Thoughts on your stories
First, I like the stories you shared.
Second, I like them better than your analysis of them, and I think you did, too. Which is the point.
Third, of course it's hard to separate the two, but that doesn't mean that they're not distinct and that it's not worth seeing them as distinct. Don't take it literally! It's just a little model, part of the point of which is exactly the limitations of models!
All it's trying to do is point to the richness of images and what can't be fully translated out of them. And it's trying to say that story gets closest to the richness of the event itself.
Michael, this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with inspiration or revelation in a divine sense. That's not what "mystery" necessarily means, for Shea. Mystery is just life, and writing about it is just writing about it. The process is the same, he would say, whether you believe in itt or not. Let's the pysche, for example, the unconscious: just how deep, inexhaustible it is. Or let's say death: do you have it figured out? Mystery = anything that's not figured out and can't be. For believers, after the fact, in the process of analysis, this whole mystery gets named as somehow in relation to God. But that's the point, that it's part of the process of analysis. To believe is to interpret.
I think the best way to get at these ideas is through that little handout I gave you with the Buechner and the O'Connor quotes. That's all.
Like the stories, though. And they're all "true" stories right? Psychologically true at least!
People are the msytery!
Second, I like them better than your analysis of them, and I think you did, too. Which is the point.
Third, of course it's hard to separate the two, but that doesn't mean that they're not distinct and that it's not worth seeing them as distinct. Don't take it literally! It's just a little model, part of the point of which is exactly the limitations of models!
All it's trying to do is point to the richness of images and what can't be fully translated out of them. And it's trying to say that story gets closest to the richness of the event itself.
Michael, this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with inspiration or revelation in a divine sense. That's not what "mystery" necessarily means, for Shea. Mystery is just life, and writing about it is just writing about it. The process is the same, he would say, whether you believe in itt or not. Let's the pysche, for example, the unconscious: just how deep, inexhaustible it is. Or let's say death: do you have it figured out? Mystery = anything that's not figured out and can't be. For believers, after the fact, in the process of analysis, this whole mystery gets named as somehow in relation to God. But that's the point, that it's part of the process of analysis. To believe is to interpret.
I think the best way to get at these ideas is through that little handout I gave you with the Buechner and the O'Connor quotes. That's all.
Like the stories, though. And they're all "true" stories right? Psychologically true at least!
People are the msytery!
posted by Deacon Chris @ 12:04 PM
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