A Theology of Risk
Core to who I am and how I understand my ministry is what I call a "theology of risk," which is a term I borrow from Unitarian ethicist Sharon Welch.
It means being in touch with the ways that life is fundamentally not ok, and you can't make it be ok - and yet choosing to act for the good and walk towards love and relationship, regardless. It means - paradoxically - being more capable of knowing beauty and wonder. It helps connect me with those who live with chronic pain, or depression or terminal illness, or with those who have lost loved ones way too soon. It keeps me connected to the ways everything might look "fine," but there is usually more story under the surface, complicated stories requiring tenderness. And it strengthens my conviction that our call is simply to be present for one another with steadfast love and to walk forward towards wherever this love leads. This orientation has come out of particular life experiences, and is lived out everyday in my relationship with my children who, as I spoke about in my recent homily, "The Walking Willing," have been constant lessons in saying yes to love without any guarantee of how things will turn out. The idea of hope becomes something different from within this framework. Rather than hope being rooted in the future, it is rooted in today. As mujerista theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz put it, hope becomes grounded in having sufficient strength and courage to remain present - to continue to show up. This strength, and courage, and presence is what I understand as the holy. This theology led me to Foothills and to say yes to the call to Associate, and you can expect it to be the underlying ethic of our new ministry partnership. |
from Sharon Welch's A Feminist Ethic of Risk"The fundamental risk constitutive of this ethic is the decision to care and to act although there are no guarantees of success. Such action requires immense daring and enables great joy."
"...knowing in one's mind and in one's heart that it's 'much, much too late,' and continuing to mourn this loss, continuing to rage against the innumerable onslaughts against life. Inseparable from this grief and rage is a profound, wrenching far-from-sentimental affirmation of the beauty and wonder of nature, of human life." |