Still learning "real life" in the stories

I'm an English teacher. To be more exact, I teach literature. At least, the names of the courses I teach imply that this is what I do.

However, over the past few years I've found myself primarily interested in my students seeing more clearly, more fully, more deeply, more insightfully. In many ways, texts have become simply my means to this end. I spend much more time discussing characters and situations and cause and effect than I do the various literary techniques and devices I used to think of when I thought of literature. I tend to lead students into the texts presupposing an awareness of the literary devices, the elements and parts of stories.

No, I'm more interested in students seeing literary texts as a means to or a mode of knowledge. To borrow an image from Leland Ryken, I'm more interested in my students seeing texts as the windows on the world, windows to the world. Somehow through these texts we're able to plumb the depths of human experience in ways that elude us in many other academic ventures; we're able to see and experience and understand life in ways that are often beyond our perception in day to day living.

Sure, I've mentioned some of these things before, but I'm rethinking them again tonight as I read through student essays about Oedipus Rex. The essays were meant to be short discussion question responses--twelve to fifteen lines or so. Several of the students went above and beyond my expectations. More than that, they are seeing what's going on in the text and--at least a few--are able to see the connections between Oedipus's story and the stories we live in "real life." No, most of us--thankfully--don't murder our fathers and marry our mothers, but we do struggle to understand our identities and our place in this world. We do come face to face with the horrors of some of our actions and the consequences we must live with thereafter.    

As I've been reading these essays, I remember that I'm a student, too. I remember that I'm still learning the very thing that I try to teach. I'm still learning to see. And though Keanu Reeves says otherwise in the movie Point Break, vision is NOT highly overrated. I need more of it.

Cover comments

Covers sell books, whether writers like it or not. Personally, I don't like it too much. Still, I know that regardless of any old adage, people DO judge a book by its cover.

I bring all this up because I hope to release a book on biblical narrative next week or the week after. But I'm having trouble with cover design. I only have one at the moment, but I wanted to give you all a sample and get some feedback, if you're up for it.

First, I want to show you some covers of books that are similar to mine.

Here's Robert Alter's classic, The Art of Biblical Narrative:

Not a bad cover--readable, clear, clean.

Here's Shimon Bar-Efrat's Narrative Art in the Bible:

This one obviously has an image, and the copy is easy to read.

Here's Leland Ryken's book, How to Read the Bible as Literature:

Again, a good image and clear, readable text.

Here's one I've not read, called Reading the Bible as Literature by Jeanie C. Crain.

Simple cover concept, but definitely readable.

Okay. So here's what I'm currently working with on mine. What do you think? Need color adjustments? Too cluttered? Please let me know.

This is obviously the entire cover, back and front.

Comments and suggestions are appreciated.

Book Realease! ~ Another Angle

This past weekend I released a new book called Another Angle: Sacrament and Life through Poetry and Story. As it's a bit of an unorthodox approach for a book, I have included most of the introduction below. If you're interested, click the photo of the cover or the link to the right.

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I have a vision problem. I think I know and understand—that I “see”—so much about life and purpose and fellowship with God. But the truth is I see little and know and understand less. The funny thing is, “the eye is not satisfied with seeing” (Eccl 1:8) and I do, indeed, long to see more, yet I’ve settled for seeing little while fooling myself into believing I see much. I’m like those folks C. S. Lewis once described, the ones who have contented themselves with making mud pies in their ghetto slum because they just don’t understand or can’t imagine God’s offer of a trip to the seashore. Yes, sadly, I’m also much like Isaiah’s audience, the people who kept on hearing but didn’t understand, who kept on seeing but didn’t perceive (6:9).

What I need is new eyes. I need my way of seeing crafted—sharpened and then continually shaped and sculpted by the living God. Thankfully, this is what theology does, what the preaching of God’s word does, what the study and discussion of God’s word does. This is what the administering and partaking of the sacraments does. This is what fellowship does. And, I’ve discovered and would like to argue, this is also what art does. But I get ahead of myself.

My guess is, most of us don’t see as clearly nor as fully as we could and as we long to see. Thus, my goal here is to pursue new eyes, at least in part, and to bring you along with me. More specifically, I’d like for us to consider life more fully, but we need some lenses through which to make our observations. And, we need something specific to observe, something that encapsulates and demonstrates the essence of life, for trying to look at all of life without any focal point would be maddening.

