VOLUME 26, NUMBER 1 FALL 2005 TheSPire

Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Graduate Department of Religion, and Oberlin Graduate School of Theology

the Gift of Confinement

In Celebration of Reunion and Homecoming 2005

Vanderbilt University Divinity School announces the 106th Cole Lectures to be delivered by The The Reverend Jim Wallis SPire public theologian, political activist, and editor of Sojourners Volume 26 • Number 1 • Fall 2005 Features

The Spire is published biannually by Vanderbilt University Divinity School in cooperation with the Office of Advancement Communications 10 Alumni/ae and the Office of Development and Relations. Letters from readers are welcomed Alumni/ae Scriptio Divina: Women Writing, and God by the editor. of the Divinity School, From the illuminations of Saint Hildegard of Bingen to the novels of Virginia the Graduate School’s Department of Religion, Woolf and from the poetics of Julia Kasdorf to the essays of Fanny Howe, and the Oberlin Graduate School of Theology Antoinette Brown lecturer Stephanie Paulsell examines the ways in which are encouraged to submit news of their per- medieval and contemporary women have articulated the spiritual dimension of Thursday, October 13, 2005 sonal and professional accomplishments. the practice of writing. Readers may correspond by U.S. mail to: 7:00 p.m. The Spire Benton Chapel Office 115, John Frederick Oberlin Divinity Quadrangle 18 411 21st Avenue, South The lecture will be followed by a reception Nashville, Tennessee 37240-1121 The Gift of Confinement For his act of civil disobedience in protesting the in the Divinity School Refectory. by telephone: 615/343-3964 practices of the Western Hemisphere Institute for [email protected] Security, Professor Donald F. Beisswenger was by e-mail: sentenced to six months in the Federal Correc- ______tional Institution in Manchester, Kentucky. James Hudnut-Beumler, While serving his prison term, the self-professed, Dean and the Anne Potter Wilson Distinguished post-Holocaust Christian and ordained Presby- Professor of American Religious History terian minister recorded his reflections on the spiritual gift of confinement. Alice Hunt, PhD’03, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Senior Lecturer in Hebrew Bible

Assistant Dean for Trudy Stringer, MDiv’88, 28 Student Life

Editor & Registrar Against Explanation and For Consolation Victor Judge, BS’77, MS’79, In responding to the religious interpretations of the “To allow political ideology to overshadow human needs and Designer tragic effects of the tsunami, Professor John Thatamanil Jenni Bongard, presents his argument on the proper aim of theology fundamental issues of life and death is to go seriously astray.” Christopher K. Sanders, MDiv’95, while refuting the Miltonian premise of “justifying the Director of Development and Relations ways of God to man.” —Jim Wallis Alumni/ae Dr. Kent Kyger, MD’58, and orn in Detroit, Michigan, in 1948, the Reverend Jim Wallis rigorously eschews political labels, but his advo- Patricia Miller Kyger, BS’59, Chairpersons of “A New Vision for cacy focuses undeniably upon issues of peace and social justice. Reared in a traditional evangelical family, he Schola Prophetarum questioned the racial segregation in his church and community and participated in the civil rights and anti- Executive Director of American Politics” B Kenneth J. Schexnayder, war movements. He was graduated from Michigan State University where he served as president of Students for Advancement Communications & Editor of a Democratic Society. While matriculating at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, Wallis and Vanderbilt Magazine his peer seminarians founded Sojourners magazine, an alternative forum for exploring questions of faith, politics, and Friday, October 14, 2005 ______culture. They established in 1971 a Christian community, also named Sojourners, whose mission is to proclaim 10:00 a.m. and practice the biblical call to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice while seeking to be guided by the prin- Vanderbilt University is committed to the principles Benton Chapel ciples of mercy and humility. Wallis also is the convener of Call to Renewal, a national, ecumenical federation of of equal opportunity and affirmative action. churches and faith-based organizations dedicated to overcoming poverty by changing the direction of public policy. “Vanderbilt” and the Vanderbilt logo are registered Named by Time magazine as one of the “fifty faces for America’s future,”Wallis is the author of eight books trademarks and service marks of Vanderbilt University. including the 2005 New York Times bestseller, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong, and the Left Doesn’t Get It. © 2005 Vanderbilt University Philanthropist Edmund W. Cole, president of Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad and treasurer of Vanderbilt University Board of Trust, endowed the annual Cole Lecture Series in 1892 “for the defense and advocacy of the Christian religion.” Cole’s gift provided for the first sustained lectureship in the history of Vanderbilt University.

Fall 2005

From the Dean Our Featured Artisan

$10 Million and a Commitment to Teaching for Ministry Public Laundry UT Martin and then studying abroad in Cor- tona, Italy, King volunteered for a year at N Street Village, Incorporated, a nonprofit id you ever have a great professor? he dirty words she had written on the The grant will fully support fifty graduate social services community founded in 1973 Someone who communicated love of white sheets and tee shirts could students in their doctoral programs. The pro- by Luther Place Memorial Church in Dhis or her discipline and care about gram itself adds collaborative research with Toffend anyone who walked past her you you response to the destruction from the civil who were and who wanted to clothesline. practicing clergy and professors on contem- rights riots that followed the assassination of become? Did you ever wonder how that Determined that no viewer would be porary ministry issues and required teaching the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. great teacher got to be that kind of person? granted a dispensation from the vocabulary in field education and external seminary set- As a primary case manager at N Street Village, Here at Vanderbilt we have been explor- of intolerance, the scrivener had soiled the tings to the work that all graduate students King helped homeless and low-income ing for some time the question, “What makes unblemished cotton with slurs about one’s do to master a field of inquiry. The Lilly women to gain and to maintain their highest for good teaching for ministry?” The ques- race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, Endowment is placing a great deal of trust possible level of self-sufficiency and satisfac- tion is no mere academic inquiry, either, for and religion. She had not scrawled the phrases here, and we in response plan to produce a tion in their lives. From her pastoral oppor- we have graduated hundreds of professors with a mere randomness of hand. The stac- generation of mentors for the ministry and tunities—including the most memorable into positions where they teach, mentor, and cato strokes from her index finger dipped leaders in theological education. The ulti- experience of serving as liturgist for the service conduct scholarship in seminaries, divinity repeatedly in moist potting soil suggested an mate beneficiaries will be the congregations of an elderly lady who died from the effects schools, and other schools geared toward intentional marring of the fabric. and members of religious communities of liver cancer—King felt a calling to theo- educating ministers. Alongside our own When people stood at the clothesline and whose leaders are shaped by teachers who logical education. work in educating people for ministry, we complained that her laundry was offensive, are shaped by a program that has no parallel “Whether I am drawing with pastels or wanted to know what we could do to con- PEYTON HOGE she concurred and replied, “Yes, intolerance in higher education today. This is a momen- contemplating a question from a lecture, I tribute to a stream of great professors for the tous event in the history of Vanderbilt Divin- Dean James Hudnut-Beumler is offensive. Dirty laundry needs to be

DANIEL DUBOIS become self-reflective,” she explains, “and future. A group of fifteen professors and area washed.” If an observer laughed dismis- ity School and also a great challenge to our from the questions that I ask myself during clergy spend all of 2003-04 researching what sively at her public laundry, she inquired, Elizabeth Nicole King, MDiv’2 faculty to follow through on a commitment those reflections, I am humbly reminded there went into making a great teacher for the Ph.D. graduates extend this work to literally “Are you certain you are not wearing a gar- to go beyond education to formation of the will always be ideas much greater than I.” practice of ministry. We were ably led in that hundreds of schools across the globe as they ment from this clothesline?” and the answers we may discover within kind of scholar-teachers theological institu- While pursuing the master of divinity effort by Professors Bonnie Miller- take on the work of teaching toward min- Hanging the sheets and tee shirts on the ourselves do not make us comfortable tions need today more than ever. degree at Vanderbilt and fulfilling the ordi- McLemore, practical theologian, and Patout istry. Why do we invest in graduate educa- clothesline for a public airing, Elizabeth always,” contends the twenty-four-year-old Goals for the Program in Theology and nation requirements for the Christian Burns, historian of the early church. tion? Because its effect is multiplied many Nicole King had intended to unnerve any native of Franklin, Tennessee. By writing the The Spire Practice include attracting fifty new graduate Church, Disciples of Christ, the artist has Since the last issue of went to times over. Providing excel- visitor to her installation in the fine arts slurs, generalizations, and stereotypical served as a ministerial intern with the con- print, the Lilly Endowment, Inc. made a lent graduate education is gallery on the campus of the University of phrases literally with dirt, King wanted to … you have to show them how much you gregation at Woodmont Christian Church and landmark $10 million grant to the Divinity care essential to the future of Tennessee at Martin. demonstrate how the language of prejudice has completed her clinical pastoral education School to help produce “a generation of before they will care how much you ministry and the quality of “Art encourages us to look introspectively is inscribed intentionally by human hands as a student chaplain at the University of mentors” to prepare students called to the know. life in congregations. and to ask questions of our human nature, and how the dirty words can diminish How will this affect the Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital. Follow- ministry. The program is to be called the Pro- another’s humanity. By mounting the exhibi- divinity students in the ministry programs? ing her graduation from the Divinity School gram in Theology and Practice. This grant tion for her baccalaureate in art education, students in teaching for the ministry and in 2007, King hopes to continue her studies constitutes the largest gift ever received by They will have more attention from graduate she proved that the expression “to treat one involving twenty-five Divinity School fac- by enrolling in a doctoral degree program in the Divinity School. The Program in Theol- students who are at the University precisely like dirt” is not as cliché as wordsmiths may —VJ ulty members and twenty area clergy in an art therapy. ogy and Practice comes at a critical time in innovative curriculum. Vanderbilt also will to learn how to teach and mentor theological contend, but the artist also hoped to convey theological education, for there is already a become a partner with at least eight regional students. Students in all programs will bene- another theme: although we wear our pre- Editor’s Note: nationwide shortage of practical theology seminaries as part of the program. I have fit from the attention our faculty will be judgments as casually and as comfortably as teachers, and there is an acute need for been asked, “Why graduate education?” and directing to the under-researched and under- a tee shirt, we can elect to cleanse ourselves To illustrate the excerpts from the prison journal young scholars in all fields to be more in tune “Is it going to do anything for divinity stu- resourced issues in ministry and from new of the dirty words. of Professor Donald F. Beisswenger published in with daily life in congregations. collaborations with clergy partners. King’s undergraduate experiment in the this issue of Elizabeth King created dents?” Let me spend a moment to answer The Spire, Graduate education in the United States both of these questions. So we are grateful for the grant, and some hurtful and harmful effects of language may as a representation of Why graduate education? The Gift of Confinement is geared to the development of research Vanderbilt joins things will be changing for the better as the be considered a foreshadowing of her the revelations which may be discovered during knowledge and skills in isolated fields. the Lilly Endowment in investing in gradu- Program in Theology and Practice begins. matriculation at a divinity school committed solitary self-reflection. From the looking glass While this has produced tremendous ate education in such a significant way But not all things about the Divinity School to combating the idolatry of racism and eth- held by a gray figure silhouetted against a back- advances in knowledge, when our graduate because it is the best single way we can con- are changed or need changing, and I am also nocentrism. Upon distinguishing herself as a ground of blackness, vibrant colors emerge to students become professors, the old adage create an acute juxtaposition against the darkness. show tribute to the future of the theological and profoundly grateful for that. Our outstand- University Scholar in art and psychology at will demonstrate its truth: “you have to religious enterprise in this and other coun- ing faculty will continue to mentor students The drawing reflects the influence from King’s them how much you care before they will On the Cover formal studies of Rembrandt’s self-portraiture know tries. We form leaders directly for ministry toward lives spent in church and agency care how much you .” In teaching peo- on our Nashville, Tennessee, campus as we ministry, and toward teaching in colleges, The Gift of Confinement and the seventeenth-century Dutch artist’s mas- ple who want to use the disciplines in the work with more than two hundred students seminaries, and universities. You can be 2005 tery of light and shadow. Valerie Miller, MDiv2, by Elizabeth Nicole King practice of ministry, showing that you care each year in the “Minister as Theologian” proud that your School continues to be inno- American served as King’s model for the drawing. means demonstrating the connections (born 1981) paradigm. They will continue to serve the vative in theological education and to give pastels and white charcoal on black-textured Strathmore between the practices of the church and the church and the purposes of God in ministries good teaching its highest priority. 19” x 25” The original drawing is displayed in the administrative suite of great and not-so-great ideas of the tradition. guided by imagination and insight. But our Vanderbilt University Divinity School.

2 T HE SPIRE Fall 2005 3

Readers’ Forum

From the Editor In Praise of Great Educators A New Consciousness

The Spire The Spire he fall 2005 issue of marks I received my fall 2004 issue of I enjoyed very much reading the article the thirtieth anniversary of the Van- today and wanted to comment on how titled “Called to the Walls” by Lindsay much I appreciated the issue. The edition Meyers published in the 2004 fall issue of Tderbilt University Divinity School’s The Spire. alumni/ae publication. Three decades ago, the not only had several articles that I deeply It gave me the opportunity to premier issue commemorated the centennial appreciated, but it also brought back think about ideas that were quite foreign “Writing is a legitimate way, an important way, to participate in the of the University and documented the instal- some fond memories of my years at the to me. I had never considered the fact that lation of Professor Sallie McFague as dean of Divinity School. prisoners do not have the support of a the School. With the first issue celebrating Dr. Herman Norton was one of the religious community, a condition which I empowerment of the community that names me.” the installation of the first woman as dean of greats while I was in school. His influence find so sad. I cannot imagine not having went far beyond the Disciples Divinity such a community of support that comes —Toni Cade Bambara a North American divinity school on the (1939–1995) occasion of the first one hundred years of the House and students. He influenced many from belonging to a local church or syna- The Spire literary artist, feminist, and social activist University’s heritage, ’s debut of us in a very positive way as one of the gogue. I do not know what can be done occurred at a significant interval not only in best lecturers on the staff. As one of his about the situation, but at least Ms. Mey- the history of Vanderbilt but also in theolog- Presbyterian students, I will always ers’ article has given those of us on the ical education. remember him with great fondness and outside a new consciousness about the Archival Passages In her inaugural address titled “The appreciation. spiritual life of prisoners. Also, the articles on Dr. J. Robert Nel- Also, having returned from a vacation Church, the Seminary, the Faith,” Dean “On Vanderbilt’s Record “On the Value and Necessity son, who was the dean of VDS during my to Hawaii, which included a week on the McFague remarked, “Theological study is Through the Years” of Religion” not like many other kinds of study; to a days there, and Dr. James Glasse, who island of Moloka’i, I enjoyed the article served as my field work director and “The Deflowering of Hawaii” by Joseph alumni/ae remarkable extent and to a painful degree, anderbilt University opened its eligion is basic for an enduring remained a friend for many years, Blosser. Having not visited the islands in For 130 years, of Vanderbilt Uni- theological study involves the person, the doors in 1875. The School of Reli- civilization. It is the foundation of brought back many memories of how sixteen years, we saw such a change in the versity Divinity School have empowered our whole person, in what is being studied. A mission in theological education. The ques- Vgion, then designated as the Bibli- Rthe social order. When science and they influenced me in my life. Their guid- way the people are trying to take back purpose of theological study is to prepare the cal Department, offered two courses of industry lose the stabilization of religious ance and examples during the hard days their culture. From what I gleaned by vis- tions you began to discern during your years whole person for practicing the art of min- study. To the “English Theological Course,” motivation, there is revolution. When of the 1960s helped me to keep my feet on iting with the native Hawaiians, they are in the Oberlin Quadrangle are incarnated istry critically and interpretatively.” any student might be admitted who pos- philosophy undermines religious convic- The Spire the ground and take stands that I, per- proud to be a state but want to maintain through your vocations and your contribu- Since 1975, has presented the sessed a knowledge of the ordinary tions and offers nothing constructive in haps, otherwise would not have had the their uniqueness as a Pacific island state. tions to improving the human condition. critical interpretations which the Divinity branches of an English education. For its place, national character deteriorates. alumni/ae courage to take. They also are teaching the Hawaiian lan- We remain interested in learning how you School’s faculty, students, and admission to “The Classical Theological The hope of civilization and of an I owe a deep debt to these and others I guage again through weekly classes at the are empowering the Divinity School commu- continue to contribute to theological study. Course,” it was necessary for the student enduring social order is found in the was fortunate enough to sit under as my conference center at Queen Emma’s Sum- nity that helped to name you as a theologian. Having evolved from a four-page newsletter to have had such preparation in Latin training of leaders capable of the spiritual professors at VDS: Langdon Gilkey, Nels mer Palace on the outskirts of Honolulu. Please write and inform us of your profes- to a magazine with five thousand readers, and Greek as qualified him to enter upon interpretation of history and civilization, The Spire Ferré, Ronald Sleeth, Phillip Hyatt, In addition, the Kawaaha Church, known sional and personal accomplishments so that remains dedicated to serving the our administration, faculty, staff, and future the study of Hebrew and New Testament fully abreast of the times, friendly to truth Everett Tilson, and Bard Thompson made as the Mother Church of Hawaii and the alumni/ae community of Vanderbilt Divinity School. To Greek. Two years were required to com- from every source, and able to integrate it The Spire my seminary days outstanding ones. Westminster Abbey of the Pacific, con- may celebrate your achievements. the editors who established ’s foun- The Spire. We invite you to submit class notes and plete the English Course while the Classi- with the Christian program. Such leaders Again, my thanks for ducts one of its services in the Hawaiian alumni/ae dation thirty years ago, and to my predeces- cal Course required three years, but each regard education as an adventurous dis- language every Sunday. It was refreshing ideas for essays to: sors whose work consistently supported a Reverend James D. Clark, BD’59, MDiv’72 Course when completed yielded a corre- covery of the meanings, appreciations, to see this change. [email protected] mission of service to the Divinity School, I sponding diploma. and values of experience and their organ- Birmingham, Alabama Thank you for the articles by Ms. Mey- remain grateful for being affiliated with your In 1885 a new rule made it necessary ization into personal and institutional —VJ ers and Mr. Blosser; both selections were editorial legacy. for a candidate to have had at least two programs of living. In this realistic sense, very well-written and thought-provoking. or years of college work before he could be civilization is “a race between education The Spire Charlotte Cook admitted to the School of Religion. At and catastrophe.” The outstanding need that time also it was decided to award a of the South, the section of our country Nashville, Tennessee Office 115 John Frederick Oberlin Divinity Quadrangle “certificate” only for the completion of where the Anglo-Saxon type resides in 411 21st Avenue, South the two years of study embraced in the largest number, is such a constructively- Nashville, Tennessee 37240-1121 English Theological Course. Those who trained, forward-looking religious lead- were graduates of accredited colleges ership. were for the future to receive the bachelor (excerpts from “The Training of Religious of divinity degree while those who stud- Leaders for the South,” in ied three years in the School of Religion The Bulletin of but who did not come from accredited Vanderbilt University School of Religion, Volume XXXII, Number 9, January 15, 1933, colleges as graduates received, hence- page 4) forth, the diploma of graduation. The first bachelor of divinity degrees were awarded in 1889.

