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Good afternoon. Good afternoon to this post lunch hour . I'm Jennifer Lord. I serve on the faculty here teaching preaching and worship, and it is my delight to introduce to you this year's Midwinter's Jones lecturer

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Doctor Wendy Farley. I can tell you that there was great rejoicing on the West Coast when Doctor Wendy Wendy Farley, who after teaching for 28 years at the college for Emory University as professor of religion and

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ethics, accepted the position of the Rice family chair of spirituality at San Francisco Theological Seminary. Great rejoicing , I tell you. Now that school is a part of the graduate school of theology at Redlands University

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and in this capacity, Doctor Farley is also director of the programs in spiritual direction. How to describe reasons for that rejoicing, I think of 3. She is a scholar's scholar. She received her MA

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and her PhD from Vanderbilt University. Her PhD in systematic theology with a concentration in theology, I'm told that at SFTS that meant she could easily talk with Chris Ocker, translate, here, Bill Greenway.

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Yes. In addition to teaching those 28 years at that Research one university, she also chaired theology studies for doctoral students at Emory. She has authored 6 books, co-edited a 7th, and these focus on

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theology and wisdom. And the contributions of marginalized voices and issues including feminist womanist, and queer theology contemplative practice and interreligious dialogue titles include The Thirst for God . Gathering those driven away. The wounding and healing

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of desire. Eros for the other. Tragic vision and divine compassion. And women writing theology. These books summon us to recognize the interdependence of interior transformation . And social justice. These are themes clearly reflected

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in her most recent book Beguiled by beauty cultivating a life of contemplation and compassion. A second reason for rejoicing. Doctor Farley knows holistically. She lives the teaching and writing life of the guild and is also

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a practitioner of other forms of being and learning and knowing. She has studied many forms of contemplative practice within Christianity, Buddhism, and yoga, including chant , energy work, meditation, centering prayer, visualization

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, and lectio Divina. A third reason for great rejoicing, she pursues, she pursues and speaks to urgent matters, and while her website names her as author, theologian, retreat, and meditation leader,

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others engaging her work have named her a contemporary North American constructive theologian and theological ethicist. In 2009, the Stockholm School of Theology hosted a conference on the work of Doctor Farley out of which came the edited

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volume Erotic Faith, and in the preface to that book, editor Doctor Mary Kim says this Farley's work requires us to see with clear and unwavering gaze the truth of our own suffering. And our belovedness Farley

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invites us to resist that which diminishes the divine image in us in Farley's work we discover the truth, the truth of our own complicity in the violations that undermine our ethical commitments to the other and also the

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persistent power of the divine eros that grows within and flows through our very lives. Doctor Farley is our Jones lecturer. How fitting that the women of First Presbyterian Church of Fort Worth in 1949, in order

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to honor their pastor, preacher, and educator teacher Robert F. Jones, established this endowed lectureship in his honor at Austin Seminary. In this first lecture , Farley rethinks the history of spirituality by attention to

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the beautiful variety of women who have contributed their lives , texts, and practices to our tradition, those live streaming, those in the overflow space, and all of us, it is my pleasure to introduce

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to you Doctor Wendy Wendy Farley. It's gonna be really disappointing, I'm afraid to listen to anything I have to say after all that. I mean, but thank you that was very gracious and thank you

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those women from long ago who envisioned me here now . And thank you for all of the women and men I guess but women in particular who made this thing happen this event, uh, names I know

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names I haven't, I don't know, but you've been working very hard behind the scenes and I just wanna thank you very much and thank you for all showing up after lunch when it's really nap time um

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so we'll we'll do the best we can to keep you uh. Awake even without slideshows, which I somehow have never been able to master very well. Um, one of the things I'm really enjoying about

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, um, this event is the way the three of us are just like really knitting our thinking together without having met each other, really knowing what we were gonna talk about. I'm just feeling in our

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conversations and in the talks I've heard already so much synergy. And um And so I, I hope that in whatever words I have to say to you this afternoon that you feel we continue to build on

