The world is not about thought, since we see, smell, hear, and touch metaphorically. Analogy has been our way of living and relating, and in that way we are always part of the breathing reality. We move through the mystery of what we easily label experience. Do we know anything about it? Or, do we think that we know anything about it? This sort of mystery simply embarrasses us to the point that we would say to everybody that we do not want to be a theologian. We want to be left alone with our own thoughts of everything we experience in this world – these thoughts give us lonesomeness. And reality continues to breath around us.

     This edition of Melintas presents theological reflections on human experiences. The first article attempts to explore some areas of convergences and divergences between Gabriel Marcel and Ludwig Binswanger, in dialogue with the Filipino concept of loob-kapwa, which the author believes provides a hospitable home for the intersubjective relation. The second article takes Hagar, a biblical figure, as a model of a woman who overcomes violence and oppression in her life – a model for many women struggling to defend their rights and dignities and believing in God who saves and frees them. Hagar never gives up amid the many difficulties she is facing as a single parent. The third article brings Heidegger’s ideas and insights to reveal the poetical dimension of religion in our contemporary world, in which religion is facing various criticisms on the violence it ironically provokes. The fourth article discusses the wrath of God towards human sexual asininity (pathe atimias) based on Paul’s letter to Rome 1:18-32. The text quotes Paul as explaining that idolatry is the result of erroneous relationship between human and God mirrored in aberrant sexuality. The fifth article speaks of the phenomenon of suffering especially in the Book of Job. The issues of human unresolved suffering, sin, and the mystery of God are brought together and related to the situation of the HIV/AIDS victims to recommend the appropriate disposition and approaches.

     We want to reconnect with our experiences and to do it theologically as well, because our everydayness in the world does not always ‘make sense’. At times we simply have no idea (thought), and we need to go through the mysteries and to figure out what to do along the way. What if experience is religious?

Editor.