Page 36 - Presbyterian Connection, Spring 2024

Connection
REFLECTIONS
Field Education and Imagination
36
PRESBYTERIAN
SPRING 2024
presbyterian.ca
By the Rev. Richard R. Topping, President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor of Studies in the Reformed Tradition, Vancouver School
of Theology
I drove my son to Castlegar, B.C., about 10 years ago, where he had enrolled in a wildlife and fisher- ies management program. He loves animals. He loves the out of doors. His bent in life was to do this from the time he could move. I’d say it was his calling. On the way to the school, we noticed things like mountains, trees, flow- ers and wildlife. We observed the world, as far as we could see!
Three years later, I went to pick him up and bring him home. We had to take a truck as he had accumulated all kinds of stuff— snowshoes, skis, a large back- pack, heaps of outdoor camping equipment, and books, tons of books, many of them field guides.
The drive home was different than the drive there. It wasn’t just the load of stuff we carried in the car. He brought home a load of learning and new practices. The conversation went something like this:
My son: Dad, will you look at that, the angiosperms are blooming.
Me: What?
My son: And did you see that path through the woods undu- lates love corridors. And did you know that the pinus pon- derosa has tout needles grow- ing in scopulate fascicles of two to three with flame retard- ant bark?
I was in awe of his educators. I couldn’t even get him to do the dishes; and these strangers, these educators—in the class- room and in the field—altered his world! Coming home, this son of mine had a new take on reality be- cause of his training. They did not just populate his brain with new ideas, they formed him. He saw a different world coming home than he was able to see when he left. They gave him a gift for seeing what he could not see before.
My son lives and acts in the world differently now—he cares. He knows watersheds, he does live releases of sturgeon early in the morning, he rides on a bike to the Fraser just to watch sea li- ons, he gets up at 5:30 a.m. to go whale watching and, enthusiast that he is, he drags me with him. He tries to get me to see what he sees. His joy pulls other people
into the wake of his love for the delights of the created world; he’s even latched on to other people who love what he loves.
We can’t eat fish in a restau- rant unless he sees the Ocean Wise endorsement on the menu. I don’t think it’s an exaggera- tion to say that his imaginative repertoire was enlarged by his education. I think he sees a dif- ferent world now and seeing that different world means he engages the world in new ways, humane ways, even more loving ways.
His teachers, educators and role models, with whom he is still in touch, initiated him into a whole new world with attendant behaviours, emotions, attitudes and dispositions. They introduced him to new communities and pro- fessional organizations where the learning continues. He doesn’t just know more—he cares more, he acts differently, he comports himself in the world in news ways with others who do the same. The field education took. And as a theological educator, I’m a little envious of the success!
One of my favourite authors, Northrop Frye, a Canadian liter- ary scholar, gave the Massey Lectures on CBC in 1963. The Educated Imagination is now in its 30th printing. In this book, Frye asks a simple question: Why study literature? His answer is rich with possibility. He says that the study of literature, what he calls “man’s revelation to man” (1963), is for the sake of enhanc- ing imagination. Literary studies are hard work. They require criti- cal finesse and directed attention, but the goal is to beef-up imagi- nation.
Frye claims that if imagination is stoked (educated) with ideas, pictures of the world, from other times and places, you quickly realize that what’s served up by your culture right now is only one way of doing things. There are better worlds than the one around us right now; there are worlds we want to live in. And imagination could lead to action. When you compare what is with what might be, it could make us so restless with the dead-ends and stale leftovers of the present that whole communities could start living toward a better arrangement, a more humane option, a possible world.
“You soon realize that there is a difference between the world you are living in and the one you want
Richard and Karl Topping.
to live in... The world we want to live in (not the world that is) is a vision that is inside our minds, born and fostered by imagination, yet real enough for us to try and make the world we see conform to it” (Educated Imagination, p. 4)
Now I wonder if Frye’s way of putting it might be jazzed into a theological frame to help us think about theological education and theological field education. We might talk about a vision that is born and fostered by scripture and sacraments and theology and spiritual practices of attention to God’s action in the world.
