Season 4, Episode 3: Vicki Marie & Shauna Kubossek

On this episode we speak with Vicki Marie and Shauna Kubossek, two contributors to the Spring 2024 issue of The Canadian Journal of Theology, Mental Health, and Disability on Trauma and Resistance.

About her poem, "To Know and To Grow," Vicki shares: I attended Catholic parochial school in the early 1950’s and was the only African American there for six years.  It took me years to dispel the idea that only white people were holy; that only white people were saints.  This wasn’t taught overtly but the messages I received were clear.  This work is about my struggle to believe that God loves me and an invitation for you to love those in your life that are considered outsiders.  Find the full text here: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cjtmhd/article/view/42980

About her article, "“I Am Weary with Holding it In”: Fight, Flight and Freeze in Jeremiah’s Final Confession," Shauna shares: Over the years I have experienced the tendency of some Christian communities to ignore (at best) and demonize (at worst) those who experience dark nights of the soul. Rather than being embraced, these Dear Ones are told that they must have more faith, that their suffering is God’s will, or (heaven forbid) that they have brought this pain on themselves. I have also seen the church’s deep engagement in the lives of those experiencing trauma. I have heard preachers contend with the difficult parts of Christian scriptures and have seen Christians battle with how to live well while looking the suffering of the world directly in the eyes. This article is an attempt to participate in the latter efforts, to engage theology with and for those experiencing trauma, and to intentionally engage my own pain and the pain of others not only with generosity, humility and kindness, but with deep reflection on the sacred texts of my beloved tradition. I hope that this article contributes to a positive articulation of Christian theology which engages pain rather than overlooks it, one that takes experience and practice seriously, and rejects tradition when engagement with those who suffer requires it. Find the full text here: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cjtmhd/article/view/42976

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Transcript

Welcome to the Mad and Crip Theology Podcast it's so good to be here with you today and we are excited to have two of our contributors from the Spring 2024 issue of the Canadian Journal of Theology Mental Health and Disability who are joining us today and so we have Vikki and Shaunas welcome to you both and we were wondering if you wouldn't mind introducing yourselves for us so Vikki would you mind going first? K, um I'm Reverend Dr Victoria Marie but I prefer to be called Vikki and I live in Vancouver and I've been Canada for about 50 years but I'm originally from Brooklyn New York and I just retired from active ministry.

Wonderful thank you well welcome and Shauna . Hi everyone um so nice to be here uh I am currently a PhD candidate at Emanuel College at the um Toronto School of Theology and um my research mostly focuses on um trauma and the Christian language of redemption um and yeah I'm excited to be here was there anything else you wanted for the introductions? Oh no that's perfect thank you so

much um Miriam Miriam and I already recorded a podcast today so we're a little bit a little fuzzy! And I've been working on my dissertation so I am kind in that in that um frame of mind so That'll do it! I'm sorry but we wondered if you could both um summarize was your pieces so maybe Shauna and then Vikki and then can talk about your pieces. Sure yeah happy to um so I wrote an article on uh the last confession of Jeremiah which is Jeremiah 27 to 18 um and in this confession um Jeremiah goes through a lot of feelings um and a lot of experiences of God um and a lot of experiences of his own he's working through a lot of things that are happening in and around his life and in his community at that time um and the way I thought about it was that this confession mirrors and reflects ourselves back to us um in our sacred scriptures they're not meant to um I don't believe well Tribble says they're not meant to mandate or manufacture change in us um but to mirror be a mirror for us to see ourselves and God um in our scriptures so um this paper kind of looks like looks at how might we survive in the wildernesses that we face and Jeremiah popped out at me when I was thinking of surviving in the wilderness um which is something that Dolores Williams talks about in one of her books um that Jeremiah kind of just came to the forefront like Job does um like some of the lament psalms do um and so I started looking at it and this one in particular stuck out to me because in it Jeremiah kind of fights with God um and also pulls back and kind of runs away and says I don't want to do this anymore and then um also says I wish I had not been born so completely disengages um and that reminded me of the fight flight and freeze responses um in trauma theory that I've been reading a lot about in the last few years um so the article wasn't meant to psychologize Jeremiah as a historical figure or um have any kind of insight into the prophet's soul as it were but um what I wanted to do was look at the sacred texts and see what they might show us about ourselves in these moments where we um are trying to survive the pain and complexity and paradox that we're experiencing um so that's kind of a a little bit about the article it goes through some of the methodological concerns in trauma theory um and then looks kind of at the confessions more generally and then this one particular the last confession of Jeremiah specifically um and then kind of at the end brings it um together with Katherine Keller's theology which I think although it hasn't really been used in trauma theologies much I think it's like a really really generative place um and I'm hoping to see more trauma theology in the future kind of uh use her work so I talk about that a little bit um but yeah I think that's that's about it for the summary that's kind of where I go from and

