is ultimately confronted with two questions: What bodies? And what does the experience of these bodies say about God? The answer to such questions, as I’ve come to address them in my work, comes from the narratives of my origin.

I come from a Latin@ community, specifically Mexican-American and Chican@ identifying people in California. For my community, poetry, poetics, storytelling, and the practices of our ancestors are essential for survival. I remember sitting on the front porch with my Grandpa who immigrated from the heart of Mexico and listening to stories about his Mexican father and stories he heard about his indigenous mother, who had her own theological and religious background. These stories largely consisted of day-to-day realities and struggles that teased in their own local religious and theological histories throughout his narrative. Likewise, my Grandma told stories of our family and its deep ties to the love and compassion of Jesus, and how his story mirrored our experience of suffering on a day-to-day level. Interspersed throughout their house were the statuettes and figurines of saints, images of our ancestors, and bottles of balms and panaceas with the power to cure ailments ranging from the common cold to adolescent acne. Stories included deep Catholic theology and vignettes of theological insights from an indigenous past, and they reverberated from within the very walls of the house.

These lessons of lived theology were amplified in the surrounding community. At local community centers, elders told stories and provided training on indigenous practices that sought to recover lost religious and cultural practices. As I have published elsewhere, these practices are what I call a decolonial Theopoetics, but for the purposes of this piece, are simply the Theopoetic expression of a colonized people attempting to wrestle with modern day political, social, economic, and ethnic oppression experienced by Latin@s in the United States.

While attempting to finish my bachelors and masters degrees, I worked in the packing sheds cutting broccoli, bending over all day in the fields, or working construction. After one of these long days of labor, I was organizing with a group of women. They told me to “get out of here . . . we need an educator or a priest.” At this meeting was a Methodist minister, who told me about her seminary where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once walked the campus. She told me that I could live into this legacy. So I answered the call of my community and that minister, and went in search of this seminary. There, I experienced a great disconnect between what I experienced each day in my community, and what I was learning in class. What did a white and privileged theological curriculum have to say to my everyday reality?

When I asked this question of place and of context in my writing, I was labeled a bad student, “asking the wrong questions.” Granted, I may have been better off if I took the time to learn the necessary skill of code switching, how and when to tell the stories of my community, to learn how to read dominant culture and to use the master’s tools as Audrey Lorde reminds us. It wasn’t until I was nearly done with my education at seminary that I met professors who came from similar communities and taught in contextual theological fields such as Latin@ and liberation theologies. Even in these theological spaces, they were still created to serve a predominately white academy. There was no word that I was aware of, theologically speaking, for what was happening in my reality.

Enter—Theopoetics. Simply, this method and field of study builds a space for the words of my community to echo within theological discourse. My later research was to return to my place of origin, and investigate the lived realities—lo cotidiano—of those people who I worked alongside in the fields and packing sheds. I would go to where they worked and where they gathered to explore the divine. I asked a simple question as I observed groups and interviewed individuals: what sustains our community in the midst of intense labor and hardship? What I asked for and observed came back as a beautiful mix—more complex and varied than the instruction received in seminary.

These groups survive in the same space where eighty years ago John Steinbeck wrote many books on the torturous practices to the laborers in the Salinas Valley and where more than fifty years ago César Chavez went on strike with the UFW to better the local conditions. These same tortures continue, and deep communal trauma lingers, as this space is one of the most violent communities in the country due to gang violence. Couple this violence with the hundreds of years of colonial violence on both the indigenous and migrant communities, home and community practices are not the dogmatic theologies one finds in church. The sustaining response to my inquiries uncovered poets, activists, new worship spaces, a mix of indigenous and Catholic/Christian/Charismatic practices, young people worshipping multiple gods including my own, speaking in English, Spanish, Nahuatl, Mixtec, Triqui, along with a handful of other languages I neither speak nor could identify. People gathered together to heal their wounds performing rituals of passage, plays, dramas, performed poetry in the Mayan style, honored our ancestors, and the local Tlamatinime passed on the wisdom of our ancestors. We are like the salsa my Grandma would make—a fragrant blend of ingredients gathered into a mortar stone and ground together to be consumed in community.

What is the word for this work of naming the creative spirit at work? Even in contextual theologies, where bodies are primary, this openness to the divine encounter in its full complexity is not necessarily embraced. Latin@ catholic or protestant theologies reflect back the popular practices of the community either as a popular and local Christian expression, or as I recently saw, Christians offer heartbreaking colonial prayers, such as, “Pray that the Nahuatl people will be freed from the terrible fear of evil spirits and come to know the true God who calls them out of their darkness and into his wonderful light.” This is not true to the words expressed to me by the people of my community, nor the spirit at work in this place. I tried to reflect back all of what is written in the book of life and in this community. But, as a Christian theologian I couldn’t just report back my research as if I was observing something from the outside as a modernist ethnographer might have. The spirit was clearly at work in this community. There was something deeply moving and theological trembling the earth underneath my feet. I tried to capture it in an image that was local and known. The Salinas River ran through our valley, but it largely is an underground river. A fitting metaphor:

Subterranean spirits are birthed here.

The river flows. It is the life beat of the community.

Colonial religion and systems of oppression push it below the surface.

            What makes it rise? Those who teach . . . the elders push the water along.

Like Chalchiuhtlicue, the water gives birth to something buried deep.

For a Christian theologian, I touch the water and I remember my baptism.

                                                            For the community, they are baptized in . . .

It is old and ancient and it is Holy. It is wholly other to me, and yet,

It also pumps in my veins and is my lifeblood.

Alves gave me my first inlet to languaging the ineffable. A paradox I know, but he tells us we have to unlearn what we have been taught about the divine in order to experience its overflowing, and for my context to join it below the surface. Alves continues reflecting on John 1, by suggesting the “words [were] spoken to those who had it written on their bodies: its home” (Alves 1990, 43). I later wrote of this experience of reading my community:

This is the story of particular words, written onto bodies in a particular home . . . The context in which theopoetics is emerging in this community is a theopoetics from the Deep, from the Void, but here, in the beginning there was not just the Christian God. Instead, the poetics found in this community are expressions of theological musings and visions of the divine, reflecting the Chican@ heritage, the suppressed knowledges and the disregarded theopoetic contributions of our Nahautl speaking brothers and sisters. (Reyes 2012)

Based on the Nahuatl definition of the divine and the role poetics plays in the Mexican community to reflect theologically, I define Theopoetics as “the creative language of a community and its members to express what is above and what is beyond.” This definition is borrowed from Keefe-Perry who writes that “theopoetics is a means of making God, or shaping experience of the divine, and the study of the ways in which people come to know the Spirit” (Keefe-Perry 2009, 579–80). It also borrowed from both my experience at home and in the community centers, where they teach what Miguel León-Portilla mentioned of the Central Mexican people that they “explored the possibilities of a new way of saying ‘true words’ about what ‘is above us, what is beyond.’ The adequate formulation of the theory they developed concerning metaphysical knowledge also found expression in their poetry” (León-Portilla 1990, 74).