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some themes, um. And, and like my colleagues, I, I wanna anchor us in the moment we're in, and I, I won't rehearse all of that. We've heard a lot about it

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and all we have to do is roll out of bed and look at the news, but just. We are facing a barrage of cruelty and contempt. And one thing I wanna say about that in,

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in, in addition to what my colleagues have said already is that in a time like this, it's very important to guard our hearts. Because, um . When you're faced with evil, our responses to

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that. It's very hard to keep our responses to that wholesome. Um, not because we don't want to be, but just because that's the nature of evil to to corrupt, we can, uh,

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in, in whatever ways we're vulnerable. And so there's a sense in which. I hope that you hear what I'm saying today as a way to guard your heart. I, uh, one of the

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things I do is I do teach, um, contemplative practices and for me that's a very powerful way of, of. Working to guard your heart and all of you will have your own other ways to

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do this. Um, because religion, Christianity has proved such a willing ally. Um, it's important for us to think about. What is the gospel and how do we? How do we have a

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community that sustains us in that? And one thing I would, I would put something slightly differently than my colleagues, and that is. That Christianity has given itself over to the logic of domination, that

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may have begun in 325. With the, uh , Council of Nica. And we've been a Roman church since then. And um. So what we do in this community, what all of you do

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in your various communities is. Uh, ride that Underground Railroad that has always been part of Christianity. Christianity has always been Christendom since the 4th century. And there have always been. People and communities who

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light a different path. So on the one hand , I'm so disheartened. By the way Christianity is particularly right now, just taken over by uh such a cruel vision. But I, I, I

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remember this is what Christianity was born into. Christianity is born into the Roman Empire. They didn't think they were gonna like have a new election and uh a nice emperor was gonna come to power. They

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knew they were in a world. There was going to be completely and violently at odds with the vision that they had been given. Our Jewish friends and our Christian friends out of the rubble of the Jewish

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war built two beautiful religions, different sort of linguistic twists on it, different cultural traditions, but they built out of this, uh, vision from Israel , a a a counter cultural vision and that vision

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will always be counter cultural. So on the one hand, I'm discouraged and sad, and on the other hand, I'm like, this is what Christianity , this is what the gospel was made for.

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And so, um. I'm wanting to remind us of our spiritual friends. Who are riding the Underground Railroad with us. But before I move directly into that, I want to say I'm gonna quote John

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Calvin, which is not my custom at all, but um. Um, He has this image he says in his usually temperate and compassionate way, um . We are all, you know, um,

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factories of idol making, and I think the way I would put that or the way I think of that is that we are all vulnerable to being ensnared by illusions. And and I want us to remember

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that that's our common human condition. And uh we can name really terrible nightmarish illusions like anti-Semitism, racism , uh, homophobia, patriarchy, but, but when we name those things and rightly resist them and

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try to unmask them. Um, It doesn't free us up from the work of noticing the way we are all tangled in that common humanity. And so I think of. I think of spirituality as all

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the family of practices that help us address the unconscious ways in which our minds are colonized by the logic of domination. And one of the things I really appreciate about Resma Menachem is that he says racism isn't

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a matter of the will. You don't say, oh, I've decided not to be a racist anymore , um, because he knows it doesn't live in the will. You have to practice to undo that

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formation. And so I'm thinking of spirituality is all the things we do that work to undo the illusions we're under and the things that bind us. Um , that aren't just the isms, but everything that

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binds our heart. Um And so I want to think that one of the ways I wanna talk about how do we guard our heart and how do we practice to work with our own vulnerability to illusion is

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to remember the great spirits that are teachers to us and I. I say this because. I, I teach in a seminary. I was chair of theological studies. I know what the canon is and

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I know who's not there and I know what happens when they're not there. So even if we're progressive and we're everything, we're reading a canon that is very, very distorted in many ways. And it's

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not gonna get undistorted until we. We invite to our theological dinner table many, many new friends. Some of the people I will name today, you will know, some perhaps you won't, but I