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quadrAngleAround the

Faculty Achievements On the Shoulders of Sisters and Brothers

Paul J. DeHart has been promoted to the he purpose of Black History Month is campus, Davis returned rank of associate professor of theology at not so much to rehearse figures, as part of “A Legacy to Vanderbilt University Divinity School. A “Tevents, and dates that mark the evo- be Recalled,” the twen- member of the faculty since 1997, DeHart lution of the African presence in the Ameri- tieth anniversary cele- earned the doctorate of philosophy and the cas but to reflect on the knowledge we have bration of the Bishop baccalaureate from the University of Chicago acquired from the quest of African slaves Joseph Johnson Black and received the master of arts degree in reli- and their descendants to transform the eco- Cultural Center. gion from Yale University. He is the author of Beyond the Necessary God: Trinitarian Faith and nomic and political terrain of their surround- “There was a time Philosophy in the Thought of Eberhard Jungel ings so that we all might learn the meaning when we assumed that of democracy and freedom,” stated Angela one successful black published by the American Academy of Reli- Davis during her lecture at Vanderbilt Uni- person marked a step gion and reviewed consistently as a signifi- versity on February 21. forward for the entire cant contribution to the English-language The activist, feminist, scholar, and professor community;” Davis scholarship on the German theologian. His of the history of consciousness at the Univer- emphasized, “therefore, forthcoming book from Blackwell Publishers The Trial of the Witnesses: A Study in sity of California, Santa Cruz, was among the we celebrated each is titled the Origin and Future of Postliberal Theology. guest lecturers Divinity School students black person’s success heard during Vanderbilt’s commemoration as an indication of what Alice Wells Members of the Vanderbilt University Divinity School community gathered of Black History Month 2005. Thirty-two might be possible for After “thirty years in the call,” emeriti/ae Hunt, during the spring for a dinner hosted by Eva Hodgson and Peter Hodgson, the Charles G. years after she first spoke on the Vanderbilt others. This was the PhD’03, was ordained to Christian Finney Professor of Theology, . Attending the event were (standing from left) DANIEL DUBOIS emeritus ministry on Sunday, April 10, 2005, during Annemarie Harrod, Frank and Anne Gulley, Gene and Penny TeSelle, Ed and Doris Farley, services conducted at the Fifteenth Avenue Jennie Mills, David Buttrick, Eva Hodgson, (seated from left) Peter Hodgson, Judy and Don nature of the community that we imagined, Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. The Beisswenger, Betty Buttrick, Shirley and Jack Forstman. and precisely because of the successes of Reverend Doctor William F. Buchanan, pas- those struggles and especially over the sec- tor of the congregation, delivered the sermon ond half of the twentieth century, doors titled “An Altered Life” prior to her receiv- began to open; barriers began to fall; the law ing the charge to the ministry from her was transformed; the containment of black father, the Reverend Bob Hunt of Gun- people became a project—not so much of tersville, Alabama. The Reverend Angela holding us all down but rather welcoming Denise Davis, MDiv’00, offered the prayer of those of us, at least some of us, who are able thanksgiving during the laying on of hands to climb out of the muddy swamps on the by ordained ministers from the church and shoulders of our sisters and brothers—to use the Nashville community as well as Hunt’s a metaphor Dr. King devised.” ordained colleagues and students from the A native of Birmingham, Alabama, Davis Divinity School. The associate dean for aca- gained national attention in 1969 upon being demic affairs, Hunt also serves as a senior removed from her faculty position in the phi- lecturer in Hebrew Bible. losophy department at the University of Cal- Walter J. Harrelson ifornia at Los Angeles for her social activism was among the seven and her membership in the Communist recipients of the 2004 North Carolina Party, USA. Placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Awards. Presented since 1964, the award is Wanted List—as a result of false charges the highest civilian honor the state can related to her involvement in the campaign

bestow upon citizens for contributions to the DANIEL DUBOIS to free the Soledad Brothers—she was arts, literature, public service, and science. 2 0 0 6 Su mmer Travel Seminar Stephanie Paulsell, associate dean for ministerial studies and senior lecturer on ministry at arrested, imprisoned, tried, and acquitted in Governor Mike Easley presented the award Harvard University Divinity School, delivered the thirty-first annual Antoinette Brown Lec- 1972. A member of the Advisory Board of the for literature to Harrelson, Distinguished ture on March 17, 2005. Established in 1974 with a gift from benefactor Sylvia Sanders Prison Activist Resource Center, Davis lec- Professor of Hebrew Bible and dean of Van- Religion and Society in El Salvador and Guatemala emeritus Kelly, BA’54, of Atlanta, Georgia, the lecture commemorates the life of the first woman in the tures extensively on prisoners’ rights and derbilt University Divinity School, . directed by Professor Fernando F. Segovia, United States to be ordained to the Christian ministry. The daughter of alumnus William racism within the criminal justice system. the Oberlin Graduate Professor of New Testament Paulsell, BD’59, PhD’65, Paulsell discussed the ways in which medieval and contemporary at Vanderbilt University Divinity School women have articulated the spiritual dimension of the practice of writing in her lecture titled Pictured with Paulsell (center) are the “Scriptio Divina” Women, Writing, and God.” alumni/ae chairpersons of the 2005 Antoinette Brown Lecture committee, Dana Irwin, MDiv3, and Students, , and friends of the Divinity School who are interested in learning Ginger Skaggs, MDiv’05. The complete text of Paulsell’s lecture is published in this issue of more about this seminar, proposed for June 2006, may direct their inquiries to: [email protected] or call 615/343-3992. The Spire.

6 THE SPIRE Fall 2005 7

Fall Facts Knight Receives Recommended Reading s Vanderbilt University Divinity Vanderbilt, Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Jefferson Award New Titles by Faculty School enters the 130th year of classes, Rhodes, Cornell, the University of the South, A88 full-time students have accepted Johns Hopkins, Birmingham-Southern, Texas For his distinguished service to the councils Preaching Paul Brad Braxton, admission for the 2005-2006 academic year. Christian, Spelman, Lipscomb, Belmont, and government of Vanderbilt University, (Abington Press, 2004) Ranging in age from 22 to 54 years, the Trevecca, Wabash, Hiram, Wake Forest, Douglas A. Knight, matriculants hail from 29 states, the Domin- Wheaton, American Baptist College, Mercer, professor of Hebrew The Substance of Robin M. Jensen, ion of Canada, and the Commonwealth of and the Universities of Calgary, Alabama, Bible, received the Things Seen: Art, Faith, and the Christian the Bahamas. Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Thomas Jefferson Community (Eerdmans Publishers, They represent 15 religious traditions Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Ten- Award during the 2004) including African Methodist Episcopal, nessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. faculty assembly on American Baptist, Baptist, Church of Christ, Of the 88 new students who can be seen in August 25, 2005. Wesleyan M. Douglas Meeks, editor, Church of the Nazarene, Disciples of Christ, the John Frederick Oberlin Quadrangle, 26 Chancellor Gor- Perspectives on the New Creation Episcopalian, Free Will Baptist, Judaism, women and 26 men are pursuing the master don Gee bestowed (Kingswood Books, 2004) Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Roman of divinity degree while 11 women and 25 the honor upon Catholic, Southern Baptist, and United men have begun fulfilling the requirements Knight and pre- Global Daniel Patte, general editor, Churches of Christ. for the master of theological studies degree. sented him with an Bible Commentary (Abington Press, Among the institutions of higher learning They join the 120 Divinity School students who engraved pewter 2004) where they earned their baccalaureates are resumed their studies during the fall term. goblet and monetary gift of $2,500. The Divinity School professor and former chair- person of the graduate department of reli- gion was nominated for the award by a A Separate Peace consultative committee of the faculty senate. NEIL BRAKE Established at the University of Virginia earning about other cultures and reli- ilies of the victims of pro-regime vigilantes. in honor of the institution’s founder, the gions is the best way to resolve differ- “In peace and tranquility, the tree of The Translation of Redemption Thomas Jefferson Award is endowed by the “Lences among humankind,” explained knowledge bears fruit, artistic creativity Robert Earl McConnell Foundation and has Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi when shines, and civilization advances. Peace is a “Nashville may be the ‘Athens of the South,’ but Vanderbilt University Divinity School been presented at Vanderbilt since 1967. addressing the University community on fundamental human right without which is Jerusalem,” proclaimed the Reverend Professor Peter Gomes, the Plummer Professor As the thirtieth-eighth Vanderbilt profes- May 12. The first Muslim woman and the other rights—such as freedom of speech and of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University. sor to receive the distinction, Knight is the first Iranian to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, the right to a fair trial—lose their meanings. During his delivery of the 2004 Cole Lectures, Gomes commented favorably upon fifth member of the Divinity School faculty Ebadi was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal Peace will be lasting only when built on two the significant presence of homiletics courses in the School’s curricula. “From this to be recognized for his contributions to the on the eve of commencement exercises. solid pillars: social justice and democracy,” School of the Prophets, students will learn that preaching is not restricted to Bible University. He now joins the company of Ebadi stated. “Democracy is not a gift that verses or to pericopes of the ‘Happy News.’ Preaching involves a comprehensive inter- previous recipients Lou Silberman, the Hillel Peace will be lasting only when Professor of Jewish Literature and Thought, we can give to a nation; we cannot export pretation of the redemptive possibilities in the Good News and a translation of these emeritus, democracy by weapons, nor can we bomb a possibilities from the Academy into the hearts and minds of people,” he remarked. in 1979; Walter Harrelson, Dean and built on two solid pillars: social Distinguished Professor of Hebrew Bible, nation in order to give the nation human In his lecture titled “The Bible: Beyond the Culture to the Gospel,” Gomes stated, emeritus, justice and democracy. rights.” “Bibliodolatry, or emphasis only on ‘the Book’, results in the development of an impe- in 1985; H. Jackson Forstman, Dean and the Charles Grandison Finney Professor When referring to the restrictions upon rialistic culture in which religious values ultimately are hijacked.” emeritus, of Theology, in 1993; and Eugene educational opportunities in the West for Alumni TeSelle, the Oberlin Professor of The cofounder and president of the students from developing countries—a con- emeritus, Center for Defense of Human Rights, Ebadi sequence of the events related to September Church History and Theology, in helped to establish the Association for Sup- 11, 2001—Ebadi encouraged the audience “to Professorial Appointments 1996. Knight was appointed to the University in port of Children’s Rights. In 1975 she became separate what people do from their national- Spring 2006 1973 upon receiving the doctorate of theology the first woman judge in the history of Iran ity and religion,” and to remember that “the NEIL BRAKE James Hudnut-Beumler, Ph.D., Dean and the Herbert Robinson Marbury, Ph.D., but was denied the opportunity to continue wrongs that are committed by people are Anne Potter Wilson Distinguished Professor from Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen. her work after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 done by themselves, not by their religion or Vanderbilt University Chancellor Gordon Gee of American Religious History, announces Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible when the cleric rulers forbade women to national origin.” presented the 2005 Chancellor’s Medal to the following appointments to the faculty of human rights advocate Shirin Ebadi, the first Fall 2006 serve as judges. Ebadi declined the offer to “Shirin Ebadi is a role model for women Vanderbilt University Divinity School: Ellen True Armour, Ph.D., serve as a clerk in the court over which she and men who have endured unspeakable Muslim woman and the first Iranian to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Fall 2005 previously presided. Despite her insistence violations of dignity and basic human Theodore A. Smith, Ph.D., The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter that human rights standards do not contra- rights,” stated Chancellor Gordon Gee. “Her Associate Professor of Theology dict the principles of an Islamic society and fight for the rights of women and children in Assistant Professor of Divinity and Director Koran the teachings of the , she received her Iran is a lesson of courage and conviction for of the Program in Theology and Practice license to practice law and has represented all; her passion for justice in the face of students, journalists, reformists, and the fam- threats is truly an inspiration.”

8 T HE SPIRE Fall 2005 9 Lucinda Williams shown during a performance at the Theater of Living Arts in Philadelphia

When I was a child, my family would a practice intended applies her reason to drive every other summer from eastern to leave one vulnera- this text in medita- North Carolina where we lived to the Rio ble to an experience tion, reaching into Grande Valley of Texas where my mother’s of God’s presence. other parts of Scrip- parents lived. We always stopped in “One day when I ture to interpret the Nashville to visit Herman Norton, the for- was busy working verse. But rather than mer dean of Disciples House who, as my dad with my hands,” the deepening pleas- remembers, poked and prodded and nudged Guigo wrote, “I ure Guigo’s account and encouraged a generation of Disciples began to think about of reading one’s way students through their degrees here. I our spiritual work, up the ladder to God remember standing in Dr. Norton’s yard and all at once four promises, she, how- during cicada season, picking empty cicada stages in spiritual ever, experiences a shells off his trees. Dr. Norton is a part of the exercise came into deepening anxiety cloud of witnesses that surrounds and my mind: reading, about her salvation. upholds your School now. I was lucky to But when she pulls have known him when I was a child, and it is Can we use human language to tell the truth? herself up to the third good to be able to say his name out loud, rung of prayer, God here in Benton Chapel. does come to her, full Most of all, it is an intense and humbling meditation, prayer, and contemplation. of sweetness, and lifts her to the fourth rung Lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio. pleasure for me to have been entrusted with These of the ladder, contemplation. the Antoinette Brown Lecture this year. It is, make a ladder for monks by which they are The God this woman meets at the top of of course, terrifying to follow scholars like lifted up from earth to heaven. It has few Guigo’s ladder is a God who writes, an Rosemary Radford Ruether, Elisabeth rungs, yet its length is immense and wonder- author whose chosen parchment is the Schüssler Fiorenza, and Emilie Townes to ful, for its lower end rests upon the earth, but human heart and whose pen inscribes so this podium. It is even more daunting to its top pierces the clouds and touches heav- deeply as to wound. God writes on her heart think of the great responsibility this lecture- enly secrets.” at the top of that ladder, congesting and ship has carried forward for the past thirty- We ascend to God by degrees, Guigo con- crowding her heart with divine writing. one years. Thanks to the inspiration of the tends, stepping onto the first rung by reading, Having reached the top of Guigo’s ladder, Reverend Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the most especially by reading Scripture. We pull she cannot find a way down; she believes she generosity of Ms. Sylvia Sanders Kelly, and ourselves up to the next rung, meditation, by will die if she cannot relieve her wounded, the energy and commitment of students in bringing all the resources of our reason to overburdened heart. But she is also afraid of this School, the Antoinette Brown Lecture bear upon what we read. If we do this, Guigo losing what her heart contains. has, for thirty-one years, opened a space for believes, we will be led naturally to the third This young woman adds another rung to BY STEPHANIE PAULSELL, PH.D. scriptio, women scholars to do their very best thinking rung of prayer. And if we are very lucky, God Guigo’s ladder, the rung of a rung of Editor’s Note: When Stephanie Paulsell arrived at Vanderbilt about religion and about ministry—thirty- will reach down and lift us to the fourth rung writing by which she can both escape and University Divinity School to deliver the thirty-first Antoinette am grateful to Dean Hudnut-Beumler, the faculty, and most especially the students for the one years of feminist scholarship—in season of contemplation where we will taste the joys return to this writing God. Adding this rung, Brown Lecture, she greeted the lecture committee by saying invitation to be here this evening. Dana Irwin and Ginger Skaggs have been so helpful to and out of season. My hope for this evening of everlasting sweetness. Meeting God in she bends Guigo’s ladder into a wheel on that she hoped her presentation would be worthy of the poster Ime that I hesitate even to say it—I feel I should sing about it—they have been so kind. I which University graphic designer John Steiner had created for am grateful for all their kindnesses, including inviting me to choose a song to serve as a prel- is that my words will match the seriousness contemplation is a gift, Guigo says; none of which she can turn and turn, creating new Columba aspexit, lectio divina. the occasion. The consensus from those who were fortunate to ude to this evening. The song we heard was a hymn celebrating Saint of your commitment to this conversation and us can make it happen through our own texts on which to practice She hear “Scriptio Divina: Women, Writing, and God” was that the Maximin as a priest at the altar, composed by the great twelfth-century writer, musician, and that you will find in them some resources for efforts. But through our reading, Guigo sug- writes in response to God’s own writing, and lecture was worthy, indeed—so worthy that we are delighted to artist, Hildegard of Bingen. “O Maximin,” she writes, “you are the mountain and the valley. doing your own best work in whatever form gests, we are made vulnerable and become her creative work keeps the wheel turning. publish the text for our readers. We remain grateful to Paulsell, You intercede for the people who stretch toward the mirror of light.” I feel compelled to say, your work takes. I should like to dedicate available for receiving this gift. As she writes, not only is her festering heart the associate dean for ministerial studies at Harvard University these remarks to the Revered Antoinette A century later, in 1286, a Carthusian nun soothed, but she finds that the practice of Divinity School, for granting us permission to share the words here in Nashville, that my second choice for a song to open the evening was Lucinda Williams’ “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.” She is such a writerly composer; in her song about Brown, who believed that “women were wrote an account of an experience of God writing brings her to another experience of with which she inspired us in Benton Chapel on Thursday indispensable to the religious evolution of that echoes Guigo’s reflections on the ladder God, an experience of God working in her. evening, March 17, 2005. “Passionate Kisses,” her fans here will know, she longs not only for kisses but for “pens that won’t run out of ink, and cool quiet, and time to think.” Sometimes when I am stuck in my the human race.” of monks. Listening is a kind of reading, No longer the passive sheet of parchment own writing, which is often, I go for a long walk and listen to her—loud. When I used to teach Sometime in the second half of the Guigo had insisted, in a world in which a upon which God writes, she learns to create preaching, I always urged my students to listen to “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” to remind twelfth century, a Carthusian monk named book was a rare and precious article, the as God creates, without another text from them to edit their sermons by the light of their hearts. “Could tell a lie, but my heart would Guigo wrote a letter to his spiritual director work of many hands. This woman has which to copy. Feeling God sorting her know,” Lucinda sings. Hildegard of Bingen would have loved that line. about the place of reading in the cultivation stepped onto the ladder of monks through thoughts into order, feeling God’s creativity Among the many reasons I am grateful to be here is that Vanderbilt Divinity School holds of a life with God. As a member of an order listening to—through reading—a verse from undergirding hers, images for God begin to such an important place in my family’s history. The Disciples Divinity House at Vanderbilt whose ministry was the making of books, Psalm 17 in the pre-Lenten liturgy. Guigo pour from her pen: mother, father, brother, was my parents’ first home after they married. From Vanderbilt Divinity School, my parents and whose rule of life described books as the had compared reading a verse of Scripture to friend; creator, judge, blessed food; true became involved with the civil rights movement. From Vanderbilt, my parents learned to be “food of our souls,” it is perhaps no surprise putting a grape in one’s mouth, but the verse refreshment, precious stone; mirror into ministers in their student church in LaCentre, Kentucky. From Vanderbilt, my father first vis- that Guigo’s letter is one of the loveliest and that entered Marguerite did not make a very which the angels peer; medicine, physician, clearest articulations we have of the practice delicious treat: “the lamentations of death health itself; fragrant rose; life of the soul. ited the Abbey of Gethsemani, a journey he has repeated over and over, a journey that has had lectio divina, a tremendous impact on my own life. of the prayerful reading of a text, surrounded me.” As Guigo recommends, she She has become a writer.

