Sorry for the later send today - once again from "Let the Bones Dance" - Marcia W. Mount Shoop - in a section called 'Disposition of Interdependence: Embodying Relationality.' Much like a placenta, which facilitates, mediates, and nourishes , those informed by interdependence are intimately tethered to entities with differing, even competing, needs. Dispositions of interdependence grow accustomed to engaging differences and contradictions. Creativity informs these dispositions of interdependence by giving flesh to how we share in the efficacy and delicacy of creation. Dispositions of interdependence strive to read the poetics of the body for how it speaks of all creation. These dispositions integrate the fact of cellular relationality with all the activities of life. Cellular interdependence calls for response-ability that does not limit itself to human life. Environmental care becomes a spiritual practice, not simply an ethical or moral choice. Power is not imposed, but shared. In-formed by the wonder of how God self-emptied in the Christ event, human beings can empty self into relational experience. We need not fear that interdependence is the same as fusion. Our own particular uniqueness is actually more ennobled in this mode of relationship than it is in orientations that grasp for individuality or separation. In an interdependent world our uniqueness is a given, and severing ties is an impossibility. It is not easy to engage 'differences and contradictions.' And yet, that is what is real and set before us each day. I like the image of poetry used here. When the body is engaged and available, there is a possibility for movement in life that does become a bit of beauty that has the complexity of a poet. When we are a body defined by the self-giving life of our God in Christ, we become attached to all things and can no longer isolate something as outside. This has much to say about who we become as a community of faithful ones and it has much to say with how we - as this community - respond to the world around us as though there is an intimate connection with that which is not us - even such things as the environment. Once again I hear in this writing something that has been a part of so many of the serious and faithful biblical and theological writers who are so good at bringing all things within the loving relationship of our God and the call for us all to be stewards of creation so that nothing can be set off as not us. Connection: It is good to ask - what are we doing here? This can apply to political decisions or personal decisions or church decisions. What are we doing here - are we being this interdependent body that continually witnesses to the welfare of all? Or are we living in accord to some other word? Gather us as one, O God, that as we are drawn into a life shaped by your self-emptying ways, we will fear no evil - but only see your life become us. Amen |
No comments:
Post a Comment