Queering Contemplation: Finding Queerness in the Roots and Future of Contemplative Spirituality

With this ambitious study, filmmaker Hall (coauthor, Notes on Silence) attempts to disentangle spiritual contemplation from the “grasp of Western Christian expression” and reframe it through a queer ethos of “strangeness, oddity, liberation [and] love.” Arguing that queerness contains the “generative materials necessary to awaken our contemplative life,” Hall casts aside the work of Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who “cannot express what it’s like for me to be a queer woman in America,” in favor of such models as “sex worker turned hermit monk” Pelagia, who lived in fourth- or fifth-century Antioch as a trans male, and Walatta Petros, a 17th-century Ethiopian nun believed to be a lesbian. Drawing inspiration from these figures, as well as interviews with queer theorists and theologians, Hall dissects how queerness is woven into mysticism, liminality, and monasticism, piecing together a model of spiritual contemplation that calls for “our most authentic self to emerge and bud into existence.” While Hall’s prose sometimes runs away from her (“When we are safe with our partner, creating immeasurable oneness in lovemaking, moments of sexual expression or exploration—we can experience our spirituality deeply enmeshed with embodiment and sexuality”), readers will appreciate her innovative analyses and authentic invitation to create one’s own flexible, individual practice of contemplation. This will give curious Christians plenty to chew on. (May)