10 T HE SPIRE Fall 2005 11 Virginia Woolf (née Stephen) 1882–1941 studio photograph by George Charles Beresford July 1902, when the literary artist was twenty years old platinum print National Portrait Gallery

More than six hundred years later, another this evening, and for six hundred years of cloud moving in pure air?” Sadly, probably women’s understanding of the spiritual that the aspect in which she was most inter- young woman, also in the process of becom- evenings such as these?” not as much as those of us who would like to dimension of the practice of writing. There ested—what drives one to write, to create— ing a writer, visits a medieval church in a vil- You probably recognize the young trace across the centuries a women’s tradi- was a flowering of women’s writing then—it was “left out in almost all biographies and lage in West Suffolk, England. She is twenty- woman in West Suffolk as Virginia Stephen, tion of reflection on the spiritual dimension is one of those “periods of activity” in autobiographies, even of artists.” Medieval four years old. In the last ten years, she has who, when she marries six years later, will of writing might hope. women’s writing of which Woolf speaks. We women do not omit these details. They offer lost her mother, her father, and a sister to become Virginia Woolf. In spite of her thor- But even though it is not possible to trace also know quite a bit about how medieval a range of complex accounts of the vocation death. Although she does not know it now, oughgoing agnosticism, her conviction that an unbroken line from Marguerite d’Oingt to women thought about the practice of writing of the writer, from Hildegard of Bingen’s in a few months a beloved brother will be the practice of writing connects her some- Virginia Woolf and beyond, it is possible to because they so often included a defense or claim to be God’s amanuensis to Marguerite gone as well. how to what she will later call “something in illuminate points of intersection among an explanation of the act of writing itself in d’Oingt’s description of the influence of This young woman has lived through the universe that one’s left with” runs women writers. The life of Marguerite their works. Virginia Woolf once complained divine creativity upon human creativity to several periods of what her doctors call mad- throughout her work her whole life long. d’Oingt, about which we know approxi- ness, which have ranged from periods of That “something in the universe” is not the mately five or six cold hard facts, is the kind severe depression to the intrusion of voices personal God our Carthusian woman of life in which Virginia Woolf was intensely she cannot block out. Once, she heard birds encounters as she writes. The language interested: an obscure life, a woman’s life, a speaking Greek in a tree. Two years earlier, Virginia Woolf will use later to describe the life not recorded in the history books (or at she had tried to kill herself. least not many of them), but a life upon Throughout all that has happened to her, whose “unhistoric acts,” in the words of this young woman has clung to her life as a Like a rabbi beginning with what is not said in a story, filling the gaps George Eliot, the good of the world depends. reader and remained faithful to her appren- For Woolf, the hidden lives of the obscure, as ticeship to the vocation of writer. In addition in biblical narrative with midrashim, Virginia Woolf entered women’s she called them, tell the real history of the to the stories and story fragments on which world. she is constantly working, she keeps a jour- lives at their most hidden points and filled them with stories about I think Woolf also loved the lives of the nal to experiment with form and voice, to creation—of a painting, of a party, of a play, of a life. obscure, particularly of women like test the weight and heft of words. Each time Marguerite d’Oingt, because the very hid- she begins to be tormented by voices in her denness of their lives inspired her imagina- head or disappears into depression, her jour- tion and called forth her authorial powers. nal falls silent. But the instinct to write, presence that writing opens her to speaks come together.” It is something I hope you Like a rabbi beginning with what is not said “wells like sap in a tree,” and she always more of the invisible connections that thread are all experiencing in your own writing in in a story, filling the gaps in biblical narrative returns to keeping a diary. She starts back through all of life: the pattern hidden behind Divinity School. We all know that writing is with midrashim, Virginia Woolf entered slowly each time, with a word, a description, the cotton wool that wads us all in. But here, quite often unbearable. But I hope we have women’s lives at their most hidden points a shopping list—a sentence, two sentences— a young writer still discovering what she is all had those moments, however fleeting, and filled them with stories about creation— a ladder of words she climbs back into life— able to do with words, Virginia Stephen when we place one ordinary word next to of a painting, of a party, of a play, of a life. a wheel of words she can turn and turn until turns to the language of the creator God to another and the world breaks open. I am interested in understanding how it begins to sing. The daughter of a famous describe the larger creativity of which she Marguerite d’Oingt and Virginia Woolf women have understood and experienced agnostic, this young woman is not a feels her own creativity to be a part. are part of a long history of women writers writing as a spiritual practice and what this Christian, emphatically not. On a rare visit to The Carthusian nun is perhaps less well who have reflected very deeply on those might say to those of us who are students and a church service nine years earlier, she had known to you, if known to you at all. Her kinds of moments. That is not to say that it is teachers of religion, ministers, religious lead- refused, on principle, to kneel although she name is Marguerite d’Oingt, and it is her a continuous, unbroken history through ers, as we struggle also in the many forms our did find the hymns “splendid.” She has work that inspired the title of this lecture: vocations take to feel the steady beat of the lectio divina Scriptio Divina. which influences can be easily traced. As probably never heard of She herself never uses the Woolf herself noted, there are “strange creator, to record its pulse. I wonder if, although she reads as devotedly and pas- phrase—much to my everlasting disappoint- spaces of silence” that “separate one period of through attention to the spiritual dimension sionately as any Carthusian. On this day, a ment—but her addition of the practice of activity” in women’s writing from another. of aesthetic practice, we might come to Sunday, she has tramped through meadows writing to Guigo’s ladder, I think, suggests it. understand something about the aesthetic lectio divina Although it is possible to identify common and fens and wondered at the people she Just as the phrase captures a par- themes and preoccupations in the history of dimension of spiritual practice, something saw making their way to church. That kind ticular experience of reading, one in which women’s constructions of writing as a spiri- about the creativity that the life of ministry of piety was understandable in the days of our reading sharpens our attention to what is tual practice, it remains difficult to speak of a and the life of faith demand. Gregory the the black death, she reasons, but what could really real, a kind of reading that wakes us “tradition” of such writing. Women’s texts Great famously described ministry as “the art possibly be driving it now? When she sits to up, and opens us to the presence of God, so of arts” because, as he put it, “who does not scriptio divina, appear and disappear throughout history, and record this day in her journal, however, she I hope, captures the way that tracing lines of influence is a complicated realise that the wounds of the mind are more seems, like the Carthusian woman turning writing, as a practice, can also sharpen our task. For us, Hildegard of Bingen shines out hidden than the internal wounds of the words on the wheel of her reading and writ- attention to the deepest realities. Marguerite of the twelfth century like a star. But did body?” So much of our work as ministers and ing, trying to find words for the connection d’Oingt discovers this when, through writ- women writers in the centuries following scholars, as students and teachers, is work she senses between her creativity and a larg- ing, she feels, as she says, God’s grace oper- know her breathtaking descriptions of her done in hiddenness. But if Virginia Woolf is er, more encompassing creative force. “Don’t ating in her. Virginia Woolf describes it as visions and her brilliantly detailed exegeses right, it is work that matters, work that I feel,” this young woman asks herself, “the “the rapture I get when in writing I seem to of them? Were they influenced by her moves human history forward. Vision of the Earth minature by Saint Hiledgarde of Bingen steady beat of the great Creator as I write; be discovering what belongs to what; mak- attempt to capture in writing words that The period of the High Middle Ages is an 1098–1179 and doesn’t the Church there record its pulse ing a scene come right; making a character came to her like “sparkling flame...like a appropriate place to begin looking at folio from Codex Latinum Biblioteca Statale de Lucca

12 T HE SPIRE Fall 2005 13 Building the City language for the writer who is search for a to say to the precious, disappearing moments Winner, or Kathleen Norris—but books in c. 1407 scriptio divina from Le livre de la cité des dames language and a form with which to speak of that make up a life: “Stay a while. I love you.” which the notion of is alive and (The Book of the City of Women) Christine de Pisan her experience of God. And if a writer is wor- And it is the work of the minister who bathes well. 1363–1430 ried about lying, then one may very well be a new Christian in the waters of baptism, or An impressive number of books in the lit- Bibliothèque Nationale de France silenced by the dilemma of human language. whispers the promises that couples exchange erature of contemporary women’s spiritual But if one is committed to writing as a prac- in their wedding finery, or who holds onto autobiography are by academically-trained tice that might make one vulnerable to the hope until the hopeless can come back for it. theologians: Roberta Bondi, Melanie May, scriptio divina, presence of God, to then the Stay a while. I love you. Rita Nakashima Brock, and Rebecca Parker. problem of realism is one to be lived with Perhaps because of their frequently con- Interestingly, almost all of the academic and worked through over and over and over, strained circumstances, women writers have women express anxiety about writing—not per se, never arriving at the perfection at which often found startlingly creative ways to about writing as Marguerite d’Oingt Saint Hildegard snorted so long ago. It is a approach the problem of realism. Indeed, for or Hildegard of Bingen did, but about writ- problem to place on the wheel of reading and many women writers, speaking of what is ing autobiographically. “I was afraid I would writing, like the psalmist who writes in really real in words presents not a problem make a fool of myself,” Roberta Bondi wrote, Psalm 49: “I will incline my “I was afraid once I transgressed ear to a proverb; I will breathe the boundary between objectivity out my riddle to the music of We all know that writing is quite often unbearable. and subjectivity, I might never be my harp.” The problem of capable of objective historical realism is not a problem to be But I hope we have all had those moments, however scholarship again.” Just as for solved; it is a problem to be fleeting, when we place one ordinary word next to medieval women, contemporary breathed in and out, to be women’s anxiety about writing turned over and over, a prob- another and the world breaks open. has been productive of thoughtful lem to live with and write reflections about the practice towards, a problem that might itself. draw one more and more Julia Kasdorf, poet and English deeply into the life of God or however one but a free space for creative thought. How professor at Pennsylvania State University The Body and the Book: Writing describes the real beneath appearances. It is a does one make language speak the truth of and author of from a Mennonite Life, problem for writers and artists of all kinds, God or of women’s hidden lives? We forge writes of transgressing including those practitioners of the art of our answers in school, but that is a relatively boundaries in order to write from her life. arts, whose work is ministry. How do we recent development for women. Hildegard Here, however, it is not the boundaries of the craft language to speak of a call? Or a trans- of Bingen found her voice in the interpreta- academy that must be crossed, but the gression? Or a transformation—in a way that tion of her visions. Marguerite d’Oingt boundaries of her religious tradition, a tradi- is not only true but shareable? How do we sought her poetics in the liturgy and in tion she wants both to honor and transcend. offer a word of comfort, of rebuke, of hope, dreams. Virginia Woolf, educated from her Writing about her life in that community is of challenge in a way, as the writer Annie father’s library and excluded from the class- “an attempt to negotiate an authorial identity Dillard once asked, would not offend a rooms of the great universities of her day, without either abandoning my home commu- Marguerite Porete’s desire to “write God” as spontaneously, rather than being constructed when we have lied, as Lucinda Williams dying person by its triviality? Dillard meant developed a way of writing that illuminated nity altogether or becoming silenced by it.” she wished God to be. from particular literary choices. Far from would have it? Hildegard of Bingen was this as advice for aspiring writers—what can the relationship of inner life to outward cir- In order to write, Kasdorf must overcome Because medieval women often paused to being an unliterary motivation for writing, I fond of quoting a line from Psalm 115 when you say that would not offend a dying per- cumstances in a way that modern literature what she understands to be her Mennonite describe their conceptions of the practice of believe that women discover the spiritual writing of the difficulty of writing truly omnis homo mendax: son by its triviality? It is equally good advice had never seen. impulse not to disturb anyone, an impulse “so writing or to elaborate on their vocations as dimension of writing through addressing about what is really real: for aspiring ministers. But what about our own day, the writers deeply ingrained in my Mennonite soul as to writers, critics have sometimes described particular literary problems, most particularly everyone is a liar. “No one is in such perfec- Virginia Woolf worried about triviality, we know and read and with whom we share be a reflex.” Pondering the relative lack of their writings as “more like journals than like the problem of capturing the real in lan- tion,” she writes to one of her many corre- too. Writers claiming to be realists, she pro- this slice of time? Can we still point to a prac- imaginative Mennonite literature, she won- scriptio divina carefully constructed works of art.” guage, what we might call the problem of spondents, “that he is not a liar in some nounced, expended “immense skill and tice like in contemporary ders if the history of violence against “[Medieval] women’s motivation for writing realism. way.” This is a fixture of Christian reflection immense industry making the trivial and the women’s writing? Without a doubt. One Mennonites has kept them silent, “if a memo- at all,” one critic proclaims, “seems rarely to By realism I do not mean what Virginia on writing, by both men and women—that transitory appear the true and enduring.” place to look, one place to listen for women’s ry of trauma and fear of violation” has caused be predominantly literary: it is often more Woolf once called the “appalling narrative human language cannot suffice to convey When this happens, she complained, “life reflections on the spiritual dimension of the Mennonites to want to hide their “hearts and urgently serious than is common among business of the realist: getting from lunch to the truth of God. escapes.” How to write in a way that cap- practice of writing is in the incredible out- minds from the curious gaze of others.” men writers; it is a response springing from dinner.” I mean the search for a language Augustine famously bemoaned the fact that tured the “luminous halo” of life, the “semi- pouring of women’s spiritual autobiographies One of the books referred to in the title of Martyr’s Mirror, inner needs, more than from an artistic, or with which to speak the deepest truth about human language cannot tell the truth about transparent envelope surrounding us from that began twelve years ago with the sur- Kasdorf’s own book is the a Dakota: A didactic inclination.” the world and a form to give it shape. This is God because there is no way to utter Father the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is prise success of Kathleen Norris’s seventeenth-century collection of narrative Spiritual Geography That is an odd distinction to make, an age-old problem for artists of any gender, Son and Holy Spirit at once. Always, these this not,” she asked, “the task of the novelist?” and shows no signs of accounts, accompanied by vivid engravings, between literary, artistic impulses and of course, and maybe especially for religious names have distance between them; always, Indeed it is. The contemporary American slowing down. I shall mention two contribu- of Mennonite martyrs who were tortured, urgently serious ones born of inner needs. It writers. Can we use human language to tell they occupy separate spaces on the page. novelist, Carole Maso, an inheritor of Woolf’s tions to this growing literature—less well- burned alive, and drowned for their beliefs. implies that women’s texts come into being the truth? Can we rely on the heart to tell us This is a rather constraining truth about vocation, says that it is the work of the writer known than books by Phyllis Tickle, Lauren When a respected elderly neighbor began

