Saturday, July 03, 2010
God at feast, a further re-imagining of God and creativity
Following on from the image of God as musician, here’s one about God at feast – What does this quote say about God? What does it say about being human?
“All the senses are involved in a good feast. We taste, touch, smell, see, hear. Salvation as health is here vividly physical. Anything that heals and enhances savouring the world through our senses may feed into a salvation that culminates in feasting ….
As millions starve, ought anyone to be feasting? Ought there not to be a long detour of working to feed anyone, postponing the feasting till that has been achieved? Or should we keep alive the hope of food for all by working for justice, and, if we have food, simultaneously celebrating the goodness of God? Can we even sustain work of compassion and justice in the right spirit if we are not also having some celebratory foretaste of the Kingdom of God? …
That combination of sharing and celebrating is, perhaps, the most radical of all the implications of the teaching of practice of Jesus. Feeding the hungry is not a matter of the well-fed offering handouts and getting on with their private feasting: the vision is of everyone around the same table, face to face. Even to imagine sitting like that gently but inexorably exposes injustice, exploitation, sexism, hard-heartedness, and the multiple ways of rejecting the other …
To envisage the ultimate feasting is to imagine an endless overflow of communication between those who love and enjoy each other. It embraces body language, facial expressions, the ways we eat, drink, toast, dance and sing; and accompanying every course, encounter and artistic performance are conversations taken up into celebration.”
David Ford; in Theological Aesthetics: A Reader
Friday, July 02, 2010
God the musician compliments of 4th century poet Paulinus of Nola
Imaging God, imaging humans – What does the following quote say about God? What does it say about being human?
“Think of a man playing a harp, plucking strings producing different sounds by striking them with one quill … This is how God works … the Musician who controls that universal-sounding harmony … God is the Craftsman of all creation natural and contrived … Like a musician strumming the strings of the lyre with fluent quill, the Spirit proclaimed the same message in different tongues, instilling into men’s ears the varying sounds.”
From Paulinus of Nola, a Bishop around the 4th century, most famous not for his name, but for his poetry. (In Theological Aesthetics: A Reader
Friday, February 19, 2010
purchased: philosophers fingerpuppets, now wanted: theologians fingerpuppets
These little people are being ordered today:
the philosophers fingerpuppets, care of my Ministry Enhancement Allowance, in preparation for some upcoming input.
At Spirit of Wonder: imagining a church immersed in culture (part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival, more info here), I am providing two blocks of input. One is on imagination, leadership and culture, the other on the Spirit, the Bible and culture.
In a moment of mad randomness with Craig yesterday, I was talking about how imagination has a history and the need for us to find our story within that history. Craig, totally lateral thinker that he is, mentioned a shop that sold philosophers fingerpuppets. Nietzsche, Plato and Kant. Who all had things to say about imagination! Who all deserve to make an appearance at the Spirit of Wonder!
So that’s the creative spark that suddenly clicked the first session. Yes!
Which only leaves the second session – theologians fingerpuppets – like Moses and the tabernacle makers, like Deborah and Hannah, like Mary and the 70/2 anonymous in Luke 10, like Peter – who all also deserve to make an appearance at Spirit of Wonder, because they all have a lot to say about imagination and a church immersed in culture.
)
