Telling The Story
The danger of the theopoetic is to think that we are only dealing with the ‘deep seated’ images and symbols of a subconscious reality. This assumes only the reality of an interior life. In contrast the goal of the theopoet – one who includes and transcends the academic – is to create radical texts in the public sphere of our imagination, longing, hungers and impulses that accurately speak to and from our places of spirit. To create such a text requires us to be at home in, critical of and aware of the cultural stories we tell. By this we mean to understand that every ad we view has a story that makes assumptions of the human spirit. If Coke is ‘The Real Thing’ then what is God/Spirit/Humanity? Is our task to challenge this notion of the ‘Real Thing’ or is it to create an image that acknowledges that story in our culture but also says their is a ‘real thing’ – God fully alive in the human condition – that is more than the impule towars capitilism, economic competition and the domination of public spaces by corporations and their stories? How do we produce thought, image, story and symbol that undermines that story?
The Theopoetic as a liberation theology assumes that the leading narrative of a culture is always a dominating and oppressive narrative. An advert is never just an advert – it in stead a story of what we belive to be the most true and real about human nature. Storys of the body, of human nature, of worth and value are all being spoken into the public space. Liberation is to deconstuct those stories, to proclaim the truth of spirit that is in bodies that are not popular, socially attractive or fall into a space of unacceptability. When condos start using spiritual language to name themselves what they are naming is disconnection between spirit and place that we as human persons are experiencing. But buying into a condo and into a capitalist culture will never truly allow us to reconnect spirit and place. And for those few that do a story needs to be presented to them, of the folly of buying into a locale of exclusivity and of fellows who are of our own class.
The theopoet then can work as an academic, as a poet, as a fiction writer or any form of artist in order to open these stories. I would love to see the rise of the theopoet academic – one who draws equally from popular culture, poetry, paintings and public discourse in order to do their God-Speak in culture.