This practice of making words about God(s), tracking the spirit of the community, and building theological models to wrestle with the day-to-day struggle of the community, has been actively embraced by the association and the discipline. Granted, the field has a long history of white men thinking through poetry, theology, preaching, and liturgy as a means of relativizing and contextualizing God (see http://theopoetics.net/what-is-theopoetics/definitions). That is not say this trajectory of Theopoetics is necessarily gone or not useful, but the field itself, at least as it is coming to be explored by the Association for Theopoetic Research and Exploration, is far more diverse and inclusive than ever before.

In the same way that Theopoetics, as a means for defining the “creative language of a community and its members to express what is above and what is beyond,” has created a space for my community to flourish in theological discourse, the contours of that space are not yet defined. Theopoetic researchers are gesturing towards its application in new arenas such as hip-hop as named by James Hill (2016) and Jon Gill; sites of public tragedy by Ashley Theuring (2015); implications of poetics and the flesh (Rivera 2015); and trauma and theology (Rambo 2010; Walsh). Theopoetics also performs differently than other disciplines. In Latin@ theology, we have a term teologia en conjunto. So many times, this is practiced as Latin@ theologians gathering together to do theology or talking about our home communities who gather together to do theology. Theopoetics is about recognizing that theology is done in community, but it looks, smells, feels, tastes, sounds different across all of our communities, and that it is through the cacophony of contexts that the divine emerges. It is listening to the dissonance and the silence, and waiting for the divine to emerge. Theopoetics is about the creative spirit that moves in our communities, and creating spaces for that spirit to emerge.

The answer for me to the question, why Theopoetics as opposed to theology and the arts, theological aesthetics, religion and the arts, poetry and liturgy, and the list goes on, is simple. Theopoetics cultivates the imagination and says yes and . . . yes and . . . yes and. . . . It is the field and method of theological discourse that neither limits God(s) or God’s beloved’s imagination. It is not fitting then that I should end with a period, but rather, prompt the reader’s imagination. Yes, Theopoetics is as I described above, and it is also . . .

Suggested Bibliography and Works Cited

Alves, Rubem. The Poet, the Warrior, the Prophet. Norwich: SCM Press, 2002.

———. Tomorrow’s Child: Imagination, Creativity, and the Rebirth of Culture. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009.

———. Transparencies of Eternity. Translated by Jovelino Ramos and Joan Ramos. Miami: Convivium, 2010.

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands: The New Mestiza / La Frontera. 3rd ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 2007.

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places. Translated by Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon, 1994.

Barnes, M. Craig. The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009.

Caputo, John, and Catherine Keller. “Theopoetic/Theopolitic.“ CrossCurrents 56 (2007) 105–11.

Chopp, Rebecca. “Theology and the Poetics of Testimony.“ In Converging on Culture: Theologians in Dialogue with Cultural Analysis and Criticism, edited by Delwin Brown et al., 56–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Faber, Roland, and Jeremy Fackenthal. Theopoetic Folds: Philosophizing Multifariousness. New York: Fordham University Press, 2013.

Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Edited by Colin Gordon. Translated by Colin Gordon et al. New York: Pantheon, 1980.

Hill, James. “The Tunes Written in Our Flesh: Theopoetics from an Ontologically Hip-Hop Perspective.” In review, forthcoming.

Isasi-Díaz, Ada María, and Eduardo Mendieta. Decolonizing Epistemologies: Latina/o Theology and Philosophy. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012.

Keefe-Perry, Callid. “Flesh to Mind: Whetstone of Thought.” CrossCurrents 64 (2014) 489–95.

———. “Theopoetics: Process and Perspective.” Christianity and Literature 58 (2009) 579–601.

———. Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014.

May, Melanie. A Body Knows: A Theopoetics of Death and Resurrection. New York: Continuum, 1995.

Moraga, Cherríe L. Loving in the War Years: Lo Que Nunca Pasó Sus Labios. Cambridge: South End, 2000.

Rendón, Laura. Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogy: Educating for Wholeness, Social Justice, and Liberation. Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2009.

Reyes, Patrick B. “Alisal: Theopoetics and Emancipatory Politics.” Theopoetics 2 (forthcoming).

Rivera, Mayra. Poetics of the Flesh. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.

Roberto, Goizueta. “U.S. Hispanic Popular Catholicism as Theopoetics.” In Hispanic/Latino Theology: Challenge and Promise, edited by Ada-María Isasi-Díaz, 261–88. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996.

Theuring, Ashley. “Holding Hope and Doubt: Interreligious Theopoetic Response to Public Tragedies.” CrossCurrents 64 (2014) 549–65.

Walton, Heather. “Poetics.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, edited by Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore. Malden: Blackwell, 2012.

Wilder, Amos Niven. Theopoetic: Theology and the Religious Imagination. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976.

IMAGINATION AND OUR ABILITY to imagine novelty is a key part of responding to the theological questions trauma theology poses. All human hope is rooted in imagination, specifically imagining that the future can be different. In my work with domestic violence survivors, hope plays an important role in the survivors’ healing work. In conducting a pilot study with several female domestic violence survivors after their stay in the House of Peace domestic violence shelter, I found that the theme of hope came up throughout the interviews.

The House of Peace is a unique domestic violence shelter in a number of ways. First, the surrounding community and therefore the shelter clients are predominantly Hispanic immigrants. The shared culture of the survivors plays a role to create a unique shelter atmosphere. Second, the shelter functions as an intentional living community, with the clients sharing a communal meal, chores, child rearing duties, and other parts of daily life. Another unique part of this shelter is the extended timeframe the women live at the House of Peace, with most staying between six and nine months. The median maximum length of stay for most shelters is two months.1 Finally, the House of Peace is unique in the range of care and services provided to these survivors, with body work classes for adults and children, weekly support group meetings, career building opportunities, and nutrition and parenting classes. During my time and observations with the House of Peace, I came to see that not only was the House of Peace providing the space, time, and resources to allow these women to heal from their trauma, but it was also creating community in ways that were connected to the women’s healing.

As explained above, hope, rooted in the ability to imagine a different future, is an important part of healing for survivors of trauma. For domestic violence survivors to move forward, they need to believe and act as though it is possible to live in a world where they are not abused. Hope in a future where they can flourish and be in relationships free from abuse is a central part to the healing process for survivors of abuse. When asked about their sources of hope, several of the former clients of the House of Peace mentioned the effect the children in the house had on the women’s healing process. Many of the women mentioned their own children, as well as the children of other women at the house, as sources of unconditional love, inspiring affection and transformation for the women.

