Second Saturday Conversation – January 8, 2022

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Second Saturday Conversation

All sessions are recorded and can be found a few days after they happen by clicking on the Second Saturday link at the top of the website and all sessions are in Pacific time.

Rev. Marianne Borg welcomes you to continue the conversation with Jack Caputo on prayer, spirituality and radical theology.

In a helpful and engaging article Jack wrote in August, 2021, the question is posed: Do radical theologians pray? His response: Like mad!

We have been exploring “radical theology.” Or put another way, what stirs beneath confessional belief claims and practices and doctrines and dogmas and texts and institutions and rites. What gives rise to those constructions? That question and consequent probing and seeking unsettles theological claims. Which is why radical theology is seen as radical. Radical theology is not content with what is constructed. It is always restless for what stirs us, calls us, and holds promise for the future; a future we can’t see coming but hope for nonetheless.

So, within radical theology, what is it to pray? Jack suggests that prayer cannot be “shut up within orthodox confessional limits.” I like the double entendre of shut up. Prayer he says belongs to our restless hearts, it is a response before it is an address, it belongs to a prior and deeper structure than dogmas or doctrine. Using his language and categories, prayer belongs to a theopoetic space he calls event. Now this may sound too abstract. Or undefined. But prayer and the name of God is not “a theoretical object“ but as he says it “is a form of life.”

So what is it to pray? What kind of madness is it when we seek and weep and pray. We have all sought and wept and prayed. So what is stirring in our prayers and tears, in our hopes for real life. What are we participating in when we pray?

We will explore prayer. And spirituality. And provide plenty of time for you to ask Jack about what is prayer and what is taking place or might be when we do.

Join us for this conversation. The topic of prayer is always on our minds. Well, more exactly, it is always in our hearts. This time with Jack will help us as we think and imagine, hope and yes, pray.

You need not have attended a previous conversation to be part of this one. But radical theology is the framework for our inquiry.

In advance, thanks to Jack for being with us. And for his prayers and tears. Prayers and tears which he insists may blind us but his prayers and tears have illumined our way.

January 8 Discussion – Telling the story again anew

We will be holding these conversations on Zoom. Please register once per household to receive a link for the event with login information. This link will be sent the day before the event.

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