This is a book that Dunamis Publishers, my little enterprise, has just put out. It was edited by José María Vigil and contains reflections by theologians from at least five major world religions on five continents. They all responded to questions about the possibility and urgency of a planetary theology with which every religion would be able to identify--like an ecumenical theology but much, much broader. The results are interesting and open a debate. Never before has there been an effort to bring together the threads of inter-religious theology and liberation theology. Take a peek at the Dunamis blog.
Tengo algunas copias en castellano, si alquien quisiera -- mismo precio.
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Monday, 1 March 2010
Light and Darkness: A Lenten Reflection
This is something I wrote more than ten years ago. I think we often forget that Lent (the period before Easter) is meant to be a joyful time of realistic reflection about life and where we are headed.
Quite frankly I don’t know much about the Resurrection. I believe, but I sure don’t know much about it. (Actually I learned a little bit more when I visited El Salvator ten years ago during the twentieth anniversary of the martyrdom of Oscar Romero -- March 24, 1980) What I do know about, what most of the world knows about, is suffering, the passion, death. About that we know a lot. And when it comes to knowing about God and religion, most of us identify much more with Jesus in the garden than we do with him rising from the tomb. God may be more reassuring on the mountain top but he is much closer in the Gethsemane . We feel more confidence before a God who cries out in the garden or is led before Pilate than we do with a God who shines with brilliant light on the mountaintop. Maybe we will get there one day. But right now we need to know that Jesus understands what it is to sweat blood in fear, to be betrayed, to be tortured, condemned and led to the slaughter. Humanity has much more experience of being slaughtered than of conquering death.
Quite frankly I don’t know much about the Resurrection. I believe, but I sure don’t know much about it. (Actually I learned a little bit more when I visited El Salvator ten years ago during the twentieth anniversary of the martyrdom of Oscar Romero -- March 24, 1980) What I do know about, what most of the world knows about, is suffering, the passion, death. About that we know a lot. And when it comes to knowing about God and religion, most of us identify much more with Jesus in the garden than we do with him rising from the tomb. God may be more reassuring on the mountain top but he is much closer in the Gethsemane . We feel more confidence before a God who cries out in the garden or is led before Pilate than we do with a God who shines with brilliant light on the mountaintop. Maybe we will get there one day. But right now we need to know that Jesus understands what it is to sweat blood in fear, to be betrayed, to be tortured, condemned and led to the slaughter. Humanity has much more experience of being slaughtered than of conquering death.
Saturday, 20 February 2010
RÉFLEXIONS SUR LE TERRORISME
C'est une réflexion que j'ai publié il y a quelque temps maintenant (Décembre 2006). De toute façon, j'y crois encore. Je trouve le menace du terrorisme exagéré et manipulé pour faire toute sorte de bêtise, y inclus des guerres de conquête et la limitation de nos droits de citoyens et citoyennes.
Après la Seconde guerre mondiale, Dorothy Day et ses compagnons de New York avaient décidé de ne pas faire grand cas des sirènes d'alarme qui appelaient régulièrement tous les citoyens à se rassembler dans les abris contre les bombes. Elle avait été arrêtée plusieurs fois pour avoir continué à errer à travers la ville au lieu de se soumettre à ces « exercices d'urgence ». Les déambulations, qu'elle se permettait alors que le gouvernement de l'époque exigeait de ses citoyens de suivre des consignes afin de se protéger d'une possible attaque nucléaire, elle équivalait à dire aux autres citoyens, comme dans le conte d'Andersen, qu'en réalité «l'empereur n'a pas d'habit du tout!», comme dans le comte d’Anderson. Elle allait ainsi à l'encontre de tout le système qui visait à inculquer la peur dans les esprits de la population, et par imitation et dont elle révélait la profonde immoralité.
