I met Tommasso for the first time the other night. Usually, I’m decent at remembering whether or not I’ve met someone before, but in this case, I wasn’t. We had met before, he told me as he was finishing up his last couple drags on a skinny hand rolled cigarette outside of Atopos. I shook his hand and pretended like I suddenly remembered the last time we had seen each other in order to bypass the initial awkwardness in the conversation. He just got back from staying for a month in America and had visited New York, Boston, and Chicago. He was one of the few Italians my age, that I’ve met, who is enthralled with America, and yet, still very much a commie. We chatted a bit outside as I waited for Francesco to come out for his smoke break. Tommasso told me about his trip and how he couldn’t wait to get back. He lives in Bologna, but he’s from Ancona, and is studying philosophy. Besides his experience in America, this topic led us into another segment of conversation that we explored for about an hour. He was studying two French guys that were teachers of Foucault. It was quite interesting, and I knew just enough to be dangerous, as they say. I tried to comment on how I saw Focault’s influence in theology and why he’s important. Especially his work on critiquing the prison system and his stuff on power in light of Jesus’ message in the Gospels. Being an atheist and a big fan of Gramsci, Tommasso had never considered how his work could be of interest to the realm of theology or the Church in general. He said that he wasn’t much of a fan of orthodoxy because it was too coercive and “hegemonic” (that’s right, I had to look that one up!). Instead of defending “orthodoxy” or assumming that my definition of it matched his, I stepped back and punted with a statement I’ve heard some of my friends say, “If God is Love, then to be an atheist doesn’t mean that you don’t believe, but that you don’t love.” Tommasso was pleasantly surprised by this statement, thought about it for a second, as if he would tuck it away, without giving up his ground as being an ‘atheist.’

The conversation moved on to other things like the elections and some recent controversial graffitti work done in the city (which I happened to like) as a means of sprucing things up around town. Here’s a picture of one that’s been done right by our church that some in the city have deemed “blasphemous”:

mary