Books · Beauty · Theology #5
On living rivers, re-imagination, and St. John
My friends,
I’m writing from a favourite cafe on a break from one of the highlight events of my summer: a conference on theological anthropology. Once in awhile, it is such a gift to re-immerse in the world of theological exploration, to hear from scholars and writers who are thinking deeply about things like… the story that Christianity tells about what it means to be human.
On the first day, Judith Wolfe described the ‘gap’ that all human beings experience between the plenitude of creation, it’s lavish beauty, and the conditions of competition and loss and scarcity in which we experience it. Christianity speaks directly to this disjunction, she said, affirming the beauty we see and hunger to grasp, addressing the sin and loss and grief that make it impossible to keep. She described the way that eight of the miracles in the Gospel of St. John embody a divine healing of this gap, as people are moved from scarcity to plenitude (feeding of the 5000), sickness to health (healing of man born blind), death to life (raising of Lazarus).
To be a Christian, then, is to witness to the arrival of divine plenty, of an unending goodness, an incorruptible beauty. We can only act like Jesus in his generosity and self-gift and joy if we really believe there is now ‘enough’ for us, a source of joy and plenty that will no longer fail. In this way, she said, Christians are called to a ‘radical re-imagination of the world’.
I love this. It’s why I love literature that participates in this task, art and music that kindle our capacity to imagine a goodness we haven’t fully yet known. It’s also what I’m mostly writing about here in one way or another, because I believe we’re called to this ‘radical re-imagination’ in the quotidian corners of our lives. We don’t just look at the world ‘out there’ with that newly kindled imagination, we look at our own lives: how may I radically re-imagine my home, my table, my community, my marriage, my deepest need and grief as the site of God’s arriving plenitude?
I’ll leave you to chew on that.
Books
For my money, Robert MacFarlane is one of the most vivid, interesting, articulate writers alive. I first read The Old Ways, years ago, and was instantly fascinated by his exploration of the art and joy of walking ancient ways around Britain. His prose is clear-cut but rich, peppered with the old words and place-names he loves. His non-fiction reads like a novel and he draws upon literature, philosophy, theology, and a host of natural sciences to explore his themes. His Lost Words is on display in our playroom, and his Landmarks (which I first read last year) was one of my ‘landmark’ books - an exploration of imagination, language, and place, and how a diminished local vocabulary actually results in a marred capacity to ‘see’ the places we keep in their complexity and beauty.
So often in that book, I underlined passages that, to me, evidenced an inherent sacramental bent - he was always pushing toward a sense of a reality, a presence, a ‘meaning’ in nature that could not be explained or encompassed by scientific knowledge alone. I yearned intellectually for him to take what seemed an evident step to me toward some kind of religious or faith-based sacramental view. In Is A River Alive, he does take a next step, but it is, a little startlingly, toward animism rather than any kind of sacramental or religious insight. I am frustrated by this. And at the same time fascinated. (He actually uses the term ‘god’ in the final chapter.) And I also wonder if Christianity needs to be more articulate about the real character of creation. Because what continues to compel and intrigue me in MacFarlane’s writing is his vivid, passionate account of nature basically as creation - as living and meaning. In this book he looks at three rivers, all endangered for various reasons, asking whether we can understand a river as a something that lives, that requires a certain obligation from us. For me, MacFarlane is always worth reading (because his prose is magnificent) and because he challenges my complacent thought, my own unconscious modern bent to see the material world as inanimate, rather than something that ripples and thrums with the mind of its Maker. He helps me toward that ‘radical re-imagination’ of the world, even though he doesn’t share the faith toward which it points. I keep hoping maybe, someday, he will. The book is vivid, compelling, and a step into the presence of mystery, regardless. I’m contemplating which MacFarlane to revisit next…
Beauty
I recently had the great fun of hosting my longtime friend, the artist and writer Katy Rose, for an interview over at The Book Girl Fellowship. Katy is a rich and varied source of artistic knowledge and profound beauty. Her painting above, titled I Will Sing, hangs in my living room and is a source of regular contemplation. I love the movement the painting kindles in my eye, asking me to move through the sinuous colours, ever upward toward what I always feel are the mountains. The painting below is one she based on a photo I took from a walk on the ‘downs’ in Sussex, where I used to live. One of the topics we explored in her interview, was the way that her art emerges from seasons of deep suffering, both her own and others. She regularly leads a group of women, all survivors of sexual trafficking, in both the study and making of art as a way of healing, exploring a hymn alongside the different images they examine. Her work bears a vivid and profound hope and it’s been a gift to return to it in this season. You can find her art prints HERE, or explore her website and lovely books, HERE.
