Wednesday, May 25, 2005
‘Christ Plays’ p. 11-26
Kathy (who is loath to be cited, but makes contributions that cannot go unmentioned) began by quoting Peterson’s superb line on page 13: “Stories are verbal acts of hospitality.” The line is worth quoting in context:
Story is the most natural way of enlarging and deepening our sense of reality, and then enlisting us as participants in it. Stories open doors to areas or aspects of life that we didn’t know were there, or had quit noticing out of over-familiarity, or supposed were out-of-bounds to us. They then welcome us in. Stories are verbal acts of hospitality.
Ed echoed Peterson’s point that in the two biblical stories summarized in this section, “Jesus did not question the motives of Nicodemus and the woman at the well.” We would do well to follow suit, Ed said. Kathy underscored Peterson’s point that said the stories are not primarily about Nicodemus or the woman at the well, but about Jesus.
Brenda said Peterson’s section on the definition of spirituality, between the asterisks on page 19, “hit the nail on the head for me.” John pointed out Peterson’s merger of spirituality and practice in that section, where he writes, “‘the Christian life’ will be often used in these pages (but not exclusively) as a synonym for spirituality.” So bifurcated are spirtuality and practice that, as Howie added, if Peterson “doesn’t repeat [the redefinition] every chapter, he’s going to be misinterpreted.” (Peterson writes on p. 21, “It would clarify things enormously if we could withdraw “spirit” and “spirituality” from our language stock for a while.”)
Emily B. observed that this definition separates spirituality from an Eastern understanding of spirituality. Eastern gurus, she said, would dismiss Peterson’s “Christian spirituality” as a narrow understanding of the term. On
the other hand, John added, Peterson would say his sense of spirituality is broader than the Eastern sense.
John pointed to what he called Peterson’s “prophetic” words about elitism and class on page 20. When it comes to spirituality, Peterson writes:
The poor and the minimally educated never seem to receive much attention in these matters. But ‘evangelical’ brings the same energy and acceptance to the outsiders as to the insiders. The storefront mission and the prairie outpost often have deeply developed Christian spiritualities, even though their vocabularies might not fit in easily with what is heard in mountain retreat centers or large suburban churches.
John commented, “It is so easy to do everything we do with the implication that we have the middle class in mind ... and that is just so not the way it ought to be.”
Emily B. called Peterson’s tripod metaphor for creation, salvation, and community “very evocative,” as it suggests that any two without the other one is like a stool that won’t stand up. Betsy affirmed this, commenting, “We don’t have the language discuss the connection between these three.”
When the talk turned to possible “missing dependent clauses” from the chapter (that is, qualifying statements to blanket assertions), I thought the coast was grammatically clear to talk about Peterson’s fondness for the hyphenated participle—“God-defined, God-revealed life” (Peterson also hyphenates “fear-of-the-Lord.” Acknolwedging my cursory knowledge of biblical languages, I said this was a very Hebrew and Greek thing to do. (It’s also, I realized later, a fitting touch for someone who wrote a brilliant paraphrase of the Bible.) I added that using this structure in English suggests that the ideas behind the words overwhelm the words’ ability to convey them.
For next time: pages 26-39
Earlier: p. 1-9
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