14 T HE SPIRE Fall 2005 15 sexually abusing Kasdorf when she was a lit- lence of disembodiment, the violence of much to teach about the practice of writing, dom than fear in it. She loves Simone Weil, by Perugino, the teacher of Raphael, and Martyr’s Mirror tle girl, the played a complex turning away from the demands of others. particularly about how to sustain what she the philosopher who stood at the threshold pondered the beauty of his forms. All the role: the narratives both helped her to sur- This idea suggests for me one of the anxieties calls “a balance between the necessity associ- of the church, loving it, but refusing to enter, beauty seemed sealed up to her; “all its vive and kept her silent. of the minister, or the theological educator— ated with plot and the blindness associated and Edith Stein, the Jewish woman turned worth in it; not a hint of past or future.” She “When the man was done,” she writes, “I the fear that in order to write we have to turn with experience,” a balance she seeks in both Carmelite nun who died in Auschwitz, is in love with beauty, and she admires this would let his wood framed cellar door slam our backs. poetry and fiction. Howe calls her poetics women on the boundaries of Christianity. fresco. She can see the relation of color and shut and walk home through the backyards, For Kasdorf, writing is not an end in itself. “bewilderment.” The wedding dress of the title of her book line, she can see the way each part is depend- thinking, ‘Well, that was not so bad. It was It is, rather, “part of a long training for the She also draws her poetics of bewilder- refers to Edith Stein’s adornment when she ent on the other. Is this what I do, she asks only my body.’ I think the martyr stories day when I would be able to talk. I bore on ment from her experience of being “born into became a Carmelite, a sign of “the start of a herself? I want to express beauty, too. But, taught me that splintering trick: it is only the my body a violence until I could write; I bore white privilege but with no financial security, period of waiting” rather than arrival at a she concludes, a different kind of beauty, one body….They can burn the body but not the witness in writing until I could speak. The given a good education but no training for definite destination, “not so much running made up not of perfectly integrated forms, soul. You may gaze at my body, even touch it struggle to speak out of silence on behalf of survival.” As a single white mother rearing from object to object as receiving the future, but a beauty made up of “infinite discords” if you must, but you will not know my soul: defenseless beings,” she argues, “is the pri- interracial children in Boston in the 1970s, which is empty.” Howe’s epigraph to her that achieves, in the end, a whole made of my essential self exists safely apart from my mary challenge of our time.” moving from neighborhood to neighbor- book is a line from the novelist Ilona Karmel: shivering fragments. body and from you.” The practice of writing is at once spiritual hood, trying to keep her children in the best “It was the truth but still not quite.” Twenty years later, Virginia Woolf writes To the Lighthouse. For Kasdorf, the practice of writing gave and political for Julia Kasdorf: a way of public schools she could find, she knew first- Fanny Howe’s practice of writing is a novel called All of her her a way of “removing language from my drawing close to the truth of her life without hand the “blindness associated with experi- shaped by her attention to areas of experi- past is gathered up and transformed in this own body and inscribing it in that safe, quiet allowing that truth to destroy her, a way of ence” and the bewilderment such blindness ence that resist expression in language. You book, Including the summer day twenty space of the page, where I could assemble bearing witness to the pain and truth of oth- engenders. The poetics that emerged from can see her experimenting in her novels with years earlier when she stood before and view it again.” As an adult, pondering ers, a way of both transgressing and honor- these experiences subverted what she calls forms that both mirror the narrative dimen- Perugino’s fresco and asked herself difficult her own traumatic experience in light of the ing her community, of transcending and “the narratives of power and winning” in sion of dreams but also what she calls their questions about the kind of beauty she was stories of martyrdom which so deeply “greater consciousness of randomness and seeking. In the novel, the writer becomes a shaped her religious sensibility, she wonders … I believe that women discover the spiritual dimension of writing uncertainty.” In Howe’s novels, events are painter, who, having finally found a form what it might mean to “write like a martyr.” most often not what they at first seem. This is that tells the truth, a form that captures She asserts, “To write like a martyr through addressing particular literary problems, most particularly the her solution to the problem of realism. something real about her subject, ponders Saint Teresia Benedicta a Cruce means, not to choose death, but to choose to Through this oscillation between clearing (born Edith Stein) her vocation. “Love had a thousand shapes,” bear life-giving witness, to communicate the problem of capturing the real in language, what we might call the and darkening, this poetics of bewilderment, (1891–1942) she thought to herself. “There might be on the occasion of her religious vestition or truth of one’s own vision or insight, to affirm she is seeking, she says in language reminis- clothing ceremony on April 15, 1934 lovers whose gift it was to choose out the ele- its value with confidence, no matter how problem of realism….the search for a language with which to speak the cent of the luminous Hildegard of Bingen, “a Mary Queen of Peace Carmelite Convent ments of things and place them together and Cologne, Germany arrogant or disturbing it may be, ‘and the literature made out of light.” so, giving them a wholeness not theirs in life, truth shall make you free’.” deepest truth about the world and a form to give it shape. Now there’s a vocation—to contribute to make of some scene, or meeting of people Kasdorf believes “an awareness of mor- a literature made out of light. Think of late into the night working on a paper, or a (all now gone and separate), one of those tality” is, in the words of Helene Cixous, “the Marguerite turning on her wheel, moving sermon, rejecting word after word after globed compacted things over which first rung on the ladder of writing.” Drawing remaining rooted in her body. But it is a prac- much the way dreams do—and in the way between reading and prayer, prayer and beautiful word because your heart told you thought lingers, and love plays.” on the engraved image of a Mennonite mar- tice ultimately to be discarded, and here, per- Virginia Woolf’s attention to lives of the writing, writing and reading. Think of they were not true? I hope that when God Twenty years of pondering her vocation tyr lashed to a ladder, tipping towards the haps, we hear her Mennonite self speaking obscure does. As in the poetics of many Virginia Woolf, writing to the steady beat of looks at us, God sees those shining, hidden as a writer in the light of the vocations of oth- flames in which she will be burnt alive in most clearly when she writes, “I know that medieval women’s writings, “weakness, flu- the creator, illuminating the pattern that fragments, the fragments from which the ers brought her to this clarity, that her work front of her children, Kasdorf writes, “The beyond the book, beyond the limits of the idity, concealment, and solitude” replace holds us all. Think of Hildegard of Bingen, world’s literature of light is made. was to work with fragments, even with frag- I should like to offer one last word about author must lean into the scorching truth of body, are healing mysteries that have noth- “courage, discipline, conquest, and fame.” trying to capture a sparkling flame, a cloud scriptio divina. ments that seem impossible to fit, and make her own mortality in order to write. She must ing to do with labor or language.” What she calls the politics of bewilderment moving in air in her words and in her music. One of the ways artists of all of them something which attracts both scriptio write the book that threatens to cost her life.” Another recent articulation of bears similar marks. “It’s a politics,” she writes, Think of Carole Maso saying, stay a little. kinds, including writers, including minis- thought and love. Twenty years of turning divina Like Marguerite d’Oingt, Kasdorf refuses can be found in the work of the con- “devoted to the little and the weak; it is Think of Julia Kasdorf, writing like a martyr, ters, have sharpened their attention to the and turning her wheel of words. It takes that to adhere only to the rungs of the ladder she temporary Roman Catholic novelist Fanny grassroots in that it imitates the way grass tilting toward the flames. spiritual dimension of their craft is through long. It takes longer. Do not give up. This is has been given. She adds yet a new rung, the Howe. The author of several books of poetry bends and springs back when it is stepped on.” The writings of these women are the frag- the discernment of the spiritual dimension of the work of a lifetime. Whether you are rung of speaking, because for her, writing is and more than twenty-five novels, Fanny The poetics of bewilderment shapes ments of a literature made out of light. I set the craft of others. A writer walks into a tiny preparing to be a minister, a writer, a scholar, finally only a step on the way towards Howe is preoccupied in her work with Howe’s practice of writing, which in turn them before you in the hopes that you will foyer that prepares her for the high cathedral a teacher, an activist, a parent, a counselor, a speech. The practice of writing helped to themes of race, marriage, motherhood, reli- reflects her understanding of the interaction place these fragments next to your own, space just inside: how can I do this in a novel, musician–whatever your vocation—you are heal her, but it also replicated the splintering gious faith, poverty, and writing. In her between human beings and God. Both writ- whatever form the literature you are making she asks? A preacher asks: how can I make the lovers whose work it is to take the frag- The Wedding Dress, of soul from body that she learned from the recent book of essays, she ing and life with God are marked for Howe takes. Are you working with the strange, old my paragraphs move like lines in a poem? A ments that are given to you and make of stories of the martyrs and practiced as a sur- writes of drawing a poetics, a way of writing, by “constant oscillation and clearing and words of Scripture, trying to help them dancer asks: how can I ascend the ladder of them something for all of us, so that we can vival skill as a child. “Writing may be the from her experience of the world and from darkening” a quality she finds reflected in speak their truth into this broken world? monks with my body? A musician sees a take the fragments that are given to us, and most brilliant splintering trick of all,” she her dreams. As medieval women interpreted the Psalms. And how great a description of Have you crossed a boundary—as dancer turn a ladder into a wheel and asks: make our shivering whole, so that others can writes. Kasdorf acknowledges that writing is their dreams and visions as if they were writ- the practice of writing is that—a constant Vanderbilt Divinity School student Ginger how can I accomplish this with notes? do the same. This work is never finished, but a practice that can help us bear witness to the ten texts, Howe finds in her dreams “a movement between clearing and darkening! Skaggs crossed during her spring break in Two years after Virginia Stephen wrote the steady pulse of the creator beats under all truth. But it is also a practice, she worries, method for describing sequential persons, Howe is drawn to writers who fully inhabit Ecuador—and when you returned found that she could feel the steady beat of the cre- of it. that can perpetrate its own violence: the vio- first and third.” Dreams, for Howe, have this oscillation, who seem to find more free- your old life inaccessible? Have you sat up ator as she wrote, she stood before a fresco

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who believes one has the moral responsibility Penuel Ridge Retreat Center, I heard him to object to the United States government’s quote “Poem 816” from the canon of Emily role in supporting human rights violations. Dickinson: For his act of civil disobedience in protest- ing the practices of the Western Hemisphere A Death blow is a Life blow to Some Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly Who till they died, did not alive become— known as the School of the Americas, Who had they lived, had died but when Beisswenger was arrested, charged, tried, They died, Vitality begun. convicted, fined $1000, and sentenced to six months in federal prison. Standing before During a recent visit to the Divinity Judge G. Mallon Faircloth of the United School, he conveyed that since his release he States District Court in Columbus, Georgia, occasionally experiences a moment of confu- Beisswenger pled guilty to charges of taking sion in his effort to renew his relationship to six steps past a “No Trespassing” sign at Fort time in the free world. As he considers the Benning where American military personnel world’s affairs in his seventy-fourth year, he train foreign nationals in the strategies for says he finds himself entering a period of conducting insurgency warfare against dissi- lamentations, but when he learns that a dents in their home countries. Graduates of friend’s cancer is in remission, or when he the institute have been involved in human thinks about the blessing of his recent mar- rights atrocities, including the El Mozote riage to Judy Pilgrim, or as he observes the Massacre on December 11, 1981, when trees in Vanderbilt’s arboretum, he realizes Salvadoran armed forces slaughtered nine that there are resurrections which supersede hundred civilians in an anti-guerrilla cam- the lamentations. Standing at the entrance to paign. Since learning of the United States’ my office, he read the excerpt from Czeslaw links to assassinations in El Salvador, Milosz’ poem titled “The Thistle, The Nettle” Beisswenger became committed to educat- which I have mounted on the door: ing himself and others about the truth underlying United States and Latin Who shall I be for men many American foreign policy, and he continues generations later? working to gain support for a U.S. congres- When, after the clamor of tongues,

NEIL BRAKE sional investigation of our country’s prac- the award goes to silence? tices in Latin America. I was to be redeemed by the Before his name would be inscribed on gift of arranging words the roster of the one hundred and seventy But must be prepared for an earth individuals who have served over seventy without grammar. years in prison for engaging in nonviolent nclosed within a letter I received from resistance campaigns to close the School of As I was telling him that I had heard Inmate Number 92091-020 was a copy the Americas, Beisswenger told Judge Milosz read the poem at the University in B.C. Eof a comic strip. The speaker in the Faircloth, “I am acting out of care for a nation 1992, Beisswenger walked to the bookcase and retrieved my copy of the Nobel laure- first frame resembles Sisyphus as he climbs which still has the potential to be a life-giving Provinces. to the summit of a mountain where an elder- force in the world.” ate’s volume of verse, Turning to ly, bearded figure sits in silence. Assuming This conviction of the Presbyterian minis- the poem titled “Return,” he read: the emeritus, the posture of a supplicant, the speaker ter and professor, from Vanderbilt inquires, “Oh, great guru, what is the secret University Divinity School became the inspi- Somehow I waded through; of life?” ration for the “gift of confinement” he received I am grateful that I was not submitted The guru replies, “Getting along with during his days of contemplation in prison. to tests beyond my strength, your fellow prisoners.” Beisswenger translated his interpretation of and yet I think that the human soul In the lower-right margin of the frayed this gift into the prose of his prison journal belongs to the anti-world. and graciously consented to allow us to pub- comic strip, the inmate correspondent has The Spire. written in blue ink, “I’m learning.” lish excerpts in A reader of Beisswenger’s journal will of Confinement During the six months of his incarceration In my conversations with former Inmate discover that the tests of a prison sentence Gift in the Federal Correctional Institution in Number 92091-020 since his release from can become a life blow for a soul that strives Manchester, Kentucky, the Reverend Donald prison on Friday, October 1, 2004, he does to give grammar to the earth. And perhaps while reading the pages, one may pause and F. Beisswenger learned that the secret of life not allude to comic strips but to poetry, the —VJ involved more than getting along with his literary genre Robert Frost once described as write in the margins, “I’m learning.” fellow inmates; he learned that a period of “a momentary stay against confusion.” At confinement can offer spiritual gifts to one the twentieth anniversary celebration of

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The Preface to the Journal April ,  stone) on either side. A road at one end leads up to a large grassy plateau where there is a The year 2005 stands as a reminder of two Today I reported to the U.S. Bureau of softball field, volleyball court, and a picnic important historical events for me. First is the Prisons located in Manchester, Kentucky. At area. This is a restful place. 2:00 p.m. I walked into the front office and fiftieth anniversary of the hanging of Dietrich care, Five hundred inmates reside here in four Bonhoeffer in Germany, just as the war surrendered myself to their if that is the dormitories with one hundred and twenty- ended, and the subsequent publication of his correct word. If I had not reported, I would five persons in each. The facility is located on letters and papers from prison which are have forfeited my bond and would be sub- a former strip mine. Stripping coal from the important in my life’s journey. The second is ject to immediate arrest and further time. mountains was the prior goal. Now it is often the twenty-fifth anniversary this year of the Prior to surrendering, five persons joined stripping life from people to make sure they murder of Oscar Romero for his challenge of me on the trip from Nashville, along with the are properly punished. My roommate is a the oppression and murder of the poor in El Reverend Erik Johnson, who drove up from twenty-six-year-old man from Milwaukee Salvador. He was killed while serving the Knoxville. We had a sumptuous picnic pre- who was sentenced here for three months for Lord’s Supper, a symbol of the intertwining pared by Erik. What a joy! The community computer fraud. (He was discharged ten days after I arrived.) It was cold that first Confinement has provided me with an unwanted isolation, but night, and I had only my prison uniform confinement also has brought me the deeper meanings that lie until the next morning when I would receive a jacket. I felt cold inside as well. quietly. I listen better; let events be my teacher. Today, April 6, is the second day of Holy Week, a time between Palm Sunday, Good