When speaking with the director of the house about what gave her hope, she said that “[the children] inspire their moms. They give them a reason to look at themselves differently. So the children give me a lot of hope”2 One survivor described her children as a source of hope in her life. Clarifying her statement, she said, “My kids have been keeping me together, because they are constantly giving me new challenges. They keep me alert, you know? They are giving me a challenge and I can focus on them. That keeps me going and gives me a sense of purpose.”3 This sense of purpose and vision into the future is an important part of how the children inspire hope in their mothers and the other women in the house. The children help the women to trust and love again, allowing them to practice healthy relationships and imagine a future in which these relationships can continue.

What the interviews from the House of Peace uncover about children as a significant source of hope and flourishing for domestic violence survivors is important to consider. Through a theopoetic lens they take on another layer of meaning. The survivor’s ability to imagine a different future, through their relationship to a child, opened up their capacity to hope. Because the children at the House of Peace embodied such great examples of resiliency after trauma, they became an important part of their entire family’s healing process. This is not to say that the burden of recovery should be placed on those with the least amount of agency in the situation, but theologians can look to the imaginative and hopeful practices that children take on for resources of healing for all survivors of trauma. Adult-child relationships are sites of flourishing for domestic violence survivors and have the possibility to lead to theological insight.

Theopoetics Shaping Theological Methodologies

I would not argue that theopoetics is unique in providing theologians with a methodology to reach poetic resources, but rather that the conversation and energy that has gathered around theopoetics as a theological method is. More than “mere aestheticism,” theopoetics and theopoets strive towards profound action that is founded in a vision formed by rigorous thought.4 Also more than simply connecting the fields of theology and art, theopoetics turns to artistic expression as an equal partner in constructing and practicing theology.

Theopoetics, defined by David Miller, are “strategies of human signification in the absence of fixed and ultimate meaning accessible to knowledge or faith.”5 These strategies of poetics, imagination, and embodiment, help theologians and practitioners to explore their faith amidst life’s contradictions and mysteries. Another theopoet, Rubem Alves, argues in his work The Poet, the Warrior, the Prophet that theology poses as a science with fixed answers, whereas theopoetics leaves questions open ended to continually grow in our knowledge and expression of the Divine. In poetic verse he writes:

Theology wants to be a science, a discourse without interstices . . .

It wants to have its birds in cages . . .

Theopoetics instead,

empty cages,

words which are uttered out of and before the void [. . .]6

These words and the conversation around theopoetics are reminiscent of mystical teachings throughout history in many different religious traditions. Theopoetics is not a novel conversation without theological roots, but it does help to bring many of these shared conversations about the nature of knowledge and knowing together in significant ways.

The theopoetic method questions modern theology’s privileging of rational epistemologies in similar ways as other methodologies shaped by critical theory (i.e. feminist, queer, or womanist theologies). But the theopoetic central focus on non-rational ways of knowing, such as poetics, embodiment, and imagination, does provide a unique lens for theologians. Rebecca Chopp argues that while poetics won’t “replace other modes of discourses in community,” they will “fund their richness and fullness in a communion of words which is multivocal and multiform, dense and rich, imagistic and creative.” In this way poetics “reforms all our other modes of discourse.”7

Theopoetics both shapes methodologies and influences theological construction. My research, focused on theological and spiritual questions arising from the experiences of domestic violence survivors, is most directly formed by feminist and trauma theologies. Both of these methodologies act as negative ethical norms for my theological research. If a theology does not contribute to the flourishing of women or make sense in light of the experience of trauma, it must be revisited. Theopoetics on the other hand acts as a positive norm for my research, providing a multiplicity of traditions, texts, and practices from which to draw while constructing theology. Theopoetics turns both feminist and trauma theologies into positive norms as well, asking theologians to pay attention when flourishing is experienced by women or survivors of trauma, pointing to these moments as sites of truth. These methods work together to give a theological investigation both an ethical norm and poetic resources with which to deconstruct and reconstruct theological responses.

A Theopoetic-Informed Trauma Theology8

Trauma theology is significant to research on domestic violence. An abuser uses various tactics which isolate, confuse, and scare survivors, in order to keep them trapped within an unhealthy relationship. A survivor’s world becomes unsafe and untrustworthy, taking away their agency. Living in a constant state of fear and panic inflicts marks on the body and mind of survivors, leaving them traumatized. Shelly Rambo defines trauma as an encounter with death that is not integrated in time.9 Survivors are left in limbo, unable to move forward in time and forever stuck within their experience of abuse.

Theopoetics provides resources for theologians engaging trauma, by opening up the conversation to include non-rational epistemologies. Trauma defies rationality, by removing survivors from their daily lives and making it impossible to narrate traumatic memories in the same linear way one would talk about other parts of life. “Traumatic memories are the unassimilated scrap of overwhelming experiences, which need to be integrated with existing mental schemes, and be transformed into narrative language.”10 Theopoetics is equipped to assist with this integration process, because of its ability to make meaning in the absence of rationality.

For example, trauma theologian Serene Jones turns to the imagination as a way of making meaning after large scale traumas. Part of her book, Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World, focuses on the toxic narratives told by the United States after 9/11 in order to make sense of the traumatic experience. Using the biblical example of Emmaus, Jones brings a different type of narrative reordering into the conversation. Jones argues that the disciples had to reorder their imaginations in order to reframe the cross and Jesus, giving it new significance. Unlike the narratives of patriotism, family values, and distracting comedy told in the wake of 9/11, Emmaus gives an example of a reordering that breaks the cycle of violence and trauma. Jones argues that the reality of grace that breaks in allows the disciples to imagine their story centered on the communion table instead of vengeance.11

Theopoetics helps theologians to reimagine practices after trauma, loosening the narrative structures of memory and spiritual practices in order to help survivors make meaning and begin to heal. Neuroscientists Bessel van der Kolk and Onno van der Hart have noted the importance of flexibility in memory and narratives. They write, “Memory is everything. Once flexibility is introduced, the traumatic memory starts losing its power over current experience. By imagining these alternative scenarios, many patients are able to soften the intrusive power or the original, unmitigated horror.”12 The poetic playing of memory and narrative allows survivors to integrate their past, while also looking towards the future and the possibilities that are uncovered through play. This renewed imagined future becomes the basis of hope and the foundation of healing.

The Power and Future of Theopoetics

Theopoetics provides theological resources and a particular lens towards the non-rational that is important for theologians working to engage our postmodern epistemologies. Novel thought, including theological insight, depends upon imagination, which the poetic helps to facilitate, as well as give it language to express itself. Theopoetics and scholars who converse in the field of theopoetics access an ancient and powerful side of theology through poetics, imagination, and embodiment, digging below the “exclusive, literal, and patriarchal”13 language that can trap our theological language and ideas.

