Our final book of our course work in the Doctor of Theology was “The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study in Monastic Culture” by Jean Leclercq. This has been by far my favorite book and we have read A LOT! I love the thoughts in this one. Specifically this excerpt on biblical imagination.
“We are fond of abstract ideas. Our imagination, having become lazy, seldom allows us to do anything but dream. But in the men of the Middle Ages, it was vigorous and active. It permitted them to picture, to “make present,” to see beings with all the details provided by the text: the colors and dimensions of things, the clothing, bearing, and actions of the people, and the complex environment in which they move. They liked to describe them and, so to speak, re-create them, giving very sharp relief to images and feelings. The words of the sacred text never failed to produce a strong impression on the mind. The biblical words did not become trite; people never got used to them. Scripture, which they like to compare to a river or a well, remained a fountain that was always fresh. The spiritual men of those days counsel the renunciation of carnal images: but this is in order to substitute them for holy imagination. The sanctification of the imagination results in their attachment to the slightest particulars of the text, and not merely to the ideas it contains. The strength of imagination has great consequences in the field of iconography, and literary expression as well. The memory, fashioned wholly by the Bible and nurtured entirely by biblical words and the images they evoke, causes them to express themselves spontaneously in biblical vocabulary. Reminiscences are not quotations, elements of phrases borrowed from another. They are the words of the person using them; they belong to him.”
“The memory fashioned wholly by the Bible” is the desire of my academic pursuits. To be so wrapped up in the story that the story becomes a memory. When Christ says “Do this in remembrance of me” the word for remembrance is ‘anamnésis’. Man, I love this word. It means a retelling/recalling. So, whenever we take the Holy Communion, we are retelling the story. If we take a more Quaker stance on the sacrament, which I tend to, our whole life is a constant retelling. My past, present, and future are indistinguishable from the story, the true story.
Joining this story, I realize that I cannot be authentically me without knowing myself in the story of Christ. If I have learned anything (besides I really don’t know a whole lot) it is that the story of Christ is uniquely and specifically mine. And yours too. There is such wonder and amazement that threads itself throughout Christian history that speaks to the beauty, truth, and goodness of Jesus in and for creation…on our behalf. These past two years have been a blur, but I have lifelong friends and mentors who have helped me better recognize the length, breadth, width, height, and depth of the love of God in Christ Jesus. For that, I am eternally grateful and hope as I enter into the next phase of the degree that the light of Christ shines on our creativity and imagination as we decidedly tell the only story that matters.
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