Friday, and Easter. Before Jesus entered NEIL BRAKE of death and life, Cross and Resurrection, in created synergy, hope, strength, perspective, Jerusalem, he wept for the city because the our common and individual lives. and shalom for the journey ahead. people did not know the way to make peace. The trees were barren when I arrived. A Prayer for the American, Nation of Islam, Rastafarian, My purpose in writing was in part a strat- At 1:45 we drove to the maximum security After Jesus entered the city, he saw the Over the next three weeks, a light green color Wild Creatures Pentecostal, Spanish Protestant, Shatru, egy to survive while in prison, but upon my building where I was to report. Razor wire profit-making occurring at the Temple, a began to radiate rays of the sun, and four Jewish, House of Yahweh, Hebrew Israelites, leaving, the inmates said over and over, covered every fence and door. My friends place for prayer. He became angry and weeks later, the trees were fully clothed in Oh, Great Spirit, we come to you with love Wicca, and Life Connections. “Please tell about what happens here to the and I held hands and prayed together prior turned over the tables of the money chang- brilliant, bright green. and gratitude for all living creatures. We I have attended the Protestant service as world. They need to know about how pris- to checking in the office. They walked into ers. He met with his disciples and prepared I also looked again for flowers, and I was pray especially for our relatives of the well as the Catholic service which I appreci- ons operate, how they demean life, disre- the facility with me. The entry looked like a for the Passover. The supper must have been delighted to find a patch of wild iris, their wilderness — the four-legged, the winged, ate because it has liturgical form which gives spect us, and make it hard.” hotel with an atrium— bright lights and shaped by the climate of confusion, vulnera- purple color bright against the flea bane and those that live in the waters, and those that continuity over time, as well as inviting me Survival was seen as the goal for most color for decoration. A pleasant receptionist bility, and fear. All they knew was the the yellow mustard. I was happy. I noticed crawl upon the land. to participate. I do value liturgy. every inmate when I asked them their pri- asked why I was there. I turned over my pounding of their hearts, fear for their own purple up along the edge of the forest; I Bless them, that they may continue to live I plan to share in a Native American mary purpose while in prison. Luis was papers and waited for about twenty minutes demise, and that this was their last time found lyre-leaved sage. Flowers coming in freedom and enjoy their right to be wild. sweat lodge on Wednesdays (about five especially compelling in his desire for me to until Officer Wodles escorted me inside the together. Jesus was a threat to the Romans, as forth from a strip mine now a prison! Fill our hearts with tolerance, apprecia- hours) when I receive permission to do so. I speak about what I have seen and experi- maximum security prison— through five well as to the religious laws. He must be Alleluia! tion, and respect for all living creatures so have attended several Bible study sessions, enced. I want to tell what I experienced in steel doors—where I was fingerprinted, pho- rejected, they believed. The Jesus story keeps Animals appear once in a while. A ground- that we all might live together in harmony and watched a video on prayer. the hope it may provoke some transforma- tographed, and given prison clothes, and me alive to the mystery of life and death, hog puttered along the base of the cliff where and in peace. I entered the prison just after Palm tion in the prison system. There is such bru- where all the clothes I came with were put good and evil, greatness and perversion; the forest began. At the Native American —Marcellus Bear Heart Williams Sunday and desired some liturgical frame- tality and tragedy, without much in the way into a box to be shipped home. I could keep such a gift for life it is. Center there are two dogs, one with four pup- work to consider my role here, but there was of positive possibilities for life, only survival. only my eye glasses and a Bible. (I had pies. The puppies have evoked care from sev- May ,  little help. The Protestant Good Friday serv- I also write to keep alive the memory of brought two Bibles, and they let me keep May ,  eral inmates. I enjoy the birds although I have ice had little to do with Good Friday, except Sandor, José, Candida, and Carla—all of both.) Written inside were the addresses and not been able to identify many. Reflections on Faith, Religion, a word study on the seven last words with- whom were victims of military officers in telephone numbers of persons with whom I Reflection on the Flowers and Just outside the lunch hall is a small Chaplains, and Inmates out any exposition or reflection. On Easter, their Latin American countries—and to wanted to keep in touch. Animals at the Prison ravine, and water has begun to collect by a the Southern Baptist minister preached using express my hope that United States military I was driven by an inmate to the mini- small dam made from stones. In the small There are many religious groups here. Each Ephesians where Paul speaks of Jesus’ suf- policies can stop the support for oppressive mum security facility which would now I love flowers and looked about for the won- pond, about four feet across, are two large religious group is assigned a group sponsor. fering Death and Resurrection, but the min- governments and their repressive tactics of become my home for the next six months. It drous colors of spring, given without cost. frogs and several smaller ones. Inmates Three chaplains coordinate the activities: a ister focused on “The Plan of God” where maintaining order. is called “the camp.” I have a lower bunk When I arrived on April 6th, the grassy areas stand at the fence overlooking the pond after Catholic chaplain who is supervising chap- Jesus died for our sins without any sense of Finally, I write to give glory to the God bed, a benefit for me as an older person around the prison were filled with yellow. each meal and enjoy observing the frogs. Jesus’ death relating to human arrogance old lain, a Southern Baptist, and a Missouri The Passion of Christ who has blessed me, and called me to be a (older, mind you, not as some suggest). I The color was striking, with millions of dan- Tadpoles also come to the pond’s surface— Synod Lutheran who said he was on the pro- and power. (The film has blessing. I can only trust that this calling will was taken to a six by ten area room, separat- delions showing off their hue. new life, fragile to be sure. gressive wing of the church. We had a good the same problem). Jesus’ great pain and suf- be embodied in some small way. God works ed by five-foot tall cement blocks, with open There was little else, however, no tooth I was sent a prayer which I posted in a conversation, but when I asked if I might fering is presented to us, calling us to wor- in the world in ways we do not comprehend, space to the ceiling. We have bunk beds, two warts, Jacob’s ladders, shooting stars. I plastic cover on the levee by the pond and teach a course, he closed up and said, ship and praise. This is partially true for and I trust that God seeks justice and shalom. lockers, two chairs, and a desk, above which looked for them. Finally, I saw small butter- dedicated to the frogs. The text remained “Inmates cannot teach courses.” me—but only in the larger context of Jesus’ Sol Deo gratia. is a bulletin board. There is a two feet by six cups and purple violets. There was a strange posted for only two days—a sign of my lim- The following groups are approved: execution challenging the powers that be feet window facing a grassy hillside. flower with white shoots coming out of ited influence in this place. Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, House of and thus reaping the whirlwind. We also cel- The camp nestles in a valley with high, twelve-inch grassy stems. It looked a bit like Jehovah’s Witnesses, Buddhist, Hindu, ebrate the power of God to bring life out of cliff-like mountain terrain (slate and sand- Allegheny spurge. Protestant, Moorish Science, Muslim, Native death. Reducing Jesus’ death to personal 20 T HE SPIRE Fall 2005 21

healing is too limiting. There were some papers and reflections also Why should I mourn I am reading about prison life and the I had a conversation about the Bible with on the bed. My windowsill had dust on it. The vanished power of the usual reign? A letter dated June ,  prison system. I am one who dissented from two inmates over lunch. One inmate had We had swept the floor, but it was dingy my government’s military policies, and this been a news reporter and the other a fire- beyond our control. In the third and fourth stanzas, Eliot is not keeping with the patriotism of the man. They wondered if the Bible changes. Mr. Gull completes the forms each week writes: Dear Reverend Don Beisswenger, time— my walk of six steps onto Fort We talked about the different meanings for to rate each dorm as to neatness and cleanli- Benning led to a six-month sentence and a words through the centuries and the need for ness. This goal is sound as the four dorms are Consequently, I rejoice, having to My name is Javiera Vergara. I am seventeen years old and attend Immaculate Heart of fine—a rather stringent penalty for dissent. I dealing with such problems. They appreciat- rated as to their grades, the best getting to eat construct something Mary High School. Last November I, too, attended the WHISC/SOA protest. That was believe excessive sentences are the rule ed the discussion. first and get to the commissary first. Upon which to rejoice. a weekend that changed my life forever. here—excess penalty for nonviolent crimes. Prior to a softball game a week ago, one of He called my roommate and me into his And pray to God to have mercy It’s funny how life seems so simple, but it really isn’t. Humans are complex beings Conspiracy has been the key to conviction. the inmates called the team together to pre- office and said we did not deserve a room upon us… that can do things so wonderful and beautiful and yet be capable of mass destruction. Implicate other people to get lighter sen- pare to play, and he said he wanted to offer a because our room was, as I have mentioned, Going to the protest made me angry, and it also made me feel useless. Things that I tences. People implicating others can be prayer. This was their prayer before the game: cluttered and disordered and with dust on Life has passed me, in a way, too. I have thought could be figured out simply are too complex even to think about sometimes. grounds for a dangerous social system. Yet Father, Who art in heaven. Thank You for the the windowsill. Especially egregious was come face to face with endings, finitude, and People tend to be so freaking greedy and totally oblivious to those around them; it conspiracy laws are the key issue in the rad- wonderful day. Thank You for the blessings You New York Times having the and Martin not knowing. I wonder as the men walk, one hurts me deep inside I think more than other kids my age. But what do you do unless ical increase in our prison population since bestow upon us. Lord, we thank You for looking Bearing the Cross, Luther King’s a three-inch by one, two by two. Do they seek “to con- you have money? I pray—but I don’t think it will do any good. I mean, God did give the 1980s, the “tough on crime” years. The over our families while we are separated from thick volume, on the bed. struct something upon which to rejoice”? everyone free will—it’s too bad many haven’t learned to love; they are too wrapped up “tough on crime” approach was the same them. Yet Lord, we ask for Your forgiveness of our It is well to note that I am seventy-three Armstrong’s book also caught my eye in money to see through anything. period when privatization of prisons began. sins and wrongdoings throughout this day. Lord, years with six children and eight grandchil- with the detailed life in the convent com- But I still pray and ask God to help me not be afraid of the future of our world. I Prisons have become one of the most prof- we ask as we get ready to play this game that You dren. I was married for forty-nine years pared with the life in the world which she pray so God can give others good judgment and to let them see how wonderful it is to itable businesses. I learned yesterday that keep us in character. Put a leash upon our when my wife died some eighteen months has confronted. In the convent, everything love others. It’s too bad many won’t have the chance. most items in the warehouse have expired tongues so that we will not argue a call. If one of ago. I have always had a work area of some had some sacred significance, and now in the Well, I have to go, but I want to finish by saying that I think it’s great that you dates on the food packages. The criminal jus- us makes an error or does wrong, let us do as You sort where I write letters, reflect on books, world nothing seems to matter at all—a real- crossed the line. I hope you are doing fine, and may God give you all of God’s bless- tice system is now a rich source for cheap said, “Lift one another up.” Lord, we ask for Your study, and pray. Usually my work area is ity to be created. Freedom led to defiance of ings. You are a wonderful person. I hope this letter finds you well, and let’s keep pray- labor, control of dissent, and private funnel- protection on the field. Keep us from harm or cluttered with piles of magazines, papers, the past. ing. I know I need prayers if I’m going to survive here on earth. And of course, let’s ing of private funds to increase profit. injury, not only us, but the other team as well. and books. It is orderly in the sense that I can This new world was an assault, she says, pray that the school closes. Thanks for reading, and God bless. Yesterday I was reading at a picnic table Lord, we thank You for this chance to play and to find what I need. a bubbling roar of four hundred students, on the playing field. Three men came up to come to You. We thank and praise You, in the For punishment, we were immediately unrestrained, yet she kissed the floor out of Love, sit out of the sun as I had. I was writing and name of Jesus. moved out of the cubicle into the hall. The the joy of a new freedom, or out of habit, it Javiera Vergara heard them converse. Amen. bed in the hall is called the “bus stop,” for it was not clear. In the convent, she failed to One asked another, “Why don’t you have This is a small glimpse of religious life is a place of great activity, located between find God, yet convent life proved to be a a tattoo on your arm like this?” as he pointed here. the microwave and the telephone. There is a fixed point of home, an orientation. Now there ular counts to monitor our presence through I sit here this morning writing with a to a barbed wire rung around his arm. passageway in front of the bunk bed. So here was nothing, nothing given, only options the day is cumbersome (midnight, 3 a.m., 5 small book light I purchased. It helps with The man answered, “I am not into this.” June ,  we live; there is no place to store anything which led her to stunned bewilderment. a.m., 9 a.m., Noon, 4 p.m., 9 p.m.). Some my morning reflections, reading of psalms The other persisted as if he were recruit- except in boxes under the bed and by hang- In the convent she felt isolation, without counts take an hour until all are accounted and prayers. Because I have no light or desk, ing for an association. “You need to get a tat- 2:35 p.m., upon the knoll ing items on the bedposts. So I have been intimacy, where the capacity for affection for. Whether in the day or night, we are I do most of my writing in the laundry room too! You need to make an appointment right troubled, and I have felt vulnerable and con- atrophied or became badly damaged and reminded we are in a system of control and where folks fold their clothes. They have away since he is very busy.” I have been troubled during the past two strained, controlled, angry, and afraid. could not function. It hardened within, craft- There are two or three inmates who tattoo The Spiral power. Mr. Stampler, the unit manager, been cordial and supportive. weeks. I was unnerved by the move from my This morning I began to read ing a person who cannot love. Isolation is on location, and tattoos are a key symbol for Staircase comes to look at the visiting area. He The event has led me to be aware of vul- cubicle into the hall where there is no light, by Karen Armstrong. The story central to initiation. Is it to make a person remarked during orientation, “I know every- nerability, mine and the vulnerability of all many of the white men here. The persistent no desk, no privacy. No locker to store books reports on her move out of the convent into independent or to make one pliable? In the thing that goes on here. Inmates keep me the men here. The prison system is to incar- one had a spider web on his whole arm, with and papers, no place to put pills and bath- the secular world only to face many difficul- convent it was not to make one self-reliant informed.” But overall, the life here seems cerate. It takes us out of the world and wants the elbow as the center of the web. He said, room supplies—I have no place to store my ties in adjustment leading to mental illness but pliable to the superiors. She says she was benign and I usually feel upbeat, as my let- us to conform to the world of rules. I won- “My next tattoo will be a skull, with a clothes except in a bag on the floor. and physical disability. unable to accept love: “I had wanted to be ters indicate. But this feeling has changed. dered why Mr. Gull came when he did since Confederate flag coming out of it, and a Klan I was taken out of my cubicle because I She begins her book with a stanza from transformed and enriched; instead, I was It is 5:30 a.m., and I sit on the bottom I had not cleaned up my room, which I usu- cap on top.” got caught up in my writing responses to let- T.S. Eliot’s poem, “Ash Wednesday.” The diminished, and I became simply hard.” I became aware of the racial dynamics. bunk in the hallway of the dormitory. A bunk ally do, though not in any perfect fashion. He New Yorker ters and cards. The writing has become a verse “spoke to me.” For an older man, the is against the wall with only a walkway in did come two days earlier than usual. Was it There was a lengthy article in the burden, and I was seeking to organize it bet- stanza has poignancy: June ,  front, with people going all night, using the because of a snitch? Are we under surveil- about the Aryan nations controlling the fed- ter, but on May 21, I, along with my Bunkie, microwave or the telephone. I have, along lance? I do not want to be concerned exces- eral prisons—inmates using the same mech- was called into the administrative office by Because I do not hope to turn again Two months ago today, I entered the federal with my Bunkie, been here for over four sively about all this except it has brought a anism for decisions as the Mafia, with a per- Mr. Gull, as I shall call him. Because I do not hope prison here in Kentucky to begin my six- weeks. This is the punishment that Mr. Gull new concern to my attention. son in each facility who has the power to say I must agree that my room was cluttered. Because I do not hope to turn month incarceration. The time has been has given us for having a messy room with a I talked to an inmate who has been here who is to live or to die. The Nation began as I had a pile of magazines on the left side of Desiring this man’s gift and that occupied with coming to terms with the cluttered bed and dust on the windowsill. six years. I asked him his purpose while an anti-black group but moved to become the desk, and the letters I had received and man’s scope world here. It seemed like a summer camp There is a strict rule about keeping your desk here. “I have only one goal, and that is to sur- oriented toward total power. Black and was answering were on the right side. On during the first month in some ways: eating, New York I no longer strive to strive toward absolutely clear of books, magazines, and vive,” he responded. This has led me to be Latino gangs formed to counter the Nation, my bed were three copies of the picking up trash, recreation, group conversa- Times such things papers. Nothing is to be on the desk except cautious and to see that survival is a part of and tensions were high. One of the men here along with four books I was perusing. (Why should the agèd eagle stretch tions, free times, and sleep. The reality of reg- the Bible, they say. my calling here. told me of his experience with the gang at its wings?) 22 T HE SPIRE Fall 2005 23

Book Review and Reflection, not aimed at correcting me for anything. ten times that number locked up. Segregation ruled the South until a centu- August 2004 There are no offerings to help me to grow, Are we willing, Davis asks, to “relegate ry after the abolition of slaves. The system of and work is minimal as to be absurd. I work large number of persons from racially exploitation saw black persons as property, about one hour a day, and wait around for oppressed communities to an isolated exis- and such views continue, even now. In pris- Are Prisons Obsolete? about three to four hours each day to be tence marked by authoritarian regimes, vio- ons there is deep racism. After abolition, Angela Davis, Seven Stories Press, “counted.” lence, disease, and technology of seclusions blacks were still treated as second-class citi- New York, 2003, 127 pages, paperback Some years ago, John Egerton, a that produce several mental illnesses?” zens with curtailed voting rights, educational Nashville author, wrote a fine book titled Why has this happened? opportunities, and marginal jobs. Lynching Speak Now Against the Day. I am writing this review from the federal In the book he During the Reagan administration, there was an extra-legal institution where ruthless prison in Manchester, Kentucky, where I am examines the civil rights movement prior to was a strong movement to be tough on groups took thousands of lives. a prisoner of conscience. I, along with twenty- 1954 to ascertain what had been done about crime. It was exaggerated in many ways. We rarely acknowledge the role of race in six others, was arrested at Fort Benning, racial injustice. What he discovered was that From this period came legislation leading to prisons. Is racism so deeply entrenched in Georgia, in November of 2003. I took six almost all persons seeking change focused certain imprisonment and longer sentences. the institution of prisons that it is almost steps onto the army base and was given a on humanizing the separate but equal sys- Power was taken away from the judges to impossible to eliminate it? (Here in this sentence of six months in federal prison and tem. They tried to secure equal educational exercise discretion. There was also much prison, there are few black staff and officers Authors John Egerton and the Reverend Will Campbell were among the friends who visited Professor a fine of $1000. I am about half finished with opportunity within the separate school sys- unemployment and homelessness. The con- although approximately forty percent of the the sentence and have made efforts to under- tems. The same applied with equal housing tinued racism of the culture meant black per- inmates are black.) Beisswenger during his sixth-month incarceration in federal prison. A description of their visit is Are stand the prison system. The book and transportation; they did not seek to chal- sons were targeted. (One in three black men, After slavery, black codes were estab- recounted in Beisswenger’s journal entry dated June 28, 2004. Prisons Obsolete? has been of great assistance lenge the separate but equal system but to ranging in age from twenty to twenty-nine lished in slave states. Slavery and involun- in coming to an understanding of why I am seek a more humane system. But Egerton years, is in prison according to a study con- tary servitude had been abolished by the first the prison next door to this camp. He was to a noted southern writer. The last one was incarcerated and the system under which argues that there were few who spoke ducted in 1995; black women also have been amendment, but not as punishment for be killed, but found a way out. Matt Leber, the twenty-nine-year-old direc- our prisons operate. against the separate but equal laws. Some incarcerated at increasingly high numbers.) crime. The black codes defined crime state to Eventually, all the Aryan Nation members tor of a nonprofit social agency. I was excited Angela Davis seeks to do two things: first, worked to humanize the law. Almost univer- were taken out of the prison system and put about the visit. to reveal the impact of the prison on the lives sally, he says, they tried to negotiate within into a super maximum security facility When I arrived for their visit, after hearing of people inside and outside the prison. The the separate but equal system. (It is interest- where they are now. While the power of the my call to come down, Officer Hobbs con- ones punished most harshly are often the ing to note that even Martin Luther King and An Essay Composed by my Granddaughter, Sara Beisswenger gangs has been diluted, the sentiments are fronted me with great anger and stated he families. Secondly, she seeks to challenge the the Montgomery Association wanted to still here. I am not unduly afraid, yet I am was of a mind to cancel my visit for all three “taken for grantedness” of prisons as neces- negotiate within the system at the begin- Brown v. the Board of Education “I’m going to jail,” my grandfather said on the walk we were going on together. “I’m aware of the reality of the prison—both in persons because the young man had on san- sary and an inevitable part of our social sys- ning.) showed going to jail.” how it operates and more aware about the dals and socks, and sandals were not permit- tem in the United States. She describes the that the separate but equal system and struc- Those words struck me by surprise. My grandfather wasn’t a bad man, was he? At prison population. ted. He shouted at me several more times that historical development of what we have—a ture was wrong and unconstitutional. It had first I didn’t know what to say; then a question popped into my head. “How?” I asked. When will we get moved back into a cubi- it was my responsibility to tell folks what to prison-industrial complex. to be dismantled. This meant a new day had “Why?” cle? We do not know. A memo said we would wear (which I have done diligently). Then he The purpose of prisons, she suggests, has, begun. The whole system had to be trans- My dad had gone down to Columbus, Georgia, to see my grandfather, who lived in be returned to a cubicle at “Mr. Gull’s con- said, “I intend to do all in my power to have over the years, focused on different inten- formed, and we still seek the reality of this Tennessee. I asked him about it when he got home, but I didn’t get any answers. I didn’t venience.” your visitor privilege revoked.” He said I tions and goals. The brutal forms of torture transformation. know what had happened, but I was going to find out. So, my brothers and sisters, I still rejoice could go into the visiting area at that point. and personal punishment such as whip- Davis argues along a similar line. We have It ended up that my grandfather wanted to tell me himself, so he came down to my at the power of life, its wonders, its diversity. I greeted Reverend Campbell and Mr. pings, cutting off hands, and stocks were tried reforming prison, and it has not house for the weekend. My grandfather and I were on a walk around my neighbor- Bill Coffin reminds us there is no shortage of Egerton who told me Matt was told to wait challenged as inhumane. There was a move- worked. Racism and sexism are deeply hood. He started talking about God’s plan for him, and then he just said it. He told me miracles, only those who can perceive them. in the parking lot. Reverend Campbell was ment by the Quakers to provide space for ingrained in the system, as well as homopho- he was going for six months to jail in Kentucky. Then he told me why. While he talked, I remain concerned about the School of visibly shaken by the encounter with Officer persons to repent and start new lives. If per- bia. It cannot be fixed. It is obsolete. Prisons, I stayed quiet. I didn’t know what to say. the Americas and the same kinds of atrocities Hobbs. He cried for a time. Mr. Egerton was sons were penitent, they could move on; as a way to deal with persons who commit He started out telling me how much he loved me. Then he said that every year, that are present in Iraqi prisons and what is angry because of the disrespect he experi- penitentiaries had small cells, like monaster- crime, are obsolete. down in Columbus, he protests at a camp that trains South American men how to be occurring in Latin America. We know how to enced in talking with Officer Hobbs. Our ies. But this did not work for most. There The complication has now been com- army men. He told me how nineteen men, who had been graduated from this camp, terrorize. I remain angry but also filled with visit continued for a time, and finally Matt developed broader concerns with rehabilita- pounded by the fact that prisons are a prof- had gone into a small town down in South America. They had killed everyone in the wonder at the beauty in people, even here in appeared with new sneakers which he had tion—returning persons to society, healed. itable business—the more prisons, the better. town. Only one woman survived. He thought that was terrible and wanted to stop it an old strip mine now turned into a prison. purchased and was permitted to enter for the Educational interventions, as well as reli- We have over two million citizens in prisons from happening again. I agreed. time remaining. Reverend Campbell said, as gious conversions, were part of such opera- as of this date. The number of persons in Then he told me that a person could protest all he wants, but if there is violence, or we concluded our time together that he tions. There were usually insufficient monies prison has escalated exponentially. There are June ,  if he goes on personal property, he can get arrested. He said that he took six steps onto would not cry the next visit, he hoped. It was to offer what was needed, and offerings were nine million persons in prison throughout that base and knelt in prayer. He got arrested along with the twenty-six other people a sad conclusion for our visit. marginal for rehabilitation. Punishment the world; two million of these are in the Visitation that did the same. He was not sorry for what he had done. I am very happy that he is Officer Hobbs does not have the right to through incarceration then became a central United States—in prisons, jails, youth facilities, out although the place that he was at wasn’t a bad place. He probably could have On Friday, June 25th, I had three persons abuse visitors as he did. To make an eighty- goal. The punishment for long periods in and immigrant detention. The U.S. popula- walked out, but then he would have had to stay in jail longer. There was a baseball field come from Nashville for a visit. They arrived year-old man cry is clearly excessive. I have prison has now led to the realization that the tion is five percent of the world, but we have that they could go to. He was not in a bad place. But to my dad, it was still jail. I felt about 12:30 p.m. One of the visitors was the asked that he be punished for his action, and goal is incarceration—removal of persons more than twenty percent of the world-com- for my dad. It’s not easy having your father in jail. Reverend Will Campbell, a well-known furthermore, that he be dismissed as an offi- from society. bined prison population. In the late 1960s, Now I think about God and his plan for me. I look up to my grandfather for doing Nashville author who is eighty years old and cer in charge of visitation if he cannot act I am incarcerated—pulled out of my life there were two-hundred thousand individu- what he did. I think he did a very good thing. uses a cane for balance. Another was John properly. for six months as a form of punishment. It is als in prison. Now, thirty years later, we have Egerton who is fifty-seven years old and also 24 THE SPIRE Fall 2005 25

