A creative reading today of Intercarnations : Exercises in Theological Possibility by Catherine Keller, Chapter 1: Returning God: Gift of Feminist Theology…
“I let Love be all that she is; I cannot understand her fierce wonders.
Hadewijch of Brabant (a 13th-century poet and mystic), Minne
Incomprehension, however, does not silence the poetry”
Blessed are you who expect God to be more intimately revealed in exile, for you shall behold the risen Christ.
Blessed are you who finds abundance in scarcity, for God will give you everything you need.
Blessed are you who are hungry for God’s grace, for you will find and recognise it in strange forms in which comes along.
Blessed are you who realises incarnation happens in the world as it is, for you will find relationship anywhere.
Blessed are you who thinks the future is always bigger than the past, for you will always be excited by what God’s doing next.
Samuel Wells. Heartsedge session 3. Wednesday 10 March.
This afternoon I got to hear some of a fantastic panel session moderated by Sandra Kailahi, on the panel was keynote speaker Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku, with Sheridan Waitai, Leali’ifano Dr Albert L. Refiti, Nigel Borell and Zech Soakai.
I came in late but these are some fav snippets for listening and learning, I’m sorry they’re not attributed!:
kōrero/speak #advent2020
My friend Maria and I spend the afternoon in the garden. The broadbeans are spent, it’s the end of their season and we sort the remaining pods for food and seeds to dry. We hold the end and the beginning of life in our hands.
kororia/glory #advent2020
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it. We pray for the changing things, and the things that stay the same. We pray for the uncertain things, and the ones we’re sure of, the known and the unknown. We pray for the paradox. So we are not alone when we’re alone.
karakia/prayer #advent2020
whanaungatanga/fellowship #advent2020
There are there 4 themes of Advent: peace, hope, love, joy… it occurred to me today how grateful I am that those things aren’t around all the time. They’re not single-use gifts or something we put on a shelf and admire. They are practices, they are feelings. The word ‘advent’ means coming. This is a time of year where maybe we’re cleaning our house and making food to say: “Come in, come in” to hope… to love.
Maybe these are gifts you have to give. Maybe these are gifts you desperately want to receive. We cannot promise that you’ll have them all the time, but we can promise that they keep coming.
hanga anō/rebuild #advent2020
Whenua, in te reo, means land and is the same word for the placenta. That which nourishes. That which we come from, that to which we return.
It is a tradition to plant the placenta and umbilical cord beneath a tree, in a special place, in the place you come from. You are intimately connected to the land. The tree grows as you grow. The landscape is changed because of your presence in the world, because you put something into the land that nourishes it and then the land produces the food that nourishes you in turn.
You will always be connected to this place.
We are children of Papatūānuku, the Earth Mother. How often, when faced with a decision and uncertain what to do, do we go home, connect with where we come from, listen to and learn from the land to get perspective and clarity?
What remains when land and sky are gone? What endures? Listen to the story you were born into.
Whenua/earth #advent2020
The Māori creation story begins with nothingness. ( Te Kore).
It is a long dark night. (Te Pō)
From here two of our Māori gods Ranginui, the Sky Father, and Papatūānuku, the Earth Mother, emerge.
Rangi and Papa lay together in a tight embrace. They held each other so tightly that no light could get through and the world was in darkness, and their children are born between them.
For a long time, the children exist in a dark cramped uncomfortable space. They talk of the “potential”, the speck of light seen beyond. What could be beyond?
The brothers made a decision and tried to separate their mātua. Finally, it was Tāne who lay on his back with his legs facing up. With total focus and strength, he pushed and pushed. Ranginui and Papatūānuku didn’t want to be separated from each other or their tamariki. In this crucial time of separation, te wehenga, the tamariki spoke with respect to their parents while helping. Rangi and Papa wept for each other rather than being angry with their tamariki. The separation of the parents by the children resulted in the movement from darkness to the world of light (Te Ao- Mārama) and humans flourished on the Earth. However, Rangi still mourns the loss of Papa and drops tears which become dew and Papa’s sighs go up to the sky, which become mist.
In the end, the brothers became Māori Gods, guardians, or atua of particular domains.
In the cycles of our own, day in and year out, little births and deaths – what does the knowledge of our bigger creation narrative offer?
There is life beyond the darkness that seems to be all we can see. We can make a decision that things will be different, and choose to act before the new Way is visible.
We are strong, in our minds and our bodies. We are agents in bringing about our own becoming and shaping our lives into what we want them to be.
The old ways cease to be, but we learn new ways of relating to one other and ourselves.
Whakapakari/strengthen #advent2020
Going to a sales page and creating a post to ask if there is an item instead of searching for the answer youself is like asking the person of colour you know what BIPOC stands for instead of googling it.
When you hear that white people need to ‘do our own work’ this is what we’re talking about. Especially don’t use questions as a way of doing the following:
For further reading please check out Clemenger Melbourne’s site: Deadly Questions for other commonly asked questions from ‘Why don’t Aboriginal people just get over it?’ to ‘What the most important things I can teach my child about the land and indigenous culture?’
itellyouarise 