Sinsinawa
Spectrum
A Congregation News Magazine
Join Us for St. Catherine of Siena Lecture
Okapis by Moonlight: Sacramental Witness in Women’s Writing
Presenter: Associate Colleen Carpenter Cullinan
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Dominican University, Priory Campus,
7200 W. Division, River Forest, IL
7 p.m. Prayer, Priory Chapel
7:30 p.m. Lecture, Priory Auditorium
Admission is free
by Claire Noonan
Barbara Kingsolver’s stunning 1999 novel The Poisonwood Bible opens with a haunting scene of a struggling mother, alone and afraid, suddenly encountering an okapi at the edge of a stream. The elusive okapi―so rare it was once known as “the African unicorn” and supposed by many to be mythical―appears in its strangeness, its beauty, its silence, and is gone as suddenly as it appeared. So, too, the presence of God breaks in on our all-too-ordinary lives in fleeting and breathtaking ways. Colleen Carpenter Cullinan, author of Redeeming the Story: Women, Suffering and Christ, will examine the ways in which several contemporary women writers direct our attention to the moments in which God’s presence becomes manifest and will also invite us to reflect on the sacramental imagination that shapes our ability to see the okapis in the forests and silences of our own lives. Cullinan is assistant professor of theology at St. Catherine University, St. Paul, MN.