I just translated the following from Dorothee Sölle; it’s a powerful engagement with a poem by Carola Moobach. Sölle conversation with this text by Moosbach is especially poignant for today in light of “death of God” and postmodernist theological and religious deconstruction. The original text can be located here: http://www.carola-moosbach.de/buecher/laudatio.htm. I stumbled upon this Laudatio from this website: https://www.dorothee-soelle.de
Laudation from Dorothee Sölle for Carola Moosbach: On the occasion of the award ceremony on June 2, 2000 in Hamburg (Prize of the FrauenKirchenKalender for divine poets)
Dear Carola Moosbach,
How can I praise God, without lying? How can I open a way to speak to that which is in truth of and about God? That is a question to which I also return again.
When I went to Israel in 1960, I sought for the great Jewish Philosopher Martin Buber. I had declared myself as a “Theologian.” The conversation did not begin at all; at first Buber kept silent. After a long silence he said, “Theo-logie…how does one actually do it? There is, after all, no Logos of Theos.” For do Logos and God fit together? There is Geology and other –logies, but God is not an object of a doctrine, of a science—God lives in the relationship; yes, we can say: God is relationship.
God remains not in an academic edifice of dogmatically right clauses. These old remains of faith decompose today before our eyes.
God desires to be related to as it was understood long since in the Jewish tradition. Theo-poetics, God-poetics—in this way we can speak of the experience with God. Instead of wishing to prove God, we say with American Process theology, “God happens”, God come before; last Tuesday afternoon God suddenly appeared…
These relations of God that emerged—this “To praise God without lying”—we can learn from Carola Moosbach.
Respectively
I had already written You off long ago
childish belief wishful-folk-babble
who still seriously reckons with You today
You the impossible of all possibilities
and now You are there; I do not see it
what does it mean for how can it be
from the search to the petition toward the being found
how have only you done that, God
I have angst you come to near to me
with faith I am still not faithful
and when you suddenly dissolve yourself in the heavens
then I stand there and still need you
Blow my angst away God
and leave it be there anyway
bestow to me Your nearness God
and leave me to doubt anyway
to praise God, without lying
It is an honest, truthful speech, which Carola Moosbach speaks here; a speech of which we all need more.
Come near help me to believe You All-Weaver
So that You need and miss having wanted me
and hear me also still at that time
Come near help me to speak You All-Saving
A union becomes established
The last phrase of this poem grasps a technical command. This sobriety does well!
Obedience is not the most significant virtue rather [the most significant virtue is] to be able to trust. Considering that we need a different relationship to God: God is for us, not for God’s self. Also, God needs us. Every real love is reciprocal—that is a perception of Feminist Theology—there is a giving and a receiving. When it is related to the children: God loves you, God protects you, God warms you, I completely agree with it. But just as important is it to say to them: God is in need of you, you can warm God. Sometimes, it is also cold here to God.
In 1 John it tells: God is love and who remains in love, remains in God and God in [them].
Graven image
self-sufficing Lord God
friendly strict Patriarch
created after white unfeminine image
beclouded truth self-deification
caged and sliced in pieces
ensnared in Golden Heaven’s gilded cage (like a bird)
fed with blood and jewels
tall-tales in Your name
from above and below head and body
divine ordering to command obeying
the earth a tributary to the Lord
This is a bitter text, which exposes the false theology, which was recently formulated by half of humanity. Today we see clearer that this theology is not being received well. Feminist Theology, which was initiated about 30 years [ago], is therefore desperately necessary.
In her prayer “Missing” Carola Moosbach writes in the last line,
Have mercy; I miss You
“I miss God,” this request has me deeply moved. At last, it might be a first step for many people sadly to miss God. In doing so it is certainly nonsensical, to be made itself a determining image of God.
No image many images
kill the images and give them to God
be swarming language and medicinal silence
Consistently there are mystical elements in the text of Carola Moosbach. Many of her texts manage to create something entirely special: to establish mystical silence. And that is the great accolade that can be said about poetry, if at all.
Dorothee Sölle