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Theopoetics: Poetry, Embodiment, and Theology
with Tamisha Tyler
Where do art and theology intersect? And what would happen if we stopped insisting “real theology” must come from a book, instead of a poem or painting or song?
Today I speak with feminist theologian and artist Tamisha Tyler. Join us to learn:
🔹 What theopoetics is
🔸 Where the real value of art lies (hint: it’s not in the “product”)
🔹 What happens when we stop making an idol of the intellect
🔸 Tamisha’s favorite poem, written after recognizing the contrast between all the white bodies in Christian art, and her own black body
Tamisha is the Executive Director of Art | Religion | Culture (ARC), and is passionate about African American Culture and Literature. She is also a PhD candidate studying Theology, Culture and Ethics, and is writing her dissertation on Octavia Butler. Learn more about her at https://www.tamishatyler.com/.
00;00;08;03 - 00;00;41;05
Kelly Deutsch
Welcome to Spiritual Wanderlust, where we explore our interior life in search of the sacred. Many of us will travel the whole world to find ourselves, but here will follow those longings within to our spiritual and emotional landscapes. In each episode, we'll talk with inspiring guests, contemplative teachers and body experts, neuropsychologists and mystics with a blend of ancient wisdom and modern science along with a healthy dash of mischief, well, deep dove into divine intimacy and what it means to be.
00;00;42;14 - 00;01;27;27
Kelly Deutsch
I'm your host, Kelly Deutsch, Hi, everyone. I'm Kelly Deutsch here. And welcome back to Spiritual Wanderlust. Today I have joining me to Misha Tyler and to Misha is a theologian and artist and a lover of people. She's the co-executive director of Art, Religion Culture, also called ARC and is passionate about African-American culture and literature. She's also a Ph.D. candidate studying theology, culture and ethics And today, we're here to talk about field poetics and the intersection of theology, art and embodiment.
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Kelly Deutsch
And I'm really excited to pick your brain to Misha. So welcome. We're glad to have you.
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Tamisha Tyler
Thank you. Glad to be here.
00;01;35;10 - 00;01;46;14
Kelly Deutsch
It's wonderful to get us started to Misha. Would you share a bit about how you came to be so passionate about this intersection of theology and art? You know, we're always passionate about both.
00;01;47;21 - 00;02;17;09
Tamisha Tyler
Yes and no. I think I always say that I started out with the spirituality of my mom and the things that she taught me and she always tells me this story growing up about how when she was pregnant with me, she was at a revival. She comes from Pentecostal background. And that she received the gift of the Holy Spirit well, during her pregnancy.
00;02;17;24 - 00;02;38;23
Tamisha Tyler
And for for people of Pentecostal tradition, that's often followed by evidence of speaking in tongues. And the revivalist, the pastor who was leading the service that night, gave her a prophetic word, but also gave me a word in the room. And the word was that the words knowledge and wisdom all the days of her life were written across my forehead.
00;02;38;24 - 00;02;59;26
Tamisha Tyler
And so that was just a formative story growing up for me. So it was really interesting because it was both grounded in a deeply spiritual experience, but it was about this sense of like wanting to seek knowledge. And so I think that that was the beginning seeds of shaping kind of my trajectory. I was always a deeply spiritual kid.
00;02;59;26 - 00;03;23;19
Tamisha Tyler
I would always want to go to church, and even if my family wasn't going at the time, like my mom would send me off with like the neighbor, the neighbor, Christian, who would always go you know. But I was also deeply creative. So I began writing poetry in elementary school. And so poetry especially and other forms of art were deeply was a way that I learned to articulate who I was.
00;03;24;00 - 00;03;47;07
Tamisha Tyler
But I was also grounded in a deeply kind of spiritual sense. So I always kind of embodied the intersection before I knew how to name it. Hmm. I don't really learn about the word theology until college. And I think when I heard it, it made the most sense because it was like, well, I love God, and spiritual things and I love school.
00;03;48;00 - 00;04;06;13
Tamisha Tyler
So it just makes sense that there is a thing that I can do both. I'll just do that. And initially, I put it on the backburner because I was really discouraged when I first discovered theology because I was a woman. And so I was discouraged by a lot of the men in the church and I just kind of served in ministry.
00;04;06;13 - 00;04;27;19
Tamisha Tyler
And then it wasn't until, wow, I want to say quite a few years, almost a decade later, that I actually that idea came back up for me. And I was like, why did I forget about this? And I just decided to pursue it. So it's theology especially. It's always been kind of there I think the arts just comes from me being an artist.
00;04;29;19 - 00;04;55;24
Tamisha Tyler
Me having a deep care for artists and for creatives and a knowing and understanding that an artist can give you more than just the product that they create, the way that the artist sees the world, the way that artist kind of lives and in feels the world It's something that I think is deeply embedded in us and we often need help tapping into.
00;04;55;24 - 00;05;17;16
Tamisha Tyler
And I think artists in the way that they live their lives, the way that they help us to enter into those spaces are absolutely necessary. And so I always knew that one. That was something that I would advocate for. But to do that, that also required a deep caring for artists, right? You're in a very vulnerable space when you do that.
00;05;17;16 - 00;05;30;14
Tamisha Tyler
And so who cares for you as your caring for others in that way. And so that was just kind of a moment that I fell into it, but it just it was who I am. That's why I just kind of leaned into that. And so that's how I ended up here.
00;05;30;29 - 00;05;47;12
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Beautiful. How did. I'm curious. What changed as you were speaking about theology and how you felt discouraged, especially by men in the church. How did that change so that you found the courage to follow the calling that that you felt drawing you.
