Ingrid Mattson – 2016 Cole Lecture Day 2
AI: Summary ©
The ColeGenerationures lecture is about the transformation of the Bible and how it is reflected in the transformation of the Bible. The title describes a shift in perspective from the first to second person, and how it is reflected in the parable of the third person being the ultimate source of wealth and suffering. The importance of perception in the eye and being mindful of one's actions is emphasized, and the use of words of divine power to describe the benefits of creating fly. The importance of self sufficiency in spiritual discipline is emphasized, and the importance of creating a sense of consciousness and space for one's perspective is emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
Good morning.
It is good to see many of you
back for this second lecture and some new
faces in the audience.
It is my great honor to welcome back
doctor Ingrid Matson for the second of this
year's Cole Lectures.
Doctor
Matson, the London and Windsor Community Chair in
Islamic Studies
at Huron University College, at the University of
Western Ontario,
London, Canada,
encouraged us to think about who we are
as individuals
within communities,
and how we face outward with one another
as people living
into our various faiths last night.
She's the author of the influential, The Story
of the Quran, Its History and Its Place
in Muslim Life, now in its second edition.
And she is a respected
Islamic scholar and leader in interfaith dialogue and
Understanding.
This morning, she concludes this year's Cowles Lecture
with her talk,
Solomon and the Ant,
A Quranic Story of Perspective.
After the talk, she will entertain questions for
a bit,
and then we will conclude this year's lecture.
Please join me once again in welcoming doctor
Ingrid Matson
to Vanderbilt Divinity School and its university
and the wider community of Nashville
and beyond.
Good morning.
May God's peace and blessings be
upon you. The root of much sin
is our refusal to acknowledge our limitations,
and we assert our perspective,
our own perspective, to be superior to all
others,
or perhaps more insidiously
to act as if we are neutral actors,
that we have no perspective at all.
In other words,
when we identify reality with our own perspective.
It is this attitude that is at the
root of much oppression and violence in the
world,
and it is here that an authentic
religious perspective is critical to peace building.
For it is only God whose perspective can
be identified with reality.
The narrative and outlook of each human being
and each human community
is limited
by time and space,
by the fact that we are part of
the created
world, we are not the creators.
To recognize this essential distinction between the creator
and creation
is to assert the inescapable
truth of the human condition
as limited,
constrained,
and in need of others.
To take into account the perspective of the
of others is not political correctness.
It is a rejection of self idolatry.
This is the lesson at the heart of
the Quranic story of Solomon and the ant.
For those of you who aren't familiar with
the Quran,
it is
as the holy revealed scripture,
of Islam.
It's comp composed
of
a
114 Suras.
Sura is sometimes translated as chapter, but literally
it means sign.
A Sura
is
a,
or it means
it means an encompassing
or a collection
of signs which are ayat, signs or verses.
So
this particular chapter of the Quran that we're
looking at
is called the ants.
Although the chapter is filled of great characters,
we recognize
people like Moses, and David, and Solomon, still
it's named
after the ants.
The theme of this
chapter
is that
we think we know reality,
but in fact, we only have a perception
of reality,
and we see time and time again in
the
mini stories that are narrated
in this chapter,
that someone sees something, but in fact, it's
only an illusion
or sleight of hand,
magic,
or a mirage.
It's significant that this chapter begins with
the symbolic letters,
that are the opening of a set of
chapters of the Quran. These are just disconnected
letters.
Tasin, it's like beginning the story with t
s.
What does that mean? What's the
symbolism?
What's the impact of these letters?
It spurs our imagination,
but there's no clear answer. There's a lot
of speculation.
What it tells us is that our language
is comprised
of
small little units,
each of which
have symbolism and meaning
that
may be understood differently by different people.
So it begins
taw, sinn,
these are the signs of God, a book
which clarifies
guidance and good news to those who believe,
those who establish prayer and give charity.
They are confident
in the life to come.
So what is our confidence? Our confidence is
not
in
our
clear perception
of reality and the meaning of everything.
Our confidence is that there is a life
to come,
and in the end,
we will be in the fullness
of the understanding
that God gives us,
who God who creates all understanding and knowledge.
So what do we need to do in
this life?
We need to pray.
We need to believe. We need to give
charity,
and that is our job.
Then this chapter goes on and
narrates
a series of illusions
and then realizations
about the limits of human perception
to show that all of creation is under
God's command.
It tells the story of Moses,
who sees a fire,
and he goes to bring some of it
back to keep his family warm. This is
the kind of fire he believes he's approaching,
but when he gets there he finds himself,
in fact, in the divine presence.
