Making 'Sense' in Theological Education
by Cláudio Carvalhaes
Cláudio Carvalhaes is an associate professor of worship and liturgy at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. He was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, and earned his doctorate from Union Theological Seminary. He has published articles in English, Spanish, and Portuguese on the relation between globalization, immigration, multiculturalism, and postcolonial theologies/liturgies, worship, the arts, and Christian faith. Eucharist and Globalization: Redrawing the Borders of Eucharistic Hospitality was published by Wipf and Stock in 2013, and What Worship Has To Do With It: Interpreting Life, Church, and the World Liturgically is forthcoming.
The photographs are by Michael Whitman. See http://michaelwhitman.net.
In every educational system, there is a pattern established that must be followed. Within U.S. theological schools, there is a pattern of pedagogical values and schemes that determine not only the fields of knowledge, but the degree of each field’s importance, as well. The high-ranking areas in the Christian theological world are arguably Bible and theology. It is around these two fields that everything revolves. The field called “practical theology” is often placed at the periphery of theological priorities. Often, in a seminary, there is Area A: “theology”; Area B: “Bible” (they are often exchanged in their places); and then Area C: “practical theology,” which is composed of the rest of the courses to be taken: homiletics, pastoral care, Christian education and worship. Furthermore, in Area C, there are another layer of values that mark the field of homiletics as of highest importance.
These ways of understanding theological education privilege a certain worldview and are clearly marked and shown by certain expected pedagogies that preference certain intelligences and senses which are well stated in the classrooms, seminary policies, educational outcomes, and large field organizations, such as the American Academy of Religion. This structure is also carefully controlled by higher education systems requiring theological schools to work under a certain expectancy of models and rules now governed by the buzz word associated with assessment—outcomes.
Within this well-worn structure, faculty are to live and organize their thinking and teaching practices. The problem is that much of the theological system is addressed to our minds and to intellectual forms of intelligence and understanding, compartmentalizing life and limiting varied possibilities of knowledge. Faith is something to be figured out rationally, and theology is to love God with our minds. We are all heirs of St. Augustine who claimed: Credo ut intellegam, intellego ut credam, “I believe to understand; I understand to believe,” and St. Anselm of Canterbury who said: Fides quaerens intellectum, “Faith seeking understanding.” Knowledge is something to be wrestled with in a certain kind of rationality that often avoids or does not need the body to comprehend/apprehend, and this is the ground from which we are allowed to move. The body is restricted to minorities, lesser forms of knowledge, and rituals are to embed proper understandings of faith, which is the lex credendi (the law/rule of belief) organizing, limiting, and fixing the lex orandi (the law/rule of prayer).
In one of my classes, Worship and the Arts, we were reading Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a Mexico-USA performer whose work blurs the borders of cultural, sexual, social class identities. He dresses up in weird cloths and exposes often his and his performer friends’ naked bodies. One of my students said: “I think (thus feel) that he is doing something very offensive; I can’t grasp what is the point of what he is doing. I can’t make sense of his actions and what it means.” This student was educated in mostly one sense—the rational, and was equipped to prefer only what one can rationally grasp/control/apprehend. What she cannot understand through her rational thought becomes offensive, or difficult to discern how it also might provide another means toward understanding. The bodily kinesthetic forms of learning are foreign to her capacity to understand because she has not been exposed to alternate forms of learning.
We need to decenter our pedagogies and create possibilities for other narratives, practices and consequently other forms of learning to happen, critically engaging the validity of multiple discourses. It is my contention that to understand is to make sense, and we can only make sense through the senses of our bodies: smelling, tasting, touching, listening, and looking. We need all of these senses in order to make sense, to understand. If we explore our senses, we might become better prepared and empowered to know that we do not need to make an enemy of those whom and that which I do not understand or cannot make sense of; we do not need to make an enemy of that which frightens my senses.
In the Western world, people have heightened the visual and the hearing senses. The entire educational system is grounded mostly on these two senses. Word read and spoken is privileged over other forms of knowing. No wonder we respond to each other when we understand what the other is saying by saying, “I see,” or “I hear you.” If we look at art classes in seminaries, they are often related to visual arts and music. Dance, street art, and performance movements are not often well studied or received. Another student of mine once complained: “I hoped this class was about visual arts, but it is more about performance and I am not comfortable with it.”
The way we set up to learn theology around these two senses forces us to teach in a way that is based on reading and class discussions. Lectures, talks, group conversation, everything is based on spoken and heard words. Those choices often leave our bodies and bodily movements away from our main form of cognition. It is fine to sit for three hours, hear lectures, and talk amongst ourselves, but it is very rare when the class is asked to do something with their bodies and in different places. When students try to use their bodies, they often go into the suspicious mode, already connecting movements with lesser forms of academic rigorous work.
A student’s incapacity to make “sense” outside of certain categories of understanding has to do with the fact that they don’t allow themselves to engage or play with all of their senses and various intelligences.1People in the United States in general tend to use their thinking (seeing and hearing) as their safety net of known senses to apprehend the world and often get offended or confused by somebody else’s way of making sense if people organize their lives, bodily limits, learning, and so on, in other ways of knowing the world. Thus, it does not make sense. Alternate epistemic frameworks can be threatening to students. If we think beyond precise forms of reasoning, we hover around improper academic work, educational lunacy, intellectual stupidity, and ridiculousness.