00;05;49;20 - 00;06;09;14
Tamisha Tyler
I just share this with the group of students. Like a week or two ago. And it's funny because I and I would change was I told them, I said I prayed a prayer that I don't recommend anyone to ever pray and then say, you know, Lord, will you close every door that's not like you? And open up the one door.
00;06;09;25 - 00;06;42;08
Tamisha Tyler
You know, that super naive prayer that, you know, thinks that life works that way. But after I prayed, that prayer is kind of like my life kind of fell apart. So the job that I was working at, the company went out of business. So losing my job, I had this huge falling out with my best friend already had these questions about God and community and church that was not jiving well with the church that I was at I had been there for a while and they had questions, but I hadn't like.
00;06;42;24 - 00;07;07;02
Tamisha Tyler
I think that there was something that kind of jolt to me to go, Wait, what am I doing? What are we doing? And, you know, once you start asking too many questions and it can become a real problem in some places. And so I was just in this it was almost like everything in my life, including me, had been tossed up And at the same time, they were actually quite a few people who were asking me specifically when I was going to graduate school.
00;07;07;02 - 00;07;27;13
Tamisha Tyler
And these were people who didn't know I had an undergraduate degree. And so my friend was like, I mean, if they're asking me that specifically, And so, yeah, I batched it for a bit. And I was like, maybe I'll go get a degree in screenwriting. And then I tried to write a screenplay and was like, No, that's definitely a poet.
00;07;27;14 - 00;08;01;02
Tamisha Tyler
Okay. Maybe And then somebody just said, Hey, have you thought about seminary? And I was like, Oh, and then all of that just came flooding back. And it was actually a pretty quick decision in retrospect. I am three days after I lost my job. I Googled seminaries in California click the first one. They had an arts program. I applied three days after, and then a month after I after my last day at work, I was in class.
00;08;01;21 - 00;08;11;27
Tamisha Tyler
Wow. So it was it felt almost immediate. Mm hmm. But it set me up for the rest is history, I guess, as they say.
00;08;12;05 - 00;08;41;29
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I know I personally resonate with that. Trajectory of life falling apart and then something beautiful being reborn. And I think a lot of our listeners do, too, because, know, spiritual wanderlust doesn't really fit well within a whole lot of structures. A lot of people end up feeling like they're off roading, and that can be a really intimidating place, especially when we've been taught to stay inside of our white picket fences.
00;08;42;21 - 00;08;54;04
Tamisha Tyler
Right. But I mean, that's just it, right? Like all of the fence places and the road, it paved places or want someone else's wanderlust. Right.
00;08;54;09 - 00;08;55;03
Speaker 3
Mm hmm.
00;08;55;12 - 00;09;13;22
Tamisha Tyler
And we're kind of just following the path that they found. Yeah. Right. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. I think that there's something extremely beautiful in that just as much as it is beautiful to also be the off roader.
00;09;13;28 - 00;09;14;03
Speaker 3
Hmm.
00;09;14;14 - 00;09;21;20
Tamisha Tyler
And the wanderlust of that goes off and create spaces for other people to then eventually maybe walk on and find.
00;09;21;29 - 00;09;22;28
Kelly Deutsch
Absolutely.
00;09;23;05 - 00;09;23;24
Tamisha Tyler
Which is awesome.
00;09;24;02 - 00;09;47;15
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. I was just I'm working on a program about women mystics, and I was just reflecting on how so many of the women mystics were such rebels and were so audacious in their day, and, you know, would tell the pope what was what. And, you know, all sorts of really bold things, especially for, you know, being a woman in the Middle Ages, many of them.
00;09;47;26 - 00;10;08;20
Kelly Deutsch
But looking at for that, I was looking at Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, Teresa Avila and Tourism, Lisa Those four became like doctors of the church in the Catholic Church, which means like we hold you up above All Saints is influencing our spirituality. But how in order to get there, they had to kind of push outside of those normal fences.
00;10;08;27 - 00;10;25;21
Kelly Deutsch
What was accepted for them and what they were allowed to say or not allowed to say. And, you know, just all that systemic fencing that we put ourselves in. So I thought that was kind of an interesting example of that. Yeah, I pushed outside, but now I'm embraced and lauded.
00;10;26;08 - 00;10;47;09
Tamisha Tyler
I think there's so many of our saints and our leaders, you know, especially Jesus. Right, that that had to push outside and would never receive what's the same, like you're never received in your hometown or something like that. But I think that also relates to time. Right. Like, we look a lot of these people, we think they're beyond their time.
00;10;47;09 - 00;11;02;11
Tamisha Tyler
And it's like, no, they had to push through something, right? So that we can say that that is our time. Right? Our time that we think, oh, of course, they should have thought that we inherited from their rebellion, you know, and I think we forget that a lot.
00;11;02;19 - 00;11;03;02
Speaker 3
Mm.
00;11;03;10 - 00;11;28;27
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. So you had these kind of two streams of theology and art, which maybe were really one after all. But I'm curious how you would define for those who are listening what Theo Poetics is, because those things intersect, and Theo Poetics, but a lot of people haven't heard of it or think that it sounds like a cool term, but don't quite understand what it is.
00;11;28;28 - 00;11;30;05
Kelly Deutsch
So how do you define it?
00;11;30;17 - 00;11;56;07
Tamisha Tyler
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the ARC website and just the clarification, I'm no longer am the executive director for ARC, just in case somebody is listening to this timeline. And they're like, when did you do this with you? But, you know, transitions happen. But I still think that the website has a really great kind of collective definition that I think was written about five or six years ago by some of the leaders.
00;11;57;22 - 00;12;27;00
Tamisha Tyler
In a paraphrase, it says that Theo Poetics is a art as a form or a style or a positive concern for the intersection of religious reflection or spirituality. Right. The intersection of that and esthetics and the arts. So it's a form similar concern for those two intersections with the focus on community material change and an emphasis on embodiment.
