Of course, as a theologian, I was delighted to have this conversation with my son. It was fascinating to see how his mind worked, to hear him evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of high and low Christologies, to hear how he resolved the question himself, and to have an opportunity to share my own thoughts with a genuinely engaged, truly curious, and attentively listening dialogue partner in the person of my teenage son. Not too shabby a victory for any parent!
As we talked, he continued to provide context for the question, which began as a classroom debate in his high school theology seminar. Apparently, the students were tasked with taking some element from their in-class discussion, evaluating it, and then applying it practically by a twofold retrospective reflection in which the students were 1) to identify a specific situation in their life that could have gone better and 2) to share how their insight drawn from class would have made all the difference. Now, my son expressed a bit of frustration with this assignment because he would have preferred to discuss how today’s insights might help him in the future, rather than to dwell in the past. As his wheels turned, I left him alone to puzzle out his assignment, with the promise that I eagerly would return in an hour to see what he produced, accompanied by my own essay on the same task.
Continue reading “A Theological Conversation by Natalie Weaver and Valentine”
Every morning I walk to the river in the velveteen hour between the vanishing blue night and the coming of the first scarlet, pink, lavender, purple or golden ribbons that stretch across the horizon. Sometimes clouds with heavy gray eyelids mute first light. Either way all my senses except that of sight are on high alert; a deep peace embraces me in the dark. My body knows the way. I murmur to the willows as I pass through the veil and under their bowed bridge. Their response is muted, a song beneath words.
Today’s blog is a sequel to: 
In 1729, the Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), who was already widely known for his political polemics and satirical pamphlets and highly ironic letters to and about the literati of Georgian England, published “A Modest Proposal for preventing the Children of Poor People from being a Burden to their Parents or the Country.” Having observed how the English conquerors and (mostly absentee) landlords of Ireland had for close to five centuries been bleeding the island dry by confiscating its crops and taxing the Irish people unto starvation, Swift suggested in “A Modest Proposal” that the poor people (nearly everyone) sell their children to the rich to be used as food. Yes, the pamphlet is outrageous. (But students of English literature generally enjoy it. I know I did. It’s lots less boring than the poetry written during the reigns of the first three Georges.) It was widely discussed (an understatement) in London.
Just a few months ago, not long after turning seventy, I was diagnosed with mild osteoporosis. I had thought that all my yoga, my occasional forays to the gym, my daily walking, my frequently consumed leafy greens and yogurt , my calcium supplements would protect me. I had thought I was different from most other women my age, that I could avoid taking the medication that I knew was sometimes problematic. But the bone density scan revealed what I had feared, and because both of my parents declined and died shortly after hip fractures, because I had once broken an ankle, I decided to accept my doctor’s sober recommendation: that I begin a weekly dose of alendronate. It would be the first chronic medication I would ever be prescribed.
On a cold and rainy morning in Lesbos, I ponder the advice of my intuitive friend Cristina to reflect on the spiritual dimensions of my decision to move to Crete. When asked why I am moving from Lesbos to Crete, I tend focus on the negative: I am lonely in my small village; and I am disheartened by my neighbors’ lack of compassion for the refugees who come to our island from Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.
