I have always found theological autobiography both fascinating and rewarding. When a theologian takes time to reflect on the meaning of their life, and to critically evaluate what they have thought, said, taught and written, I have sensed that in the articulation of such self-criticism both writer and reader have the chance to grow.
This was true for me when, a few years ago, I read Renita Weems' volume, Listening for God. A Minister's Journey Through Silence and Doubt. I'm re-reading it. I first came across Weems in her commentary on Song of Songs in the New Interpreter's Bible. Not everyone who reviewed it liked it. Weems is an outspoken and thoughtful feminist, and her interpretation of the Song is likewise shaped by her perspective as a woman. Why that should be a 'problem', I'm not sure. Most commentaries on the Song have been by men and presumably written from a masculine perspective. Anyway, what we have in her book is the honesty and integrity of a scholar who has had to live in the male dominated world of church and academia as a black woman theologian. The book is an eye opener, and a moving testimony that comes with the force of an argument on behalf of those who struggle with faith and doubt, hope and despair, blessing and loss, and still hold on.
Listening for God is the disposition of the person trying to hear, wanting to know, seeking for truth, and sometimes encountering only silence. And that silence may not mean the absence of God, nor does it reassure of God's presence; it is ambiguous, creating a tension between the longing of the soul and that for which the soul longs. Early in the book we get a sense of what she is talking about, and the first sound of a voice that speaks with honest to God openness about God. She links silence to intimacy, discerning a rhythm of intensity followed by distance, passion followed by withdrawal, in the most meaningful exchanges of our lives.
"The long silence between intimacies, the interminable pause between words, the immeasurable seconds between pulses, the quiet between epiphanies, the hush after ecstasy, the listening for God -- this is the spiritual journey, learning how to live in the meantime, between the last time you heard from God and the next time you hear from God." (25)
The rest of the book is an exploration and an exposition of her own life and those same rhythms of faith and doubt, presence and absence, blessing and loss, assurance and questioning, healing and hurt. She quotes what she calls an intrepid psalm, one of those texts that feels just like that moment when you thought you'd turned the shower to warmer but turned it the wrong way and the cold jets ruin your comfort zone.
As a deer yearns
for flowing streams,
so I yearn
for you, my God.
I thirst for God,
for the living God;
where can I go to see
the face of God?
I have no food but tears,
day and night,
as all day long I am taunted,
"Where is your God?"
This is a book that takes yearning and longing, love and belonging, presence and separation, seriously. Renita Weems is a minister, a professor of biblical studies, an African American woman, and one who has walked through as many valleys of deep darkness as she has still waters and green pastures. As a theologian and a preacher, and an expert on the biblical text, she is expected to be a good guide on the journey; but she confesses that she too gets lost, doesnlt recognise the landscape, becomes uncertain about the direction and the destination.
And here's her take on those times when God is silent: "I didn't know that just because I;d lost my enthusiasm for the spiritual journey disn't mean thatt I'd lost my way on the spiritual journey." That's the whole point. To journey by faith means sometimes going out to a place that we know not where. If God is silent, then we walk on, and listen, and pay attention to the glimpses and hints, the unlooked for and unexpected, the ordinary and the routine, and in that mix of life as we live it trust on that God is there. The down to earth truth is that God's presence is sometimes to be discerned not in the obviously spiritual, but in the even more obviously mundane, "the din of a hungry toddler screaming from the backseat in rush hour traffic."
This is a book for those of us familiar with spiritual longing, restless in our questioning and thinking, hungry for what is real, substantial and sustaining for mind and heart, as we walk the sometimes puzzling and risky road that is our life. Weems comes to accept that confusion and doubt are not wrong, they are as normal as when we feel sure and confident. The rhythms of emotion and mind, the changing circumstances of life, our own inner growing and changing, the chemistry of our bodies and the biosphere of our inner lives are all part of what makes us who we are and gives colour to the life we live. When God is silent it is seldom our fault; guilt is an attempt to explain what in fact needs no explanation. God is silent just now, so what? So listen, look, and find those other ways God communicates, often through others.
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