00;12;27;09 - 00;12;27;24
Speaker 3
Hmm.
00;12;28;13 - 00;13;08;15
Tamisha Tyler
And so, yeah, there's a lot going on there. So what I often say to people is that it's more than just writing poems about God or thinking through how art can be spiritual. It's about living in the places, the meaning making of life. Right. What does it mean that we live into this way of being this style or this form of being that takes seriously community and embodiment and material change and the arts, those things are central to the way in which we live.
00;13;09;17 - 00;13;35;09
Tamisha Tyler
What does that mean? For us as people of faith, or what does that mean for the way we think about religion or spirituality? If those things are centered and I think it helps us to point to a certain way in which people have always lived. Right. So. So social poetics is not another way of doing theology. Right? It's not like another theology.
00;13;35;21 - 00;14;12;10
Tamisha Tyler
It just points to it acknowledges the ways in which we already live and says that is a point where you meet God, too. I think a lot of this is to push back against the way in which we have created a pedestal out of certain forms of theology. Like the systematic theology. Right. For example, we have we have created an idol out of the intellectual enterprise of theology and this reminds us that, you know, the embeddedness and the embodied ness of how we live into the world and how we make meaning of what is happening in the world.
00;14;13;10 - 00;14;38;00
Tamisha Tyler
Is it only an intellectual journey? Right. It is the ways in which our bodies are implicated. Right? Our community is implicated. Right. It is the ways in which we learn to navigate change. And I think the poetics takes that seriously. And it says we are using the arts exclusively like explicitly and exclusively as a way to understand that.
00;14;38;00 - 00;15;01;17
Tamisha Tyler
And I think even more broadly, for the field of theology in the arts, this is this is my thing that I say a lot of the ways in which we've engaged the arts historically has been looking at what I call the artistic product as a metaphor. Let's look at how this painting tells us about it's like metaphorically used to write.
00;15;01;17 - 00;15;24;29
Tamisha Tyler
And that's not inherently bad. It's just that we've we can't stop there. Right. We think formerly about theology in the arts, and I'm arguing in the sense that we should push into thinking through what I call understanding the artistic or the creative process. As a spiritual epistemology about this or a way of knowing.
00;15;24;29 - 00;15;26;29
Kelly Deutsch
And tell me more about that one.
00;15;27;02 - 00;15;54;14
Tamisha Tyler
One really great example is I was I was at a worship cohort in Michigan, and I made a new friend, and he is Canadian born and he is black and indigenous And so we had some conversations and we were at one of the final sessions of this cohort, and we were sitting together and we're listening to the speaker and he was beating he's making a necklace and beating and just watching him.
00;15;54;14 - 00;16;21;06
Tamisha Tyler
And it was just just a really beautiful thing to watch. And so lot of it's really beautiful. And he begins to explain that each bead has a different meaning, right? And that the thread has a specific meaning and that the act of beating this thread with this particular bead meant a certain invocation of a particular memory. Right. And the necklace then was a reminder of that process.
00;16;21;18 - 00;16;49;21
Tamisha Tyler
And so I had talked about, you know, our spiritual cosmology remarks the day before and said this is exactly what I mean when I say artistic process as a way of knowing, like the process that you are doing and that your your tribe and your culture has taught you how to remember that process is doing something right. It's a certain type of knowing that you have that isn't solely only linked to the product.
00;16;50;00 - 00;17;19;04
Tamisha Tyler
Right? The product is a reminder of of the doing. And I think in a lot of time, a lot of ways we focus so much on the end product that we missed at the process that's been telling us something all along. And the product is just a reminder and can just be a reminder of that process. Now, this is different if you are a reader or a seer of a particular type of art, right?
00;17;19;04 - 00;17;40;03
Tamisha Tyler
Like you're having a different conversation with it because you didn't make that art piece. But I think that for for people who don't do a particular art form or don't feel like their art is not their vocation, like the practicing of certain arts helps us to learn one of the ways I really love this is you ever seen the call of Buddha board?
00;17;41;05 - 00;18;15;19
Tamisha Tyler
I don't think so. It's like a canvas and it's blank and you only use water in his little paintbrush. You can paint on it and it makes all the different shapes. And then because it's water, it fades away and it's it's meant to be a meditative practice of letting go. And I think that is also just another beautiful example of being able to create something and then watching it fade and then letting that process, the witnessing in the participating of that process represents something that maybe you need to let go.
00;18;16;08 - 00;18;16;21
Speaker 3
Right.
00;18;18;07 - 00;18;41;22
Tamisha Tyler
And so I think that there are ways that we can lean into these practices right and practices in rituals that we may already do in our lives. Right. There's a reason why so many people sat down to watch Netflix or to do something during the pandemic. Right. There's a reason why so many people lean into the arts during the pandemic.
00;18;41;23 - 00;19;05;19
Tamisha Tyler
It's said something in people right? People recognize that they needed it, and they recognize that something about creativity in the arts was the only thing that can fill it in, necessarily work more right there in their community. They're more aware of their body, right? They're more aware of the arts. And so it's kind of like when we're in a certain level of culture, we recognize that these things are necessary.
00;19;06;00 - 00;19;31;14
Tamisha Tyler
But when things seem to be thriving, we somehow translate that those things are secondary now. And so I think and I hope that a space like the poetics can remind us that those things are central, and then those things are important. For us to understand who we are spiritually, in addition to emotionally and in ways that we're living together.
00;19;31;26 - 00;19;32;29
Speaker 3
Mm hmm.