Since I work at the crossroads of theology and worship, I am often engaging with the performative aspects of theology, including both its writings and its doings. For me, if a theology, any theology, cannot be translated into a certain form of gesture, movement, or ritual, it will be weak and potentially impotent. Ideas are powerful, especially when they turn into ways of defining our ways of living. Thus, theologies, like revolutions, need to go beyond the classroom, to different places, to be tested: streets, sanctuaries, classrooms, public squares, subways, and so on. Ideas have to gain a certain nerve; they have to breathe and makes us sweat in some ways.
Thinking about these juxtapositions of theologies and a vast array of movements and artistic forms, sources, and archives, I have tried, to the horror and shock of many, to create worship services that troubled with the preserved distinctiveness of listening and speaking. Moving with and away from these two senses, bodies are required to move beyond audience mode into becoming subjects of the ritual or worship event. In education, teachers are tasked to challenge our normative behaviors in order to trouble, dissect, question, and discover—and perhaps imagine new possibilities. My efforts are always guided by the desire to expose students to different senses, to expand hearts and bodies and minds to understand, to make sense of, multi-sensory possibilities of religious experiences. In worship services, for instance, even if people cannot understand and engage the liturgical concept at stake, people should be able to engage foreign understandings by pondering or by wondering after an experience. Then, we should learn to honor these different ways of worship that include different ways of understanding, portraying, enacting, and expressing God and what it means to be human before God. What follows are a few case studies that attempted to engage different senses, crossing the boundary of what is typically considered acceptable, holy, and proper, through multi-sensory liturgical movements.
Eucharist on the Floor
Some African cultures will use the ground to cook their foods. The ground is thought to be sacred, so the food does not need to be elevated in order to be cleaned or protected from anything. This way of understanding food and eating is foreign for most of us in the Western world. In the United States, soil is also called “dirt.” So the celebration of the Eucharist was done at the floor of the chapel. A whole meal was prepared, and seeds of many foods were scattered all over. By holding seeds we asked: who owns the seeds? Those who own the seeds own us and define what we are to eat. Who defines labor production, minimum wages, and distribution? How is Eucharist related or not related to eating orders and disorders? People sat on the ground and ate the bread and drank the wine along with all of the other fruits and food offerings brought by other students. Was the food unclean because it was on the floor? Is this way of celebrating the Lord’s Supper improper? What does the ground do to the very ritual of the Eucharist? Or how does the altar protect the bread and the wine? What difference does it make to elevate the bread and wine or to lower it to the floor when celebrating the Eucharist? What kind of senses are we exploring? How does this affect our understanding?
Eucharist with the Noise of the World
The seminary stands at the top of a mountain and it is very peaceful and quiet. This ritual was done in order to juxtapose the troubles of the world with the sacredness of the rite. During the celebration of the Eucharist, a record of a variety of street noises was played. While people were walking towards the altar/table to receive the bread and the wine, a loud sound of mixed conversations, screams, ambulance, police, fire truck noises, car horns, car crashes, loud multitudes, everything was going on while we went to take holy communion. The juxtaposing of these elements was intended to invite students to reflect on the question: how do we make sense of this often quiet, protected, musically enveloped ritual, when the noises of the world are too loud and we cannot escape them? How is the altar related to the world and its tragedies?
Eucharist Performed by Children. Really?
It was again a worship service with the celebration of the Eucharist on children’s Sunday. We decided to bring children to do the whole worship service from their perspective or with their input and/or participation. The chapel has a wall that separates the chancel area from its back stage space. During the Eucharist, there were two children seated next to me, a seven-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy. When time for the words of institution came, I started to move away from the table and went behind the wall, so nobody could see me. At the table, the kids started to do the gesturing along with the words of institution, which were spoken by me. The girl picked up the bread and, while I said: “On the night he was arrested, Jesus took the bread, broke it, blessed and said…,” she broke it and showed it to people. When the words around the wine came, the boy took the cup and poured wine while I said: “In the same way Jesus took the cup, blessed it and said . . .” When the food was ready, we all said: “This is the feast of God to the people of God.” We all came around the table and at the table there were juices and cookies and crackers and cheese. Children made lunches and served each other. The Eucharist was a feast, and the children blessed us all. One girl who helped prepare a Eucharistic lunch for another child said, “I like Eucharist.” With these juxtapositions, students were invited to think about questions such as: What is it that makes the Eucharist a sacrament? Is it the words and handling by ordained ministers? Is it just the words? The whole Eucharistic prayer was said, but because the kids did the gesturing, can we call it a sacrament?
