Look for the Connections

Thinking theologically is what we do when we look for the connections between God and our lives. One of the things we know is that God doesn’t change, but the perspective we see God from does. Each of us connects with different aspects of the nature of God, and the way we do that is usually shaped by our backgrounds, life experiences, education, and so on.

That said, it’s probably time for me to tell you a little more about who I am, and the things that shape my understanding of and relationship with God.

I was born in Australia, where my father worked for IBM and my mother was a teacher. Dad had immigrated from Northern Ireland as a young adult; my mother is a fourth generation Australian. We moved frequently for my father’s work as I was growing up; church was one of the few constants in our lives. Some of my earliest memories are singing at Sunday school when I was 3 or 4, having morning tea and collecting acorns under the oak tree after church, and sitting on the floor looking at the prayer books during the 8 a.m. service which I sometimes attended with my Dad.

I was baptized and confirmed at the age of 14, went to an Anglican high school, and slowly began to sense a call to full-time ministry, though there were no women clergy in Australia at that time. At college, I majored in psychology and church, and discovered I could preach. I began studying theology part time (as well as a graduate degree in women’s studies) and worked for the government for three years before going to seminary (during which time women were finally ordained priest in Australia). I’ve served parishes in four different dioceses, ranging from evangelical to Anglo-Catholic, and under the ministry of eight bishops.

Preaching has been at the core of my own calling, and that led me to the US to do a PhD in practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, focussing on Homiletics (which means preaching). I co-edited a book of sermons using the lyrics of the Irish band U2 called Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog, and have written Steeped in the Holy: Preaching as Spiritual Practice. I share my home with a beloved cat Bede, and enjoy reading mysteries, knitting, whitewater kayaking, hiking, and skiing - and my nephews, nieces, and godchildren.

So how does this shape my understanding of God? The core of my call has been the call to preach; that, and my training in practical theology causes me to constantly ask “How does what we know shape what we do?” and “How does what we do shape how we know God?” Living and serving in so many places makes me aware of how God reaches people in such a variety of ways. God’s creativity in creation feeds my own creativity. And because of who I am, the way I most often imagine God is as someone sitting quietly in the armchair beside me, enjoying a blazing fire and occasional conversation.

How does your own life experience shape your understanding of God?

Blogging about God-Talk

When Bishop Provenzano asked me to accept appointment as Canon Theologian, he asked me to help us in the diocese to think theologically. The word theology comes from two Greek words, theos, meaning God and logos, meaning words or thought or thinking. So theology is words to do with God. In its formal sense, it’s the study of God, or, as Richard Hooker put it in the 16th century, “the science of things divine.”

All of us have thoughts about God. Each of us understands God a little differently, because of the ways we have been taught and the experiences we have had.When I was in 8th grade, I was cast as God in a play – and dressed up in a white toga (bedsheet) and a cottonwool beard. As an adult, my understanding of God has changed, so that I think of God less in terms of a costume, and more in terms of our relationship – and so today when I imagine God, it’s often as a person sitting in an armchair beside me in front of a fire, in the midst of a never-ending conversation.

You all have your own images of God, and some of what I’ll do in this column and its associated blog is explore some of the ways we think of God. But our faith isn’t just in our heads. Being a Christian is also about how we live – and so thinking theologically is not just thinking about God, but learning to live our lives with God in mind.

Recently I was in Washington, DC, for a conference, where I heard the chaplain to the Senate, Dr. Barry C. Black, preach. He spoke about how in Bible studies – with senators from both sides of the political divide – they discuss how to make ethical decisions, and reflect on how they would answer to God for the decisions they make.

That’s thinking theologically.

In a Bible study in my parish a few weeks ago, we looked at Colossians 3: 12-17, where it talks about forgiveness. Forgiveness sounds like a good idea, until it comes to forgiving someone you have loved, who has wronged you. So how do forgive people who hurt us? The conclusion of one group member was to make a commitment to pray for the person who had caused her so much pain. That’s thinking theologically.

A few years ago, in a Sunday School class, we read 1 Corinthians 12:12-31, which describes the church as being like a body, and I asked the kids what part of the body they were. One eight year old, the clown of the class, said, “The funny bone!” (He also told me that when he receives communion, he thinks of Jesus and how he loves us and died for us.) That’s thinking theologically.

Thinking theologically is what we do when we look for the connections between God and our lives. Sometimes we’ll begin with God, and say something like “If God is like _____, what difference does it make for the way I live?” Other times we’ll begin with something going on in our lives – a struggle, a joy, a dilemma - and ask, “What has God got to say about this?” or “What would God have me do about this?” or even “How is God responsible for this?” – and in that case “How do I respond?” Thinking theologically is at the very core of how we live out our faith as Christians.

So please, join the conversation!

I’ll be writing a more or less weekly blog at the diocese’s website: www.dioceselongisland.org/god-talk

And I’d be happy to receive your questions by email at: rjwhiteley@dioceseli.org