00;19;33;08 - 00;19;57;19
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. There's a lot there. I mean, first of all, I resonate with that idealization of of the intellect you know, and I think anyone who alive today is kind of a product of, of the Enlightenment, or at least influenced by the Enlightenment somehow, where we're just so focused upon the intellect, our heads. If it's rational, can I argue it?
00;19;58;19 - 00;20;14;27
Kelly Deutsch
Can I be logical about it instead of looking at these other expressions? And it makes me think of in my theology undergrad, talking about the difference between, you know, some of these oh, sorry, did we flip out there?
00;20;15;00 - 00;20;18;16
Tamisha Tyler
You froze a little bit right after you said, can I be logical?
00;20;18;22 - 00;20;19;11
Kelly Deutsch
Oh, sure.
00;20;19;12 - 00;20;21;09
Tamisha Tyler
And I didn't know if it was you or me. Yeah.
00;20;21;09 - 00;20;55;26
Kelly Deutsch
Whichever you figure it out I was just thinking of how how central it is the day to day life and how back in one of my theology classes in my undergrad, we would talk about the difference between like a theologian or a scholar who, you know, studied all of, you know, the systematic breakdowns and definitions and explorations and philosophies and sometimes eventually made it to this kind of open minded, wide open space.
00;20;57;10 - 00;21;18;06
Kelly Deutsch
And how that was almost painstaking, you know, over decades was a big process. Yet how the simple farmer in the field knew those same wide open spaces, interior really just by sowing seed, you know, and reaping the harvest. And we were like, which one? Which one's wiser? Like, I don't know.
00;21;18;16 - 00;21;18;27
Tamisha Tyler
Like.
00;21;19;05 - 00;21;38;14
Kelly Deutsch
There are different approaches, but there is something that feels so relieving to think like, oh, we don't have to go the route of the intellect in order to have like a profound spirituality or to connect with God. Like, you don't have to use the path laid out for you. Like, this is how you must believe.
00;21;39;05 - 00;22;06;20
Tamisha Tyler
Right? You don't. And I think that that's part of the like the focus on embodiment for me because I think that, you know, your brain is a part of your body. Right? Like the way your mind works, like it is a part of your body. And I think that we forget, right? Am enlightenment. You know, I think we forget that that is like we think that it's a thing that's so completely separate and it's like it's a different thing.
00;22;06;20 - 00;22;38;25
Tamisha Tyler
Yes. Is it separate from you? Totally. No, Right. And I think that there's as maybe a healthy dose of integration that we need to come back to so that we can understand how those things can work together. Because I think that like yeah, both of those both of those trajectories to get to that place, maybe necessarily maybe the person who ended up being the scholar didn't in the context that they were in, didn't have a space to understand the sowing of the seed.
00;22;38;25 - 00;22;57;03
Tamisha Tyler
Right. They didn't they didn't have the space to really get their hands dirty, as it were, in that way. And because their, you know, their gifts, their list or whatever made it to more of an intellectual thing, they went and they read the books and they did the things and then they're like, oh, I came to this place.
00;22;57;21 - 00;23;23;20
Tamisha Tyler
I think that that's beautiful. But I think the problem is, is that we honor that person over and over. Like we put that we put that past on a pedestal to the point that we downplay someone like the farmer who can say, I went out and I soul would seed and this is what I discovered. And I think this is teaching me something about how to be more human in the world and about what does it mean to be a person of faith?
00;23;24;09 - 00;23;45;01
Tamisha Tyler
And then they just share that and then people go, Yeah, that reminds me of that. And the nerd me, right, can be like, that reminds me of this one book I read about this thing. And, you know, that reminds me of that one crop we had where there is generic generative space for us to be able to do that.
00;23;45;01 - 00;24;02;12
Tamisha Tyler
Right? And I think that a lot of the times we forget that as a scholar and, you know, a person who is completing a Ph.D., I think that we forget that I do this because I want to teach.
00;24;03;00 - 00;24;03;02
Speaker 3
Hmm.
00;24;04;05 - 00;24;28;08
Tamisha Tyler
Right. Part of that is I am going and learning and and reading all these books and doing all these things. So that I have clothes to share with my students if they're on their journey. And then I can say that was a really great insight. There is this you should read this or I've watched this movie or I did this thing to give you also tools and to help you write to be the guide as you're on your own intellectual.
00;24;28;17 - 00;24;50;22
Tamisha Tyler
Let discovery about something that's that's the vocation. And I think it's a beautiful thing. And I think that there are certain ways in which I am preparing to be in that space right just like a farmer has to get up and God knows what time in the morning to practice and do that. So then they can be like the guy with like to nurture the craft to their point of growth.
00;24;50;27 - 00;24;57;29
Tamisha Tyler
Right. It's different trajectories, but I think that there is something to be gained in both. Definitely.
00;24;58;08 - 00;24;58;24
Speaker 3
Yeah.
00;24;59;16 - 00;25;26;15
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. As you were speaking, I was thinking about how the art for the farmer is very similar. You know, it's like he, he comes out with this and product, you know, like here is whatever a pumpkin, you know, and we just ate a delicious pumpkin pie. But to take the time to enjoy that as a spiritual act and look at all the things it took for you to get this pumpkin pie in front of you and savor it in your mouth.
00;25;26;15 - 00;25;49;29
Kelly Deutsch
And to think of, you know, the months of tilling the soil and watching it grow and, you know, fertilizing and eventually harvesting and then shifting it across it to think of like all the people and the efforts that went into that. I have a friend who's a painter, and she was describing to me, she describe for me Jackson Pollock like I've never heard before.
00;25;49;29 - 00;26;12;00
Kelly Deutsch
He's famous, you know, for his splatter paintings. And I, I never really thought anything of them. I'm like, can't anybody splatter paint on a piece of canvas? You know, like, I just didn't know. And she's like, it's not, it's not the it's not the paint itself. It's like the actions that he took like he was often in a harness, like flinging paint and all these different directions.
