Reading Theologically Part 2

     Even on their own these more limited benefits of reading theology should make it rather enticing.  However, in fact, reading theologically only borrows its value from the inspired activity of ‘living theologically.’  To read from within the tradition of life is only a very particular and expressive example of, aid to, and consequence of consciously living from within the tradition of life more generally.  As reading theologically implies feeling the challenge of being implicated in whatever we read, and taking it personally to learn what we may about our selves, living theologically means feeling the same challenge all the time, taking every moment of perception, action, and interaction personally to learn what we can about ourselves.  It is an inspired kind of living, one in which the sacredness, value, and awe of existence itself suffuses our own existence and our perception of the world, and informs all of our action and reflective thinking.

     Living theologically has two benefits: one personal, one universal.  Personally, living theologically leads to an awareness of the continual communication between ourselves and every other subject and object, and between ourselves and the entirety of existence as whole.  Switching to the second-person to make the point more poignantly: living theologically means realizing that you have something personal to learn from everyone and everything.  All sights, all sounds, all sensations, all thoughts, yours and others’, every sunset, every gecko, every human, every star has something vital, absolutely vital, to teach you about yourself, your life, and our life together.  Encroaching further upon mysticism perhaps, not only are you in vital communication with all subjects and objects at all times, but you are in vital communication with the All at all times, in fact You, as the All, are in communication with the All, and all of us individually, at all times.  Take that to heart.  You have more mystery and magic in you than you might imagine.  Our communication is as mysterious as the Big Bang.  Why, you might say that our communication is the Big Bang, continuing on even some 13.7 billion years later...

     Universally, the call to live theologically becomes a social and political exhortation of great importance.  The willingness to feel pressed in upon, and to remember that we are also always pressing in upon others, incites us to become global, integral citizens, honoring and responsible to all people, all subjects, all things.  It is easy to ‘other-ize’ others, to make their otherness into a barrier meant to protect us, or numb us, from the consequences of being related to who they are and what they stand for.  The other-ized other is kept at a safe distance, and we are immune to feeling pressed in upon by them.  But this is a fallacy, it is willful ignorance, usually based on fear.  

     I do not mean to other-ize those who other-ize, and I should admit that I am guilty of building the same walls.  And it is not that others do not exist.  They do, otherwise communication and learning would not occur, whereas they happen continually.  But to other-ize is to make someone a permanent other, to cast a blind eye from the dynamism, fluidity, and vital interpenetration of the self-other field.  Self and other are alive to each other, pregnant with meaning and communication for each other, not dead to each other.  How could it be any other way?  Perhaps the tendency to other-ize serves a necessary and helpful function for particular individuals at particular times and in particular circumstances.  But, in general, it is a problem, one that makes it easier to stay out of relationship, to use and abuse each other and our environments, and one which I would like to see much less of in the world.

     Reading theologically is a consequence of recognizing our living relationship with every text.  Living theologically is a recognition of such a relationship with everything.  For those who read, and those who live: take the possibility of such recognitions to heart.  Text and world become vital, communicative, and personally meaningful once this is done.  When we feel pressed in upon, in togetherness, and in communication, by everything at all times, it becomes much more difficult to feel alone.  No matter what else we may be doing, or where we are, we are always being taught.  We are always being taught something about ourselves.

* Personal thanks go to Tyler Keith for help clarifying the central point of this essay. In discussion, Tyler suggested using the word "implicating" to capture the connotations of what it means to me to read "theologically."  I was immediately grateful.  This word perfectly expresses the complex, dynamic interactions between the personal and the inter-personal, which occur in every moment of both being in, and interacting with, text and the world.  To be implicated means both to be intimately involved in, and, consequentially, to be responsible to.  Thanks Tyler.