life-giving. Religious faith becomes central and all circumstances I have learned the Furthermore, to dissent from U.S. govern- The Beisswenger File for some. secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, ment policies, supported by economic insti- As I reflect upon the time here, I have of having plenty, and of being in need. I can tutions which benefit from them, is to be a A CHRONOLOGY paid attention to my relationships with do all things through Him that strengthens troublemaker. The cost of active dissent retires from Vanderbilt University inmates, and to finding space for others in increases. Three instances come to my mind. me, me. In any case it was kind of you to share Divinity School as professor of church my heart. I have paid attention to to dis- my distress.” When I was arrested, I was told to bring and community; is named professor, emeritus; begins to work more vigor- positions, to tiredness, to confusion. I cherish Thank you as well. $500.00 for bond. When we arrived, howev- ously to resist the global war against the support and give thanks to my friends, er, we were told that the bond would be the poor; works with the homeless in colleagues, and family. I am especially grate- September ,  $1000. This made for considerable difficulty, Nashville and continues studies and ful now for the women in my life. I ponder and I had to ask the Presbyterian Peace engagement with the poor of Latin I have about three more weeks here in America—an interest that developed those in the Living Room, those caring for Fellowship for help. Lois Baker from in 1980 with the murder of Oscar Penuel Ridge, and those working for the Manchester, Kentucky. The time has moved Wisconsin loaned me the money. Romero and the rape and murder of people in Nashville. I continue my thoughts along, and soon I will be free from this con- All of the twenty-seven persons arrested four missionaries about the graduates of the School of the finement, October 1st to be exact, and I am were upright and responsible citizens and Americas and how they affect the children, looking forward to seeing my friends at the could have been released on their own recog- participates in first vigil at Fort Benning, Georgia women, men, and communities in Latin October 12th banquet to celebrate Penuel nizance, but the judge denied this argument KRT PHOTOS

 © Ridge’s twentieth year. America and how the congressional investi- from our attorney. Sixteen of the twenty- participates in second vigil at Fort gation into the SOA was rejected. I see how The middle period here has been easier, seven persons arrested were given six-month Benning and crosses the line with over the atrocities by the U.S. military took shape especially having a cubicle, a light, desk, sentences, the maximum; ten received three two thousand other people; is arrest- locker for storage, and a chair. I also know ed and given a five-year ban and in Iraq and how this investigation is avoided, months; most everyone got a fine of some issued a bar letter DAVID STEPHENSON rejected, and ignored. And I praise the peo- the ropes better, so I rest more easily within amount. Protestors dressed as corpses and carrying symbolic coffins lead more than 3,800 others in a procession ple of God who gather in praise and service the system. I have not had an altercation for The escalation of the cost of dissent con- participates in third vigil; crosses the onto Fort Benning, Georgia, November 21, 1999, to protest human rights abuses they say are committed in their love and hope. I consider the beauty two weeks. Alleluia. tinues. An article written by Jim Hightower line, again; violates the five-year bar of flowers, the sky, running water, and eating I continue to believe the prisons are obso- and published in the August 23, 2004, edition and terms of the bar letter; twenty- by graduates of the Army's School of the Americas. The Nation seven persons are arrested and taken peaches for breakfast. of should be accessed for to the Fort Benning armory; they are Confinement has provided Violence and war are thought to be the way to further information on the question searched, fingerprinted, and secured state, and only black persons were convicted. stand-up counts, and “give your number” me with an unwanted isolation, of dissension and government poli- www.thenation.com with chains around their arms and legs Following slavery, the southern system has- counts. I am confined in every sense of the but confinement also has cies ( ). before taken to the Muscogee County security—justifying all kinds of military policies, jail for thirty-six hours; the judge tened to establish new forms of restriction. word. Confinement, separation, enclosure, brought me the deeper mean- We are seeing the doctrine of arraigns Beisswenger and sets bail at Vagrancy became a crime punishable by withdrawal to a desert—all have been disci- ings that lie quietly within each including interrogation. Dissent becomes essential “permanent” war become estab- $1000; bail previously had been set at incarceration or forced labor. Convict leasing plines in the life of faith. Confinement in of those areas already mentioned. lished. Terrorism is used to justify $500 programs were prominent. prison adds another dimension. I listen better; let events be my to choosing life over death. Thoreau said, “Protest all kinds of military activity. We will Being in prison has made me aware of Flannery O’Connor had lupus, a debilitat- teacher. no longer think of peace. The cost stands trial with other defendants on without resistance is consent.” January 26 and sentenced to six how prison fits into this economic system. ing disease that sapped her energy and con- And amidst all, I have found goes up, but the reasons for resist- months in federal prison; fined $1000; The close relationship of prisons and corpo- fined her to the family’s farm in Georgia. Her a holy presence in my life, filling ance go up, also. The notion of “per- will not receive social security pay- rations has become a pot of go1d. The “tough affliction and confinement were permanent. the spaces with sacredness. Such petual war,” never-ending war ments while in prison; other defen- on crime” legislation, which includes long It would not change. She named it “passive a gift! Van Gogh said, “I think that every- lete as a way to deal with ordering our soci- because of terrorism, gains credence. dants are sentenced to six months, ety. Violent persons, of course, need safe three months, a fine, or probation sentences, has led to mass incarceration. diminishment.” “From what I have to give thing comes from God.” Even here, an Violence and war are thought to be the way More and more prisons are built year after out,” she said, “I observe more clearly. I can, awareness of this thought presents itself, space to protect them and others; however, to security—justifying all kinds of military reports to prison in Manchester, year, yet the statistics on crime go down. with an eye squinted, take it all in as a bless- especially in the morning and at night when the five hundred persons in this camp do not policies, including interrogation. Dissent Kentucky, for sixth-month incarcera- Why? ing.” Confinement led her to use her energy I retire. I realize that I am glad, grateful to be need to be here but to be with their families, becomes essential to choosing life over tion; turns over garments but is per- Why is there no major debate on the enor- by attending to life at the farm and to the able to reflect theologically on the incredible at their jobs, and with the communities death. Thoreau said, “Protest without resist- mitted to keep eye glasses and two Bibles mous increase in incarceration? Why is their people about her. life given to me, even here. There is majesty which support them. ance is consent.” no discussion on an alternative to prison? Let I have wondered a lot about being more in all of this. I want to address briefly what I call the We are called to be peacemakers. We must released from prison on October 1 and us begin the debate. present to the time, the present time. What I O’Connor says that she “embraced life increasing costs of dissent. I am a part of the do so, lest we forget shalom. “Blessed are the returns to Nashville for a reception at pay attention to sharpens my life. If I pay from the standpoint of the central Christian effort to close the U.S. army school in peacemakers,” says Jesus. And so we shall the Peace and Justice Center August ,  attention to what’s in the future, I may miss mystery: that it has, for all its horror, been Columbus, Georgia, because of the serious continue. delivers first reflections on confine- something right before me. What about this found by God to be worth dying for.” Such a human rights violations, including the tor- The way to peace is not demonstration ment during a service at the A Reflection on day? This time? Much of the energy of wondrous way to see. ture and assassinations by graduates of the but by developing that network of relation- Downtown Presbyterian Church in Confinement as Gift inmates is focused outside the camp either And Paul, a prisoner, wrote to the people school. The activities of graduates parallel ships, agreements, and accords by which Nashville on their appeals, family matters, or girl- of God in Philippi, “I rejoice in the Lord what was done in the Iraqi prisons, yet nations can come to trust and work with one participates in fourth vigil at Fort I have been incarcerated over four months friends. Mostly, the energy focuses on want- greatly; I have learned to be content with Congress does not support serious investiga- another. “Development is the new name for Benning; does not cross the line now. I await October 1st when I will be ing to get out. Life is seen in the future. whatever I have. I know what it is to have lit- tion into the military policies which led to peace,” wrote Paul VI. This must be our released and free to roam beyond the camp Often, this characterizes me, also. For most, tle; I know what it is to have plenty. In any these atrocities. vision and hope, still. begins organizing correspondence and where I am now confined. I cannot leave the they also find ways to “pass the time.” journal entries from the period of con- camp without serious consequences. They Distractions become central. Playing cards, finement keep track of me with midnight counts, playing at sports, or lifting weights become

26 THE SPIRE Fall 2005 27

Head of Job c. 1823 by William Blake English poet, painter, engraver, printer, mystic, and social critic (1757–1827) pencil study for Illustrations of the Book of Job 260 x 200 mm. Sir Geoffrey Keynes Collection

ty but of human agency. Karma is the culprit; heavenly courts as God’s chief prosecutor— people suffered and died because of their are having a conversation. God asks the actions in this life or lifetimes past. satan to consider the exemplary virtue and New Amy Waldman, a reporter for the justice of his servant Job; however, the pros- York Times , described a scene in a small town ecutor replies that Job’s faithfulness is due in Sri Lanka. “Next door to four houses flat- entirely to the material blessings and protec- tened by the tsunami, three rooms of Poori- tion God has given him. The prologue ma Jayaratne’s home still stood intact. She accomplishes many purposes, but most had a ready explanation for that anomaly, importantly the narrative makes us insiders and her entire family’s survival: she was a by giving us an absolute and unequivocal Buddhist, and her neighbors were not,” God’s-eye verdict on the man, Job: innocent, reported Waldman. “‘Most of the people faithful, and just. who lost relatives were Muslim,’ said Ms. The prologue also presents to us six criti- Jayaratne, adding for good measure that two cal questions: Will Job continue to worship Christians were also missing. As proof, she God when no material gain can come from pointed to the poster of Lord Buddha that such worship? Is a relationship with God still clung to the standing portion of her wholly a transactional matter? Is human house.” After hearing this litany of judgment and … what has moved me again to grief, frustration, and even anger A house under construction can be seen through the ruins of a self-righteousness from the religious, I find tsunami-destroyed house in Meulaboh, Indonesia. The date the myself in profound sympathy with scientifi- is what has transpired since the tsunami: listening to the religious tsunami struck, December 26, 2004, is painted on the ruins. cally minded atheists and secularists. An KEN MORITSUGU © KRT PHOTOS attempt to make sense of this tragedy drives me to doubt. The ounce of scientific understanding—a mini- mal knowledge of plate tectonics and an explanations of the religious push me to the brink of irreligion. appreciation of wave dynamics are worth more than the sum total of what the religions can offer by way of explanation. Scientific of explanation but consolation? Of course, faithfulness contingent on divine blessing? AGAINST explanations commend themselves especially religions have sought repeatedly to provide And what are we to say about a God who Explanation because they are not immoral as the explana- consolation by way of explanation. The fruit permits the innocent to suffer? Is God tions of the religious so often are. Scientists of such efforts has been ambiguous at best unjust? How do we speak of God when do not blame dead children for picking a bad and criminal at worst. Have we not erred in faced with the suffering of the innocent? The AND FOR Consolation day to play on the beach. Only the religious believing that consolation comes primarily Book of Job suggests these profound ques- offer such a rationale. by way of explanation? tions and makes it impossible for us to turn FAITH IN THE WAKE OF THE TRAGIC Given the general and profound inade- I am reminded of words penned by the away from them. quacy of religious attempts to explain suffer- philosopher, Voltaire, after the Great Lisbon What then of Job’s friends, these theolo- extraordinaire ing, should we give up faith entirely and Earthquake of 1755 which laid waste the city gians ? How do they respond to devote ourselves to such knowledge as we of Lisbon on All Saints’ Day while most of the suffering of their friend? What do they BY JOHN J. THATAMANIL, PH.D. ut what has moved me again to grief, judgment upon the sinfulness of humanity, can gain from the sciences? If the central the city’s residents were at worship. “The have to say about God in relation to Job’s frustration, and even anger is what has and it also involves His salvation of people labor of religion is explanation, then the problem of good and evil remains an inexpli- suffering? Initially, his friends say absolutely yes Reading the newspapers during the weeks after Btranspired since the tsunami: listening through the Death and Resurrection of His answer is . We would be better served by cable chaos for those who seek in good nothing. to the religious attempt to make sense of this Son. And so all the beautiful things we see in stripping ourselves free from these religious faith,” wrote Voltaire. “It is an intellectual “Now when Job’s friends heard of all this the tsunami has been for me nearly as heartbreak- tragedy drives me to doubt. When I hear this world are an expression of His creative explanations. Time and again, explanations exercise for those who argue: they are con- evil that had come upon him, they came each Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims goodness to us, and all the disasters of this of suffering become temptations either to victs who play with their chains.” from his own place…. They made an ing and faith-shaking as reading the first attempt to explain and account for this world are part of His warning the Judgment complacency or to judgment. Every compre- An apt description for theologians: “Con- appointment together to come and condole tragedy, I wonder: Are we not better served is coming, and both these things should hensive account of suffering seems to dis- victs who play with their chains.” Before we with him and comfort him. And when they accounts of the unfolding tragedy. The initial by surrendering faith rather than by preserv- focus our mind on the Death and Resurrec- tance us from the pain of those who grieve rise up with indignation to challenge Voltaire saw him from afar, they did not recognize and defend our craft, we should be well- news was and remains overwhelming. How, after ing it through dubious means? The explana- tion of His Son and how He saved us.” by giving to such suffering an air of necessi- him; and they raised their voices and wept; tions of the religious push me to the brink of Jensen’s words are elegant but impious. ty or inevitability. If the victimized, if the advised to turn again to the Book of Job, for and they rent their robes and sprinkled dust all, does one begin to think about the death of irreligion. To suggest that God should strip thousands poor and the oppressed, suffer because of the author of that great work would surely upon their heads turned toward Heaven. An online news story began with the of mothers and fathers of their sons to con- their karma or because of God’s judgment, agree with the great French critic. Secularists And they sat with him on the ground seven 160,000 people, perhaps a third of whom were headline “Israel Rabbi, Indian Catholic Bish- centrate our minds on the Death and Resur- then such suffering, far from being an and skeptics are not alone in condemning days and seven nights, and no one spoke a facile theologians and their attempts to op, Anglican, and Muslim Leaders Agree rection of His Son gives us a God unworthy offense, becomes a necessary part of the fab- to explain away word to him, for they saw that his suffering children? How does one register in one’s heart Tsunami is Warning from God.” The Angli- of worship, a God who bears no resemblance ric of an orderly universe. To commit our- explain and suffering. was very great.” can leader in question, Philip Jensen, the to the God proclaimed by that very Son. selves to such a vision is to compound The Book of Job begins with a prose pro- Before we proceed to examine the theolo- and mind the force and reality of entire villages Anglican Dean of Sydney, remarked, “The The news from the nontheistic traditions tragedy with the unnecessary evil of an logue in which God and the satan—not the gies articulated by Job’s friends, we would our will of God in this world involved His cre- is not better. Among Buddhists and Hindus, pointy-horned figure we know and dread, simply vanishing in raging waters? unfeeling heart. do well to ask whether capacity to keep ation of the world, but it also involves His the question is not one of God’s responsibili- But what if religion is not finally a matter but a figure who keeps company in God’s company with those who are caught in utter