God commands him to throw down his staff,
and Moses does so but pulls back in
fear because it looks like a snake to
him.
Then God turns
Moses' hand translucent.
Strange things are happening.
Then Moses is sent to preach to pharaoh
and his people,
and the verse says,
but when our enlightening
signs came to them, they said, this is
obvious magic.
Farrell believes what he sees is reality.
Well, in fact,
when they see when he has brought the
true reality, which is divine revelation, he sees
it as an illusion.
It's an inversion.
Pharoah, who is the epitome of evil in
the Quran,
deifies
his own perception of the cosmos,
And then we come to the story of
Solomon. Solomon, the great king,
the majestic king,
the builder of the grand temple,
the prophet,
the son of a prophet.
The story tells of him
gathering
with his
creatures
who are
serving him and obeying him and informing him.
And among these creatures,
they're not only humans,
but there are jinn,
invisible beings,
and there are birds whose speech he understands.
One of the birds, the Hoopi, comes to
him and says, I've seen a great queen,
but she and her people are misguided.
Satan has made them worship the sun instead
of worshiping God,
and so their path to God has been
blocked.
This we know is why prophets are needed,
to help clear that path for people who
are misguided.
Now, Solomon
wants to help
bring her into
the full knowledge of god,
and
he
comes up with a plan, a strategy
to help her realize
the truth of reality. And one thing he
does is he thinks,
if I pray to God, perhaps
when I command her to come here,
I will also, in the meantime,
command that her throne be brought miraculously
to my court.
And when it happens,
when her throne suddenly pops up and appears
in his court, he says,
this is from the grace of my lord
to try me. Will I be grateful or
ungrateful?
He does not take credit for what has
happened. He does not attribute
the power of this miraculous event to himself,
but to God.
He sees it as an occasion to witness
to and glorify God's power,
which is not bound by human perception
of what is possible or impossible
because surely it's impossible for a throne to
travel
from Yemen to the Court of Solomon.
Now, the Queen of Sheba, who has been
commanded
to come to Solomon's palace, when she arrives,
Solomon says to her,
is your throne something like this throne? And
she says it seems as though
that is my throne.
Now she's
open to seeing the true locus of power,
which is God's power
that has carried the throne there,
and now she is opening
spiritually.
Then Solomon tells her to come to enter
his court,
but the crystal floor
glitters so brilliantly,
she thinks it's a pool of water.
So she gathers up her skirts before entering
into it.
With her legs exposed, she courageously
begins to cross the floor,
but once she steps onto it, she realizes
that she has been under an illusion.
Now she too,
like Solomon,
becomes aware.
She's inspired and enlightened by and enlightened
by God. Her elevated spiritual state is reflected
in her stating what Solomon had said before
she arrived.
This is from the grace of my lord
to try me. Will I be grateful
or ungrateful?
And so now she is able
to
be beside Solomon
in absolute awareness of god and then reflect
the majesty of god
beyond the majesty
of kingship, which is only of this world.
So Solomon is this grand
king,
and in this passage,
when he's ready to march out,
he marshals his army,
his many armies.
The Quran says,
Solomon had marshaled his armies of jinn, the
invisible spirits,
and humans and birds in their separate ranks.
So we imagine,
you know, this broad plane with all of
these different creatures
brought together.
I thought of this passage of the Quran
when I saw the Lord of the Rings,
the movie, and the elves, and the dwarves.
So the Quran says, once Solomon had marshaled
his armies of jinn, and humans, and birds
in their separate ranks,
they set forth
until they came to a valley of ants.
And 1 ant said,
hey ants,
get inside your homes or Solomon and his
armies will trample you without even realizing it.
So this is the sudden shift in perspective.
We've been seeing things from the perspective of
the majesty of Solomon,
and suddenly this tiny little voice of the
Namla,
the female ant,
she calls out
because from her perspective, this army is ready
to trample.
But Solomon, who's been given the understanding
of the speech of creatures,
hears it.
He smiles, and amused at her words, he
says,
my lord, make me grateful for your blessings,
which you have bestowed upon me and my
parents,
and make me do righteous deeds, which please
you, and bring me into your mercy among
your righteous servants.
By hearing the perspective
of the ant,
as he's undertaking
this
grand display
of power,
Solomon is reminded
of his place
in creation.
And that is that he, like the ant,
is also a servant of God. He is
not just a king, he's a servant of
God.
In need of God's mercy,
in need of god's guidance and direction.
This shift has brought him back to an
awareness of his ultimate place.