to! Yeah thanks Shauna will dig into it more in a minute um and Vikki can you talk about where this piece came from and how your poem came to be? Okay yeah the the poem was a kind of a reflection on how as as a person all Other uh one isn't seen for like as themselves or for themselves they're seen always through the fil filter of observance and it's kind of a kind of a play to say like see see what's there in me rather than what you're uh pasting on me so I think that's kind of it in the

nutshell. Well thank you so much Vicki and we we'll we'll ask you to read the poem later on in today's episode well one of you read for me? Oh yeah yes we would be very happy to yes yes for sure. So I think we'll return now to Shauna's piece and we had a couple of we cooked up a couple questions for you Shauna we want to pick your brain on some stuff um today so we were wondering uh about your opinion on on how you see feminist trauma theologies like how they've been morphing over the past 20 years I was um we uh spoke with Sarah Travis earlier this morning because we recorded a a podcast episode with her and we were talking about this too that like recently um I got a chance to teach the subject in class I'm teaching a class called Mental Health and Christian Theology and so I was saying to to Sarah and Miriam earlier today I've been kind of like giddy just looking at all the stuff that's like available now um when we think about this topic so what you know what do you think about the direction that's heading and and and how things have changed over maybe past 20 years? Yeah I'm excited as well actually to see where to where things are going in the new books that are coming out um I think that um though there are many feminist theologians that have been using trauma theory for years now in their work Serene Jones, Shelley Rambo etc many others um there's some who might say that there's not really a sort of specific trauma theology necessarily as like a discipline itself um and some some are starting to so um Karen O'Donnell and Katie Cross um they're kind of starting to parse out what trauma theology might actually look like as a theological discipline which I think is really exciting because it's been very nebulous which is also beautiful um but they're kind of trying they're sort starting to sort of pin down a few things um and they have two volumes um of essays that they've kind of put together into two books one is called Feminist Trauma Theologies and the other is um I think it Bearing Witness Intersectional Perspectives on Trauma Theology which is the second volume and I think together they create something that's really beautiful um and that both are needed the second the second volume Intersectional Perspectives um kind of shows more of the trauma theologies that have existed uh for the last 20 years but haven't been published or haven't been um noticed in an academic published way which doesn't mean that they haven't been noticed or haven't been um said or written but that they just um are starting to kind of in a in a structured academic circle those things are being published which I think is really exciting um so the these vast kind of intersections and complexities that exist in post-traumatic existence demand this plurality of responses from people from the church from academia from our own theology and from our actions in the world and I think this means necessarily that there's plural like theologies so you really see that which is why it's hard to pin down as a discipline right because there's so many theologies that exist um and are starting to be kind of mulled over by people in response to a plurality of different experiences in the world um so I think that's really exciting um and I think that it's the field is starting to be more more global diverse and thus like much more interesting um than it has been um not to negate all the work that has been done over the last 20 years I think that this is just like a much a much more exciting um time for those reasons so um yeah I think I'll leave it

there. Yeah that's really helpful Shauna yeah it's exciting to me to hear it's becoming more 

a global conversation in some ways probably was happening globally and then people  in the West started paying attention to to what was happening. Yeah exactly it's you know these conversations have existed and have been going on for a really long time but not everyone has been paying attention and so I think even in the world of like um trauma theology Septemmy Lakawa who's the president at Jakarta Theological Seminary um has written some like brilliant pieces on trauma and theology um and there's still so many folks who don't know that her name is there and I'm like yeah she's brilliant like we need to we need to be read her stuff alongside all these others so I think it's just starting to um academia is like very slow to catch up on these things and and the church is very slow sometimes to catch on to these things and I think I'm just starting to see a glimmer of that change so it's an exciting time. Awesome! Yeah. 