What about a theologically edu- cated imagination? What about theological field education as fo- cused critical attention on “God’s revelation to people” in Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit? After all, Frye was a United Church minister, he was always talking about the power of scripture.
Could whole communities dare (by faith) to envision what might be because the Triune God has stoked their imaginations through prophets and poets, scripture and saints, testifying to the Kingdom coming on ear th as it is in heaven? A theologically educated imagina- tion may envision a reconciled world, fuelled as it is with visions of wild and domestic animals ly- ing down together, with visions of swords beat into plowshares, of a detoxified heaven and earth through the Lamb that was slain.
A people could become so enamoured with these solicitous visions that they grow discon- tent with what is, and start living toward more humane arrange- ments, where justice and peace embrace. And they do it not be- cause they have to but because they may and are guided by as- tute practitioners whose imagina-
tions have been sanctified by the Spirit by means of the gospel.
Subject yourself to theologi- cal education, field education, as imaginative transformation and priorities could get reversed, altered, changed. Fund an imagi- nation with the gospel of recon- ciliation and the next thing you know someone says, “I have a dream...” and moves non- violently toward a more humane arrangement. They just start to believe that history bends toward justice. Talk about grasped by a vision!
One of the disquietudes of stu- dents in theological study relates to scripture. The question inevita- bly comes up about whether rev- elation is restricted to what is tes- tified to in the Bible. What I try to say is that scripture is testimony, human testimony, to the words and works of God in the history of Israel and in Jesus Christ. It provides an imaginative norm so that we can recognize God’s MO (modus operandi) in the world now. I think that’s actually a great way to conceive of the authority of scripture for the church.
Douglas John Hall says: “The question the church (and theo- logical colleges) ought to be ask- ing and seeking to answer in and for a particular time and place (context) is not what should we do, but rather where is God now at work making and keeping life human? The extent to which [we] determine an answer or answers to that question will determine the nature and relevance of our own activity” (Douglas John Hall, What Christianity Is Not, p. 122).
In other words, of course God is a live agent in the world just now, and the Bible read as scrip- ture doesn’t prohibit but enables the recognition of what God might
be up to in the world today. That work of ministering the gospel in a variety of circumstances re- quires an immersion in the world of the Bible. Open up scripture, look at it, and then look through it with the help of the saints, and it opens us to where in the world God is active, individual lives and circumstances all around us.
And seeing it, we get invited to go with the grain of the universe. That work, requires humility, spir- itual mentors and perhaps, most of all, courage—courage to speak of God. God too often remains the tacit dimension of church life, not brought to speech for fear and se- rious secular policing.
Theological educators and the clergy live in a time where talk of God is difficult, and God is the main subject of theological study, and so ours is a very odd task. We make sense of our lives and our lives together in multiple idioms, given to us by media and therapeutic culture, and almost none of them include reference to God. Talk about God is often thought of as special pleading or rhetorical excess. Charles Taylor says that talk about God at the university is about as welcome as an atheist in the Bible belt.
And we live in a time of speed; modernity is the process of speeding things up. Just to stay where you are, speed is incum- bent upon you—like going up the down escalator, says Harmut Rosa. And discernment of God’s work in the world requires us to linger and listen and look for God.
As readers of the Bible, we’ve been taught suspicious rather than reparative reading and so an educated person is someone hyperarticulate in criticism and often tongue-tied about loves. The barbed wire of suspicion keeps us from contamination by the text—and yet what might this mean for formation in the class- room and in the field? (See Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique.)
What it means is that theologi- cal education in all its dimensions is counter-cultural, prophetic and resistant. It means we need guides who help us attend to God’s work in the world—in small, consist- ent and deliberate ways. It means theological education is in the business of bringing to speech what is there in people’s lives, in the church and in the world—the action of the gracious, merciful and reconciling God.
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