can you see it?

so one of my classes is liberation theology -- i thought i was just going to sit in on it, but being in class makes me want to be in class, write the papers, doing the presentations, i want to have to think and ponder and question what we are talking about outside of class. i want to be fully engaged. so i am taking 6 classes. crazy crazy! ... i probably won´t get credit for spanish conversation, but that´s ok. i decided a long time ago that i was here for me, not for school, and i am doing just what i need to, just what i want to.

so liberation theology. we read boff (or i didn´t, but we talked about him today) and his "methodology of the theology of liberation." one of the things he said was that most critcisms of this theology are on a POITCAL rather than THEOLOGICAL basis. that makes me trust it even more. i think Christ was a radical, he was revolutionary. he made people uncomfortable by being with the poor, by inspiring them to beable to see themselves, to be healed, to be whole. what a gift, when you have nothing to all opf a sudden have yourself! and he was criticized, he made the romans (ie Herod for one!) scared. and i see that in liberation theology: a chance for a voice previously unheard, unspoken, unkown maybe even to those speaking. sobrino calls liberation the theology an eruption of the poor.

an eruption of the poor. can you see it? it makes me want to laugh and cry all at once for the beauty of it -- and the beauty as we talked about in philosophy yestery which is beauty as the untelligible truth, beauty which encompasses the good and the bad, the shit and the joy, a bueaty that is beautiful because it is real and doesn´t try to hide or ignore or cover up, as kitsch does, that hard stuff that shit happens. that´s the beauty i seein el salvador and that´s the language i´m learning to use to be able to express it -- and i´m laughing because the word in this whole paragraph that i use the least is shit: i am learning the language of shit. and there´s something ironic about that, because it´s alos the language of beauty.

anyway, there´s a difference between liberation theology and what we normally think of as theology. theology is the study of God, right. so theologians are generally concerned with the question of God -- who is He? what are His attributes?what does faith in God look like? now the itneresting things, to ask all of these questions there´s an assumption: and we are the assumption, we are the given because WE are asking, WE are question God and His being. And that´s good. So these questions takes ourselves as the given, trying to figure out God and work down from God to where we live. So we are the given and God is the question. Liberation theology starts at the other end. It asks (we ask!) "is this the way life is supposed to be?" which is to say, what does God think of this reality, what does God think of the way life is--is this the way God wants it to be? It takes God for granted, by asking what God sees, God is the give. GOD IS THE GIVEN and WE, HERE, NOW, this REALITY is the QUESTION. can you see it? can you feel the difference that makes just by changing the who si questioning? changing the given? And this God and faith as the given, this questioning our reality, erupted from the poor. it erupted from the people who hold in the center of their heart their faith. These are the theologians. Jesus is here ---right? cause in´t that what he did?

It starts here. It starts in this reality. It starts in you and me, in our hearts on the given of God, to erupt and to change. to tilt, just a little, the way i see the world,

and it didn´t end with the eruption, the eruptioin gave birth, and this is boff´s metaphor, to a tree. at the roots of the tree are the people, under ground, hidden (after all we don´t always want to see poverty) which has grown, erupted into this tree, the trunk of which is are the pastoral team --lay people, nuns, priests, organizers really. and the top, the leaves are the theologians, writing and recording and incorporating, giving words, to this new theology in the theological tradition. in the middle, the trunk people sister peggy calls the great ciommunicators, creative speakers, working with the people, spreading awareness to others, helping the poor and the thologians connect. i like this, but it´s so vertical and it perpetuates the structure of the poor being on the bottom. we drew our own and ours was a person (the poor) with a pen (the pastors) wring in a book (the theologians). this image i love. liberation theology comes from the heart of the poele, they are the source, they are the authors, writing their story, with the help of the pastor, the theologians as the record, for others to see. in the book we drew dancing stick figures because there is joy in this movement. and a person writing, in the US you take it for granted write? NBD no big deal...but here, so many are illterate, many don´t go to school (though education is compulsory but not enforced) because they can´t afford supplies. so part of this image too is the WHOA of someone writing.