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want to. I want to think of a spiritual practice as. Befriending These great teachers and incorporating them in the very core of our education, our spirituality , our liturgy, our reading, our understanding of

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who we are. Beautiful on the mountain are the feet of those bringing good news. And that's who we're going to listen to this afternoon. The women , you know, the ones whose idle talk was

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dismissed by the disciples. These witnesses often thrive in hiddenness, in exile from authority structures and canonical literature . It's dangerous in the wilderness. And yet perhaps something happens here that can't happen anywhere else. As

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we face our own rising storm, turning to the wisdom of the outcast and the marginalized, may be a way to remember that Christianity, the gospel, has always been what Howard Thurman calls a religion for

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those with their backs against the wall. Exposure to the poly vocality of cis and trans contemplatives unmakes familiar ways of knowing and by riffing with other voices we allow our categories to be interrupted. Like the quilting

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our grandmothers did, we will discover some discarded scraps in medieval African American trans contemplatives and activists when we will relearn how the artistry of the divine is present in what we might have thought of as mere trash

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. I'm going to begin with the begins and an anchorres. The begins were a shooting star of a women's movement in the Middle Ages. They were dedicated to contemplative practice and often gathered around a spiritual guide

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. They taught, study, often did social work , meditated. Feminine imagery suffuses their writing. They created an environment in which women of all ages and social classes were supported in their spiritual and theological exploration

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which was briefly allowed to flourish without male leadership. Now the astute reader or listener will recognize a number of red flags here. The freedom that created unique possibilities for spiritual creativity provoked suspicion. The movement was

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driven to the margins by the council of Vienne, and that marginalization began with the burning of Marguerite Perrett in 1310. Marguerite was one such begging. She's one of the most remarkable of all of the European

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contemplatives. Her book The Mirror of Simple Souls describes Lady Love as a feminine face of the divine who leads the soul on a contemplative path. As Amy Hollywood insists, Marguerite's description of the contemplative path is

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her is a, is a defense of her fellow women from the expectations imposed on them by a misogynistic church. As recently as 1999, a team of translators condemned Marguerite's stubborn persistence in her opinions, even

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though she knew it would cost her a cruel death . This assessment, that is her condemnation, may not be unjust. is shown by her persistence in publishing what was already condemned. 1999, these translators

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thought to burn her at the stake for writing theology was entirely reasonable. Another Maddy, I'm, there's so much to say about Marguerite. I'm totally in love with Marguerite, but um, I'm not going

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to, I'm just gonna say, you should read Marguerite. She's amazing. Another medieval woman, Julian of Norwich, avoided conflict with the church by remaining in an anchor hold, that is, say,

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a sealed off cell. That was attached to Saint Julian's Church. She is beloved for the simplicity of her insistence that all will be well and all manner of things will be well. And that she saw

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no wrath anywhere. But these disarming quotations conceal a sophisticated systematic theology built around this insight. There was no wrath anywhere. Which, which takes apart the entire edifice of atonement theology. Built on a wrathful

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deity. Julian reconcilesed her theology with fidelity to the church through an appeal to maternal love embodied in Christ and infused through the Trinity. As a mother never abandons her children, so the Trinity never abandons humanity

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. Humanity, not a part of humanity, humanity . In a delightfully nonbinary passage, Julian insists on the dependability of the divine mother. The mother can allow the child to fall sometime for their own well-being

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. But she can never permit any kind of peril to come to her child because of her love. Even if our earthly mother could allow her child to perish, our heavenly mother Christ cannot allow us,

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His children, to perish. Julian has this sense there is no division in humanity. There is only humanity beloved by the beloved. Marguerite and Julian are among countless other women and men who perceive divine reality

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as unqualified love for all and every human being. The clarity of the spirituality and theology of Marguerite and Julian help us address the spiritual formation that would divide human humanity into saved and damned that picture that uh

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Reggie had up earlier, a duality that provides the theological justification in the spiritual formation. That makes all social dualities possible, that whole logic of domination, which is exercised in a million different ways, rests

