| Your Name | Rosemary Dewerse |
|---|---|
| Email Address | rdewerse@unitingcollege.edu.au |
| Cohort Assignment | Australia 2023 |
| 1. What do you see as your primary work at this stage of your life? | Education. |
| 2. What role do you see as yours to play? | I work in Theology and find myself wanting to be part of rethinking the whole way that Western Christianity has been shaped and has sought to shape the world. There is a massive tension (at least for me) between wanting to be transformational in our communities but holding to dualisms, as well as exclusivities. I have also been significantly influenced by indigenous elders in recent years (to the point of realising my worldview has been changing) and want to help lend my skills to seeing us listen to them. |
| 3. What goals or aims do you have in regard to the above? | I have the opportunity to research and to publish, to supervise doctoral research theses, and now to help set up a professional doctorate. I'd like to see truly integrated, wholistic, and paradigm-changing thinking and application happen in my field. |
| 4. Where do you feel your next arenas for personal growth are? | As I mentioned, my worldview has been changing. I've only recently begun to be able to articulate in what ways. Recently moving to Australia from NZ is helping as there is definitely culture shock going on. I would like to see next steps in changing thinking changing my praxis, and changing praxis changing my thinking. |
| 5. And for professional growth? | My work is a vocation, so personal and professional (one of those dualisms!) are totally intertwined for me. |
| 6. What have you invested in to get you where you are? | Years of sitting at the feet of indigenous elders and learning some language and absorbing worldview, lots of reading and conversations including as part of supervising some pretty innovative research, and much self-reflection. |
| 7. What fields of learning and which thinkers have been important in your life? | Theology is my main field, though I've also engaged in training in integral theory. Some thinkers: Aunty Denise Champion, Moana Hall-Smith, Faye Pouesi and a number of other Maori writers, Robin Wall Klimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass)... |
| 8. Can you frame your philosophy or cosmology of life? What role(s) do humans play in it? | The cosmology I grew up with is different to what I now hold. I understand that the universe is animate, embued with mauri/ru'ach, the spirit of the Creator, an integrated whole, physically real, divinely alive, profoundly interrelational. Humans are the younger brothers and sisters of all created things, and while we have been entrusted as kaitiaki (stewards) we ourselves are dependent on the gracious nurture of creation; it is important that we are mindful of all this in our operating. |
| Date Created | July 15, 2023 |