As theopoetics and the conversation surrounding this method and its resources continue to grow and develop, it will be necessary to negotiate the importance of ethical norms for theological research. Unlike feminism or other liberation theologies, theopoetics does not have a clear ethical directive, which could result in naïve claims to relativism or universalism. Authors such as Richard Kearney have argued that imagination, as the basis for empathy, is the root of ethics,14 but this idea needs to be ruminated on and is not the same as a fully formed ethical imperative. Perhaps, it could be argued that theopoetics’ central claim that theological language is plural and must resist ossification and domination can act as an ethical norm. But that is left for another article, chapter, or book, and at this time, I prefer to couple theopoetics with other methodologies that have clearer ethical concerns, such as feminist and trauma theology.

Callid: Well, I suppose the thing to start with is that I kind of wish that instead of this being a dialogue it was in the form of a one-act play or something that you and I were characters in. Something where time passing mattered and bodies were on display as well as thoughts.

Actually, that might not be particularly fitting now that I think of it.

Folks who read a theology-focused periodical might not be interested in talking about my in-law’s empty new house and the winter bite of Northern California fog. Too twee or precious or something.

Dave: I don’t know, I think dialogue can be what you want it to be, Callid; a performance where the speakers are characters and those characters have lives and motivations and meanings, especially to people left out of the dialogue. I know what you mean, though, that you want it shown and not told. Seems to me that perhaps this kind of awareness is exactly the kind of engagement that should fixate a theologian and an artist both: the essential and consequential performance of a series of nows. And “wheres” too.

You noted that (y)our specific context in this moment is connected to what we’re doing in this moment. It’s not precious, I don’t think, for just this reason. What’s the scene look like where you are?

Outside, the soft light of my kitchen illuminates the grass while the rest of the house sleeps. The house is silent, and the storm outside the kitchen window is nearly so—pecking, icy rain, the yard silvered with small beads of water. All week the weather has been like this, bobbing its erratic little dance: sleeting and dower, then bright and cold.

To talk about hearth and home and wind and weather can be precious, but it can also be valuable, with the right measure. I think that’s because writing about such small things helps us render our reality, not simply objectify it for our use in other places.

The weather is expendable in many ways, but that isn’t a liability, it’s a release, as long as we don’t exploit it simply to claim a moment but to manifest, train ourselves, rehearse the importance of sight.

Callid: Since you asked, this morning I’m writing away from home. Resting in the corner of an old couch, I had to first heavily medicate myself with Zyrtec because there’s still cat-ness all over this place even though she died two months ago.

I’m sitting here having just written a piece talking about how a unifying commitment in Latin American Liberation Theology is the idea that the Church must materially manifest as signs of the presence of Christ as liberator. In turn, I’m thinking about how that resonates with Rubem Alves’ work.

I’ve been thinking about how it isn’t usually acknowledged that he was one of the first liberation theologians, writing about it before even Guttierez. There’s a heavy dose of his version of “Christ as liberator” in my own fascination with theopoetics: the theological content of an argument isn’t just in the meaning of a text, but the feel of a text, the life of the author of it, the ways in which it comes into life in the world. How it is displayed, not just as possible prototype and theory—though that is important—but also “in the field” as it were.

Dave: Alves has been important to me as well. Over and over in his work, we see an attention to minutiae, to the momentary ecstasy of being, a prodigal abandon traversing the edge of the sentimental. It’s partially a South American poetic sensibility, but also a spiritual posture. It’s his inner tension I’m fascinated with, the times when he wants an orthodoxy, but not at the expense of his humanity. I think this is his rare kind of theopoetics.

His obsession with our capacity for seeing joins with a word you used before: “display.” I think it points to some questions I have. It’s gazes like Alves’s that I’m interested in, ones that shape both our reality and our experience of that reality but not at the commodification of it. I wonder how you would take to the idea that art-making and theologizing—these acts of rendering the unseen—are unavoidable acts of objectification. And, if so, what does that say about the nature of rendering in its entirety?

Is something like this—that is, a discussion—an exhausted form to display to the public? A journal, magazine, or publication a self-contained gesture away from the truth by its very nature of existing in this way? Are we contributing to that malaise? If so, what are the other ways to contribute without causing more illness, ways which allow us to reach others who feel the same but resist objectification for authenticity?

Callid: So you’re saying that it isn’t enough just for “theologians to be more into the Arts” and vice versa. That that kind of awareness is beneficial on its own terms, both for theologians and artists, but that for you and I awareness by itself is insufficient. That works for me.

Recently I was at a lecture by Dr. Courtney Goto in which she talked about how academics often perform a kind of ventriloquism with the “subjects” of their research, taking their narratives and experiences as subjects and making them into the objects of a study. I think she’s spot on, but it isn’t just academics that do this: it is anyone who has the ability to produce things that interpret other people’s experiences. And problems emerge when people with power and privilege attempt to use other people’s narratives to their own ends.

As white guys, you and I are aware that—whether we want it or not—we have access to power and privilege as mediated by a racist society. With that advantage we can choose to use our position in society to advance the causes and values of equity and justice or not.

As much as I dislike bifurcating dualisms, I tend to think that Paulo Freire was right that education is either an education into the status quo or into the desire to subvert it. It isn’t just enough to notice ventriloquism: I think we need to stop doing it and pretending we’re not. Teachers need to be dismantling this objectification and theopoetics can help.

I think that it helps to resist some of the nastier bits of the status quo when we give greater theological validity to the role of bodies in theological reflection and to a broader variety of genres, authorial voices, and sources of authority. These are often areas policed by dominant authority in a way was maintains the marginalization of voices . . .

Dave: Yes! That’s the overlap! And that’s what a teacher does, on his or her best day. It’s certainly what I hope I do.

I struggle to come up with any way other than theopoetics. It offers a way for me (us) to coherently exist in the world, and we do this by reordering our objectification and oppression into some higher form, or Form. Creativity (theopoesis) in my mind, is one of the only things that’s postured and equipped to help remedy these grievances through our collective awareness.

There are lines from a T. Crunk poem:

[EXT]What we mistook for flight

was only the long struggle

to surface.[/EXT]

I love those.

Art making means fidelity to the self as it exists in the world. Theology means discerning the existence of the self as it relates to the being that made the world, however fantastic or fluctuating that might be, or however our experience of being alters our relation to the self and what makes us. As I see it, God is the highest Form of existence in the universe.

Callid: Wait, do you think God is separate from the universe? I . . .