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on this fundamental spiritual formation that it's OK to torture humanity. The greater part of humanity. Now medieval women certainly experienced afflictive suffering, but it is not their primary social subject matter. Turning to African American

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writing, the emphasis shifts. Sean Copeland dedicates her book to the memory of black women whose bodies were destroyed in the Middle Passage, whose bodies were abused and chewed up in the maw of slavery, whose

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bodies were tortured and lynched, whose bodies were defiled and discarded, whose bodies lie in unmarked and unattended graves. Joy Bostick describes the effects of physical, psycho-spiritual, and sexual violence. Fear, anxiety,

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lack of self-worth, violence, and trauma have a fragmenting and disintegrative effect upon the human personality. The human soul. The story of sojourner Truth begins with this dissolution of personhood. And yet When Harriet Beecher

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Stowe describes me Sojourner Truth, it is a person of enormous charisma and power that we encounter. Harriet Beecher Stowe says, I do not recollect ever to have been conversant with any one who had more of

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that silent and subtle power of which we call personal presence than this woman. She seemed perfectly self-possessed and at her ease, and in fact there was almost an unconscious superiority not unmixed with a solemn twinkle of

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humor in the odd composed manner in which she looked down at me. Whatever alchemy produced this remarkable woman included a mystical strain passed on from her African mother who first taught her about a non-white divinity, a

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creator that would help her. But it was only as an adult that Sojourner discovered an internal mystical space in a hidden arbor where she could begin daily contemplation and prayer to this benevolent deity. She prayed for

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a kinder owner. But God instead instruction her on how to escape. When her owner came to retrieve her, she fell into a kind of rapture that seems to have driven him away. She describes this

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encounter as an ecstatic union. I met God. As says I, oh God, I didn't know you were so great. I began to feel such love in my soul as I had never felt before

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. Love to all creatures, Lord. I can love even the white folks. Her contemplative awakening allows her to recognize her own belovedness, but like other contemplatives, the seemingly private revelation unleashes enormous energy to

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act on behalf of others. In 1843, Isabella takes a new name, Sojourner Truth, by which she is recognized as the great warrior for abolition and women's equality. If we tell the story of African

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American mysticism only from the perspective of Sorrow's kitchen. We miss the ferocious love and courage that animate a long struggle for justice. Another lecture should be devoted to this synergy between spirit and action, but here

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we should at least remember the names of a few Harriet Tubman, Jerina Lee, Ida B. Wells , Mary Clad Bethune, Polly Murray, June Jordan , and the thousands of named and unnamed women these

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represent. A particular depth of mystical awareness runs through these lives that unite awakening to the divine with a flaming desire for justice and an astonishing capacity for non-hatred . Fannie Lou Hamer recognized in Jesus a revolutionary person

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out there where it's happening. That's what God is all about, and that's where I get my strength . But she perceived that part of the radicality of the gospel was that she says ain't no such a

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thing as I can hate anybody and hope to see God's face. This is a hard teaching. It's a beautiful thing to read in a lecture. It's a hard teaching. Sean Copeland extends this vision for

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justice to queer bodies. The God who is so big to sojourner truth, bodies forth to include all bodies. We begin to awaken to this radical inclusivity by recognizing the presence of the divine in the most

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savaged bodies. But Copeland insists that in Christ there is neither male nor female, neither gay, lesbian , nor straight, neither heterosexual nor homosexual. We are all transformed in Christ. We are his very

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flesh. If my sister or brother is not at the table, if my brother's mark of race must be disguised, if my sister's mark of culture must be repressed, then we are not the flesh of

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Christ. She quotes Gregory of Nissa. She concludes , It is in the union of all particular members that the beauty of Christ's body. It is complete in the union of all particular members the beauty.

