Tuesday I had the pleasure of joining St. Anne's Chapter to present some thoughts on the topic "The Bible as Literature." Glenda Hogg had invited me months ago. From then to this week, I was sifting through piles of ideas every spare moment.
For a warm-up, I brought out internet images of various print publications. Since St. Anne's chapter is part Bible study, I asked if anyone could think of any scriptures that corresponded to each image. So, instructions for a DIY building project reminded the group of chapters that describe the building of the tabernacle and the temple. Photos of Martin Luther King's original Letter from a Birmingham Jail reminded them of Paul's letters from jail. King's letter anticipated where the Civil Rights movement was headed, so I compared it to prophetic writings. A romance novel featuring on its cover a barebacked cowboy embracing a pretty young woman reminded them of forbidden romances in Song of Songs and Jacob's ordeals trying to win Rachel in marriage.
A Batman comic from the 1940s displayed Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo exploded by a giant stick of dynamite. They were stumped. So I asked how that cover would have made a reader feel in its time? "Hopeful. Satisfied. Encouraged." Then we saw the same effect from revenge fantasies in Revelation, Daniel and some Psalms, written to give encouragement to believers under persecution.
Then we studied an acrostic poem about B-A-S-E-B-A-L-L. Some were surprised to learn that many Psalms, all of Psalm 119, and portions of Lamentations are acrostics. That segued to our first activity.
Everyone wrote an acrostic poem about blessings in their lives, beginning each new sentence with one of the letters B - L - E - S - S, in that order. There was some dismay at first, but then people got into it. The results were clever and moving. A participant who said, "I'm no good at this," got applause when she read her poem. Hers was the only one that concluded with a rhymed couplet! Then I asked what they experienced as they wrote. Challenged at first, they became pretty excited, and they got ideas as they went. I said that writers, "inspired by God," were still people like them, facing the same challenge to fit their ideas to a conventional form.
We also did some acting, getting into the minds of minor characters in a famous piece of literature, King Lear. It got pretty emotional, even for "Servant 2" who had no lines. As he stands behind a chair where he and Servant 1 have bound an old man whom the King proceeds to blind with a knife, what is he thinking? What is he feeling? When Servant 1 steps forward to defend the old man from torture, does Servant 2 feel scared for his friend? ashamed of himself for not helping? When Regan the Queen demands his sword, he gives it to her without a word. What is he feeling then? It's important for the actor to know, because his reactions are just as much a part of making the scene "present" as those of the old man or the Queen. In our meeting room, everyone was deeply involved in the emotions unspoken during this unspeakable act.
We wondered: Shakespeare's play is a fantasy about a legendary king, but is this scene "true?" After a pause, the room erupted with answers, reaching a consensus that "it's always true," because criminals and unchecked authoritarians who resort to torture are placing their officers and citizens in the same situation somewhere in the world every day.
We related this imaginative experience putting ourselves in a piece of literature to the way Mother Mariclair had put herself in the roles of Mary, Joseph, and 12-year-old Jesus for her sermon Sunday.
Bottom line: We sell Scripture short if we read it only for lessons and instructions from the past. When we read the Bible the way we read literature, the story, and God, are present with us.
The group had so much to say that I only got through half of my material!
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