Theology
I have a new book in the works. I really thought I wouldn’t write a long form book for awhile. But one has arrived in my imagination. It’s a startling, and forceful presence in my mind and I find myself gathering ideas, notebooks, and of course, a stack of books for research and inspiration as I begin. One of them is the title above, John Behr’s John the Theologian & his Paschal Gospel. I learned about Behr from my husband, who greatly enjoys his work and is well versed in patristics (and I got to see Behr live yesterday at a conference here in Oxford). But this is my first full read of his work. What he’s exploring here is exactly what I need to answer some theological questions and open some theological possibilities as I begin my own writing. I started early one morning last week and had to get my brain back into academic form as I dove into his exploration of various interpretations of John’s beautiful Gospel (always my favourite). But then, abruptly, Behr presented his own thesis. The words exploded from the page: vivid, potent, blazing with colour and emotion. This passage below, is why I’m excited to keep on with this book:
…its [the book’s] argument is that the Gospel, together with its Prologue, in fact pivots upon the Passion - it is a ‘paschal gospel’ - such that the becoming flesh of the Word speaks not of the birth of a ‘pre-incarnate Word’, but of Jesus’ ascending the cross to the Father to be identified as the apocalyptic Son of Man whose flesh is in turn brought down from heaven to be eaten, so that he dwells in those who see his glory and who themselves take up the cross to become his witnesses, born of God in their own martyrdom and born into life as living human beings, the glory of God, the completion of the Temple, and perfection of God’s stated purpose in the opening chapter of Scripture, that is, to make human beings in his image. The Incarnation, in brief, is not ‘an episode in a biography’, an event now in the past, but the ongoing embodiment of God in those who follow Christ.
Just look at that run-on sentence! The passionate descriptions! The defiant interpretations! The pathos and beauty of what he’s suggesting. I haven’t yet decided what I think of his thesis, and have a lot of questions for how it shifts our understanding of other doctrines, but I’m intrigued and excited to continue.
So, friends. I wish you such a book this summer, one to kindle and delight. I wish you cool moments (sorry, the heat in supposedly cool England is currently challenging my sense of sanctification). I wish you a mind rekindled by the plenitude of God, and the vision to spot that lavish kindness arriving in the most ordinary moments of your life.
More soon,
Sarah
P.S. If you missed it, I’m hosting an online day retreat on the subject of reading, imagination, and children’s literature. Join me! (Click the image below to register, or check out this post for more information.)
P.P.S. This post contains affiliate links… all pennies donated toward the family library!
I love your summary of Macfarlane's Is a River Alive. I've always loved his writing too, and I'm a third of the way through this one and feeling the same longing you are - for that faith-based sacramental view of creation. That said, I've been searching for years for a Christian nature writer who addresses Creation as an alive being and have yet to find one (though my search is far from comprehensive). You say, "I also wonder if Christianity needs to be more articulate about the real character of creation" - and I say, yes! Look at all the Psalms where the wind, the ocean, the trees, etc. are so very animate. Isaiah has similar imagery, and so does St. Paul. When Jesus calms the storm, he speaks to it, and it *listens* - it is not some cosmic Alexa; it is animate.
Anyway, I share your hope that Macfarlane one day comes to faith - I ache to read a book from him that is witness to nature as God's Creation.
Always delighted to read anything you write.