Dave: [Interrupts laughing] Binaries don’t quite concern me so much as they do you. When I care about binaries I care about them as they are abused to create inequality, both tangible and intangible. I think there is a way to live with parsing peacefully, but it’s tough. I suppose I’m kinda Platonistic in this manner—Forms exist to me, and sort of need to if I’m going to be a poet; Forms force aspiration rather than nebulous meanderings where finding the orientation of myself is necessary. I do, however, think that there is a contemporary orientation towards Form while still a higher orientation is at work, like what Caroline Levine examines in her book Forms—like social arrangements built aside and upon previous renderings.

If art and theology become stale, placed into museums of strict observance, stiffly anthropological, self-aggrandizing, or flounced with self-indulgence or insincerity, then I think we’ve lost our way. For me, art is real. And its power is real as well.

Callid: [Laughing] You sound so serious!

Dave: [Joins in laughing] It’s funny because much of the work I make is not often overly “serious” in tone. And it certainly isn’t stopping any bullets or tanks.

Callid: And I’m joking, but it is interesting to me . . . I mean, I am generally on board with the thrust of what you just said—other than maybe a wee bit of fuzziness with the overlap between Platonic Forms and aesthetic form—and yet . . . there was a moment just then when I was kind of outside myself, listening to this conversation and I thought “Wow. These guys are riled up about nothing!” I was reflecting on myself too, you know? And I think that it is important to have that voice there—that my words can seem ridiculous and trite and nevertheless still be powerful. Humor via self-reflection is huge for me.

You know, in a recent interview bell hooks said that we cannot have a meaningful revolution without humor, and while I’m not sure that stands up historically, I still agree. And I think this is all still part of the form of conversation as it pertains to an emphasis on reading things in the context in which they’re intended. Romeo and Juliet is horrid as a comedy. And JDilla’s Donuts isn’t great as European classical music. But they are masterpieces on their own terms.

We have to remember context and recall that we’re shaping our words and thoughts for something. For a certain audience in a register directed to them. We craft and receive words in a place and time. From certain bodies and for certain bodies. It is when we think that what we are saying is supposed to be good across the board for all contexts and audiences that things start to feel wonky to me.

So yes, I guess in my own way form is important.

Dave: This is interesting because what “non-artists” often neglect to understand is that form isn’t restricting, it’s necessary to development. We don’t criticize gravity when we watch a ballet or street dancer; it’s pushing the boundaries of gravity that makes dance actual. Gravity makes amazement. I’m thinking of literary and literal subversions as well, like Roque Dalton’s attention to humor in the midst of his revolutionary sensibilities—a working against the monoliths of expectation.

This is why theopoetics is essential for me as a poet: it reintroduces the frame of Form into my theology. I think artists have less trouble with this idea than theologians and philosophers. Take the sonnet for an example.

When does a sonnet cease to be a sonnet? When the volta is removed? When there are less than fourteen lines? When iambic pentameter or rhyme are absent? All these things are “essential” to sonnet nature, but no artist would resist sacrificing one on the altar of continuity with historical rules that govern form or prosody because of the contemporary context. The artist bends the form—stretches, qualifies, manipulates, and shuffles form. The poem is still a sonnet, but a sonnet that matches the poet’s voice.

Artists can work classically, we just often choose not to; we can work to rid ourselves of traditional orientation, but never orientation itself, see the nature of Abstract art. The act of creating is itself orientation, both in the aesthetics of creativity and theology.

I wonder, how would you respond to this?

Callid: Well, I do notice in myself and among colleagues interested in theopoetics a shift that seems relevant to your question.

Increasingly, our understanding is that it isn’t our task to “give voice to the voiceless” but to help change whatever it is about the system that is suppressing voices in the first place.

Theopoetics isn’t an attempt to deny the logical flow of theological argumentation—which is an orientation of sorts in your terms—but to acknowledge that there are other things that influence understanding beyond the scope of rationality. Theopoetics is—as Catherine Keller writes—“supplemental” to theology in the way that Derrida means it. Similarly, Blake Huggins thinks about it the way Gilles Deleuze talks about “minor literatures” which help to shake things up and incite political exigency.

Dave: Interesting. I think you’re right about the overarching abilities of theology and creativity: not simply to reexamine but to empower.

I wonder if it is appropriate here to raise a question that could potentially frustrate the readers of a theology periodical, asking point-blank if people can truly be engaged in the rendering of God (however they may be engaged in that process) if they aren’t engaged in the pith of the matter of God’s self, which is (pro)creative? That is, perhaps the accumulation of ideas is a type of violation to the processes and manners in/by which we understand God?

In part, I wonder if this issue of Syndicate will be useful because readers don’t expect it. That’s what the best arts and theology do it seems to me: disrupt and redefine the normativity and staleness of the places we live and move and have our being, ultimately offering us a new vision of what we are, pulling us inward.

Callid: I’m rarely that forward myself, but I think with some qualifications, yes, I do think it is appropriate to ask that question. The matter of how to address what counts as “pith,” for example, would be a thorny thing to untangle, but I think something could be arranged. And—in my experience—theologians aren’t looking for a quick fix. I do, though, see what you’re saying about how some concepts of “theology” are about providing answers. That kind of work is something I resist. Many do. Theologians included.

I’m reminded of Freire’s line that the ontological vocation of humanity is what he calls, “o ser-mais,” which in English is something like “being-more-so.” I think this points to a realization that if we’re to develop a kind of deepening reflective inwardness with any authenticity—to become more—it must be done as yoked to the realization that we, our selves, are inextricably linked to the lives, labor, and love of others.

Death

My dad and brother are dead. This phrase repeated in my mind. A feeling-less mantra repetitive and hollow. Rationally, logically I knew the truth of the words—James Christian Common and Richard Joseph Common were found dead in their beds September 15, 2005—but somehow I did not fully know. Full knowing stuck. An unprocessed trauma, a hard drive spinning caught in the edges.

My dad and brother are dead.

My dad and brother are dead.

My dad and brother are dead.

Of course.

A year of legal proceedings, toxicology reports, and insurance companies told me this.

They died on vacation. An annual fishing trip I took every year but that one because I moved to Boston. They caught fish like there was no tomorrow and shut the windows on the cold night. The angel of death crept in through the warm flame of a dirty burning Servel refrigerator, tucking them into their beds in a remote cabin in the Ontario woods. For three days they slept. On the third day they were found and did not rise again—but I would.

Design

I am an artist.

In high school my boyfriend (unconscious heterosexual decoy) was also an artist.

His paintings captivated me. They were opposite of mine. Thick, swollen strokes of acrylic black, red, blue and yellow. Giant-eyed self portraits, doors framing foreboding figures haunting. His paint bore the pain of the worst kind of childhood. Mine were tight pencil sketches. Immaculate replications of a hand or a face. Hours slaved over the intricate portraits of the friends I longed to be lovers. It was safe to gaze if I had a pencil in hand.

I was drawn to my boyfriend’s work but said I am a different kind of artist.

I cannot create from an emotional place.