00;26;12;00 - 00;26;31;00
Kelly Deutsch
It's like the dynamism in the movement that's in it. That's the art piece. It's not what you see hanging on the wall. And that changed so much for my perspective, Art. Oh, the act is what we're holding up. It's not not simply like, Wow, you make things look real pretty.
00;26;31;14 - 00;26;56;18
Tamisha Tyler
Well and it resonates, right? Like, when you look at certain pieces of especially abstract art, like, it's not about making out what the thing is. It's about I can, I can see the movement. I can see the emotion you have articulated it in a way that I can now enter into that space. And it has captivated me. And so I would like to continue to enter into that experience.
00;26;56;18 - 00;27;25;21
Tamisha Tyler
That's why we purchase art, right? You look at a piece and you go, Oh, it still makes me feel this. It still draws me into this. Right? And so I think that the intentionality that is put into work like that really does translate. And I think, you know, I'm not saying that you're saying this, but I do want to also make a note to say, like, we always want to be surrounded by really beautiful things, too.
00;27;26;00 - 00;27;52;00
Tamisha Tyler
It does something to us, right? The way we adorn ourselves, right? The way we adorn our spaces. Right? There's some kind of calming in it. Energy that happens to us when we walk into a space that we feel is beautiful or esthetically pleasing. And I think that, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. That's how we're made. And, you know, I think that that is something that we can lean into.
00;27;52;05 - 00;28;25;08
Tamisha Tyler
Right. The beauty of it all this is especially true, I think, in just my own cultural heritage. Right. African Americans, you know, black people in America have been creating these beautiful celebrations that are not without the truth of 400 years of oppression and suffering that we have been undergoing in all these different ways. That don't mean we don't celebrate right.
00;28;25;11 - 00;28;57;19
Tamisha Tyler
And we don't mean beautiful things. And, you know, we don't laugh and we don't do it's like it's more beautiful, not because it's in spite of it in sometimes it is, but it's because it's it doesn't always negate that beauty but we learn to live with both as we are fighting against a certain injustice. Right. As we are sitting in the realities of death and murder and all of these things.
00;28;59;15 - 00;29;09;23
Tamisha Tyler
And I think that, like, that's life you know, and everybody deserves to be around something beautiful.
00;29;10;07 - 00;29;11;25
Speaker 3
Mm hmm. Mm.
00;29;12;16 - 00;29;26;17
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. I know. Finding ways to live into that both. And I think that's a beautiful example of that. Think the beauty and the pain and suffering and all exist coexists in this wild world.
00;29;26;29 - 00;29;27;15
Speaker 3
Mm hmm.
00;29;27;28 - 00;29;46;04
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. Can I ask you a question? I've been super curious about this. So my background is Catholic, and we have this term that we use, and I don't know if it's used in a Protestant circles as well. So you tell me. We talk about this term called the sacramental imagination. Is that something you've heard before?
00;29;46;20 - 00;29;57;04
Tamisha Tyler
Uh, I feel like it is something I've heard before, and now I'm kind of questioning myself because I was like, I'm wondering if I read it in a text that was written by a Catholic. Sure, sure.
00;29;57;06 - 00;30;18;29
Kelly Deutsch
So yeah, let me describe it a little bit also for our listeners here. And I'm curious how that overlaps with or relates to your poetics. So the sacramental imagination has to do obviously with this idea of the sacraments where a material thing makes a spiritual reality present. You know, so we think of the typical ones like OC baptism.
00;30;19;09 - 00;30;58;18
Kelly Deutsch
It's not just a symbol of water, but this material thing of water makes present the symbol, the actual reality of like cleansing or making us part of God's body, etc. But when you extend that to the entire world, that it's not just the seven official sacraments but that all of reality is sacramental and that, you know, huckleberries and paperwork and like the homeless lady who lives by your workplace or mosquitoes, you know, just like everything in existence is is teeming with divine presence, you know, and that idea, some people call it pantheism, you know, God in all things.
00;30;58;28 - 00;31;42;20
Kelly Deutsch
And, you know, that's where you get like the Flannery O'Connor's or the J.R.R. Tolkien's or, you know, the Gerard Manley Hopkins, where they just, you know, everything is possessed, shot through with with presence and with meaning, you know, and to be able to look at the world in that way that our bodies, our soil, our food, everything makes present the divine in some way that I think also informed, you know, all the, you know, Renaissance art and architecture and music and, you know, all those things that came about and I'm curious if that is an element of your poetics or if that feels like a separate thing or alongside it.
00;31;44;25 - 00;32;20;25
Tamisha Tyler
No, I don't think that it feels like something that is separate from that or even alongside. I do feel like that is deeply resonant with what the tenets of the poetics entails. Hmm. For me, I think because we are looking at this deep sense of like materiality, right? Our own embodiment of our own ways, we live in the world, and we're centering that and asking, you know, what is it mean about religion, God, spirituality?
00;32;20;26 - 00;32;59;16
Tamisha Tyler
Now, that those things are central, like those very like that's exactly the questions that seal poetics, preciousness, right? And in it and it reminds us, remember, you're not you're not only this, you know, there's all of this other things, right? God didn't create only you right? There's all these other things that God created. I do also want to say, like me, you talked about this over email that in my research and in looking at the field as we know it right now was originally, you know a lot about Christian renewal.
00;33;00;07 - 00;33;28;28
Tamisha Tyler
I don't think that. And I think that quite a few scholars may see themselves. So I think that the opposite is about spirituality and religious reflection. In regards to those things. I don't think it's only about spirituality and Christian religious reflection. I think that there then opens up an avenue for other religions and spirituality that center those things to go, Okay, what does it mean then?