Washing Our Dirty Laundry
One day, we had to deal with the proposals of a school who called itself a diverse school. However, while the website and pictures were showing a very diverse school, in reality the number of students, faculty, and board who were of color was staggering low. In order to take on that issue, a worship service was created so we could pause, and attempt to make sense of ourselves, through ritualized actions. The sermon title was “Airing our Dirty Laundry.” So we decided to put plastic on the chancel area, stretch a laundry line across the area, and have five students literally washing their cloths on a washboard with water and soap. While they were washing their clothes and putting it on the laundry line, a word was spoken about the state of the school: “We tell everybody we are a diverse school, but where is the diversity of the school? We look around and where are the black students? We look at our board and where are the people of color? And do you want to know the Latino/a constituency in this school? Myself, and the whole cleaning crew who could not be here because they are cleaning our offices and classrooms.” This pedagogy of performance helped the school receive a hard word about its identity, manifested not only in documents but through vivid actions. This strategy provided a way of making sense of harsh realities, calling those present to respond, if possible, without anger or hatred.
Present by its Absence
When I was inaugurated as the Assistant Professor of Worship and Preaching at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, I presented on the relation between the things that are visible in our worship services and the things that go unnoticed, or are clearly forbidden. The idea was to show how, by way of what we affirm, we also exclude and deny that which we do not want as part of what we call the ritual that gives us life. During the whole worship, I had the baptismal font and the pulpit wrapped up with yellow tapes with the inscription “Caution!” The Eucharistic table was protected by chicken wire, also wrapped up with yellow tapes with the words “Do not cross.” While the service was underway, about ten students walked around the sanctuary carrying sashes with words: rape, immigrant, domestic violence, human traffic, wars, intolerance, xenophobia, fears, etc. At the end, those present were to be aware of the disasters of the world and, at the same time, without fear of naming that which people also carry within them, they were empowered to struggle for justice and peace. The aim of the pedagogical strategy was to use the worship service as a learning space. The in and the out of the worship service was confused, its borders blurred intentionally in order to show that our worship services have clear cultural, economic, and social and class markers everywhere. Students were invited to reflect on questions such as: What are these fences? Who owns the space? What is allowed inside? Does it make sense?
Border Conference
Every other year, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary holds a Worship and the Arts Conference, led by David Gambrell and myself. David Gambrell and I led one of these conferences. In one of its editions, we decided to work with the theme of Borders. For the first worship service, we built a wall that divided the chapel into two places, left and right, and we kept it in place until the last day when we broke it. From inside of it, there were candies and chocolates—and the kids loved it. But at the first service, we decided to act like the border crossing places around the world. We had two blind students as the police, asking people for their literal IDs or social security. If they had not brought it to the worship, they were placed on the side and not allowed to go in. Meanwhile, those with identification would be carried inside of the sanctuary. While these rejected people were waiting, some other students acted like “coyotes” and promised to take them inside of the sanctuary by the back door to which they had access, but people would have to give up something: a purse, a watch, a glass, money—something to exchange for the worship experience. Some accepted the play, and students would take them across campus and through bushes and offices until they finally arrived at the back door. Some got easier routes. Some got lost and some got there only at the end of the worship service. Some did not want to go through the adventure and stayed at the door throughout the whole worship service, not fully understanding what was happening.
Pedagogies of performance can enable participants to reflect on unexamined questions. Students were invited to reflect on a host of questions that involved ritual activities. Are our rituals filled with borders we do not realize? These “stupid” actions might show that the borders of countries are inextricably connected with the borders of our religious sacred sites. Bringing different ways of sensing our sacred rituals might confuse our senses, but it also offers us ways to engage it together, thus, perhaps, preparing us to engage reality with new tools.
Wine on People’s Hands
It was a multicultural conference and the challenge was: how do we share the Eucharist with people on the streets? How do we serve wine without cups? The pedagogical strategy was aimed at helping students understand and reflect more directly on the experience of people in the streets who live lives of scarcity. The strategy involved inviting everyone to sit down on the floor around the room. As they did so, they were asked to cup their hands. Words were said while the wine was administered and people drank from their hands. Some wine was expelled on the floor and some people were very anxious. Some others were licking their hands and fists as to dry out their hands. The visceral experience of having no cup from which to drink provides an apt way by which students can query ritual activity associated with the Eucharist. For example, how does this experience change our understanding of the Eucharist? What would we do if we did not have a cup to pour out the wine? How do we make sense of this ritual when the necessary holy things are not available?
Eucharist with Gestures and Without Words
What does it mean to partake of the Eucharist without words? Pedagogies that seek to expand knowing through direct engagement with sensory awareness involves interacting with a range of sensory ways of knowing. For example, in this case, there was the welcoming, the prayers of forgiveness, the Gospel was preached, and hymns were sung. At the time for the meal, the Eucharistic prayer was done with different gestures, but with no words. After that, bread and wine were distributed without any direction of how to take it. Some people partook of it, and offered thanksgiving to God. Some other people said “No!” Some people were angry; some people blessed. What is it that makes the Eucharist a sacrament?