So I went to art school and studied visual communication (graphic) design. Our side of the art building was filled with clean critique boards, crisp typography, dynamic layouts, design students with impeccable poise and style. The fine artists didn’t consider us real artists and we turned our nose to their dirty nails, oil-stained jeans, and mess. We were artists and we wouldn’t starve.

I became a polished designer with an impeccable portfolio and served eight years in the corporate world developing refined brands and sophisticated brochures. 

_____

 I sketch these two reflections—death and design—to illustrate a fundamental epistemological imbalance I embodied for much of my life. There was a fissure in my art building. On one side rational, logical designers skilled in typography and the principles of design and on the other, emotive, poetic fine artists skilled in bringing raw emotions to life. And the two did not connect. I was a designer, firmly nested in the rational, logical design side unidentified with the others.

Many factors in my development led to an identity formation that was disconnected from my body, emotions and intuitions. My experiences—as a white, cisgender woman, tomboy, closeted queer, Midwestern, athlete, with an ecumenical faith mix of Roman Catholicism paired with fundamentalist evangelicalism—contributed to a sense of knowing that if I wanted to survive I had to tough it out and be strong in the stereotypical masculine sense. There existed a generalized ethos that communicated do not question God or Authority. Children should be seen and not heard. Use your head. Do not cry. Do not show pain—tape your ankle and play the game anyway. And never under any circumstances reveal your true desires lest you literally be cast into hell. I taught myself a stiff upper lip to survive.

It took the inconceivable blunt force tackle of the traumatic CO2 poisoning deaths of my father and brother to jar loose my emotionally sealed identity.1 Through death I came to see that I did not fully live. Their deaths were a catalyzing gift for becoming that literally made it impossible to continue my life in its current pattern and heal from the traumatic injury of this loss. The two were mutually exclusive. I physically and emotionally could not heal without finding an integrative way to process the trauma left behind.

During the summer of 2007—almost two years after their deaths—the grief came. And by that I mean the intense raw emotions that for two years had spun themselves into an impossibly tight protective numbness began to unravel. For two years I went to work, went out with friends, led the church youth group and people marveled at how well I was doing. And I did too. But then one day in the middle of a talk I was giving at a church the room began to spin. Raw unprocessed emotions rose to the surface with such seismic force that the ensuing adrenaline ejected me into a room spinning panic. The Turkish rug and its concentric patterns spun into itself, turning, spiraling reality—and I thought I am losing it—and did not think reality would right itself again.

Through that experience I would learn first hand that one common symptom of a complicated traumatic grief can be intense anxiety and panic. That spiraling reality panic marked the first contraction of a grief so big that it took a plethora of midwives—my therapist, family, chaplain uncle, soul-sisters, pastor, grief books, grief support groups, meditation, and running—to help coax the log-jammed emotional trauma out of the limbic system and into integration and healing. However, even with the unwavering aid of this large support group I faced a fundamental problem. All my verbal, rational, logical skills that led me to talk therapy, support groups and books could not alone birth this emotional trauma from its limbic depths. I needed something more than the tools honed in my rationally dominated toolbox.

Through a process of serendipitous creativity,2 a new tool emerged. It began by paying attention to words. Particularly to a phrase that repeated, emotionless, over and over in my mind—my dad and brother are dead. One day I decided to write down part of it—my brother is dead—and carry it with me. Even though almost two years had passed it still felt unreal that my brother was dead. I thought writing it might get it out of my head and make it more real somehow. Sometime later, I paged through the New York Times and suddenly an image scratched out, hooked me by the temples and dragged me headlong into it. Time stopped. I found myself with a man from a different space and place, who was shrieking out over an open grave that held the partially wrapped body of his dead brother. A dead brother. This one killed by the shrapnel of a US bomb. But a dead brother. I heard this man’s desperate and contorted scream. And saw his face misshapen yielding to an inconsolable cry and in that moment realized it was my cry—the cry that had gotten caught on my stiff upper lip way of being.

This man modeled another way of grieving. One that my culture and the immediate people around me could not do. I could not scream over the open grave of brother or father. I did not know how. But miraculously through his pain and rage I found my own. This stranger on the other side of the world, I met only through a photograph, witnessed to me what lay caught deep inside. In an instant I found myself ripping his photo from the paper and pulling out the crisp white piece of paper with the sketched words—my brother is dead—and I pressed it over the screaming picture melding the two truths into one. And in this very act I saw before me a collage of blended realities that created a new knowing. My brother is dead and now I know what that feels like. And as garishly painful as it was it felt so damn good to be freed from the numb.

And then an insatiable desire to collage erupted. I sought out images, objects, words—anything that emoted any of the many words and phrases that began to gush out once the first phrase let go. From this assemblage I started making collages. This making required the permeation of boundaries and entrance into the venn overlap of things traditionally bifurcated—image/text, feeling/thinking, poetic/logical, intuition/rational. I practiced listening to a dialogue between my gathered objects, words, and images with the intuitive urges inside me and began to bring them together. My logical compositional side, already so heavily practiced, operated out of muscle memory and the collages produced were both emotionally rich and compositionally dynamic. I looked down and saw my best art. I looked down and saw the emotionally swollen canvases I once envied.

But this process of making created something much more than a series of grief-processing collages. As I practiced this process of making I myself was remade. The collage making modeled for me another way of being where the boundaries between the logical and poetic blurred and integrated. I learned that I could follow my intuition and still trust the logical to be there. I learned that it took more than words to access the depths of my being. Standing back from the depth and beauty I saw in each finished collage I learned to trust the process. And this trust reverberated into other aspects of my life. I began to apply the process to my relationships and in my decision-making processes. And as I began to fashion myself differently, God too began to reform.

She unfolded as the new Process—a unifying process that masterfully created through the interplay of objects, texts, images, feelings and intuitions. She was a magical creativity, seamlessly welding the most disparate parts together into stunning new wholes. Weaving together the Good Fridays, Holy Saturdays, and Easter Sundays into a new Collage, with rich darks balanced by white space, elements of repetition and surprise, diagonals and asymmetry that kept the eye on the page engaged, mesmerized—a calculated beauty in the chaos of things. God was the Collage maker, piecing the assemblages of my experiences into a meaning full newness. In my collage making I met Her. In my collage making I met Myself.

Theopoetics

This personal narrative marks why as a doctoral student in feminist practical theology at Boston University School of Theology, theopoetics is important to me. My engagement with theopoetics in part emerges because it is a space I feel honors the Divine image I met for the first time through my collage making and also in part because it helps me live out the commitment I made to myself to try and live into a more logical-poetic integrated life. I have found over the years that this commitment is difficult to keep. Especially within the status quo of the theological academy that still predominately privileges the theological in its forms of knowledge production. Residing in the margins of the academy as queer identified wo/man doing feminist theology, the temptation to fit in comes from both a deep-seated fear of survival and the desire to be heard. To overcompensate for my marginalization, the temptation is to wield the dominant tools with skill and perfection. But as I learned (and must constantly remind myself) the safety afforded by this strategy of institutional survival and voice cultivation leads to a bifurcated half-life which is not survival; it leads to a false voice that does not speak from the place of integrated beingness that Collage brought.