00;33;28;28 - 00;34;01;12
Tamisha Tyler
It's the arts, imagination, esthetics, embodiment, if those things are central to integrate it, what do we think about God or the beyond or deities or or what? Or people or how we live in the world now? What changes right And so I think part of my encouragement to people who are on a spiritual walk and I mean, it also looks at the ways in which a lot of people are deeply complicated, right?
00;34;01;12 - 00;34;25;21
Tamisha Tyler
Especially now with everything going on, we'll find people who have a deep love, you know, for Jesus but also are, you know, engaging in different religions or who are borrowing from different things in a little more complicated than, you know, the categories that we have drawn on religion anyway. And so I think that the politics honors that as a lived reality, right?
00;34;25;21 - 00;34;46;08
Tamisha Tyler
Because it starts with the Bible and it starts with that experience. And so it's like, well, where do you meet God and all these areas? Where do you meet beyond in all these areas? Or maybe you don't maybe you don't believe that there is a beyond and you're trying to figure out, you know, what does this mean for the human condition, right?
00;34;46;16 - 00;34;54;13
Tamisha Tyler
What is this saying? Demand less demand. But in some ways, yeah, the ways we care and honor one another.
00;34;54;24 - 00;34;56;07
Speaker 3
Mm hmm. Right.
00;34;56;19 - 00;34;57;18
Tamisha Tyler
It changes about that.
00;35;01;06 - 00;35;26;08
Tamisha Tyler
So. Yeah, but yeah, I think that the sacramental imagination I do not know what that was or if you can do that. That was very loud. I, I didn't think that the sacramental imagination, it's dissonant of what it is. I think it sits right within there and it says that God was here. It's kind of like, you know, you write in the tree and like on the piece of paper, like, you just want to know that you're known here.
00;35;26;08 - 00;35;36;07
Tamisha Tyler
It's like, you know, God has done that. You know, I believe that, like, as a Christian, when God is in that and we get to find these little pockets of, you know, God was here. And what does that mean for us?
00;35;36;22 - 00;35;37;24
Speaker 3
Hmm. Yeah.
00;35;38;17 - 00;35;52;00
Kelly Deutsch
Talk to me a little bit about embodiment in your own journey with that. Like, how do you feel like embodiment in that concept, in how you live inside your own body has changed or developed over the years?
00;35;52;29 - 00;36;26;21
Tamisha Tyler
Yeah, you know, it's I have had to be extremely aware of my body for most of my life, being a black woman in America, being a Plus-sized black woman in America. Right my body is always present whether I want it to be or not, whether I have control of how it's present or I'm fighting for control of how it is present.
00;36;27;14 - 00;36;57;11
Tamisha Tyler
It is. And it is very like palpably in the forefront of my mind. I think that that history. Right. Has deeply affected the way in which I think about God. And because the way in which I received an understanding of God came from a very particular place. It was in a didn't have like a deep, spiritual, otherworldly connection.
00;36;57;11 - 00;37;12;19
Tamisha Tyler
It was my mom who was a single mom at the time of six children and had to figure out all the things and was perfect, but lived this deep spirituality, you know, and, you know, it was a singing gospel song, but also cleaning the house at six in the morning on Saturday. Right. It was always deeply embodied. Right.
00;37;12;19 - 00;37;47;24
Tamisha Tyler
Whether or not she was like, you're going to do an embodied exercise to remind our bodies that, no, she's like, get up and clean and listen to Mahalia Jackson over and over again. Like, that just was life. And so I have always been important and present for me personally, and I think the notion of bodies and starting with the body, one of the things that and doing that Melanie says, doing theology in the body and not just about the body.
00;37;47;25 - 00;38;11;08
Tamisha Tyler
Right. Yeah. I think it's a lifelong practice in which you kind of lean into and even lean into this with some of my art. There's a what is the name of that painting? It's probably called The Resurrection, because it's a painting of the resurrection kit. It's at a dormant in or vessel, and it's a fresco, fresco, fresco I would say where it's wrong.
00;38;13;00 - 00;38;33;13
Tamisha Tyler
And I can't remember the artist, but I remember seeing it in Oviedo and it's this huge, beautiful painting and it's a the resurrection. So people are coming out of the ground and they're being lifted up into God. And at the time, the artist thought that everybody who is resurrected will be resurrected at 33. They were all extremely fit and they were all white.
00;38;34;09 - 00;38;49;17
Tamisha Tyler
And I remember coming back and writing an extremely short poem about that, which was a response to what I saw in that painting, and it was entitled When I Rise and I Think I Can Remember It. So I don't actually remember if I wrote it down.
00;38;50;10 - 00;38;50;22
Speaker 3
Yeah.
00;38;52;07 - 00;39;44;23
Tamisha Tyler
And it says, it goes When I rise from the dead, I will still be fat my teeth will still be crooked hair kinked skin black. And it was just a way of writing myself into that narrative. Now, maybe that's all the people that that artist was surrounded by. I doubt it. But you know what I mean? Like, it was it was in a sense of if I die and I rise from the dead, I think wholeness and healing when going to Jesus is more about what size I am or what skin color I am or how I look I think that Jesus in God knows exactly what size I am, what skin color I am, and
00;39;44;23 - 00;39;48;17
Tamisha Tyler
how I look. I think if anybody knows, right?
00;39;49;01 - 00;39;49;09
Speaker 3
Yeah.
00;39;50;29 - 00;39;58;22
Tamisha Tyler
So I'm not going to become something I'm not when I rise. And if I have to become something, I'm not that a place I want to go.