Faith With/Out Faith
Another example of this kinesthetic pedagogy of performance involved a worship/performance that was done at Union Theological Seminary and was intended to blur the lines between worship and play, to confuse senses of how to see/feel/analyze both worship services and theater plays. In this pedagogical case example, the ritual space was set up in a “U” shape facing the “altar.” The altar had a main screen, pulpit, and table. The table had flowers, milk, honey, bread, candles, and a standing Bible as well as Caravaggio’s painting of St. Thomas. The pulpit and the table were placed to the side of the screen. Various paintings on the story of St. Thomas were placed throughout the columns of James Chapel. There were two sites in different parts of the chapel with the following: 1) a fight between two men dressed up in black suits and ties; 2) a woman who was praising God and singing alleluia. They were doing that until the sermon began. An actor performed a “holy fool challenging guy in the park”, using lots of gestures, dressed up in liturgical clothes, and crossing the chapel from time to time throughout the liturgical play, always saying “Remember. . . . Pay attention.” The pastor was seated near the screen. The Trickster and the Prophet, two characters in the service/play, were seated on the other side of the screen.
People were welcomed by the choir. The choir members were dressed in dark clothes with their heads and half of their faces covered. They carried brooms (floor sweepers) in their hands. They were spread throughout the chapel and were sweeping the floor and humming a song (the chorus of the song “Are We the Waiting” by Green Day). As they sang, they greeted people at the door and took them to their seats. Then they were seated all over the chapel. They were in charge of helping the congregation to do the readings and responses throughout the service that appeared on the main screen.
The service opened with the leader expressing that he was in pain, no longer certain that there is a God. “God is beyond our reach, in between the known and the unknown. God might as well pass like a trickster, laughing at our theologies. At the same time, God is like a prophet, giving depth to our words.” In responses, the congregation tries to tell the leader that God is known and knowable. They say that the leader should not be leading them, and that he is confusing them. He asks, “Is it only me who is trying to deal with this disquiet of faith? Are you all always so sure about the ways in which you know God and worship him? Her? It? I wish I could be so certain as you all. I am not certain and still want to worship. . . . Could you linger a little longer with me here please? Let’s stay here for a while, if you don’t mind. God might appear, you know.” A Buddhist bowl is struck, and the people plead to follow the order of service. The leader says yes, but “Let’s wait.” The people are impatient, and accuse the leader of being like Job, or like Paul, or like Thomas—to which the leader says, “Yes!” And the people listen to his story, and then sing with Sweet Honey in the Rock, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Then they say a prayer of confession: “Dear God, are we there yet? How long till we cross the Rubicon, till we are safe in bed at home? We are some of the ones who have been waiting for . . . too long Sometimes you abuse our faith and leave us waiting and wanting, waiting and wanting. That waiting/wanting pierces our faith in different ways. We are mortally wounded by this faith you gave to us. We confess that we don’t have the necessary wisdom to understand your ways and still believe, and still hold on to our Alleluias! Teach us to dwell in your house of horror and relief, burden and enjoyment. . . . Forgive us the lack as well as the excessiveness of our faith. And like that father in the gospel of St. Mark, we say once again: “I believe, help my unbelief.” Forgive our faithful unbelief.” When the leader assures the congregation of pardon, he is drowned out. Then he says, “Let’s share the peace of Christ,” but the crazy guy shouts, “I am NOT in peace.”
The leader stops and does not know what to do. . . . He looks at the person who shouts, turning his eyes from him as he makes the sign with his hands, and saying again in a quieter voice, “Let’s share the peace of Christ.” The crazy guy says, “I am not in peace, no sir.” The leader, insecure at first, but with greater conviction, says, “LET US SHARE THE PEACE OF CHRIST.” The crazy guy shouts, “I am NOT in peace. Can you hear me: I am NOT in peace. Actually I am in pieces. Do you know the difference? . . . Peace of Christ—this is a luxury! Do you know how many people have all kinds of problems, who are always in pain, that cannot have peace at all? Peace of Christ. . . . Do you want a piece of me? Peace of Christ. . . . Bullshit! That’s what it is!” The leader prays for illumination, and a candle lights the dark sanctuary. The pedagogy of performance has a way of helping students move from a solely head knowledge of worship to one that engages the whole body.
Conclusion
Crazy, outrageous, daring, challenging, disrespectful, blessing, powerful. These worship services were named with many names by students, faculty, and administrators.
What did I want to do with it all? This pedagogical method aims to expose students to a variety of senses so they could, among other things, learn: a) that their senses are not enough; b) that their theology is not the only one encompassing map of the world; c) that they cannot make sense of so many things of their faith, life, and this world; d) that they have to trust somebody else in order to be fully part of something else for the glory of God; e) that they have to respond to it firmly, in favor or against it, and get themselves expanded in many directions; and f) that they have to make sense of their theologies through different, sometimes strange gestures, foreign movements, outrageous practices, and “improper” ways of worshiping God.
As Tom Driver says, “rituals are pathways,” and we have to wrestle together to discover the many pathways yet undiscovered, and to check the ones we already have.2 Rituals are risk-taking, expanding our repertoire of emotions, reasonings, bodily feelings, senses, and understandings. They are a never ending exercise on the archeology of knowledges, practices, discourses, and ways of believing, living, organizing ourselves. In these processes, we reform pedagogical centers, challenge educational limitations, expand the strictness of our “traditionally expected” outcomes, open ourselves and the educational process for what is not imagined, sizable, prefigured, or “allowed.” As we do it, we decolonize our minds, which is inextricably related to the decolonization of our bodies.
Does it make sense? How might one’s understanding of theology and worship be transformed through pedagogies of performance?