Theopoetics reminds me of my commitment to the Collage way. It opens up venues, dialogue partners and prompts to create differently. As a designer I enter into the theopoetic conversation differently than I have entered into other theological conversations. I do not need to explicitly unpack and rationalize why my design identity and practices are critical to my theological work and method. Folks typically at the theopoetic table have already attuned to this type of epistemological interdiscplinarity. As a feminist theologian theopoetics helps me to do to the imaginative work of reinterpreting symbols and reconstructing history towards the creation of a more flourishing present and future. Theopoetics cultivates a community of diverse people across disciplines, methods and practices that nudge me to keep doing and being in the ways I most deeply desire and affirms this in all its messy vulnerability.

I wrote this not only to talk about the (re)emergence of theopoetic interest, why it is important to me and what I think it has to offer but to let this essay unfold as a theopoetic piece that would speak to these things not only through words but by example. To create this piece, I needed to leave the safety of my academic theological voice and enter into the Collage process. And new knowledge has emerged. In writing it I learned what I learned through that grief collage process. For the first time I saw collage as Collage and articulated how my life and my understanding of the Divine were reshaped through that experience. What emerged through this way of doing was deeply personal and vulnerable and there has been much fear in writing it and submitting it. Especially as this essay will be the very first one I have published. It represents a coming out of sorts—a coming out to do the type of integrated work I committed to doing years ago. Doing so means working through the fears of creating something differently. More often than not I have gone to my safe, color-within-the-lines voice. But I want to do and be differently. And this desire means that I must pursue this way of creativity and trust what it turns up even if that means collaging deeply personal experiences and naming the Wisdom that emerged there. By doing so I hope that this essay I am providing creates an opening for others to do the same.

You said a lot of great things during your sermon, James, but you must remember to deliver your message as if you are preaching at the Grand Ole Opry! No one will ever receive what you have to say if you put too much passion into it. Think of the Grand Ole Opry next time and you will be fine!

God, forgive me for my brash delivery. —Jay Z

THOUGH I WAS SURE my homiletics professor meant no harm by his statement, his words, nevertheless, added to the existential anguish already waging war deep within the catacombs of my racialized frame. Raised in the bosom of evangelical fundamentalism, I was taught from an early age that conservative Bible colleges were the only institutions that could “rightly” prepare me for a career in religious scholarship. Having already overcome a childhood plagued by many obstacles, I wasted no time heeding the advice of my elders and enrolled into my first North Texas Bible college in the fall of 2007. Unfortunately, it did not take me long to realize that this particular institution was not a place where Black creativity could flourish or be constructively cultivated and developed. With no one around to inform me of the potential opportunities available at HBCU’s (Historically Black Colleges and University’s), I would, regrettably, spend the next four years journeying through different evangelical colleges in North Texas, shedding a piece of my soul at every stop.

No one knows my struggle, they only see the trouble
Not knowin it’s hard to carry on when no one loves you —2Pac

Very early in my undergraduate experience I began to notice that, while the conduct of students of color was policed at every turn, our white classmates, by in large, were allowed to project their disdain for the “ruin of America” upon our Black and Brown bodies with no fear of shame or recourse whatsoever. With no hope of administrative reprieve, we witnessed white students make chimp gestures as Black students walked towards their dormitories. We listened to chapel speakers joke about the “wondrous” possibility of (then Senators) Obama and Biden drowning in a nearby lake in order to “save America.” Stories traveled amongst the Black student body concerning how, on one particular occasion, a Black student-athlete had another student “prophesy” to him during a prayer meeting that he was demonically possessed, prompting many of the students in attendance to lay hands on him in an attempt to “exorcize the demonic forces of Darkness” out of him.

Needless to say, though I had always known that I was Black, I did not feel like a nigger until I entered Bible College in the American South during the Age of Obama.

I remember vividly what these streets did to me —Jay Z

I am convinced that, had I not gone through such a harrowing undergraduate experience, I would not be engaged with Hip Hop Theopoetics today. After I completed my undergraduate studies in the fall of 2013, I immediately enrolled into the Master of Theological Studies program at Southern Methodist University with very little hope in God or anything else in its God-relatedness. In my first two months of graduate studies, I contemplated dropping out no less than half a dozen times.

I was broke.

I refused to look my professors in their eyes.

I kept my head down as I walked across the campus.

Convinced that my first semester in seminary would be my last, I had resolved within my heart to make as few friends as possible, fail as admirably as I could, and keep things strictly academic in the process. Thankfully, all my plans fell miserably apart at the seams.

I grew up a fuckin screw up —Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace

Dr. Tamara Lewis, my Christian Heritage professor, noticed my fallen countenance and confronted me immediately. Recognizing that the passionate work I was presenting in my papers did not reflect the defeatism that ensnared me during class, Dr. Lewis requested that I schedule a time to meet with her during her office hours. During our meeting, I discussed my past experiences in my undergraduate program and how I was told repeatedly over a period of four years that my theology and epistemological constructs were inherently problematic and devoid of merit within the hallowed halls of academia. This, I relayed to her, was the reason I could not bring myself to speak in class and confidently articulate my views.

I remember you was conflicted, misusing your influence —Kendrick Lamar

“You know that’s a lie from the Devil, right?” Dr. Lewis asked with unflinching conviction. “You know you are too brilliant to allow these folks to colonize your mind, do you? You know what? You’re not dropping out. I got you. Have you ever heard of the Forum for Theological Exploration?”

After informing her that I had never heard of the Forum for Theological Exploration, Dr. Lewis began to tell me how, all across the country, there were aspiring scholars of color like me who were grappling through many of the same issues. Right there in her office, Dr. Lewis logged on to the FTE website, found the contact information for an FTE staff member, and within a month, I was on a plane to Chicago to take part in my first FTE Leadership Discernment retreat.

We do what we gotta do
Yo we could break the cycle let nobody lie to you —Nas

Sure enough, at the FTE retreat, I encountered colleagues who were grappling with many of the same issues that ensnared me. As we talked, I realized that I kept referring back to Hip-Hop in order to describe my theo-logical thought-world. After a while, one colleague mentioned that I should try and link up with Callid Keefe-Perry, a doctoral student at Boston University, who was leading a workshop at the retreat and doing some significant work in the area of Theopoetics that might intersect with my own research interests. Though I had no idea what Theopoetics meant, I was intrigued enough to hunt Callid down and introduce myself during lunch. It took all of about thirty-five seconds for me to realize that Theopoetics was what I had been looking for during the past four years.

