Border Crossings

Abstract

Border Crossings Charles P. Henderson I am delighted to introduce the contributors whose thought and writing make up this issue. As usual our December issue features articles that have come to us in the past year or so without having been solicited for a particular theme or topic. Still, there is often a synchronicity at play as articles amazingly appear in our inbox and, as they make their way through our peer review process, a theme slowly emerges. We open with a work of collaboration between theologian Björn Krondorfer and artist Karen Baldner. Karen is a visual artist who comes from a Jewish‐German family persecuted during the Nazi era. She grew up in post‐Shoah Germany but today resides in Bloomington, Indiana. Björn was also born and raised in Germany, emigrating to the United States at the age of 24, he has pursued a career in the academy, writing and teaching. Their article is a remarkable example of interdisciplinary work at the boundary of religion and the arts; it conveys, through the imaginative use of their respective mediums, a journey in which body, mind, and soul are fully engaged. At one level, the story of their collaboration is about making books; at another level, it is a pilgrimage of self‐discovery in which reader is invited to share. Regular readers will remember that we published two entire issues focusing on the life and work of Thomas Merton not long ago (v58:4 and v59:1). Herein Christopher Pramuk brings Merton into renewed conversation with his long‐time friend, Polish‐American writer Czeslaw Milosz, who would have been 100 this coming June. Of course, their actual conversations and transcontinental exchange of letters has been well documented elsewhere: “Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czeslaw Milosz” (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1996). In this piece, Christopher suggests that as they struggled at the intersections of a deep faith tradition and the contradictions of contemporary culture, as Catholics and as poets, from their own very distinctive perspectives, they each point to that which others fail to see: reflecting upon the surfaces of this all too mundane terrain, there is, “the lightning flash of God.” Next in line is Elaine Padilla’s “Border‐Crossing and Exile: A Latina’s Theological Encounter with Shekhinah.” Already the patterns for this issue are beginning to emerge, as Elaine’s contribution, like the others, has a strong narrative involving a personal journey across boundaries of time and space. Our writers are clearly mining rich veins of their life’s story for a gold that enriches our appreciation of how “religion” encompasses the entire human enterprise. I love it when writers root their thought in the particularity of their own experience, while speaking to the common dilemmas and challenges that in one way or another all of us encounter. Edward K. Kaplan does the same as he narrates a series of conversations with Howard Thurman, crossing the boundaries between his own Judaism and Thurman’s Christianity. It is hoped that most of our readers have encountered the writing of Howard Thurman. For those who have not, Kaplan’s article will introduce you to the wonder of a man whose ability to communicate a depth of religious experience is unmatched among present‐day writers or preachers. For those who have already been inspired by Thurman, Kaplan will remind you of what made Thurman so special. As Kaplan puts it: “Thurman … train(s) us to receive God as guarantor of human sanctity. Black, beautiful, and universally human, Howard Thurman reminds us that we are all partners in redeeming the human family.” As we, in the U.S., approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we can look back upon a decade in which religion has played a far more visible role in civil society. For better or for worse, we have focused far more attention upon the role of religion in our political life. Arguably, as Americans, we have been enthralled with the topic. Our next contributor, Yelena Mazour‐Matusevich, forces a change of scenery. And she does so with gusto, drawing our attention to a country in which religion, or even, dare I say it, “spirituality...