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Of Christ's body is complete. Notice the journey from these savage bodies to the beauty of Christ's body. For Julian, the whole humanity is one with Christ . This was both an eternal truth and an eschatological

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promise. For Copeland, the mystical body is divine reality as co-present in afflicted bodies of history's most devo . Debased people now to take seriously this metanoia, this awakening, this turning around is an awaking that

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is not intellectual, it's not even ethical, but it's a new way to experience reality that has enormous consequences for the church and how are we to behave . The body of Christ, she says, provokes

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our interrogation. Of the imperial deployment and debasement of bodies in the suffering and groaning outrage and hope of victims of history, we glimpse the flesh of Christ , and we are drawn by that eros. The

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radiant desire for us and we too seek to imitate his incarnation of love. Eros, this is an obligation. This isn't a duty. This is erotic . This is the arrows that allows us to see

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, love, and desire the beauty of others all . Others, no exception. Conventional in truth insisted we are obviously and stubbornly separated from one another. Individuals are sorted out by regimes that require any self

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to be racialized and gendered, possessing what trans black feminist Marquis Bay calls non-conceptual coercive bestows of taxonomies. In other words, whether we like it or not , we are marked by you're white, you're black

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, you're this, you're that, and we, we, we have 10 minutes, I see, we, um. Oh We, um, we have an identity, whether we like it or not

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in these regimes. And yet it is the wisdom of medieval and contemporary mystics to cultivate an eros for this sacred body, the one with the divine and with each other, to live as if it is

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true. We are one another's bodies. What happens to one happens to all. A trans youth who commits suicide is a tear in the body of Christ . Bishop Marian Edgar Bud's ringing demand for mercy for

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trans and queer and immigrant bodies, even if it's falling on deaf ears, reunites, knits back together the body of Christ. 10 minutes, 10 minutes , 10 minutes. I want to acknowledge, I

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, I won't have time to go through all of this, but I want to acknowledge that a number of women and trans. Witnesses and spiritual friends are exiled from the church. We won't find them in

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the Christian tradition. And I'm going to Mention this one Marquis Bay. Because she has this spirituality that is a fierce denial of the culture of death around her, them. Even as the Begins glimpsed an

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alternative reality in the midst of escalating violence, Bay envisions a different realm in the midst of empire. The unmaking of that self. Makes possible a phoenix like birthing of life. She describes. A celebratory

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life in excess of deathly society. This celebratory life is the enlivening injection of fugitive hope. She concludes her book with this song, this beautiful kind of song of the soul, and she says, we

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have to live as if this were already true. We won't stay dead even if they kill us. And here are some other lovely ones that I'm not going to talk about. Christina Cleveland, who just

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celebrates the sacred black. Divine black queer activist and mystic, Dr. Elise Ambrose, but I don't want to miss Rosemarie Freeney Harding. I make every single one of my students read her book, and

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so you write it down and you go home and read it too. Uh, Rosemarie Frey Harding, her memoir Remnants. It's become essential to my own canon. Harding traces her lineage through a long maternal

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line of astonishing ordinary invisible women, slaves, these are her fam. This is her family, not general people, slaves, sharecroppers, women who clean houses for white people, but that demographic isn't what

00:33:29.860 - 00:33:49.060

she's interested in. He inheritance. Is a radical compassion and courage conversed with spirits and divinity in and beyond organized religion. She understands her own work in the civil rights movement as the natural blossoming of this

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ancient inheritance. An attitude toward life passed from mother to daughter, healing, hospitality, non-hatred are a single fabric that emerged from an unspoken mysticism running straight down the middle of the bloodline connecting healing. To

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justice. So I must be 5 minutes in. OK, all right, skip skip, skip in this, um, patchwork quilt of God intoxicated women , something of the great tapestry of women's activism,

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misism and contemplation is glimpsed. It is easy to despair over the countless voices mutilated and silenced, but for the moment we can celebrate the survival of wisdom's scrappy, courageous, brilliant daughters whom regimes of domination

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did not manage to erase, and I would say that includes all y'all, as we say in the South. These women did not invite us to linger over what has been lost or let our hearts be

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overly despairing by the storms gathering around us. Rosemary Freeney Harding evokes the great female Holy Spirit who, she says, teaches us how to live like family . How to live with some strength and care in