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desolation and sorrow complements their watching Job’s theologian friends run hear in one critical respect. Job is fortunate to over the experience of the suffering. Job’s capacity. Most of us know from personal aground. maintain a relative clarity of vision in a time friends do well to keep company with Job, experience that little in life is more difficult In the depth of his agony, Job begins the of great pain because he steadfastly and but when Job speaks out of his experience of than keeping company with those in the grip conversation by wishing that he had never unwaveringly asserts his own innocence suffering and anguish, he articulates an idea of physical and emotional agony. Something been born and cursing the very day of his rather than blame himself for his own suffer- unfamiliar and disturbing to his fortunate within us recoils and wants to turn away birth: “Why did I not die at birth, come forth ing. But this attitude is precisely what his friends. Job discovers that a theology to from such circumstances, but Job’s friends from the womb and expire? For then I should friends cannot countenance, for his steadfast which he once subscribed is breaking down, do not respond this way. Much to their cred- have lain down and been quiet; I should commitment to his own innocence disrupts and he can no longer believe that those who it, we see that their capacity for silence and have slept; then I should have been at the moorings of their theology of suffering. suffer deserve to suffer. It is true that Job solidarity vastly exceeds ours. The Book of rest….” For his friends, the matter is quite clear. never allowed his theology to interfere with Job reminds us of our profound obligation to the work of doing justice and looking after keep company with those who suffer; our To suggest that God should strip thousands of mothers and fathers of the needs of the poor—that is all the more to first and foremost obligation in the face of their sons to concentrate our minds on the Death and Resurrection of Job’s credit—but now that Job finds himself tragedy and grief is to keep silent solidarity on the other side of the table, he can no with those who suffer. His Son gives us a God unworthy of worship, a God who bears no longer accept a theo-logic that gives him a But there is also a time for speech, and picture of a morally tidy universe where the such a time inevitably arrives in the lives of resemblance to the God proclaimed by that very Son. good prosper and the wicked perish. He the afflicted. Every pastor or hospital chap- knows better, and so do we. Confronted with lain knows that the question of theodicy will the choice between continuing to adhere to inevitably surface. The cry, “Why?” comes How familiar and painful these words are The world is an orderly place that runs an unworkable theology and entering into unbidden and spontaneously to the lips of to those of us who have kept company with according to a strict moral logic: God pun- the experience of their suffering friend, Job’s those who suffer, as it comes to Job. What those surviving acute injury, those who have ishes the guilty and blesses the innocent; Job friends elect to abide with their theology. then are we to do, we who would dare to call lost dear ones, those who are caught up in is suffering; therefore, God is punishing Job. Let us not, however, be too quick to judge. ourselves theologians? I shall not pretend “to acute depression, those who are suicidal and After all, God does not punish the innocent; Abandoning our classroom theologies—the ergo dispense answers” to these great questions, who look longingly upon death as rest com- , Job must be guilty—his protests to the ones you write in Divinity School—is an but I do believe that we can learn lessons pared to the torture of living. Nevertheless, contrary notwithstanding. His friend Elip- easy gesture. To surrender entirely the the- about what we ought not to say and do by Job’s lament differs from those we so often haz begins, “Think now, who that was inno- ologies by which we live is another matter. cent ever perished? Or where were the Such theologies die hard. To surrender them

Satan Smiting Job with Boils upright cut off? As I have seen, those who is to be broken open, to find that our way of c. 1823 plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the inhabiting the world is insufficient and William Blake pencil study same. By the breath of God they perish, and unworkable. To surrender our living theolo- 200 x 135 mm. by the blast of His anger they are con- gies is to find ourselves moving into a new Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, England sumed.” vulnerability that will render us raw and His friend Bildad even has the temerity to naked to the suffering of others without the pass judgment on the children Job has lost. armor of our mediating categories. It is not “How long will you say these things, and the accomplished easily. words of your mouth be a great wind? Does There are precious lessons here for we God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty who dare to call ourselves theologians. Not pervert the right? If your children have least among these lessons is that when we sinned against Him, He has delivered them are given a choice between saving our com- into the power of their transgression.” fortable and well-worn theologies and enter- Lest one protest too quickly about the ing into vulnerable solidarity with those who naivety of this theology—we should do well suffer, we must always choose the latter. to remember that this theology has a good You may well ask, “How are we are to claim to being both Biblical and impeccably know whether and when a given theology To surrender our living theologies is to find ourselves moving into a logical. Eliphaz’s words nicely echo Psalm 1. that has sustained us needs to drop away “Blessed is the man who walks not in the from our lives?” Here, too, the experience of new vulnerability that will render us raw and naked to the suffering counsel of the wicked…his delight is in the Job gives us valuable insight. As we listen to law of the Lord…he is like a tree planted by Job’s laments, we find that his protestations of others without the armor of our mediating categories….We must streams of water, that yields its fruit in its initially are provoked by his private pain, his season, and its leaf does not whither. The singular and unique personal anguish. As cast away any theology that sanctions the status quo by declaring the wicked are not so, but are like chaff driven we follow the trajectory of his conversations privileged blessed and the poor accursed. away by the wind.” with his friends; however, we learn that his Every Man Also Gave Him a Piece of Money Theologians of our day, too, can cite private grief is transformed into a collective c. 1824 William Blake Scripture for their claims and mount argu- lament on behalf of all who suffer. We dis- pencil study ments with impeccable structure, even if cover here a mysterious and grace-full alche- 228 x 177 mm. formerly Kerrison Preston Collection such argumentation should run roughshod my of transformation.

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God’s innocence and power at the expense of those An assistant professor of theology at Vanderbilt dichotomy of innocence and guilt remains in A proper aim of theology is to make it who suffer. God does not need your vindication; University Divinity School, John J. Thatamanil place. To undercut this logic, God blesses Job possible for the suffering to speak to God the poor, the oppressed, and the suffering do! earned the baccalaureate at Washington Univer- with a vision of the immense scale of the cre- once more. Our capacity to inspire such sity and received the master of divinity degree These conclusions may seem altogether ation and God’s creative power. “Where speech does not hinge on our explanatory and the doctorate of philosophy from Boston Uni- obvious to one. If so, I am pleased. But they were you when I laid the foundation of the powers. We cannot explain, but we can con- versity. He teaches courses in constructive Chris- seem far from obvious to many of our earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. sole. We can and must strive to speak, how- tian theology, process theology, comparative the- learned theologians who are committed, Who determined its measurements—surely ever fallibly, of a God Whose grace defies our ology of South Asia, Hindu and Christian dia- always and everywhere, “to cherish explana- you know!” (Divine sarcasm) “Have you moral logic, a God Who will address crea- logue, Buddhist and Christian dialogue, God and tion” even if it should come at the price of commanded the morning since your days tures who address God. Jesus’ response to the other, Eastern Orthodox theology and spiritu- consolation. If we take the experience of Job began, and caused the dawn to know its those who sought to establish the guilt of the ality, theology of religious pluralism, and Paul seriously, then we theologians may have to place? Where is the way to the dwelling of man born blind is significant. We glorify God Tillich and the future of theology. Thatamanil learn to abandon one of our favorite preoc- light?” as God’s interrogation continues. not by way of argument and explanation and states that his essay was inspired “by a close read- cupations: the work of theodicy. For what is The force of this interrogation draws Job not by establishing who is or is not guilty. We ing of Gustavo Gutierrez’s indispensable book” theodicy save a tremendous intellectual into the realization that God’s universe is not glorify God when, by grace, we are able to be titled investment in defending the innocence of made to the scale of Job’s moral imagination. agents of healing and consolation. Contrary On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of (Orbis Books, 1987) “Father

PHOTOS God? Can we imagine a theology without Thanks to the sciences of our day, we, too, to John Milton, we have not been called to the Innocent . Gutierrez many not agree with my conclusions,” KRT

© theodicy? Must we not? are growing in our time to realize the vast Christian life “to justify God’s ways to man” contends Thatamanil, “but I am in substantive Job gives up on his conversation with his and unimaginable scale of the universe as we but to be the continuous incarnate presence agreement with most of his argument.” friends whom he quite rightly calls, “worth- come to appreciate our fragile place in inter- of Christ to the world. May God help us to be less physicians.” How keenly we theologians stellar spaces. such theologians. ought to fear that those who suffer will pass But even as God bequeaths to Job and to KHAMPHA BOUAPHANH on us an identical indictment. Nevertheless, us a sense of our smallness relative to the remarkably and miraculously, Job turns from vastness of God’s creation, Job comes to see Refugees in Lamno, Indonesia, read from the Koran, January 14, 2005. The tsunami left hundreds of to thousands homeless in Indonesia. talking about God to talking God. He that the God who can hook Leviathan like a turns from the accusative case to the vocative fish is, nonetheless, speaking to him. To be case; consequently, a theology of address and addressed by God is simultaneously to rec- So often, acute personal anguish encloses … our first and foremost obliga- prayer replaces disputation. ognize both our smallness in God’s universe us in the prison-house of our private pain. It is a wonder that Job is not put off from and the dignity of human life that is, This enclosure is characteristic especially of tion in the face of tragedy and speaking to God by the theological machina- nonetheless, addressed by God. the lives of those who suffer in the grips of grief is to keep silent solidarity tions of his learned and overzealous friends. The Book of Job never indicates that Job is psychological suffering—and not surprising- We theologians should pray that our satisfied by what God actually has to say. It is ly, that is where Job begins. In his case, how- inevitable theological failure—and fail we not clear whether God’s explanation suffices. with those who suffer. experience of God ever, a transformation occurs. When Job must when we try to talk about the ineffa- What consoles Job is the in gives up the idea that the poor and the unfor- ble—will drive those who listen to us not to the midst of devastation: “I had heard of Thee tunate merit their suffering, he decisively suffering into an occasion for sundering despair and faithlessness but to God-talk, by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye to leaves behind a world divided into those community; no words about suffering can be not talk about God but talk God. sees Thee.” We are left to believe that even who take themselves to be prosperous and right if the words undermine the possibility And when Job addresses God, God God can console only by way of presence. blessed on account of their righteousness of the beloved community. We must stand responds to vindicate Job, to silence his and those who take themselves to be always ready to discard any and every theol- friends, and to correct Job as well. God repu- accursed because of their pain. Now, he is ogy that disrupts our capacity to form com- diates the logic of God’s self-appointed able to cast his lot squarely with those inno- munity with the least of these. We must cast status defenders; God explicitly states that they cent who suffer as he does. Now, he can utter away any theology that sanctions the quo have spoken wrongly about the divine Job and His Daughters words of protest on their behalf: “Why are by declaring the privileged blessed and c. 1818 nature; God refuses to accept the rigid and William Blake not the times of judgment kept by the the poor accursed. inflexible role of moral enforcer who always pencil study 215 x 255 mm. Almighty, and why do those who know Him We can draw a further corollary from wit- rewards the righteous and punishes the National Gallery of Art never see His days? Men remove landmarks; nessing Job’s transformation. Given a choice guilty. No such God can be a God of Grace. Washington, D.C. Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection they seize flocks and pasture them. They between defending God’s innocence and But God also dismisses Job’s accusations drive away the ass of the powerless; they integrity or defending the downtrodden, we that God has treated Job unjustly. Job is right take the widow’s ox for a pledge. They thrust must always choose to defend the weak. God to protest his innocence. God agrees. But as May I presume to venture a theological commandment? the poor off the road….There are those who does not need us to come rallying to God’s Gustavo Gutierrez explains, Job remains cap- Thou shall snatch the fatherless child from the breast, defense. Those who suffer desperately need tive to the very logic of innocence and guilt and take in pledge the infant of the poor…” us. Any theology that has more invested in that he is learning to outgrow. If I suffer but not seek to preserve God’s innocence and power at the expense What lesson shall we learn from Job’s defending God’s innocence than defending know myself to be innocent, then it follows transformation? those who are the beloved of God must per- that I suffer wrongly; therefore, God must be of those who suffer. God does not need your vindication; the No words spoken about a situation of suf- ish. May I presume to venture a theological Thou shall not seek to preserve guilty. Someone must be guilty; if not I, then fering can be true or accurate if they make commandment? God. In Job’s faithful but moralistic logic, a poor, the oppressed, and the suffering do!

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gleanings

Commencement 2005

The Habit of Different Perspectives After Dean James Hudnut- Ninety graduates from the Divinity School Beumler presented diplomas to the and the Graduate School’s Department of Divinity School candidates, he Religion were welcomed into the Vanderbilt charged each graduate with the alumni/ae University community on Friday, responsibility “to grow into a reli- May 13, 2005. Chancellor Gordon Gee con- gious leader whose life will be ferred the master of divinity degree upon remembered for its example, its thirty-four students, the master of theological articulation of meaning, and its studies degree upon twenty-eight students, integrity.” He encouraged the newest and the dual master of theological studies alumni/ae members of the commu- The hand of God extended toward Adam’s hand degree and doctorate of jurisprudence upon Joseph Daniels Blosser, MDiv’05, (center) received the nity to “cultivate holiness; seek jus- central detail from the Creation of Adam two students during the commencement Founder’s Medal for first honors in the Divinity School 1508-1512 Alumni tice for the vulnerable; wait not for by Michelangelo Buonarroti exercises on Lawn. Six students during the 2005 commencement exercises. Among Cor- authority to respond in faith; take (1475–1564) received the master of arts degree in religion nelius Vanderbilt’s gifts to the University was the endow- fresco Truth courage from hope and turn aside 18’ 8” x 9’ 2” while twenty members of the class of 2005 ment of this award given since 1877. Members of Blosser’s Sistine Chapel ceiling from fear when it is time to act; were awarded the doctorate of philosophy in family who witnessed the conferring of the honor included The Vatican develop high expectations and Truth is what you cannot tell. religion. (from left) his paternal grandfather, Robert Blosser; his exceed them by relying upon the Truth is for the grave. During his address to the University’s parents, Cynthia and John Blosser, and his grandmother, strength of God’s Holy Spirit; and Truth is only the flowing shadow cast degree candidates, Chancellor Gee remarked, Marjorie Blosser. By the wind-tossed elm “Vanderbilt is a special place, even among lift your eyes from the holy books When sun is bright and grass well groomed. universities, because here we gain the habit and seek out the faces of your knowledge of religious traditions and a sen- of treating perspectives that differ from our neighbors.” sitive understanding of the tension which Truth is the downy feather own with honor, respect, and civility. We A Symphony of Understandings exists between living in a culture and living You blow from your lips to shine in sunlight. dread the intellectual and spiritual loss that in a religious world.” would come if we did not accord dignity to Commencement 2005 marked the third time Blosser experienced such tension by serv- Truth is the trick that History, the viewpoints of others. Joseph Daniels Blosser has been graduated ing as a hospital chaplain for Pacific Health Over and over again, plays on us. “But such is not the case in our culture first in his class; as valedictorian of Jefferson Ministries in Honolulu where he studied the Its shape is unclear in shadow or brightness, right now, and there are many extreme advo- City High School in Missouri, he enrolled as intricate interweaving of Micronesian and And its utterance the whisper we strive to catch cacies that would have you swayed into a chancellor’s scholar at Texas Christian Uni- Western cultural and religious practices. He Or the scream of a locomotive desperately habits of confrontation. They would have you versity where he received a baccalaureate in summa cum laude, documented his observations on the effects Blowing for the tragic crossing. Truth create a category of ideological enemy, and economics and religion, of imperialism in his essay titled “The Is the curse laid upon us in the Garden. they would have you develop the reflex of and was ranked first among the undergradu- Deflowering of Hawaii” which was published decisively shutting down the voices of those ates. He distinguished himself this year by The Spire. in the 2004 fall issue of Blosser also Truth is the Serpent’s joke, who fit that category. They would encourage earning first honors as the eighty-sixth was chosen by the Divinity School to travel to you to let aggression and defensive tri- Founder’s Medalist in the history of Vander- Mexico where he studied the social, political, And is the sun-stung dust-devil that swirls umphalism become the rock rib of your rela- bilt University Divinity School. and economic circumstances affecting the cit- On the lee side of God when He drowses. tionship to others, of all your political affilia- Chosen as one of the Divinity School’s izens and the reasons they make the difficult tions. Or they would have you succumb to Carpenter Scholars for his commitment to journey across the border. Truth is the long soliloquy the notion of yourselves as a victim and hope social justice and ministry, Blosser sought a While fulfilling his degree requirements, Of the dead all their long night. that you would allow that notion to figure theological education in the context of a he served as an intern minister for the con- Truth is what would be told by the dead into how you respond to all circumstances. research University which would promote gregation at Vine Street Christian Church in If they could hold conversation “I have so much faith in your capabilities his intellectual and spiritual formation and Nashville and as the interim minister at With the living and thus fulfill obligation to us. and your good sense, but the zeitgeist is a provide practical instruction for nurturing Bellevue Christian Church. He continued to forceful gale, indeed. Do not let it erode the the people of God. develop his skills as a homiletician by Their accumulated wisdom must be immense. habits you have learned. Please do not let “The Divinity School’s rigorous academic preaching for congregations in Middle Ten- yourself be blown off center. Do not let your- standards and the challenging ministerial —Robert Penn Warren, BA’25 nessee and Western Kentucky. self be used. Do no let yourself be a useful opportunities have tested continuously the Ordained as a minister in the Christian In commemoration of the centenary of the poet’s birth tool in someone else’s scheme for power and limits of my knowledge,” remarks Blosser. Church, Disciples of Christ on May 22, Bloss- (1905–1989) profit, for ratings, or for influence. Resist “My education at Vanderbilt has invited me Being Here: Poetry er has begun doctoral studies in ethics at the from 1977–1980 being a tool for those who would manipulate to ask significant questions about communi- University of Chicago Divinity School where page 63, Random House, New York, 1980 you to their own ends. Please do not choose ty, justice, ethics, and God and has exposed he has received a full scholarship. Upon com- to capitalize on keeping this country out of me to the raw realities of congregational and pleting his doctorate, he hopes to pursue a joint. For if you give in to these temptations, chaplain ministries. I have discovered that vocation in the Academy and in congrega- then your diploma, your degree, might as ministry is not a one-person show but a sym- tional life. well be valueless.” phony that requires one to have a thorough 34 THE SPIRE Fall 2005 35

