WSCF General Assembly Stewards Blog: Rubem Alves is great!
by Beidy Casas-Aragon
SCM Canada Steward to the WSCF General Assembly
3 Aug 2008
I first encountered Rubem Alves’ work through a Theology course I took in 1994 when I read his book “La Teologia como Juego” (Theology as a Game). I really fell in love with his work. Since then I have read a lot of his books and have been following the evolution in his ways of thinking. Today he has confirmed what he is doing in his writing and his theology -he plays, and he does it with words, which is something quite difficult, yet he’s great!. It has been a wonderful experience to be able to see him face-to-face and listen to one of his speeches. It would have been better to hear him in Portuguese, but that wasn’t not possible in this context. Even still, I think he threw us lots of good points and opened up for us the space to dream, which is something we really need as students. From the Latin American perspective, It was great that other people from other contexts were able to know how we do theology and to see how important the daily life and context is for us when doing theology. He told us about his dog and how he could theologise from it. He said that the dog knows what life really is, because it enjoys every moment and that’s the way we Latin Americans are. Every moment is important for us and even when we can’t live fully, we take life as a game. Such an attitude helps us to overcome the difficulties we face as a people of this region. It has been incredible and I’m very glad that other people had the chance to enjoy the way he plays with words.