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your hands. How to live with some joy in your mouth. How to put your hands gentle on where the wound is and draw out the grief. Had to urge some kind of mercy into the shock

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stained earth so good will grow. That's why you have to go get this book. Remembering these lives , we begin to sense how deep and wide the roots of our spirituality go. We discover an benevolent

00:35:59.230 - 00:36:19.610

divinity enticing us to unite with the beloved's untiring love and joy in humanity and in all of creation. I pray that remembering these beautiful and diverse Holy Spirits will lighten our heart and remind us of how much

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goodness and beauty there is in the world, how much good can grow when we open ourselves to the beloved's extravagant delight in creation. Thank you. I had to, I had 2 more minutes. I

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wanna go back. Thank you, Doctor Frawley. Immensely, you did have 2 more minutes. I was sitting there looking at your questions, so thank you very much. You gave us some extra time

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for these questions. Um, I want to begin . There was one question, uh, that was posted even before you began. So this person is clearly is very familiar with your work and wanna honor

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them. Uh, Doctor Farley, how have your views of the Odyssey changed or developed since your great tragic vision book? Um, I wrote that, that was my dissertation. So that was a while

00:37:27.120 - 00:37:44.750

back. Um, I I don't know that I would recant things that I said, um. I , I wrote that book. I was working with Amnesty and her dad National and my mom was working

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. She was uh director of a house of abused teenage girls, um, what, what we would call afflictive or traumatic suffering. You know, I was a graduate student. I read, I read

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Everybody origin and some Aqui, you know, I read everybody, all those obscure little 19th century people , um. I never found one person in the canon of systematic theology that acknowledged the fundamental basic truth

00:38:15.540 - 00:38:34.190

of the human condition and that is we experience afflictive suffering we experience things that we cannot bear and that destroy us. And I thought a Christianity that cannot acknowledge that truth. Cannot speak to us. So

00:38:34.190 - 00:39:00.440

that was the problem, and I still think that's a problem. I think, I think what is different for me. Is I. It's, it's like. It's like living in a little room.

00:39:00.100 - 00:39:12.360

And that's a good room and then noticing, well damn, there's a door here and you walk through it and there's this gorgeous garden and this huge vista and all these other rooms, so I, I

00:39:12.360 - 00:39:28.720

don't feel as oppressed by that truth of afflictive suffering because it, it feels like it's in a context that holds it, but it's not the whole story . I think for me my narrative of reality just

00:39:28.720 - 00:39:47.740

got much bigger and my sense not only of the divine compassion which I was preoccupied with and still am but I'm much more aware of the divine delight God's enormous arrows for creation. So I think that's where

00:39:47.740 - 00:39:59.050

I would. I've changed. Yes ma'am, thank you very much. Uh, here's another question of course if you've got them by all means please uh add them to Slido at this time. Uh,

00:39:59.180 - 00:40:08.860

if we are to enlarge the discussion table, how do we deal with those who want to join the table only to destroy it? I'll say it again . If we if we are to enlarge the discussion

00:40:08.860 - 00:40:21.980

table, how do we deal with those who want to join the table only to destroy it? I , I wish this person were here so I could ask them exactly what they had in mind. Um

00:40:22.100 - 00:40:40.290

, because I'm afraid I'll respond to it in a way that you, you didn't intend. Um, Those there's all um there are always people as we talked about in the last two lectures uh people who

00:40:40.290 - 00:40:52.170

are using Christianity to destroy what I would think of as the gospel who are using it to destroy not just the gospel but human lives. So that's a fact of our history and it's a fact of our

00:40:52.170 - 00:41:06.140

current moment we can't make that go away that will never go away as far as I am aware. So we don't we can't put our head like what do I do to make that go away, um

00:41:06.320 - 00:41:19.730

, my point is more. What do we bring ? What do we bring? How do we How do we get, you know, how do we fall in love with these exiles and, and say

00:41:19.730 - 00:41:34.330

we have to have all of these beautiful women and trans and queer and men that we are not used to reading we have to have them all here our our hearts are too are too small and in too

00:41:34.330 - 00:42:00.300

much pain. Thank you Another question that is uh light amongst the folks that are here. Have you had any pushback from academia or clergy leaning on the theology of Christian mystics? Um, perhaps. I

00:42:02.290 - 00:42:15.450

You know, I think that, you know, when I was reading the women, um, contemplatives , the medieval women, and then expanding that to include Sojourner Truth and so many others, um.

