Archives of:
Monsieur Renaissance : le forum de discussion
Hello, and welcome to the Mr. Renaissance discussion forum archives. While the entries below can no longer be added to or edited, you may post your thoughts and interact with others at the current forum.
[ Home | Back to Archives | Search Archives | Current Forum ]

Re (1): Living Water

IP: 146.7.17.46
Posted on June 17, 2005 at 10:22:57 AM by Eric

Hello Susan,

So your "finite" mind was "reeling," huh? That surprises me: I figured the mind of infinite_upon_infinite was incapable of reeling. :) (For those of you who fail to understand my rather pathetic attempt at humor, that is the name of Susan's blog and thus her "handle," as such identities are called in the world of computers.) In any case, thank you for your comments. I have a few thoughts I might throw out and then I'll answer your questions as well.

This past Monday marked the beginning of the summer semester for me and I am taking a course in the New Testament and another required course in English grammar. The New Testament course is somewhat disappointing because while it purports to be a historical study of the Bible, I often find myself arguing with the author who seems to take a dim view of Christianity (and I don't think I'm suffering any persecution complexes here). Further, the "professor" is a graduate student who is teaching her first college class ever. (Needless to say, it is a 102-level course—I have to keep my credit hours at 30 a year so that my scholarships renew, and this year I needed six "filler" hours: I chose religious studies.) The English grammar class, by rate of comparison, is much more interesting, or at least the lectures are. (The textbook is a bit on the dry side however.) In the latter class, one of the first things we spoke about was the difference between spoken and written language. Put simply, we use and recognize a lot more words in writing than we do in speech. Many of these words are "loan words" that come to us from other languages, whereas the very basic vocabulary we learn either as small children or as foreigners learning English as a second language are words that have been in the English language from its inception. Many of these "loan words" as well as a lot of "neologisms" ("new words"—words made up out of parts of other languages, like the word "neologism" itself) are the product of the Renaissance (14th through the 16th centuries) when Latin and Greek were thought to be superior languages and scholars sought to "objectify" ideas by using more "precise" words generated to large degree from Greek and Latin. Even though most of us today now recognize these words without thinking twice, we read them and write them far more frequently than we speak them.

Now then, the skills involved in reading and writing are far more visual than those in spoken language which are much more aural. Of course, that makes sense when you think about it: we read with our eyes and recognize (the sound of) words with our ears. But apparently, it goes even deeper than this: different regions of the brain are affected as well, as is evidenced by electronic imaging. When we process information by listening (aurally) it affects us somewhat differently than when we process information through reading (visually). It strikes me that my days in college are predicated on the written word, for even class discussions and lectures often center around a given text. Further, those lectures that I hear aurally are frequently spoken from lecture notes and I in turn recode them into my own study notes: text to speech to text. All of this engagement with texts has an effect on the way I think, particularly when compounded by my two main subjects of choice, English literature and philosophy, both of which are rife with "loan words" and what were once neologisms in the Middle English period of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth. In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman writes of the process reading has on the mind:

From Erasmus in the sixteenth century to Elizabeth Eisenstein in the twentieth, almost every scholar who has grappled with the question of what reading does to one's habits of mind has concluded that the process encourages rationality; that the sequential, propositional character of the written word fosters what Walter Ong calls the "analytic management of knowledge." To engage the written word means to follow a line of thought, which requires considerable powers of classifying, inference-making, and reasoning. It means to uncover lies, confusions, and overgeneralizations, to detect abuses of logic and common sense. It also means to weigh ideas, to compare and contrast assertions, to connect one generalization to another. To accomplish this, one must achieve a certain distance from the words themselves, which is, in fact, encouraged by the isolated and impersonal text. That is why a good reader does not cheer an apt sentence or pause to applaud even an inspired paragraph. Analytic thought is to busy for that, and too detached.

Something many people have not considered before is that whether we be more artistic or whether we be more analytical, we are imposing (or perhaps finding) order in the world around us. We applaud the artist because we find his work novel and refreshing, but he, no less than his analytical counterpart, arranges and re-arranges in order to craft the creations that we enjoy.

The same Holy Spirit who speaks to anyone else is available to me as well. Yet the relationship that the Holy Spirit has with any of us is completely unique because we are all unique. No two of us have exactly the same gifting and our life experiences further affect and develop (or undernourish) our gifts. It should come as no surprise that spending as many hours in the classroom and in reading books as I have throughout my life that my gifting would engage words in ways that others might not always understand or might even consider superfluous. I have had people rather harshly judge me before because they think that what I do and the way that I think runs contrary to the simplicity of the Gospels or even to the nature of faith in general. That ultimately is not important, however, for I shine as a light to those to whom the Lord is pleased to let me shine. It is always according to the Master whether the servant stands or falls and to the degree that I truly do shine (and not simply extol the interesting though surface effects of hours in the classroom), it is no longer I, but Christ who lives within me.

Now then, as to where I find time: generally, when it comes to e-mail or the forum, the thoughts flow out of me quite freely as I am responding to others in these venues, and, given that I type quickly and read quickly, while it still takes a substantial amount of time in a given day, it doesn't take as long as it might seen. The newsletters, by rate of comparison, have been more and more difficult for me to write lately: I haven't felt as much inspiration as I sometimes do and that can make it difficult to generate ideas. Of course, I always pray that God will help me write and He always does, but sometimes His influence is more obvious to me when I write than others. It seems like many of the newsletters lately have been more like giving birth: agonizing and rather difficult to write and research. I don't always know what makes the difference: the seasons of life I guess. And as far as the blog, you have probably noticed that I don't really post too much of my own writing there these days, partly for the same reason. Interacting with and responding to others still flows quite freely, but trying to generate a piece of writing without that initial influence can be difficult these days. I have considered that maybe cutting back a little might be a good idea—trying to simplify my life a bit—and that explains in part why I'm getting more sluggish on Xanga. In the end, however, I do what I do because it is what I do: it is the gift that I have been given, and sometimes it is hard and disagreeable and others it flows readily and makes me feel truly blessed. In the end, however, I do what I do because it is what I do and I know that my words really do make a difference to those to whom they make a difference.

Lastly, six years after the (somewhat romanticized) sketch you mentioned was drawn from a photograph Jeanette had seen, I gave my life to Christ after living the life of the prodigal son. Four years after that, I enrolled in college for the first time in 2000, a late bloomer but with a greater maturity and tenacity than many of my younger peers. If you do that math, you will see I am about the same age as Jesus when He was involved in His earthly ministry, though let's hope no crucifixions await me in the next year or so: I thank Him for what He did, but I have no great desire to follow that closely in His footsteps! Yes, I am thirty-one and will be having another birthday in October. I'm not big on photographs, but if you really must know how well I have aged since that sketch, you can see a picture from Christmas 2000. (It is linked in only one other place: from my name in the "about this site" page.)

Well, I seem to have waxed eloquent (otherwise known as "been long-winded"), so for now I'll sign off. Thanks for posting.

God bless,
Eric

Supernatural Irrigation Systems of Eternal Life

Replies:

.:| get up to date: newsletter :. 1&1 .: discussion forum: participate |:.

http://www.mrrena.com/board/1119028977.shtml