Après la Seconde guerre mondiale, Dorothy Day et ses compagnons de New York avaient décidé de ne pas faire grand cas des sirènes d'alarme qui appelaient régulièrement tous les citoyens à se rassembler dans les abris contre les bombes. Elle avait été arrêtée plusieurs fois pour avoir continué à errer à travers la ville au lieu de se soumettre à ces « exercices d'urgence ». Les déambulations, qu'elle se permettait alors que le gouvernement de l'époque exigeait de ses citoyens de suivre des consignes afin de se protéger d'une possible attaque nucléaire, elle équivalait à dire aux autres citoyens, comme dans le conte d'Andersen, qu'en réalité «l'empereur n'a pas d'habit du tout!», comme dans le comte d’Anderson. Elle allait ainsi à l'encontre de tout le système qui visait à inculquer la peur dans les esprits de la population, et par imitation et dont elle révélait la profonde immoralité.
Thursday, 11 February 2010
To See a New World Coming: The Crisis as a Moral and Cultural Challenge
(I belong to the Quebec Group on Contextual Theology. Over the past year we have reflected on the economic crisis and have now published two reflections.
Here is the second part of the reflection--February 2010. You will find the first part in the post below- April, 2009)
Just at the point when we share these reflections, Haiti has suffered another terrible blow. A new catastrophe displays before the world the misfortune of this people, held in the grip of a bad development that aggravates once more the consequences of a natural disaster. At the same time there arise out of this tragedy some reasons for hope: the Haitians have given new proof of an astonishing moral and spiritual strength; the international community has mobilized in a vast surge of solidarity. For how long? Obsessed by the phantom of the recession and the hope for a recovery, will well-off societies maintain a cap on their objectives for cooperation or will we see their economic and political interests commit the promised aid for reconstruction? Are another Haiti and another world really possible?
In an initial text on the current crisis (Who Will Help Us Cross the Desert? April 2009), devoted above all to an economic and political analysis, we took up the question of hope: By what path is the future opened up? Suspicious of the plans for economic and financial recovery proposed by world leaders as ways out, we looked toward the alternatives emerging among the innumerable groups that form the network of social movements. They already announce, by their prophetic practices, the possibility of a different world, on condition that we manage to integrate the cultural dimension to the efforts of social transformation.
" As important as they might be, our commitments to social transformation remain sterile if our mentalities, our deep attitudes, our vision of the world, in short the common culture is not transformed as well in order to become more permeable to human meaning " (page 6).
In this perspective, we announced a follow-up to our reflection, one that would take up more explicitly the cultural and moral dimension of the current crisis. This is what we want to attempt in the text that follows.
Here is the second part of the reflection--February 2010. You will find the first part in the post below- April, 2009)
Just at the point when we share these reflections, Haiti has suffered another terrible blow. A new catastrophe displays before the world the misfortune of this people, held in the grip of a bad development that aggravates once more the consequences of a natural disaster. At the same time there arise out of this tragedy some reasons for hope: the Haitians have given new proof of an astonishing moral and spiritual strength; the international community has mobilized in a vast surge of solidarity. For how long? Obsessed by the phantom of the recession and the hope for a recovery, will well-off societies maintain a cap on their objectives for cooperation or will we see their economic and political interests commit the promised aid for reconstruction? Are another Haiti and another world really possible?
In an initial text on the current crisis (Who Will Help Us Cross the Desert? April 2009), devoted above all to an economic and political analysis, we took up the question of hope: By what path is the future opened up? Suspicious of the plans for economic and financial recovery proposed by world leaders as ways out, we looked toward the alternatives emerging among the innumerable groups that form the network of social movements. They already announce, by their prophetic practices, the possibility of a different world, on condition that we manage to integrate the cultural dimension to the efforts of social transformation.
" As important as they might be, our commitments to social transformation remain sterile if our mentalities, our deep attitudes, our vision of the world, in short the common culture is not transformed as well in order to become more permeable to human meaning " (page 6).
In this perspective, we announced a follow-up to our reflection, one that would take up more explicitly the cultural and moral dimension of the current crisis. This is what we want to attempt in the text that follows.
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