Telling the Story Again Anew – October 9, 2021

Christianity for the 21st Century

In last month’s Second Saturday, I introduced the notion of deconstruction, an approach to textual criticism in our discussion of Christianity for the 21st century. And I suggest it is an approach to life as well.

In this session, Jack Caputo was our guest. A man who “rightly passes for an atheist” and is also a man of “prayers and tears.” October 9 is the death date of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), an influence on Jack and arguably one is the most important post structuralist and post modern philosophers. We might have lost you at Derrida.  But I suggest this conversation welcomes us to a “whole new game” and “style of thinking” that can lead us out of the mire we find ourselves in today not become one itself. I think Caputo’s and Derrida’s contribution to our conversation about Christianity for the 21st century is important.  But watch for yourselves. I will further discuss this new style of thinking in our November session.

To what do I pray?

Below is copy upon request of a prayer I spoke during this session.  Here is the prayer I quoted from Jack Caputo’s book The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion.  The quotes are the words of Jacques Derrida.

To what do I pray, over what do I weep, when in my language, I pray and weep to my God?  For what am I “hoping sighing dreaming” when I hope and sigh and dream of my God? For what am I “inviting calling promising” when I invoke my God? For what do I call when I call, in my language, viens? [French, what is to come.] By what am I impassioned in my passion for God? To what am I promised, to what do I consent, in this pact with the impossible? What do I expect when I expect the impossible?