NOTES
Cláudio Carvalhaes is an associate professor of worship and liturgy at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. He was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, and earned his doctorate from Union Theological Seminary. He has published articles in English, Spanish, and Portuguese on the relation between globalization, immigration, multiculturalism, and postcolonial theologies/liturgies, worship, the arts, and Christian faith. Eucharist and Globalization: Redrawing the Borders of Eucharistic Hospitality was published by Wipf and Stock in 2013, and What Worship Has To Do With It: Interpreting Life, Church, and the World Liturgically is forthcoming.
The photographs are by Michael Whitman. See http://michaelwhitman.net.
In every educational system, there is a pattern established that must be followed. Within U.S. theological schools, there is a pattern of pedagogical values and schemes that determine not only the fields of knowledge, but the degree of each field’s importance, as well. The high-ranking areas in the Christian theological world are arguably Bible and theology. It is around these two fields that everything revolves. The field called “practical theology” is often placed at the periphery of theological priorities. Often, in a seminary, there is Area A: “theology”; Area B: “Bible” (they are often exchanged in their places); and then Area C: “practical theology,” which is composed of the rest of the courses to be taken: homiletics, pastoral care, Christian education and worship. Furthermore, in Area C, there are another layer of values that mark the field of homiletics as of highest importance.
These ways of understanding theological education privilege a certain worldview and are clearly marked and shown by certain expected pedagogies that preference certain intelligences and senses which are well stated in the classrooms, seminary policies, educational outcomes, and large field organizations, such as the American Academy of Religion. This structure is also carefully controlled by higher education systems requiring theological schools to work under a certain expectancy of models and rules now governed by the buzz word associated with assessment—outcomes.
Within this well-worn structure, faculty are to live and organize their thinking and teaching practices. The problem is that much of the theological system is addressed to our minds and to intellectual forms of intelligence and understanding, compartmentalizing life and limiting varied possibilities of knowledge. Faith is something to be figured out rationally, and theology is to love God with our minds. We are all heirs of St. Augustine who claimed: Credo ut intellegam, intellego ut credam, “I believe to understand; I understand to believe,” and St. Anselm of Canterbury who said: Fides quaerens intellectum, “Faith seeking understanding.” Knowledge is something to be wrestled with in a certain kind of rationality that often avoids or does not need the body to comprehend/apprehend, and this is the ground from which we are allowed to move. The body is restricted to minorities, lesser forms of knowledge, and rituals are to embed proper understandings of faith, which is the lex credendi (the law/rule of belief) organizing, limiting, and fixing the lex orandi (the law/rule of prayer).
In one of my classes, Worship and the Arts, we were reading Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a Mexico-USA performer whose work blurs the borders of cultural, sexual, social class identities. He dresses up in weird cloths and exposes often his and his performer friends’ naked bodies. One of my students said: “I think (thus feel) that he is doing something very offensive; I can’t grasp what is the point of what he is doing. I can’t make sense of his actions and what it means.” This student was educated in mostly one sense—the rational, and was equipped to prefer only what one can rationally grasp/control/apprehend. What she cannot understand through her rational thought becomes offensive, or difficult to discern how it also might provide another means toward understanding. The bodily kinesthetic forms of learning are foreign to her capacity to understand because she has not been exposed to alternate forms of learning.
We need to decenter our pedagogies and create possibilities for other narratives, practices and consequently other forms of learning to happen, critically engaging the validity of multiple discourses. It is my contention that to understand is to make sense, and we can only make sense through the senses of our bodies: smelling, tasting, touching, listening, and looking. We need all of these senses in order to make sense, to understand. If we explore our senses, we might become better prepared and empowered to know that we do not need to make an enemy of those whom and that which I do not understand or cannot make sense of; we do not need to make an enemy of that which frightens my senses.
In the Western world, people have heightened the visual and the hearing senses. The entire educational system is grounded mostly on these two senses. Word read and spoken is privileged over other forms of knowing. No wonder we respond to each other when we understand what the other is saying by saying, “I see,” or “I hear you.” If we look at art classes in seminaries, they are often related to visual arts and music. Dance, street art, and performance movements are not often well studied or received. Another student of mine once complained: “I hoped this class was about visual arts, but it is more about performance and I am not comfortable with it.”
The way we set up to learn theology around these two senses forces us to teach in a way that is based on reading and class discussions. Lectures, talks, group conversation, everything is based on spoken and heard words. Those choices often leave our bodies and bodily movements away from our main form of cognition. It is fine to sit for three hours, hear lectures, and talk amongst ourselves, but it is very rare when the class is asked to do something with their bodies and in different places. When students try to use their bodies, they often go into the suspicious mode, already connecting movements with lesser forms of academic rigorous work.
A student’s incapacity to make “sense” outside of certain categories of understanding has to do with the fact that they don’t allow themselves to engage or play with all of their senses and various intelligences.1People in the United States in general tend to use their thinking (seeing and hearing) as their safety net of known senses to apprehend the world and often get offended or confused by somebody else’s way of making sense if people organize their lives, bodily limits, learning, and so on, in other ways of knowing the world. Thus, it does not make sense. Alternate epistemic frameworks can be threatening to students. If we think beyond precise forms of reasoning, we hover around improper academic work, educational lunacy, intellectual stupidity, and ridiculousness.
