Interview with Artist Megan Clay.
Megan Clay holds a degree in English and Theology and is currently studying for a
PhD in Theology researching in the area of children’s spirituality and sexuality. She
is a free lance book illustrator.
Lisa:
Hello Megan, what fantastic art work you have produced for this project, tell
me what is the inspiration behind it?
Megan: Thank you I really enjoyed this work. Inspiration, well it is always from many
places but of course central to all my work is feminist liberation theology and
its challenge to look beyond what we see. As you know feminist theology is
interdisciplinary and that too has been a great help for me when I began to
think about how to theoretically frame my work.
Lisa:
So who were you reading and thinking with as you began the project?
Megan: Oh it goes back further than the beginning of the project, in fact it started with
your own work ‘Liberating Christ’ which took me beyond what I thought
Christology was and could be- it opened a door of possibilities and at the same
time showed how women have been excluded from the story. In engaging with
how these excluded women thought about Christ the whole dynamics of my
world were changed and I began to think differently.
Lisa:
Well thank you. So this work is Christology?
Megan: yes absolutely in that feminist christologies and particularly those put
forward by you and Heyward who understand this as gift and empowerment.
Swimme & Berry tell us that the cosmos itself is both gift and empowerment
so in that way there is a starting point. When you commissioned me for this
project I felt that I understood the heart of it- but it has been a great journey of
discovery since then
Lisa:
And what has that journey looked like?
Megan: Interestingly a journey backwards. My own theological work is looking at
how we empower young girls spiritually and sexually given the world in
which we live seems to exploit the dynamic energies of women. I had already
gone back to the Christian beginnings and found the negative view of bodies
and women that took root then still weighs heavy on us today. I was not the
first to find this of course but like everyone else I was faced with a dilemma,
what to do with tradition that does not speak my reality. Through this project I
have been able to think and work through to another starting point which I
believe can move us away from those negative beginnings
Lisa: That is fascinating, how are you thinking now?
Megan: I had begun to read those feminists who were outside the Christian tradition
in order to find a possible positive starting place for thinking about women
and their bodies. The writer who really resonated with me was Tess Tessier,
her book ‘Dancing After the Whirlwind’ set me on fire because it put in words
what I had always felt in my own body.
Lisa:
And what was that?
Megan: That raw connection with the energy of nature and in that the energy and
empowerment of God. Praying for me had always been a fully embodied
experience but this had not always gone down OK with churches that I was a
member of so I kept quiet most of the time about the depth of my experience.
Lisa:
As you say Tessier is not within the Christian tradition and so how have you
incorporated her insights, which clearly sit alongside your experiences, with
what you say is a Christological piece of work?
Megan: Well she like you and Carter Hayward is talking about that deep knowing and
relationality, she calls it the drum beat within, the beat that is in all of life, us
the animals, the cosmos, it is the beat of the divine. It is sexual, sensual,
divine- what is called the erotic in Christian feminist theology. It is a power
that is the full force of nature, tectonic plates shifting, galaxies colliding, stars
exploding and new planets being created, it is what makes us know we are
alive and what frightens us the most about being alive!!
Lisa:
I can see how this may be a wonderful and indeed revolutionary place to start
the empowerment of young girls spiritually and sexually- they have this power
in them and need to be nurtured to embrace it- but how on earth can Christians
accept this as christology when we have been so suspicious of the world and
the flesh seeing heaven as a place we aspire to that is apart from what we live
in here?
Megan: How can any of us deny the universe or put it as frame that we do not have to
truly engage with. We do not tell our children that they are part of a living
breathing universe and so I believe we do not really tell them who they are. By
giving them an embodied starting point- we are all creatures of this earth- and
placing that back beyond the Word we are engaging them with a place of
feeling and endless possibility and not simply a rigid worked out system
dictated by an external power. What cosmology shows is that there is no
external- the big bang itself came from within the darkness not from outside.
I accept that traditional christology will have a problem with this but I also
challenge theologians to be open to the new possibilities that talking to
quantum theory and cosmology can open up. After all Christ is about
abundance and doing new things, the cosmos is also about abundance and
newness. There is a power here that I still want to call spirituality that
enlivens all and it is this that I also believe is Christological, in other words it
is the redemptive power that Christians have spoken about- it is perhaps
situated in places we had not allowed ourselves to consider for some time.
Lisa:
What you are proposing then is that Christians should look within the cosmos
and not beyond it for what we have traditionally called redemption?
Megan: If by this you mean that Christ released us from fear and the death it brings
with it then yes- what greater news is there then you are made of the stars and
that the cosmic drum beat is in us all humans and non-humans alike, we are all
connected and we are all outpourings of amazing possibilities- this is the
journey of us all it does not stop when we reach adulthood, we are all new, we
are all exciting. I think children are very special in this journey they help we
adults remember newness, inquisitiveness, play and novelty.
Lisa:
So your PhD will carry on from this art work?
Megan: Yes, as an artist I feel and put on the canvas what I find holds much more
than I ever know at the time of creating the work- there are challenges in this
piece for me too. As I said I have a new starting point for theorising the
spirituality & sexuality of children and an emerging story that has in its
science and certainly its mythology much that is empowering for women, the
female divine is in this story and she is powerful. The challenge is for
Christian theology to respect the wisdom that came before it and allow back in
subjugated ways of knowing. Since doing this work I have come to realise that
there is nothing to fear, the Spirit blows where she will and we are on the
threshold of newness beyond our imagination.
Lisa:
On that challenging note, thank you and good luck with the journey ahead.