Rev Dr Maja Whitaker
Maja is Laidlaw’s academic dean, a practical theologian, and pastor with a passion for research that helps us think better about the fullness of our lived lives. Her work is both timely, encouraging and challenging. She will explore the ideas we have about resurrection bodies and how these speak to current Western cultural assumptions about bodies and body shaming. Offering a new vision for Christians to engage with bodies and embodiment – their own and others - this presentation will offer deeply theological and beautifully accessible ways of exploring our ideas around bodies, identity, shame and celebration. This discussion will also explore ideas around disability, disabled bodies and the fullness of human identity. Maja’s recently released edited book: Pursuing Perfection: Faith and the Female Body will also be celebrated and available on the evening.
Miriam Jessie Fisher
Miriam Jessie is an arts-based researcher and this presentation offers a way of thinking about spiritual pilgrimage through the vehicle of stitched cartographies and poetry. She will explore ideas of how God meets us in particular places, in whenua, in the actualities of our lives and invite people to reflect on their own journeys of pilgrimage. Three maps will be presented exploring narratives of the ‘Prodigal Son,’ the life of Elijah, and a personal ‘archipelago of faith.’ The ways in which our faith is an ongoing journey where God is present invites theological reflection on salvation as an ongoing divine work. Meditations on landscapes of spiritual significance, insights, homecoming, exile and wandering as human aspects of being in a world as seekers and those sought will be offered. Listeners will be invited to consider the cartography of their lives as a means to witness to their spiritual pilgrimage. Original work will be displayed and prints of a particular work may be ordered on the night.