Since I work at the crossroads of theology and worship, I am often engaging with the performative aspects of theology, including both its writings and its doings. For me, if a theology, any theology, cannot be translated into a certain form of gesture, movement, or ritual, it will be weak and potentially impotent. Ideas are powerful, especially when they turn into ways of defining our ways of living. Thus, theologies, like revolutions, need to go beyond the classroom, to different places, to be tested: streets, sanctuaries, classrooms, public squares, subways, and so on. Ideas have to gain a certain nerve; they have to breathe and makes us sweat in some ways.
Thinking about these juxtapositions of theologies and a vast array of movements and artistic forms, sources, and archives, I have tried, to the horror and shock of many, to create worship services that troubled with the preserved distinctiveness of listening and speaking. Moving with and away from these two senses, bodies are required to move beyond audience mode into becoming subjects of the ritual or worship event. In education, teachers are tasked to challenge our normative behaviors in order to trouble, dissect, question, and discover—and perhaps imagine new possibilities. My efforts are always guided by the desire to expose students to different senses, to expand hearts and bodies and minds to understand, to make sense of, multi-sensory possibilities of religious experiences. In worship services, for instance, even if people cannot understand and engage the liturgical concept at stake, people should be able to engage foreign understandings by pondering or by wondering after an experience. Then, we should learn to honor these different ways of worship that include different ways of understanding, portraying, enacting, and expressing God and what it means to be human before God. What follows are a few case studies that attempted to engage different senses, crossing the boundary of what is typically considered acceptable, holy, and proper, through multi-sensory liturgical movements.
Eucharist on the Floor
Some African cultures will use the ground to cook their foods. The ground is thought to be sacred, so the food does not need to be elevated in order to be cleaned or protected from anything. This way of understanding food and eating is foreign for most of us in the Western world. In the United States, soil is also called “dirt.” So the celebration of the Eucharist was done at the floor of the chapel. A whole meal was prepared, and seeds of many foods were scattered all over. By holding seeds we asked: who owns the seeds? Those who own the seeds own us and define what we are to eat. Who defines labor production, minimum wages, and distribution? How is Eucharist related or not related to eating orders and disorders? People sat on the ground and ate the bread and drank the wine along with all of the other fruits and food offerings brought by other students. Was the food unclean because it was on the floor? Is this way of celebrating the Lord’s Supper improper? What does the ground do to the very ritual of the Eucharist? Or how does the altar protect the bread and the wine? What difference does it make to elevate the bread and wine or to lower it to the floor when celebrating the Eucharist? What kind of senses are we exploring? How does this affect our understanding?
Eucharist with the Noise of the World
The seminary stands at the top of a mountain and it is very peaceful and quiet. This ritual was done in order to juxtapose the troubles of the world with the sacredness of the rite. During the celebration of the Eucharist, a record of a variety of street noises was played. While people were walking towards the altar/table to receive the bread and the wine, a loud sound of mixed conversations, screams, ambulance, police, fire truck noises, car horns, car crashes, loud multitudes, everything was going on while we went to take holy communion. The juxtaposing of these elements was intended to invite students to reflect on the question: how do we make sense of this often quiet, protected, musically enveloped ritual, when the noises of the world are too loud and we cannot escape them? How is the altar related to the world and its tragedies?
Eucharist Performed by Children. Really?
It was again a worship service with the celebration of the Eucharist on children’s Sunday. We decided to bring children to do the whole worship service from their perspective or with their input and/or participation. The chapel has a wall that separates the chancel area from its back stage space. During the Eucharist, there were two children seated next to me, a seven-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy. When time for the words of institution came, I started to move away from the table and went behind the wall, so nobody could see me. At the table, the kids started to do the gesturing along with the words of institution, which were spoken by me. The girl picked up the bread and, while I said: “On the night he was arrested, Jesus took the bread, broke it, blessed and said…,” she broke it and showed it to people. When the words around the wine came, the boy took the cup and poured wine while I said: “In the same way Jesus took the cup, blessed it and said . . .” When the food was ready, we all said: “This is the feast of God to the people of God.” We all came around the table and at the table there were juices and cookies and crackers and cheese. Children made lunches and served each other. The Eucharist was a feast, and the children blessed us all. One girl who helped prepare a Eucharistic lunch for another child said, “I like Eucharist.” With these juxtapositions, students were invited to think about questions such as: What is it that makes the Eucharist a sacrament? Is it the words and handling by ordained ministers? Is it just the words? The whole Eucharistic prayer was said, but because the kids did the gesturing, can we call it a sacrament?
Washing Our Dirty Laundry
One day, we had to deal with the proposals of a school who called itself a diverse school. However, while the website and pictures were showing a very diverse school, in reality the number of students, faculty, and board who were of color was staggering low. In order to take on that issue, a worship service was created so we could pause, and attempt to make sense of ourselves, through ritualized actions. The sermon title was “Airing our Dirty Laundry.” So we decided to put plastic on the chancel area, stretch a laundry line across the area, and have five students literally washing their cloths on a washboard with water and soap. While they were washing their clothes and putting it on the laundry line, a word was spoken about the state of the school: “We tell everybody we are a diverse school, but where is the diversity of the school? We look around and where are the black students? We look at our board and where are the people of color? And do you want to know the Latino/a constituency in this school? Myself, and the whole cleaning crew who could not be here because they are cleaning our offices and classrooms.” This pedagogy of performance helped the school receive a hard word about its identity, manifested not only in documents but through vivid actions. This strategy provided a way of making sense of harsh realities, calling those present to respond, if possible, without anger or hatred.