00:42:15.830 - 00:42:32.200

That is often understood as well, that's history or that's women's history or some such thing but um but then it would be theology. You have to read it differently, but then you have to read Anselm

00:42:32.200 - 00:42:47.120

differently than you read Thomas Aquinas. Um, you have to, you have to read people who write different genres in a different way, but that doesn't mean they don't have a theology to offer us.

00:42:47.810 - 00:42:57.730

Someone once asked me, I would say maybe we should read some of these women mystics, and they're like, Well, what if we what if no one read Augustine anymore? And I thought, I'm

00:42:57.730 - 00:43:21.080

not worried about that. Um, I've just, I don't feel like Augustine needs protection. I think he'll, he feels a pretty robust presence. Thank you very much. um. Oh, given the

00:43:21.080 - 00:43:32.670

oppression enacted by the current regime, can nihilism function as a way to protect our hearts? If not , what grounds Christian hope? I'll say it again . Given the oppression enacted by the current regime,

00:43:32.960 - 00:43:52.210

can nihilism function as a way to protect our hearts ? If not, what grounds Christian hope? One thing I would say, I would say uh it's not clear to me that nihilism is a wholesome.

00:43:53.880 - 00:44:10.910

Uh a way of being with our heart. Um , But I also wanna say we have to be , you know, in, in contemplative practice and and admiring these great people we have to be honest

00:44:10.910 - 00:44:28.110

with who we are we can't like have this imaginary Wendy who's gonna you know be Rose Marie Freeney Hardy and I'm not gonna be her. I'm gonna be me and I have to be honest with myself right

00:44:28.110 - 00:44:39.190

now uh with what's happening to me right this minute and maybe it's different a year from now and so it may be that there's a moment where I'm in despair you know I say all this pretty stuff but

00:44:39.190 - 00:45:00.600

something happens to me and my heart goes into despair and maybe I do feel a kind of nihilism, but I would hope. I You know, underneath everything that tears us apart and destroys us and destroys

00:45:00.600 - 00:45:15.760

us utterly, maybe. Is the divine goodness and that holds us and there are times we can't see it or feel it, but that doesn't make it go away. It keeps holding us and it will

00:45:15.760 - 00:45:29.790

always hold us, you know, there'll be a time and it may not even be in our lifetime where we wash into a different shore and the. The unbearable things that we have experienced, the nihilism

00:45:29.910 - 00:45:44.080

, the despair, the, the rage, what whatever unwholesome things have haunted us, will be healed . Thank you very much. um, got a couple more questions for you. How do we articulate

00:45:44.080 - 00:46:06.220

the relationship between beauty and unity while affirming particularity? Oh, how fun. Um, Uh, let's see, I, I, I kind of wanna go on this like long, like neoplatonic riff,

00:46:06.860 - 00:46:21.710

but, uh, I'm gonna spare you that, um. We can we say divine reality is one . And then it's the source of all, but we don't say God is one in the sense like

00:46:21.710 - 00:46:35.310

God is an entity, one thing. So, so everything that is that, that, um, map of reality that, uh, my new friend , uh, put on, you know, with

00:46:35.320 - 00:46:57.110

, uh, uh, cosmology, yeah, um . That's, that's. That's like coming out of this infinite abyss of divine creativity and exploding into the only way things can exist, namely as particularities in

00:46:57.110 - 00:47:10.920

relationship. And so everything is beautiful by being itself . And by being itself in relation because nothing can be at all unless it's in relation to a trillion other things so we're particular and we're in relation and

