Uniting Network
the national network for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people, their families and friends within the Uniting Church in Australia.
The Tree of Life - five meditative images
On Saturday, 6th June, 1998, Rev Dr Carter Heyward delivered her keynote address to the Third Biennial Conference of the Uniting Network - "Re-imagining Love: Embracing Our Strength". Five meditative images or reflections were presented as theological affirmations of the love of God and the participation of queer folks in that love. The following are notes on that address and upon reflections made by some conference members.
- The Root of the tree as embodied love: the re-imagining of love as power.
- The Trunk and Branches as "opening to the power of embodied love."
- God as our power to touch our strength.
- Transforming fear through our "God-power": embodied power that transforms fear.
- God as our power to "come out": to live with integrity.
The Root of the tree as embodied love: the re-imagining of love as power.
- God is the root of our embodied wisdom.
- God perceived in this way enables the re-imagining of love in power.
- It embodies the power to make right relation.
- Right relation is perceived in terms of mutuality: the power to make right relations such that no one is left out.
- mutual right relation is inclusive.
- mutuality is expressed in a passion for life.
- Our passion for life is erotic (Eros love and Agape love, both)
- Eros perceived as "the love of life": as passion for life and in life.
- love of life and passion embrace mutuality, and are "good".
- Re-imagining God as Erotic Energy.
- This is our Christic energy or power to make right relations.
- The way of Christ re-imagined this erotic power as love of God, Self and Neighbour.
- God as Holy Spirit: the power to make love and to make justice.
- This is the power to hold love and justice as one word: justice/love
- This power is also Christic: of Christ.
- Re-imagining God as "trinitarian" in a non-static, non-patriarchal way.
- re-imaging the "ground and figure" of God as Sophia/Christ: the embodiment of God’s Wisdom and Word as the Wisdom and Word of right relation.
- Re-imagining Sophia/Wisdom in the Cosmos as "Godding" (the power of making justice/love in right relation)
- Re-imagining the Christic centre as justice/love.
- Re-imagining the Holy Spirit of power as the erotic power to make justice/love.
The Trunk and Branches as "opening to the power of embodied love."
- Being in Christ and being in "Spirit God": embodied love.
- embodying sacred power in our "here and now living".
- being compassionate: being fully present for one another (=’mutuality’)
- Our passion as the power to be "out": to be "fully present for one another".
- passion/compassion, as the power to suffer with one another.
- this is Christic power, to stand with the suffering Ones, the outcasts.
- this is the power to stand with one’s sisters and brothers on common ground (=’mutuality’) in solidarity and in Christ as the erotic power of God.
- Our passion for non-violence
- moves in solidarity, erotically empowered by Christ
- Interpreting Jesus as the One who lived in the Spirit
- Jesus played a unique role: Christic moment of God’s solidarity with us, for us, among us (God embodied).
- Jesus as the One with God, in God, yet as "other than God".
- God as the "source of our being".
- She who is with us, in us as Sophia/Christ in and with us.
- The birth of the World/Cosmos as the embodiment of God/Sophia/Christ.
- interpreting creation as "embodiment" of Wisdom/Word
- a "window into the whole"
Re-imagining God as the power to touch our strength.
- Embodied power that risks love and love making.
- a power that involves vulnerability: power to risk the passion: power to be open to love; power to be vulnerable. (Note the paradox here.)
- Interpreting the "vulnerability" of God in "letting-be", to risk passion, to be open to love (risk-taking), to be among us.
- Ref. John 14, where the John speaks of the sacred unity of God, Christ and the world. God is not just spiritual but is embodied among us as Logos/Sophia/Christ.
- This is a spirituality which is grounded in God and in the here and now.
- Interpreting (re-imagining) God as "the spirited strength to hold complexity.
- Note that Jesus’ passion is open to complexity in passion.
- Noting that patriarchy has no place for complexity (diversity)
- Patriarchy involves a dualism that puts G/L/B/T people down.
- Homophobia does not recognise divine participation in complexity.
- God is embodied in Creation: Cosmos, the Body of God.
- Re-imagining God as "openness" leading to complexity and diversity.
Re-imagining God as our God-power to transform fear into serenity.
- To live "here and now" is to be complex: to embrace complexity/diversity.
- to be complex, diverse.
- to live "here" but not "there": the power to be complex.
- to live "in motion".
- Carter notes that the "best theologians are our scientists, artists, poets, etc, who know that all of life is motion.
- this "motion’ is erotic, inter-connected, open, embodied.
- friendship is our way of visioning our interconnectedness as open, erotic, embodied and "here and now".
- friendship is being there for the other: open, interconnected, vulnerable.
- Being transformed in this way participates in the Wisdom of God (Sophia/Christ) such that fear does not have the last word.
- through friendship with God and each other, we transform fear and embrace our strength.
Re-imagining God as our power to "come out" and to live with integrity.
- Coming out is to seek to live with integrity: to not allow fear the last word.
- Naming/identifying as "queer": where "being queer" is the capacity to embrace one’s own diversity and that of others and to step outside the barriers of patriarchal dualism , with its limitations and denials.
- Jesus’ own "coming out" is represented in those stories that show him being visible, available for all. (Mk 1:21-28; Lk 4: 14-37.)
- Re-imagine Jesus in the Synagogue reading from Isaiah as his "coming out".
- The home-boy comes out; shows his way; goes public.
- Jesus declared himself to be in solidarity with the outcasts.
- Note how the town’s folk question Jesus as to whether the prophet is false or not. They make their choice (or at least ask the question) but Jesus answers by moving on. He claims the mantle of prophet and moves on. (Ed. So must we embrace the strength to move with him.)
- Jesus’ ‘coming out’ represents the power to embody the passion of life in solidarity with the outcasts.
- being ‘queer’ refers to all who stand in solidarity with homosexual people and all others who are made outcast or pressed to the margins of church and society.
- being queer means participating in solidarity with others who suffer in all respects.
- thus the Cross is a queer image.
- Being queer is a ‘transgendering experience’.
- NB here "transgendering" means crossing over boundaries of gender to celebrate diversity.
- it breaks boundaries, as Jesus did! Jesus becomes our queer friend.
- "Queer" perceptions include being open to others, living "in motion", "transgendering", crossing boundaries, exposing limitations to the power of God to transform.
How do we struggle with passion to be queer and to deny patriarchy the last word?
Be as constant agents of transformation.
Notes by wla 6/6/98