Kudos for the 2004-2005 Academic Year

Jenny Tyler Redding, MDiv’05 Certificates earned in the Carpenter Pro- Founder’s Medal for first honors in the Jackson, Tennessee gram in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality Divinity School Patricia Kent Gardner, MDiv’05 Joseph Daniels Blosser, MDiv’05 for “A Common Table: Making Room Charlotte, North Carolina Jefferson City, Missouri for Eating Disorders in the United Methodist Church” Anne Margaret Hardison, MTS’05 Sliding into Nicaragua Academic Achievement Award Raleigh, North Carolina Emily Ferrel Ramsey, MTS’05 Florence Conwell Prize for outstanding Mount Juliet, Tennessee BY PRISCILLA JOHANNA HOHMANN, MDIV’05 preaching Blake Austin Mann, MTS’05 Charles Benjamin Delaney, MDiv’05 I have always enjoyed a good relationship with Cullman, Alabama Stow, Ohio mud but my poorly Banner Bearer for the Procession of nature. Hiking and camping, regardless of the equipped shoes. I could Degree Candidates Katherine Jean Carroll Nelson, MDiv’05 Emily Ferrel Ramsey, MTS’05 only nod my head in Saint James Academy for South Bend, Indiana Mount Juliet, Tennessee weather, are among my favorite avocations. Prior agreement. While his outstanding sermon Lisa Ann Dordal, MDiv’05 inexpensive plastic Kimberly Nicole Crawford Sheehan, to owning my first car (when I was thirty-two Nashville, Tennessee sandals slipped over The Umphrey Lee Dean’s Award for MDiv’05 for her sermon titled “Remembering the surface effortlessly, exemplifying the mission and vision of Kingsport, Tennessee years old), I rode my bicycle everywhere—even in Zipporah” I was stuck with my the Divinity School Dawn Latrise Riley Duval, MDiv’05 inadequate, albeit ex- Ginger Reneé Skaggs, MDiv’05 the snow, and I confess to scoffing at folks who Denver, Colorado pensive, American foot- W. Kendrick Grobel Award for outstanding Neosho, Missouri fear displacement when a few snowflakes descend. wear. Even the chick- achievement in biblical studies Emily Ferrel Ramsey, MTS’05 ens and pigs that scurried in and out of the wrestled with a desire to flee the village, but William Newcomb Prize for exemplifying house tracked in less mud. I also wanted to forget the mud, the sneakers, Mount Juliet, Tennessee Certificates earned in the Kelly Miller the idea of the “Minister as Theologian” y relationship to nature, however, The physical discomfort of this homestay and the tiny wooden outhouse and just be Smith Institute on Black Church Studies and for receiving honors on one’s project Christophe Darro Ringer, MDiv’05 was undermined deeply when I was exceeded only by my embarrassment of with my host family who welcomed me into for the master of divinity degree J. D. Owen Prize for most successful work Nashville, Tennessee Mtraveled to Nicaragua during the not being able to adapt to this situation with their home and taught me, with great Lisa Ann Dordal, MDiv’05 in Hebrew Bible Nashville, Tennessee Priscilla Johanna Hohmann, MDiv’05 rainy season. I never have liked the phrase, grace or ease. I struggled to maintain not patience, how to make corn tortillas. Annette Lorraine Taylor, MDiv’05 “On the Way to Framingham, Massachusetts “fighting the elements,” as if rain or snow only my footing but my sense of humor. Ini- In the early morning hours, with corn for her essay titled Madison, Tennessee Emmanus: Deception as a Vehicle for Illumi- were obstacles to be endured, but after I tially, I was able to shrug off my awkward flour-caked hands and a stray dog licking nation and Transformation” encountered the mud in a rural Nicaraguan attempts to navigate this new setting, such as tortilla batter off my shoes, I surrendered my Luke-Acts Prize for the outstanding paper village, I felt as if I had, indeed, survived an my numerous excursions to the privy located attempts to be mud-free and sterilized from Student Government Association on an aspect of Luke-Acts environmental ordeal. atop a sharp muddy slope. These trips á la this brief encounter. Keita, a young mother Lisa Ann Dordal, MDiv’05 Community Service Awards Honors for the master of divinity degree Ginger Reneé Skaggs, MDiv’05 Nashville, Tennessee Everywhere I walked, mud—caked with commode provided amusement for the small living with her parents, showed me how to project were awarded also to: Neosho, Missouri Charles Benjamin Delaney, MDiv’05 rotting leaves and chicken feathers—clung children who watched me cling to the tower- pound the batter into thin tortillas and fry Stow, Ohio stubbornly to my shoes, gathering mass with ing branches as I tried to overcome the slip- them over a makeshift mud stove while Car- Elliott F. Shepard Prize in church history Dale A. Johnson for “Coming To and Going From: Matthew Christopher McCullough, MTS’05 each step. Mud engulfed los, Raymond’s younger brother, laughed at The Drucilla Moore Buffington Everywhere I walked, mud—caked with rotting A Christian Pedagogy of Short-term Frisco City, Alabama the tiny house in which I the thick broken cakes of my culinary efforts. Professor of Church History Mission Trips” stayed with my host fami- leaves and chicken feathers—clung stubbornly When Raymond strapped an old transistor ly and threatened to take radio around Carlos’ neck and encouraged Wilbur F. Tillett Prize in theology me hostage in the front him to dance to the disco sounds of “Don’t Nancy Jacobs Jenkins, MDiv’05 Joseph Daniels Blosser, MDiv’05 Bettye Ford Award for service to the to my shoes, gathering mass with each step. yard. While the native Bring Me Down,” Carlos stomped his bare Hermitage, Tennessee Jefferson City, Missouri faculty and students of the Graduate children skipped down feet and shook his hands beside his head to for “Does She Even Know I’m There? A School’s Department of Religion Amy Elizabeth Steele, MDiv’00 Theological Reflection on Pastoral Care to the slick hills, I plotted every step with care- pery earth beneath my shoes. I tried to laugh the music as we pounded the tortillas to his The Nella May Overby Memorial Award Nashville, Tennessee Patients with End Stage Alzheimer’s ful hesitation, wondering whether I could and feign amazement with my footwear, but movements and sang the words that we all for honors in field education in a congre- doctoral student in ethics Disease and Other Forms of Dementia” make it through the next twenty-four hours I grew tired of keeping up the jolly front, knew: “I’ll tell you once more, before you get gation or community agency Amy Virginia Cates, MDiv’05 without succumbing to this murky mass. especially as the Nicaraguan diet was chal- off the floor, don’t bring me down.” An overnight homestay in Sontule, the lenging my digestive system on a regular The chickens pecked the fallen corn from Lea Marcella McCracken, MDiv’05 Henderson, Kentucky The Bishop Holland Nimmons McTyeire coffee-growing region of Nicaragua, was part basis. I became desperate for some degree of the floor; the pigs grunted under the table, Murfreesboro, Tennessee Award presented by the United Methodist of the past academic year’s cultural immer- control over the uncertainties of this whole and my sneakers—lying outside by the for “Setting a Place for the Children: The Student Association for outstanding service Chalice Press Book Awards for academic sion seminar organized by the field educa- encounter and even thought about limiting door—dried stiffly in the morning sun. I was Lord’s Supper as an Inclusive Ritual in the to the Divinity School and to parishes accomplishment by Disciples of Christ Lisa Hamilton Gwock, MTS’05 Christian Church, Disciples of Christ” tion department at Vanderbilt University my fluid intake for the rest of the home-stay no longer fighting the elements. students Brentwood, Tennessee Divinity School. For one day, we experienced Amy Virginia Cates, MDiv’05 to avoid the privy ordeal. Perhaps I would The essayist, a native of Framingham, Massachu- what it was like to live as most Nicaraguans Lindsay Cathryn Meyers, MDiv’05 Henderson, Kentucky just stay inside on the dry dirt floor with the setts, was graduated in 1993 from Smith College Nancy Jacobs Jenkins, MDiv’05 live: no electricity, no running water, but lots Nashville, Tennessee chickens and the pigs until it was time to where she earned a baccalaureate in religion. Hermitage, Tennessee of dirt floors, bare pantries, and in the remote for “A Company of Prophets” Audrey MacMillan Connor, MDiv’05 leave. While fulfilling the requirements for the master of farm villages—lots of mud. Bowling Green, Ohio There were many moments during this divinity degree at Vanderbilt, she was the recipi- Before meeting my host family and enter- homestay when I could not wait to get back ent of the Saint Thomas Health Services Scholar- ing their modest house, I tried to wipe the Charles Benjamin Delaney, MDiv’05 to the city where my Divinity School cohorts ship awarded to a matriculant from the Roman grime from my sneakers, but my efforts Stow, Ohio and I could sit on the patio and talk about Catholic faith tradition. proved useless. One of the older children, poverty without actually experiencing the Raymond, who observed my futile attempts, discomforts of substandard living. Exhaust- shook his head and pointed to my sneakers ed by the strangeness of this encounter, the as if to say that the problem was not the language barrier, and the lack of amenities, I

36 T HE SPIRE Fall 2005 37

Alumni/ae Class Notes Please Note: Class Notes appear only in the printed version of this publication. (Do not remove the Class Notes pages!)

38 T HE SPIRE Fall 2005 39

40 T HE SPIRE Fall 2005 41 Divinity School Staff and Faculty

Barbara Hart Simpson, of Nashville, Ten- nessee, on April 22, 2005, at the age of 77. She was retired from Vanderbilt University Divinity School where she served in the office of development and external relations. Congregants from various houses of worship in Nashville remember her as one of the organizers of the Divinity School’s continu- ing education program. A service of thanks- giving for her life was conducted on April 23 at Christ Church Cathedral where she was a communicant. Langdon Brown Gilkey, of Charlottesville, Virginia, on November 19, 2004, from the effects of meningitis, at the age of 85. A pre- eminent Christian theologian who argued for the rational coexistence between faith and science, Gilkey was acknowledged by theologian David Tracy, as “the surest theo- logical guide for the joys and terrors of living as a modern Christian.” As one who debated publicly against the initiatives of Christian fundamentalists, Gilkey served as a witness for the American Civil Liberties Union and testified in 1981 in

42 T HE SPIRE Fall 2005 43

the case which challenged the constitutional- don Gilkey taught ity of an article passed by the Arkansas State before retiring from the Legislature mandating that creationist views University of Chicago,” be taught with evolutionary theory. remarks Paul DeHart, Although the authors of the law had been associate professor of careful not to present their intention in reli- theology at Vanderbilt. gious terms, Gilkey was not persuaded. Dur- “His well-known theo- ing his testimony, he remarked, “A creator is logical writings were certainly a god, if he brings the universe into rigorous, imaginative, existence from nothing.” He described the and utterly committed case as “a modern day version of the Scopes to speaking to the con- Monkey Trial” and argued successfully temporary situation, against the fundamentalists’ claim that “cre- but it was as a teacher ation–science” was a science, as distinct from that he left a lasting religion cloaked as science. The author of fif- impression on me, espe- teen books, Gilkey did not approach faith as cially in two ways. On a rarefied abstraction but explored the diffi- the one hand, his moral cult terrain where religion, technology and seriousness and deep culture converge. compassion were unfor- Gilkey earned the baccalaureate from gettable, especially once Harvard where he was a classmate of John when his accounts of Fitzgerald Kennedy and of the future Cardi- the reality of human nal Avery Dulles. After traveling to Europe suffering which theolo- with the Harvard tennis team at the onset of gy must address drove World War II, Gilkey and Dulles formed him to unembarrassed “Keep America Out of the War Committee;” tears before his stu- however, both students soon felt distress that dents. On the other other members of the committee equated the hand, only a teacher of atrocities of Nazi Germany with British colo- rare talent and respect nialism. Gilkey traveled to China to teach for the life of the intel- English to university students in Beijing and lect could present a dif- was caught in Japanese-held territory after ficult thinker like Karl the attack on Pearl Harbor. Captured with Barth to his students thousands of other enemy nationals, he was with such brilliance and Benton Chapel sent to an internment camp. “This intern- sympathy, in spite of his own radically 1963 by Langdon Brown Gilkey ment camp reduced society—ordinarily large opposed theological orientation.” American theologian and complex—to viewable sizes, and by sub- Gilkey delivered the Cole Lectures at Van- (1919–2004) black ink on paper jecting life to greatly increased tension, laid derbilt Divinity School in 1969 and in 1977 13” x 10” A gift from the artist to his colleagues at Vanderbilt University bare life’s essential structures,” wrote Gilkey. and served as the Anne Potter Wilson Distin- Divinity School, the original drawing traditionally remains dis- At the conclusion of the war, he moved to guished Visiting Professor during the fall played in the office of the associate dean for academic affairs. An Apostle Reading New York to study international law but semester of the 1998-99 academic year. He 1740 became bored with the subject and enrolled was a participant in the compilation of “The chiaroscuro woodcut on laid paper Anton Maria Zanetti in Union Theological Seminary where he Lawson Affair, 1960: A Conversation,” the lessons that our unstable life-passage teaches Vanderbilt Divinity School: Italian engraver, draughtsman, and printmaker studied with Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul sixth chapter in us is that the unwanted is often creative (1680–1767) Education, Contest and Change, 6 11/16” x 4 1/8” Tillich while earning the doctorate of philos- edited by Dale rather than destructive. Only in God is there Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery Collection Gift of Thomas B. Brumbaugh, Ph.D., professor of fine arts, ophy. He was a member of the faculty at Vas- A. Johnson, the Drucilla Moore Buffington an ultimate loyalty that does not breed injus- emeritus sar College from 1951 to 1954 and taught at Professor of Church History at Vanderbilt. tice and cruelty but a meaning from which Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University Divinity School from Gilkey was among the faculty members who nothing in heaven or on earth can separate us.” 2003.031 1954 to 1963 before accepting an appoint- protested the expulsion of Divinity School (Details for Professor Gilkey’s obituary The chiaroscuro woodcut was an innovative ment at the University of Chicago Divinity student James Lawson for his participation in were obtained from the University of form of early color printmaking designed to School from where he retired in 1989 as the the peaceful sit-in demonstrations for civil Chicago News Office.) imitate Renaissance wash drawings. The term Shailer Matthews Professor of Theology. rights. The Spire “chiaroscuro,” (derived from the Italian, “I had the good fortune to begin doctoral During his last interview for in chiaro for “light,” and for “dark”) was used to study in time to take the final classes Lang- 1998, Gilkey remarked, “One of the strangest oscuro describe the prints because of the contrast between the highlights and the surrounding areas, often printed in two related shades of color, with a black outline for emphasis. 44 THE SPIRE

Vanderbilt University Divinity School Nonprofit Org. 115 John Frederick Oberlin Divinity Quadrangle U.S. Postage 411 21st Avenue, South PAID Nashville, TN 37240-1121 Nashville, TN Permit No. 1460

The Antoinette Brown Lecture • Commemorating the Life of the First American Woman to be Ordained to the Christian Ministry

Theologian Laurel C. Schneider is dedicated to the development of a stronger, more interesting public theology that understands historical antecedents and courageously examines the critical issues of justice in the contemporary world. Through her scholarship and teaching, she seeks a language that reflects the complexity of historical Christian theology and that addresses the interactions of faith, theology, science, and culture. Before earning the doc- torate of philosophy in 1997 from Vanderbilt University as a Harold Stirling Vanderbilt Graduate Scholar, Schneider received the Vanderbilt University Divinity School announces the thirty-second annual baccalaureate in international studies from Antoinette Brown Lecture Dartmouth College and the master of divinity from Harvard University. She is the author When Hell Freezes Over of Re-Imagining the Divine: Con- Feminism, Ontology, and Multiplicity fronting the Backlash Against Feminist Theology, published in 1998 by Pilgrim to be delivered by alumna Press. Her forthcoming manuscript to be pub- Laurel C. Schneider, Ph.D. lished by Routledge Press is titled Revelations: Associate Professor of Theology, Ethics, and Culture Divine Multiplicity in a World of The Chicago Theological Seminary Difference.

Dragon Casts Out Water, Thursday, March 16, 2006 with Woman Given Wings to Fly from Apocalypse French manuscript 7:00 p.m. late thirteenth century based upon the Book of Revelation 12:15-16 Benton Chapel Lambeth Palace Library London, England