00:47:10.920 - 00:47:24.570

our beauty arises in that harmony, but the, but the source is that kind of infinite eternal fecundity which is on the other side of one in many , you know, those are one and many are

00:47:24.570 - 00:47:36.780

like categories for things that exist in the world that's not a category for divine reality. Thank you very much. uh, this question is about race, so I'll give you a heads up. Uh,

00:47:37.030 - 00:47:47.430

like in Nazi Germany, the Jews were painted as the evil of all bad people. Uh, how do you feel about white males, uh, being blamed for all of the evils? I'll say it

00:47:47.430 - 00:48:00.510

again. Like in Nazi Germany, the Jews were painted as the evil all bad people. How do you feel about white and in parenthesis males, people blamed for all the evils? I think that's not

00:48:00.510 - 00:48:16.040

a very good idea. Um, I mean, part of, you know, whether it's Julian or um. Uh Sean Copeland, you know, this really radical sense that we humans are knit together in

00:48:16.040 - 00:48:37.390

one body. That means that you can't have one category of. Humanity that's separated out from that knitting as evil. We can't, that's that that logic that move is uh a um. A violation of

00:48:37.390 - 00:48:59.290

the body. Uh, whatever the category is that has been designated. Um, I think. I think it is, it is helpful um to think about how power works uh how it um. I

00:48:59.290 - 00:49:09.080

mean, I, I, I think, uh , Reggie's description of some of this was very helpful on this point. You have, we're talking about regimes of power we're talking about the construction of identities

00:49:09.450 - 00:49:22.450

of, uh, how resources are divided, uh , as it happens, whether you like it or not, if you're a white person, you might have more resource not if you're an Appalachian person on

00:49:22.450 - 00:49:42.920

welfare, you don't get a lot of um. Benefits from your whiteness. um, but there are ways in which, uh, um, you know that. The current administration is really valorizing, um

00:49:42.930 - 00:50:01.690

, a picture of whiteness and maleness and cisgenderness as the ideal. And that's very destructive. That doesn't mean that actual human beings who are white or male or cisgendered are ontologically evil so we really always need

00:50:01.690 - 00:50:22.400

to separate out how we're all caught in these regimes of power without our we didn't we didn't give permission to be located in this place, um. So noticing how the power dynamic works and the symbols work

00:50:22.400 - 00:50:39.630

and imagery works is very important, but identifying human beings with those. Constructions is a is a damage to our own heart, I think. Thank you immensely, Doctor Farley. Uh, we've got time

00:50:39.630 - 00:50:51.230

probably for one more question. Uh, Janice said in what holding tank do we place non-Christians in regard to being part of the body of Christ or dining at the table? How do we regard them?

00:50:54.400 - 00:51:08.170

When I think of this expression, the body of Christ. It's a Christian term. Like the Buddha , the Buddhists would call, say something like Buddha mind. And and they they don't. They're talking

00:51:08.170 - 00:51:21.970

about a a kind of reality and we're talking about a kind of reality and we Christians have a name for it and that name for it is the body of Christ, not because. The body of Christ

00:51:21.970 - 00:51:40.220

is limited to some category of Christians, that is to say the Christians who are Christians the way I approve, um. But uh it's our name for the interconnectedness, the the one fabric, the one

00:51:40.220 - 00:52:00.020

flower garden of humanity that that that that that humanity is the bodying forth of the divine and is precious and sacred and every part of it is sacred. Um, and so to again find some reason for

00:52:00.020 - 00:52:16.150

saying this category of people don't belong, Buddhists don't belong, Muslims don't belong, Jews don't belong, indigenous don't belong. Um, The Yarrabah are obviously demonic, um, you know, that's, that's

00:52:16.150 - 00:52:29.020

the same again, it's the same logic we, we tear apart the, the body and see these bodies matter, these don't, these bodies have wisdom , these don't and it's a. It's a,

00:52:29.280 - 00:52:45.160

it's it's a, it's a terrible, terrible wound in us to harbor that kind of sense about others . Everyone, please let's give Dr. Frawley a hand for sharing your words of wisdom with us this