00;40;00;27 - 00;40;14;02
Tamisha Tyler
Yeah. And I think that that really helped me think through both theology, the arts and my own embodiment in writing myself, as I am right now, into that story.
00;40;14;17 - 00;40;15;03
Speaker 3
Yeah.
00;40;16;13 - 00;40;19;19
Tamisha Tyler
And so I think that that's been like my own trajectory in that.
00;40;21;07 - 00;40;22;25
Kelly Deutsch
It's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that.
00;40;24;01 - 00;40;24;15
Speaker 3
Yeah.
00;40;25;07 - 00;40;53;13
Kelly Deutsch
Would you like to share any other poems with us? I know, I know you've been writing since you were a kid, and I love that kind of expression of the soul because I feel like in spiritual things, we so frequently are dancing around the ineffable and so art and poetry and music and movement and all of the things that Theo Poetics is about sometimes seems to do a more adequate job in saying the things that we can't say.
00;40;54;07 - 00;41;21;21
Tamisha Tyler
Hmm. I'm trying to think, you know, I think I will read this one and I'll say a couple of things before I read it. So this poem that I read, which is called Who Is God, is actually an assignment in a creative preaching class that we were supposed to write like something about who is God? And I end up writing this poem and I to be because I think the professor wanted me to write.
00;41;21;21 - 00;41;24;06
Kelly Deutsch
So you've got to be because the professor wanted you to write.
00;41;24;22 - 00;41;50;00
Tamisha Tyler
Yes, I got to be because the professor wanted me to write. I think these bigger kind of universal statements about God. And I didn't do that. So I would read it to you if you know what I did. And then also I will say that this poem explicitly uses the masculine pronouns for God because that's, that's that's where I was.
00;41;50;00 - 00;42;22;18
Tamisha Tyler
I think I was just still learning and unlearning a lot about the ties between masculinity and God. But I can't I never changed it because one was really where I was as a student, as a person, and I was learning and unlearning. So I wanted to honor that space and to because in many ways, for me looking to God as father was a necessary thing as I am my father, we're healing our own relationship and we're like super great now.
00;42;22;18 - 00;42;52;23
Tamisha Tyler
But I think that there was some of that that I needed. And so as a person who explicitly, you know, wants to honor that God has created all genders and that God is that necessarily connected to a particular gender. I also it's after my experience and how I mean way through that trajectory, like at the domestic programs, you know, I feel Oh, okay.
00;42;53;08 - 00;43;26;04
Tamisha Tyler
So I will read it and it's called Who Is God and I Won't Be Looking At You. So hopefully neither one of us freezes it okay. Who is God at age five? He is the best answer for Sunday school questions at age eight. He is a person you give your life to. Although the lady called him Jesus at age 13, he is the only one who will listen to what you have to say at age 16.
00;43;26;16 - 00;43;51;01
Tamisha Tyler
He is the last word you use when cursing in the first name you call on when you're about to get into trouble. At age 18, he is the voice that consoles a broken heart. And at 20 he has the grace. It gives you room to forgive yourself I'm 22 to 25. He becomes the reason for your hatred, the basis in which you claim your judgment and the source of your pride.
00;43;52;00 - 00;44;19;04
Tamisha Tyler
But at 26 you realize he was none of these things, and you wonder if you ever really knew him at all. So at 28 you set out on a journey to find him like a child obsessed with capturing their parents shadow. And then 30 you realize that the sun is east the day it's new, and he was right beside you all along, and his shadow constantly propelling you forward into newness.
00;44;20;15 - 00;45;00;15
Tamisha Tyler
Is the mystery of your life, simply because he is the only thing that makes sense. He is your foundation, whether recently rediscovered or newly found, I cannot say, but he is the only support strong enough for your ambitiously ignorant, insightfully blinded steps that you carelessly choose to take. And although there will be many names, then you will call him in the many years that you continue to discover he is and always will be the And so that was my obviously semi-autobiographical, but I think it was just my own.
00;45;01;07 - 00;45;10;22
Tamisha Tyler
The only way I knew truly how to articulate God in that assignment was to articulate the ways that I encounter God in my life.
00;45;11;01 - 00;45;12;05
Speaker 3
Mm hmm.
00;45;12;19 - 00;45;26;05
Tamisha Tyler
I can say all of these really big, large things that I believe if you ask me who God is, I have to go back to what I'm experienced in my body and in my lived experience.
00;45;26;15 - 00;45;26;19
Speaker 3
Hmm.
00;45;27;20 - 00;45;29;05
Tamisha Tyler
And I can tell you, right?
00;45;29;15 - 00;45;30;00
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah.
00;45;33;14 - 00;45;43;03
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. An exercise in theater poetics in and of itself. You know, just like I don't go to the doctrines. I go to what I've lived and what I know in my body.
00;45;43;11 - 00;45;59;27
Tamisha Tyler
Yes. And this is it. You know, this is another thing that this woman is theology. This is me. Here is the theology. Right? This is this is the theology is that the people who are on the margins, who lived and who breathed this. Right? This is the kitchen table theology, right? This is a Sunday morning with gospel music theology.
00;45;59;27 - 00;46;30;19
Tamisha Tyler
Right. It is the day in and day out lives in which people find their faith. The doctrines are are resonant of a history of that. Right. They rise up out of the ways in which we have lived. And we go, yeah, that's right. Because of what you experience and not the other way around. Right. And I think we forget that because now we have these codes, we have these things, and then they become the thing that everything is to live by.
00;46;30;21 - 00;46;44;17
Tamisha Tyler
Right. But we're just, you know, we're kind of all guessing here, right? Like. Right. Jesus came down and gave us a life and we're going to throw that away for some doctrines. Really, really.
