It affects our everyday encounters, how we meet people, greet people, our conversations, and our capacities for imagining new ways of being with one another. Indeed, the last few weeks have shown us that the struggle continues. I am tired of covid. I am tired of thinking about it, talking about it, having to respond to it, and be controlled by it.
Snippets from the everyday, Part I: Teaching at TF
Recently, I’ve been inspired and even felt a sense of renewed creativity by being involved in one of our courses here at TF. Our course on Gender Perspectives in Religion and Theology, convened by Prof. Jone Salomonsen, is a course that engages a number of different and complex struggles, real struggles, struggles that often involve tremendous sacrifice. This semester I was fortunate to be able work with Raha Sabet Sarvestany, an Iranian scholar of gender and religion, who came to the University of Oslo and TF through the Scholars at Risk network. We developed a case study on Iran, focusing particularly on the dynamics of Islam and gender. Foregrounding the dimension of lived religion – and markedly also, a profoundly lived/living struggle for rights, for recognition, and for humane encounters and interactions, we decided to invite a few notable guests. Our students got to experience and bear witness to the deeply poignant and poetic life narrative of Mahvash Sabet, an Iranian Baháí woman, who was imprisoned for more than a decade due to her faith. Mahvash vividly recounted her experiences as a young girl, as a mother, as a woman imprisoned, and reflected insightfully on the dynamics of being a woman religious. She foregrounded her love for poetry as essential in persevering incarceration and have published a number of poetry collections that could be read as meditations on hope, but also as portals into powerlessness and despair (see for examples, Prison Poems 2013). Mahvash invited us into her life story, into her struggle, and allowed us to reflect on what is real and for whom.
In our final session in the lecture series on Iran, we were lucky to have with us Bahare Badavi, who together with Melike Leblebicioglu, created the Norwegian TV-series Norskhish (broadcasted on NRK in 2020). Bahare, herself born in Iran, spoke to our students about her motivation for making the TV-series, which in many ways foreground the work of straddling two cultures and concerns the everyday struggle to “fit in”. Bahare also spoke to the power of narrative. Her own narrative and that of the characters in the TV-series, speaks to the messy notion of complex lives, wherein which everyday struggles are deeply informed by the power of tradition, religion, racial dynamics and gender – albeit also with a solid dosage of humor.
Mahavash Sabet and Bahare Badavi brought critical insights concerning a number of real struggles into our zoom classroom. For Raha and I, as well as for our students (I dare say), this meant being invited to think with and to engage and reflect on the precariousness of life and living.
Snippets from the everyday, Part II: Engaging prospective students
Also this year, TF committed to give a number of inspirational lectures at the University of Oslo’s Open Day – an annual event aimed at providing high school students with information about our University and our study programmes; and, in short, what are all the “exciting things” students can study at the University of Oslo. TF contributed with four engaging and topical mini-lectures. Prof. Anne Hege Grung addressed the issue of spiritual and existential care, an undoubtedly timely topic in our struggle with Covid-19, especially in light of the severe restrictions placed on visitation. In particular, Prof. Grung problematized the relationship between an increasingly diverse religious population and the health sector where spiritual and existential care is provided. Associate Prof. Kaia R?nsdal gave a mini-lecture with the provocative title “Should migrants be met with hospitality?” She problematized the notion of hospitality, looking particularly at the Norwegian context and the debates that emerge concerning refugees and asylum seekers. What is hospitality in the context of Norway? And, how do we practice being hospitable? Prof. Marius Timmann Mjaaland entered the territory of struggle through the lens of our current climate crisis. His mini-lecture entitled “Threatened existence” brought into conversation insights from philosophy and theology as one way of addressing peoples’ ontological concerns about being and living in a world where (all) life is threatened. Finally, senior lecturer Vemund Blomkvist posed critical questions about the Bible and its becoming. He foregrounded the struggles over the selection of texts, which texts were included, which were excluded, and why. Our mini-lectures all bear testimony to the multifaceted ways in which our scholarship here at TF contributes to and are responsive to different sites of struggle. We are attentive to processes of being and becoming, to the politics of inclusion and exclusion, and we take seriously the narratives that help us problematize the relationships between religion and living.
Snippets from the everyday, Part III: Looking back, looking forward
On the 19th of March 1961, Ingrid Bjerk?s became the first woman to be ordained in the Church of Norway. Bjerk?s’ sixtieth ordination anniversary was marked in a number of different ways across the country, and in Vang Church, the church where Bjerk?s was ordained in 1961, Bjerk?s was celebrated in the digital Sunday sermon entitled “Courage for action: Maria, Ingrid, and us”. Our Dean, Prof. Aud T?nnessen have written extensively about Ingrid Bjerk?s in her biography ?Ingrid Bjerk?s: Motstandskvinnen som ble v?r f?rste kvinnelige prest? (2014, see also Bjerk?s br?t barrierer). As many of you already know, Ingrid Bjerk?s was a student at our Faculty; what most of you probably don’t know is that Bjerk?s was my mother’s Sunday school teacher! Anecdotes aside, Bjerk?s’ struggle – a struggle undoubtedly driven and profoundly informed by her calling – paved the way for women religious to dare imagine and seek a meaningful life in ministry. Sixty years have passed and the struggle continues. Yet, I firmly believe that TF is more than well-equipped to wrestle with the multiple struggles that form part of our everyday, struggles that inspires us to work harder and push through.
Viva TF, Viva!