Is there any such thing as this, any such focal point? I think there is. The sacraments encapsulate the essence of life for they embody for us union and communion—community—as God intended humankind to experience in this world. In other words, in the sacraments we are given a picture of life as God created it to be, a “world miniature,” as Peter Leithart says. It follows that the better we understand the sacraments, the better we will understand how to live in the union and communion which the sacraments picture. Period.

So I’d like to invite you to see the sacraments in a new light that we might see the world in a new light. Ah, but here’s the catch: I don’t want to approach this exploration solely by way of mere theory or ideology—by theology--alone. Theology is necessary, of course, but constructing an entire worldview based only on rigid theological systems and ideals, devoid of imagination, tends to beget a stale and stagnant view of life. At least this is what I have observed in myself and the church. (Yes, I’m guilty of trying to live by theological constructs alone.) Seeing only through a rigid theological construct limits our vision and hinders us from grasping life more completely, more wholly. Hence the vision problem I mentioned earlier.

Thus, the pursuit of this book is to peer into the sacraments—and thereby into life—through the lens of theology as well as through the lens of art and imagination. We can’t help having a theology, a worldview, a lens through which to interpret and understand reality. Everyone has a worldview, regardless of whether he or she knows it or not. We can’t turn it off, nor should we even attempt to do so. For Christians the Bible forms and informs our worldview, our perspective and understanding of God, man, and creation. At the same time, as creatures made in the image of God and thus possessing a creative capacity, we also need to acknowledge the importance of art and imagination. We ought not ignore or turn off this creative human capacity, for it informs our understanding of life as well. Both theology and art are essential means of grasping and articulating what is often beyond our reach and our words. Both are necessary if we are to see and understand the world more wholly.

Because my desire—for myself and for others—is a more complete grasp and understanding of life as God intended, in Another Angle I will first look briefly at the sacraments through the lens of theology. Then, with this theological foundation, I will add the lens of art, specifically poetry and story, and look at the sacraments and life through it. This will give us another, more complete, angle on life.    

Literature is a mode of knowing

There are many ways of knowing--of coming into knowing or knowledge--and reading literature is one of them. Many of us often neglect this sort of knowledge or the pursuit of it, because it's less facts-based, apparently less useful for the here and now, less pragmatic. Rather--or so the common line of thinking goes--literature is just stories or poems and not much good for day to day living.

I say otherwise. If anything, literature is exactly about day to day living. Students often ask, "When are we going to use this in real life?" With literature, the answer is simply, "This is real life." At least, literature deals with the particulars of life, giving them form for us to grasp and understand and, well, something from which to gain knowledge.

Emotion, Imagination, and Experience

Knowledge is communicated through literature differently than it is through other sorts of writing. The primary difference is that story and poetry show human experience, while the other types primarily tell about it. We don’t generally read a story to get information, as we would a newspaper article. Rather, a story or poem is a sort of portal or window on or into the world (an idea I got from Leland Ryken of Weaton College). We look through this window, and yes, we see a world depicted which may be a world of elves and dwarves, heroes and villains, princesses and knights, or common men and women with common lives in a world just like our own. But more than that, we also see our own world in a new light as a result. In many ways, literature helps us to better contemplate and understand our own reality and experience, even if the stories are far-fetched fantasy adventures of orcs and talking trees. Literature does so by showing us life.

Also, stories and poems usually deal with what is concrete. It takes human experience and doesn’t simply define or explore the philosophical nature of such things as love, conflict, suffering, family, etc. Literature puts ideas and emotions, which are abstract, into a determinate shape in the imagination. It shows us these things—and more—played out through the lives and experiences of characters or poetic speakers. An author will have characters going through actions, living life in a setting of some kind. He will use sensory details—words and descriptions that appeal to the five senses—to bring the characters, the action, the setting to life. And this “bringing to life” occurs in our imagination as we read or hear a story. With such in our imagination, we can somehow “hold” onto it, understand it, almost “touch” it, as if it had more substance than an idea or emotion.

To be sure, as we read stories we are moved in our intellect, just as we are when we read other types of written language for facts. But in addition to our intellect, our imagination and our emotions are also moved. In this way, a story or poem expresses the whole of reality, the whole of life. A story may not express exactly what we personally think about reality and life, but it certainly does express a sense of life. We experience a sense of the way things truly are.

Again, like most (maybe all) types of writing, literature communicates to our intellect, but more than that, it communicates to our emotions, our imaginations, and our experience. This is how literature is a mode of knowledge, and such knowledge is what we desperately as human beings trying to live in community in our schools, churches, towns, cities, states, countries.