September 13, 2025 was our first Second Saturday Conversation for our new program year. The overall title this year is: Starlight like intuition pierced the twelve: In dreams begin responsibilities. Titles from a poem and essay of American poet Delmore Schwartz. This year is not about Schwartz. That said, I briefly unpacked the Schwartz poem which for Schwartz is a punishing reminder of Jesus’ perfection, his “unspeakable unnatural goodness,” and that “too much goodness is a boomerang.” For Schwartz such a figure is a perpetual reminder of our failures. His provocative title had the completely opposite effect on me. Jesus might pierce our memory but is not a dagger to our future. For me Jesus is an icon of our humanity. Of our possibilities. A light amidst the darkness of the unknown. Light and dark a given. For me Schwartz’s closing line of the poem, “this life will never be as it once was” suggests what Jack Caputo often reminds, that “the world can be otherwise.” For Schwartz this last line states the insurmountable standard of Jesus who forever reminds us of our lack. Many of us have been taught this: Jesus divinity and “perfection” is insurmountable and is a verdict on who we are. (But he can drop the charges.) Rather than Jesus is our hope because he is one of us. And in that we are kin with him. We make possible his dream to make the world otherwise. Two very different narratives. This year I want to explore how we understand the Christian narrative – there is obviously not just one interpretation — and what language best addresses what we think Christianity is getting at. And to ask who do we want to be? I also suggest that this year we finally put supernaturalism and supernatural theism “out of business,” to quote Jack Caputo. This session welcomed us back from a summer break and suggests areas of exploration ahead.
