To release intuition: an evening with Ivone Gebara

Catholic New Times, Nov 2, 2003 by Heather Eaton

"If a theology does not emerge from and relate to our human experience, and assist us in moving towards freedom, then it should be abandoned."

These words of Ivone Gebara, Brazilian ecofeminist liberation theologian, were spoken recently in Canada.

Gebara spent a month teaching a course at l'Universite de Montreal, and gave a conference at the Centre for Women and Christian Traditions at Saint Paul University in Ottawa. Her talks were insightful and grace-filled.

Ivone Gebara lives in Recife, Brazil, a religious sister living in a shantytown surrounded by intense poverty and violence, typical of many parts of the world. She speaks four languages, has a doctorate in theology and in philosophy, and is an academic phenomenon in the breadth and depth of her historical and contemporary knowledge.

Her books are theological bestsellers: Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation, Out of the Depths: Women's Experience of Evil and Salvation and most recently Les eaux do mon putts: Reflexions sur des experiences de liberte.

She is a liberation theologian, one who uses a method of theological analysis that starts with the suffering of the most marginalized. Not a new idea but still most theology is done by the privileged, from their viewpoint and serving their interests. In Latin America as elsewhere, the Pentecostal churches are making great strides, offering services that are energizing for the people and often dazzling in performance skills. They provide clear-cut belief systems in a complex, confounding and grossly unfair world.

But, Gebara notes, they offer little in terres of social analysis or critique of the systemic, daily sufferings of most of the people.

The Catholic church is getting into the game with media-savvy, singing priests. But for Gebara, these expressions of Christianity are far removed from her concerns and spiritual orientation.

She sees women, trying to care for their children, living in situations of extreme poverty and often violence, having to work long hours, far from home, and who cry out for release and freedom from daily oppression. She reminds us that there are many places feminism does not reach.

She thinks that the Catholic church in its current form has virtually nothing to offer these women. It is too patriarchal, too hierarchical, too elitist, and it does not do theology from the experience of these women. Most theologians barely acknowledge the experiential roots of their beliefs.

Her second theme is freedom. From where does the desire for freedom emerge s he asks. How is it manifested and understood?

Gebara gave a brilliant reflection on freedom, opening her talk with a description of how the great philosophical and theological traditions start with the metaphysical dimensions, or with an anthropological universal, or a great, abstract, idea.

"I want to talk about freedom from the other end, the place of suffering and lack of freedom." She spoke of people's lives, and showed that within experiences of oppression and suffering, there is a cry of pain.

From the cry there emerges a desire for freedom, and if this desire is nurtured it moves towards understanding the sources of oppression Then one can begin to act for freedom, resisting the causes that limit one, and opening possibilities of freedom.

Freedom is nothing if it is not existential. But it is hot about unrestrained actions, or unlimited ranges of choices. Freedom is difficult to talk about in cultures that idolize the individual, that ignore the social, economic, political and religious systems that impede a decent life. To talk about freedom today is to release intuitions, not make grandiose claims.

Finally, Gebara is the culmination of a lire of intense living, learning, reflecting, encountering many cultures and peoples, and being in deep distress about what is happening to the world. The rise of suffering in human communities, and the seemingly inability to effect real change, the spreading of an ecological wasteland of the immense and stunning earth, the religious and political traditions moving towards fundamentalism, and the inundation of a crass media world--what does one do in the face of these realities?

I walked with the Brazilian in a field near Ottawa and talked about these directions of the world, and of our despair, of the loss of the sense of divine presence as the earth diminishes, and how few Christians experience the sacred in the earth community.

We shared out desires and hopes, and talked about the World Social Forum, the emerging alliance of religion and ecology, the inspiring work in cosmology, the inter-religious efforts, the women's movement, the rising consciousness of non-violence.

Her analysis is razor-sharp. Yet what is moving about Gebara is her deep love of the world, of all life, of the dignity of humanity. She experiences life embedded in and filled with the graceful presence of the Sacred. She lives and breathes this vision--it is what she sees--and hence suffers greatly with the suffering of the world/earth. She resists those forces that limit life and the Divine, and draws from the wisdom traditions of the great religions to counter the techno-fundamentalist moves of our era. Hers is is a prophetic voice, a woman of deep integrity.