Present by its Absence
When I was inaugurated as the Assistant Professor of Worship and Preaching at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, I presented on the relation between the things that are visible in our worship services and the things that go unnoticed, or are clearly forbidden. The idea was to show how, by way of what we affirm, we also exclude and deny that which we do not want as part of what we call the ritual that gives us life. During the whole worship, I had the baptismal font and the pulpit wrapped up with yellow tapes with the inscription “Caution!” The Eucharistic table was protected by chicken wire, also wrapped up with yellow tapes with the words “Do not cross.” While the service was underway, about ten students walked around the sanctuary carrying sashes with words: rape, immigrant, domestic violence, human traffic, wars, intolerance, xenophobia, fears, etc. At the end, those present were to be aware of the disasters of the world and, at the same time, without fear of naming that which people also carry within them, they were empowered to struggle for justice and peace. The aim of the pedagogical strategy was to use the worship service as a learning space. The in and the out of the worship service was confused, its borders blurred intentionally in order to show that our worship services have clear cultural, economic, and social and class markers everywhere. Students were invited to reflect on questions such as: What are these fences? Who owns the space? What is allowed inside? Does it make sense?
Border Conference
Every other year, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary holds a Worship and the Arts Conference, led by David Gambrell and myself. David Gambrell and I led one of these conferences. In one of its editions, we decided to work with the theme of Borders. For the first worship service, we built a wall that divided the chapel into two places, left and right, and we kept it in place until the last day when we broke it. From inside of it, there were candies and chocolates—and the kids loved it. But at the first service, we decided to act like the border crossing places around the world. We had two blind students as the police, asking people for their literal IDs or social security. If they had not brought it to the worship, they were placed on the side and not allowed to go in. Meanwhile, those with identification would be carried inside of the sanctuary. While these rejected people were waiting, some other students acted like “coyotes” and promised to take them inside of the sanctuary by the back door to which they had access, but people would have to give up something: a purse, a watch, a glass, money—something to exchange for the worship experience. Some accepted the play, and students would take them across campus and through bushes and offices until they finally arrived at the back door. Some got easier routes. Some got lost and some got there only at the end of the worship service. Some did not want to go through the adventure and stayed at the door throughout the whole worship service, not fully understanding what was happening.
Pedagogies of performance can enable participants to reflect on unexamined questions. Students were invited to reflect on a host of questions that involved ritual activities. Are our rituals filled with borders we do not realize? These “stupid” actions might show that the borders of countries are inextricably connected with the borders of our religious sacred sites. Bringing different ways of sensing our sacred rituals might confuse our senses, but it also offers us ways to engage it together, thus, perhaps, preparing us to engage reality with new tools.
Wine on People’s Hands
It was a multicultural conference and the challenge was: how do we share the Eucharist with people on the streets? How do we serve wine without cups? The pedagogical strategy was aimed at helping students understand and reflect more directly on the experience of people in the streets who live lives of scarcity. The strategy involved inviting everyone to sit down on the floor around the room. As they did so, they were asked to cup their hands. Words were said while the wine was administered and people drank from their hands. Some wine was expelled on the floor and some people were very anxious. Some others were licking their hands and fists as to dry out their hands. The visceral experience of having no cup from which to drink provides an apt way by which students can query ritual activity associated with the Eucharist. For example, how does this experience change our understanding of the Eucharist? What would we do if we did not have a cup to pour out the wine? How do we make sense of this ritual when the necessary holy things are not available?
Eucharist with Gestures and Without Words
What does it mean to partake of the Eucharist without words? Pedagogies that seek to expand knowing through direct engagement with sensory awareness involves interacting with a range of sensory ways of knowing. For example, in this case, there was the welcoming, the prayers of forgiveness, the Gospel was preached, and hymns were sung. At the time for the meal, the Eucharistic prayer was done with different gestures, but with no words. After that, bread and wine were distributed without any direction of how to take it. Some people partook of it, and offered thanksgiving to God. Some other people said “No!” Some people were angry; some people blessed. What is it that makes the Eucharist a sacrament?
Faith With/Out Faith
Another example of this kinesthetic pedagogy of performance involved a worship/performance that was done at Union Theological Seminary and was intended to blur the lines between worship and play, to confuse senses of how to see/feel/analyze both worship services and theater plays. In this pedagogical case example, the ritual space was set up in a “U” shape facing the “altar.” The altar had a main screen, pulpit, and table. The table had flowers, milk, honey, bread, candles, and a standing Bible as well as Caravaggio’s painting of St. Thomas. The pulpit and the table were placed to the side of the screen. Various paintings on the story of St. Thomas were placed throughout the columns of James Chapel. There were two sites in different parts of the chapel with the following: 1) a fight between two men dressed up in black suits and ties; 2) a woman who was praising God and singing alleluia. They were doing that until the sermon began. An actor performed a “holy fool challenging guy in the park”, using lots of gestures, dressed up in liturgical clothes, and crossing the chapel from time to time throughout the liturgical play, always saying “Remember. . . . Pay attention.” The pastor was seated near the screen. The Trickster and the Prophet, two characters in the service/play, were seated on the other side of the screen.