Your piece also raise for us  how do you find have do you found that Jeremiah's experence can mirror and can help help people survive their own trauma? Yeah I mean I think just kind of simply in the fact that so many emotions and so many experiences in you know that are kind of conveyed as happening to one person in the scriptures in the space of what is 7 to 18 so like 11 verses um is like a relief when I read it because I feel like in the midst of like a post-traumatic remaking of the self or in in the aftermath of a traumatic experience it can be impossible um to streamline anything or and not that we should but sometimes I think in theology specifically we we do that without me meaning to sometimes or we mean to because it's easier to have something that's a little bit linear a little bit clean um and so I think Jeremiah is a relief for me in that sense and I think um or I know others who have experienced trauma who have found themselves in the scriptures in those ways in the laments in Job um in passages like this in Jeremiah and um just that they exist that we could talk to God this way that we experience the world in these like big extreme intense ways and that those things exist in the Sacred Scriptures of our tradition um and sometimes they all happen within 11 verses or in a moment in time. So when have you been thinking about other ways along with scripture we can engage theologically with and for those experiencing trauma?

Um hmm, yeah I think about this all the time! Yeah I know you do! Um this is like the big question that spusr my life on um and my PhD work and I think that these questions so the Christian tradition has been really good at speaking about suffering since its beginnings right like we there's this um image of suffering at the at the center of our um tradition and and so that's different than trauma so experiences of trauma resist that kind of integration where um suffering is kind of integrated into your identity throughout time and trauma doesn't do that um so then how do we speak about God how do we reconcile when we can't integrate these pieces of ourselves and these theologies or our understandings of God um so that's kind of I think the most important task of trauma theology so how do we reinvent our theologies in ways that allow for that kind of holy disruption and I think it is holy um so I think practical theology has a really important task there particularly in churches where liturgies have been saying and singing things for centuries that can be um harmful and have hurt some um and where the people in the pews or the or the chairs or benches um have vastly different experiences and understandings of God and to to start being more aware of that so practical theology and our churches um to begin to be more aware and take trauma into serious consideration when planning a service or any sort of um spiritual kind of reflection um particularly where the person speaking has um power and responsibility to do so um and then personally I think it's very important as well so as Christians I believe we're called to witness suffering um and this includes trauma I would say we're we're called to witness trauma and to come alongside people in in places that are dark and scary and overwhelming and I think our scriptures argue um for us to do that go to these places and do not reject um engage engage God in these experiences and um engage others who are experiencing these things um in our lives without looking away in practical ways you know um so something I would say that's kind of small but like really not small at all is to practice not looking away so when you're riding the bus or you're walking through a city or a neighborhood your own city and neighborhood wherever you are begin noticing where you want to look away from things um people and then ask yourself why why do I want to look away in this instance am I uncomfortable am I unsafe those are different things um and then as you go through this start and start to notice why um why you might want to look away in those instances ask yourself how those theologies how the theologies that you grew up with your understandings of God are bound up in those kind of learned responses to um those around you you in your own neighborhoods and um so like I say it's kind of a small thing but it's not really small um to learn to pay attention and then once you notice to not look away to engage in those um experiences I think is something that we're called to

do. Well that is very cool Shauna thank you um I like this idea of not looking away and um I really appreciate you with your piece uh that you brought some scripture into the conversation because practical theology can kind of shy away from scripture I find there can be a lot of theologizing and a lot of oh we don't want to touch the scripture so appreciate that you went there and you you like pulled Jeremiah into this um that's into the mess of trauma I I kind of like that it's a mess it I I kind of like that we don't know the answers sometimes when it comes to this um. Yeah. Yeah it's seems kind of maybe it's my life is a mess it feels familiar I don't know anyway um yeah it's just it feels like a good place to be right now so so thank you Shauna for writing that. Yeah happy too. Yeah so so now we're gonna turn to Vikki's poem and Vikki I think uh I'm gonna read it for us would that be okay? Yes. Okay all right so this poem is called To Know and

