Consider the idea that wine signifies sacredness, or theories about correspondences between external characteristics and intangible qualities, or the story of the hero’s miraculous birth.\u00a0 How marvelous that such ideas, theories, and stories travel to us through eons!\u00a0 Each one’s itinerary is a unique sequence of routes through and stopovers in cultures, locations, people, and institutions.\u00a0 These itineraries fascinate me.\u00a0 Sometimes the itinerary includes points of transfer from one genre to another, as when a poem becomes a play, or a sermon becomes a scripture.<\/p>\n
Whether play or scripture or whatnot, each such tradition encloses its past.\u00a0 It has not always been what it is now; in earlier manifestations its appearance, sound, or meaning to earlier audiences was quite another thing.\u00a0 An item’s transmission through time becomes part of its essence.\u00a0 Whenever it crosses our path, it harbors the complexity of its time travel.<\/p>\n
This fact about how time and human lore interact is sometimes easy to overlook, especially when something has been around a long time.\u00a0 Shakespeare’s plays or Goethe’s masterpieces become so well known that their iterations of Antony and Cleopatra or Faust become standards, become enshrined.\u00a0 An even more telling instance presents itself in the collection of texts known as the Bible.\u00a0 The New Testament has been in its current form since around 400 C.E. (A.D.), and although people are vaguely aware that there have been versions and translations, they tend to think of it as an established, static, understood object.\u00a0 While overlooking the past in such cases is easy and natural, it nevertheless involves us in peril.<\/p>\n
When we overlook our heritage’s transmission to us through time, with all its changes in view, we abdicate our responsibility to interpret.\u00a0 As we all know, the human condition involves from infancy onward the absolute necessity of interpreting our experience.\u00a0 If in certain instances adults delegate interpretation to others, they must accept the risks this entails.<\/p>\n
To my mind, ignoring the rich itineraries of cultural artifacts is tantamount to submitting to the imprisonment of the mind.\u00a0 There are in our world abundant dogma-based authoritarians ready and eager to imprison and manipulate minds.\u00a0 When one walks through their gates of intellectual arrogance, one leaves behind the pains and the joys of interpretation.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, to attend to the wondrous journeys of humanity’s stories, with their twistings and turnings through additions, omissions, and contradictions, is to reject dogma and to take up the burden of making meaning.\u00a0 Further, it is to walk carrying that burden on the messy, rocky paths of history.\u00a0 On an adventure through a landscape of actual transformations of fact, we encounter the marvels of time-bound interpretation.\u00a0 We tell stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Consider the idea that wine signifies sacredness, or theories about correspondences between external characteristics and intangible qualities, or the story of the hero’s miraculous birth.\u00a0 How marvelous that such ideas, theories, and stories travel to us through eons!\u00a0 Each one’s … Continue reading