Theopoetics Podcast

In this episode, Carolina and Tim discuss her ancestral rootedness as an author and poet. They explore her theopoetic lens as a frame for the creative task and thinking about God, the ways in which embodiment and decolonization play a role in her language and academic work, and her wisdom about drawing upon family, food, land, and culture to heal the world. The second half of this episode is also a recording from last year’s Theopoetics Conference Rubem Alves Award Reception Banquet.

In this episode, Jon and Tim discuss underground rap as a process-aesthetic religion. They talk about how Jon creatively entangles his hip-hop experience with his philosophical and theological lenses, the ways in which the underground hip-hop scene operates as a creative communal expression of becoming identity, and how he has come to embody the theopoetic dynamics of underground hiphop as an author, religious scholar, and rapper himself.

In this episode, Michael and Tim discuss a poetics of enjoying art by allowing theology to be revealed through art. They talk about how to bring a deep awareness to the engagement with art, how his own process of transformation comes through exploring poetics and curation, and we explore what intersections are possible between spirituality and art in the contemporary world.

In this episode, Teresa and Tim discuss Teresa’s journey of inner transformation and healing through the image of the Camino and her new book, Going Naked. They talk about her understanding of liberation through the process of letting go, her practical wisdom around the spiritual dimensions of healing trauma, and the way in which ancestry and intersectionality play a role in the homecoming of one’s personal identity.

In this episode, Anna and Tim discuss her creative work and its connection with activism as a form of engaged spirituality. They talk about Anna’s peace building work in Palestine, her care for words within the importance of storying and listening, and how art and the sacred intersect to create pathways of healing and restoration.

In this episode, Anuj and Tim discuss the ecological impact of the cinematic medium. They talk about scope as a lens for filmmaking, creating conversational settings to reflect upon cinema and the environment, and we dialogue about some of his projects and how they invite a process-relational perspective through a kind of storytelling that grapples with the toxic legacy of human exceptionalism.

In this episode, KJ and Tim discuss the body as a location for disrupting Christian hegemony through the practice of dance. They talk about the role that unruliness has played in liberating KJ’s own experience of their body, a queer phenomenology of the body of Christ, and the role that sacramentalism and embodiment have played in their expressive choreography.

In this episode, Ash and Tim discuss what formed her passion for faith and justice and her work in faith-based organizing in the South. They talk about LGBTQ activism in faith spaces, her experience of and working out what she calls “millennial theology,” and how she sees the theopoetic idea of divine inquisitiveness as a practice, art, and tool for shifting culture.

In this episode, Bo and Tim discuss Bo’s recent public exit from evangelicalism and how he is adapting church for the 21st century. They talk about how critical theory has widened and transformed his own theological perspective, what this new approach means for those who are in spiritual migration, and how this constructive posture is translating new possibilities for communal religious life today.

In this episode, José and Tim discuss a phenomenology of wonder and its relationship to generosity. They talk about how this wild form of wonder opens us to the world, the self, and God, its connection with a life of liturgy and liberation, and how attuning to the ground and practice of generosity can make us radically available to the experiences of wonder and joy.