People were welcomed by the choir. The choir members were dressed in dark clothes with their heads and half of their faces covered. They carried brooms (floor sweepers) in their hands. They were spread throughout the chapel and were sweeping the floor and humming a song (the chorus of the song “Are We the Waiting” by Green Day). As they sang, they greeted people at the door and took them to their seats. Then they were seated all over the chapel. They were in charge of helping the congregation to do the readings and responses throughout the service that appeared on the main screen.
The service opened with the leader expressing that he was in pain, no longer certain that there is a God. “God is beyond our reach, in between the known and the unknown. God might as well pass like a trickster, laughing at our theologies. At the same time, God is like a prophet, giving depth to our words.” In responses, the congregation tries to tell the leader that God is known and knowable. They say that the leader should not be leading them, and that he is confusing them. He asks, “Is it only me who is trying to deal with this disquiet of faith? Are you all always so sure about the ways in which you know God and worship him? Her? It? I wish I could be so certain as you all. I am not certain and still want to worship. . . . Could you linger a little longer with me here please? Let’s stay here for a while, if you don’t mind. God might appear, you know.” A Buddhist bowl is struck, and the people plead to follow the order of service. The leader says yes, but “Let’s wait.” The people are impatient, and accuse the leader of being like Job, or like Paul, or like Thomas—to which the leader says, “Yes!” And the people listen to his story, and then sing with Sweet Honey in the Rock, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Then they say a prayer of confession: “Dear God, are we there yet? How long till we cross the Rubicon, till we are safe in bed at home? We are some of the ones who have been waiting for . . . too long Sometimes you abuse our faith and leave us waiting and wanting, waiting and wanting. That waiting/wanting pierces our faith in different ways. We are mortally wounded by this faith you gave to us. We confess that we don’t have the necessary wisdom to understand your ways and still believe, and still hold on to our Alleluias! Teach us to dwell in your house of horror and relief, burden and enjoyment. . . . Forgive us the lack as well as the excessiveness of our faith. And like that father in the gospel of St. Mark, we say once again: “I believe, help my unbelief.” Forgive our faithful unbelief.” When the leader assures the congregation of pardon, he is drowned out. Then he says, “Let’s share the peace of Christ,” but the crazy guy shouts, “I am NOT in peace.”
The leader stops and does not know what to do. . . . He looks at the person who shouts, turning his eyes from him as he makes the sign with his hands, and saying again in a quieter voice, “Let’s share the peace of Christ.” The crazy guy says, “I am not in peace, no sir.” The leader, insecure at first, but with greater conviction, says, “LET US SHARE THE PEACE OF CHRIST.” The crazy guy shouts, “I am NOT in peace. Can you hear me: I am NOT in peace. Actually I am in pieces. Do you know the difference? . . . Peace of Christ—this is a luxury! Do you know how many people have all kinds of problems, who are always in pain, that cannot have peace at all? Peace of Christ. . . . Do you want a piece of me? Peace of Christ. . . . Bullshit! That’s what it is!” The leader prays for illumination, and a candle lights the dark sanctuary. The pedagogy of performance has a way of helping students move from a solely head knowledge of worship to one that engages the whole body.
Conclusion
Crazy, outrageous, daring, challenging, disrespectful, blessing, powerful. These worship services were named with many names by students, faculty, and administrators.
What did I want to do with it all? This pedagogical method aims to expose students to a variety of senses so they could, among other things, learn: a) that their senses are not enough; b) that their theology is not the only one encompassing map of the world; c) that they cannot make sense of so many things of their faith, life, and this world; d) that they have to trust somebody else in order to be fully part of something else for the glory of God; e) that they have to respond to it firmly, in favor or against it, and get themselves expanded in many directions; and f) that they have to make sense of their theologies through different, sometimes strange gestures, foreign movements, outrageous practices, and “improper” ways of worshiping God.
As Tom Driver says, “rituals are pathways,” and we have to wrestle together to discover the many pathways yet undiscovered, and to check the ones we already have.2 Rituals are risk-taking, expanding our repertoire of emotions, reasonings, bodily feelings, senses, and understandings. They are a never ending exercise on the archeology of knowledges, practices, discourses, and ways of believing, living, organizing ourselves. In these processes, we reform pedagogical centers, challenge educational limitations, expand the strictness of our “traditionally expected” outcomes, open ourselves and the educational process for what is not imagined, sizable, prefigured, or “allowed.” As we do it, we decolonize our minds, which is inextricably related to the decolonization of our bodies.
Does it make sense? How might one’s understanding of theology and worship be transformed through pedagogies of performance?
NOTES
- Howard E. Gardner, Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice (New York: Basic Books, 2006).
- Tom Driver, Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1998), 28.
