An Easter Gift to Me, and Now to You: A Theological Conversation Between Ivone Gebara and Me, "Sharing Our Life as Theology"

Here's an Easter gift given to me by some wonderful people, which I want to give, in turn. to you (with more than a little hesitancy, because — I'll just say this now and be cone with it: I'm so embarrassed, always, to watch a video of myself and listen to myself). This is a theological conversation I had the honor to take part in, with a real theologian, one whom I admire tremendously, Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara.

This dialogue was dreamed up and made possible by two marvelous human beings who have made so many valuable contributions to Bilgrimage, Rachel Fitzgerald and Mark Shumway. Rachel and Mark have uploaded this clip to their evolvingdeepforms blog, and also to YouTube. As Mark's introduction to the videotaped Skype conversation also notes, giving valuable assistance as Ivone and I talked was Marlene DeNardo, who helped translate from Portuguese to English when Ivone, who speaks superb English, searched for particular words. Also absolutely essential was Christopher Shumway, whose technological savvy made the whole thing work like a dream.

I'm deeply grateful to all these folks (though I wish I could be someone really worth watching and listening to). I'm very grateful to Mark and Rachel for the countless hours they put into making this project work, conceiving of it, setting it up, coordinating it, editing the video (Mark's additional contribution, and a real labor of love), and then putting the video up at evolvingdeepforms and YouTube. And I'm deeply grateful to Ivone Gebara for graciously being willing to have a theological discussion with me.

Much that we talk about here is, to my ear, Easter — our longing for resurrection, from our vantage points of marginalization and of solidarity with others marginalized in church and society. And our celebration of the gracious, life-giving gift of Spirit among those who live where Jesus lived, on the margins. A happy and blessed Easter to those of you celebrating Easter, a great Sunday to all of you everywhere.