A Life in Conversation
Essays in Honor of Bernard J. Lee, S.M.
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Here is what Professor Bernard Lee says about the essence of conversation:
I cannot listen seriously to a different life and come away unchanged . . . I risk being required to alter my sense of things, my understandings, my values, my self . . . I am not only reconstructing and re-understanding the meaning of my friend (or my sacred text), I am reconstructing the meaning of myself.
Relationship means co-creation of each other’s identity. When there is co-creation, no one person has control. Thus a relationship always opens up new possibilities for both lives. The conversation of a relationship makes new things appear out in front of both participants. Something is made by the conversation: a possible world is conjured up and projected; a story gets a new plot or possibility; history is enriched by a new version of how it might be lived. (AF, 160-61)
We become people of size when we risk our pre-conceived worlds, when we open ourselves to new possibilities, when we co-create each other, when we work together for a “new version” of personal and communal life.
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About the Book
In a long and creative academic career, Professor Bernard J. Lee has published and taught on the cutting edge of Catholic theology. He has been a beloved teacher, generous mentor and cherished colleague during his academic tenures at Maryville University, St. John’s University (Collegeville), Loyola University New Orleans, and St. Mary’s University, San Antonio.
In A Life in Conversation, his colleagues and former students offer a collection of essays that honor him on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. The essays focus on many aspects of Lee’s pioneering work which includes explorations in process theology, ecclesiology, the Jewish world of Jesus, sacramentology, religious life, small Christian communities, and practical theology.
Gathered here under the metaphorical umbrella of conversation, a commitment of primary and life-long importance to Professor Lee, these essays offer glimpses of the stature of a religious thinker whose life in conversation continues to affect deeply his students and colleagues alike.
The authors contributing to this volume are Dianne Bergant, C.S.A.; Michael A. Cowan; Nancy Dallavalle; William V. D’Antonio; Peter Eichten; Thomas F. Giardino, S.M.; Andrew Simon Sleeman, O.S.B.; Terry A. Veling; and Evelyn and James Whitehead. A Life in Conversation concludes with an essay by Professor Lee.
About the Author
Bernard J. Lee, S.M., is professor in the theology department of St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, Texas. A prolific systematic theologian, his published works include The Becoming of the Church, Jesus and the Metaphors of God, The Galileean Jewishness of Jesus, The Catholic Experience of Small Christian Communities, The Beating of Great Wings and The Re-Becoming of the Church.