Having been fostered and cultivated within the womb of the Hip-Hop aesthetic, I vehemently opposed all theo-logical propositions that sought to deny or obfuscate the truth that existed in my body or, as Brazilian educator and writer Rubem Alves once put it, “The tunes written in our flesh.”

Early on in my academic career, my professors would introduce certain theological concepts that would immediately cause me to think of

An experience I had in my neighborhood

A song that sustained me for a season

or

A poem that gave me the courage to see just beyond my present circumstance.

However, most of my opinions and perspectives were disregarded by my instructors, not because they were not sound or insightful, but simply because they were foreign to them. I learned very early that many theologians will simply deem irrelevant anything they cannot control or subdue. As I sat across the table from Callid I realized, for the first time in my academic life, that my hardships in the academy were not rooted in my inability to engage in critical theological inquiry but, rather, in my failure to forsake my Hip-Hop epistemological imaginary. Here I was, a twenty-something-year-old Black man seeking to make fresh theological sounds from orthodox vinyls—and Massa wasn’t having it.

My mistake was not in seeking to be creative and honor the stories, sounds, and ideas playing through my flesh; my only mistake was thinking that the institutional church and the institutional academy would ever grant me permission to do so carte blanche. Why did I need a white male professor to co-sign my theological work in order for it to be deemed valid? Did Chuck D need Bing Crosby’s co-sign to write and perform Fight the Power? Ok then.

We’ve got to fight the powers that be —Chuck D

As I traveled back home to Dallas, I knew I had to begin the difficult, yet enlivening work of determining what Hip Hop Theopoetics meant for my work and my vocational future. Was I following some innocuous rabbit trail that would ultimately end in ecclesial and vocational futility? Was there a place for Hip Hop Theopoetics in the church and the academy? Were there other young scholars or congregants scattered throughout the country who, like me, were theologically quarantined from the tunes playing in their flesh? As I meditated on these questions, I began to explore my indefatigable love of Hip-Hop culture, from rapping to graffiti. What immediately began to stick out to me was my deep and abiding love for Hip-Hop producers. From Pete Rock to J Dilla to Kanye West, my favorite Hip-Hop producers are those who are able to take the great sounds of prior generations and reinvigorate them for new audiences and listeners through the art of sampling. I am left in awe when I think of how artists such as The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Pink Floyd, Marvin Gaye, and Sly and the Family Stone have all been sampled by Hip Hop artists. How can it be, then, that even though Hip Hop producers are regarded as being amongst the most gifted and eclectic samplers in the entire music industry, rap music as a whole is oftentimes excoriated as a blasphemous aberration of everything “true” music is to supposed to be?

How, Sway? —Kanye West

Similarly, I often wonder what would happen if Jean-Michel Basquiat enrolled in an M Div program at an accredited seminary and employed Hip-Hop Theopoetics in his coursework? What if, as was the case with his graffiti and canvas paintings, he sought fresh and innovative ways to communicate, interpret, embody, and apply the texts and terms he was taught? Would Basquiat be allowed to exegetically frame the Passion Narrative as a discourse in police brutality? Would he be allowed to analyze Jesus’ attitude towards the foreign Syro-Phoenician woman as a case of clerical misogynoir? Would he be allowed to draw a Venn diagram comparing Caiaphas and the plot to illegally detain and execute Jesus with J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO? Or would he be reminded by his senior professor that, after two thousand years, all the hard intellectual work had been done and all he needed to do was check his creativity at the door and “find his place in the Story.”

It’s like Sony signed Basquiat
He gave it all he got
And now the nigga don’t paint the same. —J Cole

While I respect the contributions of individuals like Amos Wilder and John Caputo, I find it very necessary to make it clear that Hip-Hop Theopoetics does not need their co-sign in order to be a part of the conversation. I am convinced that, unless this is understood up front, all Hip-Hop Theopoetics will become is another Exotic Other in the academic menagerie that other white scholars can look at and examine before they move to the “important” work that centers them. Though I love his work and am inspired by his contribution to the field, Amos Wilder does not compel me to take up and write. While I owe a debt to Callid Keefe-Perry and all he has meant to me both academically and personally, he does not compel me to write.

What compels me to engage in the discipline of theopoetics are the countless Black and Brown persons who, like me, were told somewhere down the line that they were theologically worthless until they learn to live, move, and construct their being like white folk.

I write with the sisters and brothers who feel like they have to drop out of Bible College because there is no way to correlate what they are taught in class with what they know to be important on their street corners and recreation centers.

I write with every teenager in a youth group who was laughed at when they answered a Sunday school question with a rap reference.

I write with the seminarians who keep their heads down and their mouths closed during class because they already know which voices are allowed to dominate the conversation before the syllabi are even handed out.

I write with every student who hears snickering or sees eyes rolling every time they choose to courageously quote Delores Williams, Katie Geneva Cannon, Jaqueline Grant, Emilie Townes, Kelly Brown Douglas, and Eboni Marshall Turman in theological spaces narcotized by heteropatriarchal white supremacy.

I was rollin’ around, in my mind it occurred
What if God was a Her? —Common

Ultimately, what compels me to engage Hip-Hop Theopoetics is the fact that, at its roots, it is a modality of God-Talk that is decolonial and emancipatory in both nature and praxis. Moreover, it is a form of critical inquiry that seeks to resist all forms of totalizing, hegemonic control in the church, the academy, as well as society at large and is fueled by the imagination of marginalized, oppressed peoples whose orientation and thought-world is indelibly influenced by Hip Hop culture. When I speak of Hip Hop Theopoetics, it must be understood that I am not referring solely to rap music. Without question, if Hip Hop Theopoetics is to be taken seriously, future works must seek to explore the ways in which other mediums of Hip Hop culture, including Hip Hop photography, Hip Hop theater, and Hip Hop poetry critically and imaginatively engage the enterprise of God-Talk.

I know that after reading this, there will be those who leave the conversation surrounding Hip-Hop Theopoetics unsatisfied. There will inevitably be persons who will consider my description of Hip Hop Theopoetics as God-Talk informed by a Hip-Hop episteme little more than “nebulous jargon.” I am fully aware that, no matter how much I explain my own journey towards theopoetics and no matter how much energy I spend outlining with unfettered passion my own understanding of the endeavor, it simply will not be good enough for some folks.

My reply to such inquiries is simple; the moment we seek to contain it, dogmatically define it, and limit its potentiality is the moment it ceases to be what it was created to be. And if that answer does not suffice, I’ll just tell them what I told an old friend many years ago . . .

This ain’t the Grand Ole Opry. —James Howard Hill, Jr.