00;46;46;02 - 00;47;13;13
Kelly Deutsch
It's true. I know the first time I can't remember if it was during college or after college that it struck me that theology is like philosophy. Like it's pretty clear in philosophy that there is no one right philosophy. Like the meaning of human existence, like how we make sense of the world and our experiences. And to think that theology there's like one right way to believe or to talk about God or how we define God.
00;47;15;02 - 00;47;41;04
Kelly Deutsch
And I'm brought back to some of those examples. You know, Thomas Aquinas was one who wrote just tomes and tomes of like definitions of the scholastic theology. And at the end of his life, when he had this profound mystical experience of God, he wanted to burn it all. He's like, it's all straw. You know, he was like, all of my words do not suffice to speak of this one experience that I've had You know, he was like, I tried pointing towards it, but.
00;47;42;04 - 00;48;04;03
Tamisha Tyler
Right. And that and that's all that we can do, right? That's all we can do. We can try to find ways in which we can faithfully articulate what it is that we are experiencing. This is what the people in in the Bible did. Right. This is their ways of faithfully articulating their encounters with God. Right. With a couple of embellishments.
00;48;04;03 - 00;48;25;23
Tamisha Tyler
But, you know, I mean, that's neat to hear that. So so it's just it's what we always do. It's what we will continue to do. Let's just be honest about it. There's something deeply beautiful about that trajectory. I say even in my own dissertation and, you know, some people will be, like you said, what I say, you know, at the end of the day, my dissertation is focused on Octavia Butler.
00;48;26;02 - 00;48;48;26
Tamisha Tyler
You know, theology is speculative fiction, right? It's speculating faithfully in community. Right. When you think about all of these the histories of the creeds and all of the stuff, a lot of it was just reacting to arguments. This person said this and rely on how we got to clear this up and get together and figure out of that.
00;48;49;26 - 00;49;12;27
Tamisha Tyler
And then we got creeds and that we follow them faithfully as if God, God said came down was like, all right, so this not that, but this and that. No, it's just faithful speculation and community. And it's holding true to what we still when it's still true for us. Right now. Right. And what is still resonant about who we know God to be and what does that mean about how we live in the world?
00;49;13;12 - 00;49;17;28
Tamisha Tyler
That's all we're doing. Yeah. It's a lot more complicated than that in many ways. But at the end of the day.
00;49;18;16 - 00;49;30;19
Kelly Deutsch
Sure. But I love that. That also respects the the mystery of God. You know, that God is not something if God were something that we could contain, I don't think it would be a God worth believing in.
00;49;30;26 - 00;49;32;16
Tamisha Tyler
Mm hmm. Yeah.
00;49;32;28 - 00;49;45;06
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah. So to be able to recognize like, there is an inevitability in the midst of, like, that profound closeness, but there's something beautiful and freeing about that. When we respect.
00;49;45;26 - 00;49;55;06
Tamisha Tyler
Yes. And it doesn't invalidate what we know. Right. Right. It doesn't invalidate our encounter. It says yes. And yes, you know.
00;49;55;19 - 00;50;16;03
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. Absolutely. We will endlessly know Yeah. Beautiful. Well, as a final question, I'm curious if there is either a question or a piece of wisdom you would like to leave with our audience and those who are listening today who yes.
00;50;17;08 - 00;50;37;12
Tamisha Tyler
I've been thinking about this with a couple of people, and it just came to my mind. So we talked a lot about wisdom and the history wisdoms and the holding wisdoms. And I talked to a lot to friends who often ask the question about like, if you were go back to your younger self, what would you say? You know?
00;50;37;24 - 00;50;38;02
Speaker 3
Mm hmm.
00;50;39;12 - 00;51;04;24
Tamisha Tyler
I have inverted that question because I act in great questions and I say, you know, if your younger self can say something to you now, what would they say? And also, who would they be with a younger you? Right. Everybody has a different younger you. And the reason that I say that is we often quote wisdom pedestal I'm always like trying to knock down pedestals appearance.
00;51;05;22 - 00;51;22;26
Tamisha Tyler
We always talk with them is like this extremely important thing. And it is. And so we think that because we have more age and more experience, that in the history of our lives, when we go back to our younger selves, we have something in which to tell them. And we don't let them speak and tell us anything. Right.
00;51;23;28 - 00;51;43;07
Tamisha Tyler
And the reason that I say that in the piece of wisdom that I will lead is wisdom is extremely valuable and powerful and necessary for us. The question that I leave and the question that I think our younger selves are asking is What is wisdom without wonder?
00;51;43;27 - 00;51;44;05
Speaker 3
Hmm.
00;51;46;12 - 00;52;11;27
Tamisha Tyler
What is wisdom? And all we know is to hold on and rigidity to the wisdom in which we think we've received and to lose the wonder that God is there in the first place. And so my question to all of us and me is to think about what piece of wonder can your younger self give back to you?
00;52;12;08 - 00;52;12;24
Speaker 3
Hmm.
00;52;14;06 - 00;52;15;13
Kelly Deutsch
Lovely. I love it.
00;52;17;14 - 00;52;22;28
Kelly Deutsch
That's beautiful. I'm looking forward to wondering and wondering, too.
00;52;23;07 - 00;52;24;12
Tamisha Tyler
Yes, yes.
00;52;24;21 - 00;52;44;24
Kelly Deutsch
Yes. Yes. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us and for sharing some of your reflections and wisdom that about both for your poetics and your own story and your poetry. That was lovely. As well, to be able to experience firsthand and see what with your poetic lived and embodied looks like.
00;52;45;09 - 00;52;48;06
Tamisha Tyler
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Kelly. It's been an honor.
00;52;48;13 - 00;52;51;16
Kelly Deutsch
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, everyone, to for joining.