Grow. Bruised, abused living in unloving soil hold tight, take flight escape from this cropping crippling coil wild youth, forsooth, kept finding myself in hostile places despairing, heart tearing, will I ever find welcoming spaces. Black skin is sin, is what they want me to feel. Yet I know as I grow, such thinking cannot be real. As I age, channel my rage into fighting fallacious secur- surety, (sorry). To fight for what's right, travelling the road to maturity. To preach hate speech against those you think defenceless. Is the sin, not our skin, showing your words false and senseless. Begin to see a glimmer in me of all that I have for giving. Black skin, not sin but an ebony love-filled living. I'm one plot, on one spot on soil fed by gladness and woe. Part in a field in which I'm sealed surrounded by others who know. I've learned, discerned love cannot thrive alone. When dismayed I prayed for hearts made of flesh, not stone. Black skin, like within black souls precious wisdom pearls. Look, you'll see my Black folks’ mystery is to show how true love unfurls in spite of our plight. We manage to live, to survive. Love, resistance, persistence, tools people of colour use to thrive. We ignore the deep sore dealt by a hateful sister or brother I hope we grow to know compassionate for all and each other. Yes, to know and grow with compassion for all and each other.

Thank you.

What a beautiful poem thank

you! That's beautiful words yeah so much meaning as poetry can um. Before before we dig into into your your you're magnificent words we we're both a big fans of Catholic Worker so we wondered if you could talk about your ministry with the Vancouver Catholic Worker.

Yes well we started the Vancouver Catholic Worker back in

1998 and uh we were very taken by uh Dorothy Day and her writings and Peter Maurin and all that and so before we actually started the house we went and visited a few Catholic Workers and Washington State because they were the closest ones and we decided uh like we weren't going to have like a specific uh home we would help and sort of like oh God sent us kind of thing and we we didn't know what we were

doing so we learned a lot along the way and uh we um

we didn't want to but on cause really I don't know if you know the downtown east side of Vancouver the poorest postal code of

Canada but we didn't we wanted to kind of not preach but preach by example so we didn't uh ask people to join us and worship n stuff but they could they were always invited to and it was a small single family home so wasn't like uh like an institutional thing it was like we were home for the people who came to us and we did we had about over 200 people come through our doors up until 2015 when we did a renovation and made the house more

spiffy but then covid in 2020 but even then we're still on a smaller scale because now I have uh health issues that interfere with my immune system so we have to be careful but we still uh we still have somebody living with us and two of us started as Sarah well three of us Sarah [...] and myself and this person Harold but uh we decided after the first year that Harold was kind of

not uhh he was making some people feel uncomfortable

so so this uh this month is 26 years that we've been the

Catholic Worker so you can ask me some question more about the Catholic Worker if you

want! Yeah sure I mean I'm like in awe and I I mean I had to read Dorothy Day's um memoir from my exams so I am also a huge fan a huge fan um so um so how many people you said you have one person living in the house with you right now. Oh besides the two uh main persons. Yeah. There's oh I forgot to say we also very big on social justice issues like uh I remember we went to the 25th anniversary of the Las Vegas Catholic Worker and then we went to that nuclear place the Strategic something and so we did we've done stuff like that with in the States and then here at home we do a lot uh like with the pipeline stuff like that I got arrested and Kinder Morgan oh my yes so yes it's you know it's the the spiritual part which is motivated

the justice

part. That's amazing and uh if folks wanted to read more up more about the Vancouver Catholic Worker is there a website that you would recommend? Yeah we have a website okay and a Facebook page. Maybe we can link it at the bottom okay awesome yeah we can link that for sure uh and at the bottom of the episode that's great. And we used to have a newsletter but we ran out of steam. I understand! Totally get

it! Because right now Sarah is the only one who is working. Okay. And I'm long in the tooth so not working

Faithful and wise. 

So um more in realtion to your poem in your author's note and in your poem you refer to how

um there have been harmful theologies equatingBlackness with sin and and whiteness with goodness and we wanted to say how we wanted to hear both how you have resisted these racist theologies and how there can be solidarity and resisting such such racism in such sin and along with that question how how your own theology has changed or been impacted over over the

years. Yeah first of all uh those of us who are racialized we also by uh buy into the the [...] narrative right and we sort of have to or hopefully we can finally disengage and distill like the message say of Christianity and of Christ distill it from all its cultural and power laden  overtones

so what I see myself as evolving because it's always evolving is that I'm I'm seeing that there's a lot of patina on the Christian message right

and uh how can I say this like for instance in one of my art projects I did a thing on ancestors going but going back to my African ancestors and and others and it got me to thinking of how Christianity

um was actually a tool of empire like and we know that in the Canadian context with residential schools and all that and in the African context it's it's the same and in

racism is is a tool

to uh make hierarchies of people but those hierarchies are usually in the service of power of the state and for um

for for Christianity and even in Islam the the core essence of whatever the theology is you sort of have to you know what wood when you take off all the varnish that's been put over the years and so I don't think my theology has changed I think that as as I get older I'm uncovering all that varnish that's been placed

over. Yeah thanks Vikki that's such a powerful image of

of remembering words at the heart of our faith and at the heart of the life and ministry of

