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4 A Womanist Experience A Response to Kristine Culp R E N E E M C K E N Z I E Kristine Culp has taken us on an interesting ride. We have experienced with her memories of her visit to Lourdes, and we have shared with her a partial yield of her reflection. We have discovered that she, unlike some postmodern feminists, wants to reclaim, at least for feminist theology, the intrinsic and extrinsic value of experience in saying something meaningful to ourselves and others about God and our self. This work is intriguing even with the recognition of its being read with the eyes of one who, in great similarity to Culp’s experience at Lourdes, could neither fully participate in what she recounted nor separate from it for fear of trivializing or denigrating the reality to be conveyed. If there is no middle ground between participation and separation, how do we engage any experience not our own? How is one to read this essay, to attempt to live in this moment, as limited as that possibility might be, to grasp as fully as possible the reality of which it speaks? How is that accomplished if the two options , separation and/or participation, effectively leaves one without any option at all? Culp’s dilemma was a pull between the either/or options of participation or separation on her trip to Lourdes. She could not fully embrace either position. She could not participate in the pilgrimage she saw acted out around her because her religious and spiritual sensibilities found that particular religious expression idolatrous. Neither could she separate completely from the experience she saw, because 65 the draw to the human suffering on display necessitated a response. To separate from the reality of that suffering while still remaining visually engaged with it was to take on the role of voyeur. In separating , she would be turning a blind eye to human suffering and the loss of human dignity. In participating, she would be assenting to a view of the divine contrary to her own. These two seemingly polar opposite impulses of participation and separation met within her, and this meeting allowed her to conclude that one could remain free of religious or spiritual pretenses even as one experiences great sympathy for the suffering of others. In effect, her choice was not to choose but to mediate. As I reflect on the nature of the experience useful for theological reflection as shared by Culp in this essay, a few observations seem warranted. The first observation is this: experience, as she describes it, is individual and unique. It is always my experience made available for my reflection. Given the anti-essentialist critique of the universalizing of feminist experience considered as effectively co-opting the breadth of women’s experiences into the specificity of the particular , it would seem that Culp operated from the perspective that the most one can say about experience is that it is mine, singular and individual. Perhaps this position attempts to avoid falling into the trap of universalization. A problem with this line of thinking is revealed in the observation that any reflection upon the reality of the other acted out before me is done from the limitations of my experience . As I reflect upon what I see of the other’s reality, I may very well find myself projecting upon the other’s reality rather than engaging with it. Culp saw people with physical and perhaps mental maladies. These people appeared to have been suffering. Clearly they came to Lourdes for a healing that is frequently defined as an end to suffering . Without having directly engaged one or more of the pilgrims, one can never know exactly what their experience is or has been. To the outside observer of these others, one might infer that suffering was taking place and, with this suffering, the loss of human dignity. The reflection of the observer, which in many ways amounts to speculation , becomes a reflection on the observers’ perception of the experience of the other. This reflection is shaped out of the experience of the observer and used to serve a theological end. In this case, the reality of the other has been subsumed. Perhaps one could even say that the particular experience of the observer resulted in a universalization of that experience, because rather than yielding space to the 66 The Experience of God [3.21...

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