Been blogging now for over two years. Mostly I'm happy doing random postings from the lengthy serious to the shorter fun stuff, from theology to poetry, from unabashed baptist stuff to the essential correctives from other Christian traditions, from book reviews to political and cultural comment. I'd like to stick with the spontaneous and unpredictable daily diet - that way personal interests, daft impulses, serious reflection, can be combined with generally directive rambling around theological ideas.
At the same time there's a couple of bigger projects I'd quite like to play around with. I've already started a weekly Brueggemann conversation Friday by Friday. During Lent I'll start another regular weekly posting as an experiment with biblical text. Nothing ambitious - just an attempt to exegete the chosen text by performative practices! And the chosen text is the Lord's Prayer.
Instead of trying to exegete the meaning of the text first - supposing I try to live it while also trying to understand it, allowing reflective study and reflective practice to shape each other?
It could be an experiment reflecting on and recording the cost and consequence of living out of a text that is itself living, and active, and pierces to the marrow - to the core of who I am, and to the heart of what's important.
Anyway my plans for Lent are to live daily with the Lord's Prayer. I'll say more about why and how in the next post.
Hi Jim,
I'm interested to see how this works out - especially exegesis by performative practices. I'm not sure I even know what that means!
Posted by: Tony Maude | February 24, 2009 at 07:50 PM
Hello Tony. Not sure I know either! But what I think it means is fixing attention on the text through daily saying it, praying it, and allowing its meaning to emerge from intentional obedience. The meaning is in the doing. If exegesis is interpretation, think of this not so much as intellectual literary explanation, but as the text translated into action, interpreted by the way it is lived, each day a live performance of the text. But yes - I'm chasing something which is more practical experiment than theoretic discipline. Something of how this could be worked out will be in the next post on the Lord's Prayer.
Posted by: Jim Gordon | February 24, 2009 at 10:03 PM
Hello, I'm having fun discovering blogs related to something I'm working on, and today I came up with yours through a Google search. This year I decided to try to do a daily exegesis (after contributing to my Episcopal parish's Lenten Devotional), and I started a blog to do so. So I hope you will take a peep. http://dailyexegesis.blogspot.com
I think your idea above is a very good one. I don't know any other way except to take our time with text and try to live it. I see this exegesis as a sort of constant work in progress; my ideas really should be shaping themselves all the time, at least I hope they do.
I've written on my own for many years before I ventured even to put something on a blog. I still have to dig for what to say, for which text I'd like to discuss, and once I sit down and start writing all kinds of new things seem to come out I've never thought of before. Living the text must have all kinds of experiences in store for you. Just posting mine to the web (even in a relatively unknown blog) starts a series of effects I'd never expected. Interesting.
Thanks & Best wishes!
Posted by: Janine | March 06, 2009 at 06:44 PM
Welcome to you Janine. Best wishes for your blog, which I'll visit from time to time. And thanks for visiting here. Exegesis as applying mind and heart, knowledge and passion, to a text, is always a dynamic process. We read, we think, we pray, we form ideas, see possibilities - as a preacher that's a life discipline in lifelong learning anyway. But what to do with ideas, how to practice what is discovered - ideas as you say shape themselves, but then how do they shape us? The Lord's Prayer as daily re-orientation to Kingdom values is one (and only one) way of paying attention to the text by paying attention to my life - and vice versa. Shalom and best wishes on your writing.
Posted by: Jim Gordon | March 07, 2009 at 06:40 AM
Thank you! I'm so glad I have discovered your blog. I pray the Jesus prayer, and that is kind of a practice similar to what you describe in the sense of bringing your thoughts back to the focus, your center. The Lord's prayer I agree should work the same way of re-orientation, and giving us direction. Peace.
Posted by: Janine | March 07, 2009 at 04:52 PM