Jesus. So now we come to the point in the podcast where we I think it's my favorite part where we turn um the mic over to you both so to speak to see if you have any questions that you'd like to ask each other after reading each other's pieces so Shauna I wonder if you had any have a question that you would like to ask Vikki? I have very many but I'll just I'll start with one um um Vikki so nice to hear some of your um your work and experience and um that's so funny that the the house in 2015 you said was put on hold to be made more spiffy and in 2015 I I came to the downtown east side um and worked for worked and volunteered for about eight years in those years where that house was that's funny we just missed each other um but I was thinking as I read your poem one of the things that stood out to me among many was the line "one plot on one spot" and I wondered in the context of your work in the downtown east side um what does place have to do with it what is um or or how do you understand that line "one plot on one

spot"? That's interesting I haven't thought of it in terms of of that but one of the things that when we decided to buy the house as opposed to rent the house is we wanted to be there you know so we wanted to be that one spot where people could come if they're looking for us so yeah so place means means a

lot. And then also if you hadn't thought of it in that way before I'd love to know more about how you were thinking about that line when you wrote the poem


itself. Hmm. I'm trying to remember

now I guess part of what what I mean

is

that it's kind of hard to to

frame but I'm I'm one example of the other examples that are been misunderstood or mis-judged or whatever

and yeah so it's it's it's almost like allowing to search out the other plots and the other spots cuz I I wrote this I think around the time

uh there was something happening in the States when it wasn't George Floyd it was before that but some other thing and it just yeah I don't write poetry often but it's one way that I can get out how I'm

feeling. Beautiful I'm glad that you wrote it so we could read it and talk about it Iread it a couple times with goosebumps

beautiful. I...can I ask Shauna now? Yes

please go for it! Like as I said I uh finished active ministry but when I read your your piece and I hadn't heard of trauma theology before I must uh but it made me think of how as homilists or preachers or whatever how so often we gloss over the difficult parts right and in the lectionary I don't think I've ever seen this but it's it's a a scripture that people need to to know about to read because it's okay like you say in your paper it's okay if you're not like going through this you have to wrestle with this and that was uh it was almost l oh I

wish I could go write a sermon on this but I think that work is so important and letting people know that you know it doesn't have to be all okay in the end like you can wrestle through it and that sort of goes throughout your your paper and that was so refreshing to me and healing in a

way oh thank you. I'm so glad yeah I I struggle sometimes theologically or thinking theologically about oh because so much of the Christian story is eschatology hope uh redemption and those things are not inherently bad I don't think I I just struggle with them so much and um you might be able to have seen that in the paper I'm like trying to find language right to say okay we can exist in this space without rejecting an a different reality which can sometimes be better than our current reality without rejecting or dismissing the pain of the now right it's it's a um I know Shelley Rambo talks about it death and life existing together and I thought oh when I first read her words on that I thought oh my goodness that's like the Christian story right death and life together like okay there has to be something here existing kind of moving around each other somehow um without one overtaking the other yeah. And the other theme I think in your piece is how we kind of get afraid to get mad at God you know? Yes! And so it's it's by getting mad at God and going through your thing doesn't mean you don't love God but you're struggling through this whatever and and I think that was a good point that you brought out in your paper. Oh thank you I remember actually as a I think I was a teenager so angsty at that point in my life I'm still angsty but um even more so than or newer to it I guess um but someone I said I was struggling with this thing about being angry at God right and someone said to me well so simple like even if you pretend that you're not God knows that you are anyway you might as well feel it and say it right be honest because it's what it is right it's it's our human response to whatever we're experiencing yeah so I thought ah so simple and so

good. Yeah I think I it was a s the teenager cause my confirmation teacher told me oh God can God can take it God God takes all emotions and yeah. Well this has been a powerful conversation two powerful uh contributions to the journal so we wanted to thank you so much for sharing your work and your time and your thoughts today with

us. Thank you thank you for having me and for liking my

poem! Hope hope you both contribute again one day. Thank you! Lovley to be with you all!