This is the first of an occasional series. Sometimes a sentence or two says so much is needs to be taken with attentive slowness, even clause by clause, allowing it to build towards those moments of insight and recognition that open mind and heart to a richer apprehension of God, the world, ourselves and the infinite variations of those relationships that sustain our existence.
The prose poem is often enhanced by being written as a form of blank or open verse. I did something like that in the previous post with A W Tozer and William Temple. And have done it before with theologians like Eberhard Jungel, Hans Urs Von Balthasar (I'm under a challenge to get that name included in a sermon without spooking a congregation !) and Kathryn Tanner.
The book Believing Three ways in One God by Nicholas Lash is itself an example of multum in parvo. I've read it twice before and am reading it again - and interested in the pencilled margin notes from last time. The following passage on page 54 has Q in the margin - in JMG code that means quotable, quote it, don't forget it, this is good!
What we call Christianity is supposed to be some kind of school
the purpose of whose pedagogy
is to foster the conditions
in which dependence might be relearned as friendship;
conditions in which
the comprehensive taming of chaos by loving order;
of conflict by tranquility,
of discord by harmony,
might be instantiated and proclaimed.
To use the Creed,
to make its articles one's own,
is, therefore,
to be pledged in labour towards the 'kind of heaven and earth'
in which our human work,
might be the finite forms of God's.
Oh yes!
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