April 29, 10 AM - 3 PM, Valle Crucis Conference Center
February 23 2011
Dear All Souls Book Group,
I wanted to let you know about an interesting program to be offered in late April regarding JESUS' PARABLES. The program consists of a day-long conversation to be facilitated by Bishop Porter Taylor. Here are the details:
Friday, April 29, 2011
10 AM - 3 PM. $35, includes lunch
Location: Valle Crucis Conference Center
Facilitator: The Rt. Rev. G. Porter Taylor
Description of Program:
"Much of Jesus’ teaching was in stories, but seldom were these easy to comprehend. They were stories that gradually open your eyes to see the world in a new way. Part of Jesus’ mission was to reorient his followers or to give them a new vision of themselves, the world, and God. Megan McKenna calls Jesus’ parables “The Arrows of God” because “they pierce us and make us painfully aware of our need to change the way we relate to ourselves, others, and God. We look and we see. This is how we must live in God’s kingdom.”
During this program day we will focus on Jesus’ parables. We will look at parables of grace, the kingdom, and judgment. Participants are asked to bring a Bible. The day will be mixed with presentation, small group discussion, and plenary."
The history of the parables in Book Group discussions over our six years:
Jesus' parables have come up several times during Book Group discussion over our six-year history. The first time was in the winter of 07, when we were reading the "magical realist" stories of Gabriel Garcia Márquez. How could it be, one participant asked, that magical elements and "real" ones could coexist in the same story? I don't know that we ever answered the question in terms of Márquez; what I do remember is Brian Cole making a (fortunately) game-changing observation, about the parables, which said that to approach the parables as "magical realism" might better prepare readers to be taken by them to the "new places" they seem to want us to go. Brian's remark effectively blessed the future of the book group, in that it blurred the distinction between sacred literature and secular. It allowed us to expect from secular literature the perceptual reorientation we had heretofore reserved for the sacred; and it allowed us to read sacred texts as works of art driven by aesthetic criteria. To me, this was one of the more exciting evenings we shared.
Next installment: The stories of Flannery O'Connor, which we read for about six weeks in the summer of 07, also reminded book group members of the parables. Both sets of stories, we agreed, effect a shift in consciousness; both seem driven by a force beyond the realm of the "apparent" whose "triumph"--I can't remember who used that word--is inevitable; and while we agreed that both sets (seem to) intend moral instruction, one of us said that Jesus' are the less "heavy-handed" (that was great). One especially memorable discussion ended with a participant remarking that both sets of stories, the parables and O'Connor's, incline the reader's/listener's attention to regions of the landscape one hadn't seen before. And both sets of landscapes are very stark. This had us wondering whether a contemporary reader of O'Connor, especially a Southern reader, might close her stories to find his or her landscape transformed into one in which, as is true in the parables, "anything could happen." This would be an imaginative transformation, of course--and then the discussion circled back to how it could be that magical things and real ones could coexist in the same world.
And then there was a joke, as I recall, about encountering St. Peter at an ATM machine.
The parables came up again when we were reading Marilynne Robinson. This was the fall of 09 - winter of 10. In an effort to explain to the group how Robinson's fiction might orient her reader’s consciousness toward the spirit, I used a word you don't hear much anymore, “anagogical," which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as: "spiritual elevation, especially to understand mysteries.” I then described the parables as "anagogical," and then directed interested group members to an account of the parables offered by the brilliant scholar and professor of literature, Joshua Landy, who is currently at Stanford. Landy's thoughts about the parables can be heard/ viewed in a video on youtube. It's about midway through the video that he talks about the parables (the video total is approximately ten minutes long.) The address for that video is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXWIum9Dw5U
Landy has a book coming out in the next couple of years about fiction generally, entitled How To Do Things With Fictions, and I believe his thoughts about the parables will be expanded upon there.
And then, last summer, the book group read Mary Gordon's Reading Jesus, in which Gordon reads the Gospel stories as literature, allowing herself to be taken into their intense strangeness and ambiguity. If "reading" carefully the parable of the Prodigal Son leads Gordon to a precipice where there are only questions--and where sincerely wrestling with any of them only leads to more questions--so be it. The group had three meetings about Gordon's book, each of them beautifully facilitated by Allan Campo.
So Jesus' parables have figured importantly in several of our discussions. And, for those of you who remain fascinated (troubled, vexed, amazed, inspired) by the parables, a possible next opportunity to talk about them will come on April 29th, with Porter Taylor. A sensitive reader, Porter is ideally suited to lead this discussion--and this is a program not to be missed.
All best,
Emilie