This shift in perspective,
is found throughout the Quran,
and it is a feature of Arabic rhetoric
not only in the narrative storytelling,
but in grammar as well. It can be
grammatical shift
where
the story
or a narrative
is being is being narrated from the perspective
of,
of the 3rd person, and then suddenly it
shifts to the second person.
Or narrated from, for example,
there will be a statement,
I am your lord.
So God using the
the
the personal
first
first person
singular pronoun,
and then shifting to, and we did this,
now the majestic we, the dual. So the
shift between the singular and dual
makes us understand that God has many,
different ways of relating to us.
The majestic way where really we're in that
feeling of awe,
and then also the more personal intimate way.
This in fact is right at the beginning,
the first Surah of the Quran, the first
chapter of the Quran,
Surah Al Fatiha, which Muslims
recite in every
ritual prayer. It's the first prayer that's recited
over and over and over.
And here we have this,
instance, the first instance of the shifting perspective.
The technical term in Arabic is Iltifat
Iltifat shifting,
And in grammar books,
there's a verse of pre Islamic poetry that's
used to illustrate,
where this term Iltifat comes from, and this
ancient line of poetry,
is
my eye turned to the remnants of my
beloved's
campsite,
and when they passed out of my sight,
my heart turned towards them.
So Iltifed is is linked to imagination,
our imaginative
capacity
to shift perspective.
So if we go to the this first
Surah, this first chapter of the Quran,
it begins,
all praises for God, the Lord of the
worlds.
The merciful,
the compassionate,
the sovereign of the day of judgment. So
here, God is being described,
the majesty,
the sovereignty,
the mercy, and the compassion of god, but
from the perspective of
God in the 3rd person.
And then the next line, the next verse
says,
you alone do we worship and you alone
do we ask for aid.
So in the first three verses of the
passage, God is spoken about in the 3rd
person. This perspective on God conveys a sense
of his majesty and dominance over creation,
but the first 4th verse
then startles the listener
or reader, and the Quran is first and
primarily
experienced through recitation,
not a written text.
It is a written text, but the primary
mode is recitation.
So the 4th verse startles the listener
with its use of the second person singular
to address God.
Suddenly the relationship becomes intimate and personal.
The grammatical shift employed in this passage serves
not only a stylistic purpose,
but also conveys a theological message.
That God is in complete command over all
of creation,
yet in his majesty
is immediately accessible
to those who turn to him in worship
and supplication.
And by employing a grammatical
device to convey this concept, the Quran also
teaches that the reality of God is beyond
even the most perfect engagement
of human language
to reflect God's word.
Iltifat,
this shift in perspective has been studied,
by scholars throughout the ages. A contemporary scholar,
Mohammed Abdelhaleem,
says that Iltifa'at
keeps the listener in an interactive
state,
and he relates it to other,
features of the Quran
that engage the listener
by commands
such as think,
reflect,
have you seen,
have you not considered,
See
how?
In all of the all of these phrases
invoke our imagination
and allow us to take the perspective
that is different than our own or our
immediate,
context.
In particular,
and one of the most striking examples of
engaging the imaginative
capacity
is to reflect upon the impact
of our actions, our human actions upon others.
The ultimate
reckoning, of course, the day of judgment
is described in such vivid terms in the
Quran.
You know, for those,
who think that sometimes I hear people who
aren't
engaged with religion, talk about religion, and they
they they,
you know, characterize it as an escape from
reality, a comfortable escape from reality.
But the belief
that each one of us will have to
review and see the consequences
of everything we have done to others
in this life
is the most honest and complete
confrontation
with reality.
There will be no escape.
So a passage of the Quran describes
part of this
moment, this time.
When the sun goes dark,
when the stars fade away,
and the mountains vanish,
and the laboring camels are abandoned,
and all the animals are gathered together.
When the seas erupt and the souls are
reembodied,
the baby girl who was buried alive
will ask,
for what crime was I killed?
The pre Islamic Arabs engage in female infanticide.
A female was
not worth
living
in many cases. She was a burden,
an economic burden.
The family could be shamed if she could
not be
protected or controlled,
and so,
of course,
Islam abolished
this
horrible crime,
but this passage of the Quran
is
terrifying
for those who had done this crime to
think of,
to have to imagine
in the context of all of this chaos
and disruption
that this baby
will come to life and will speak
and will be the interrogator, the one who
will ask the one who buried her for
what crime was I killed.
What an
an act of imagination,
a shifting of perspective on what we've done
that makes us
understand
that everything we do has consequences,
and the animals who are mentioned here in
this passage
that are gathered together,
they are animals who will be raised back
like we will from the dust,
and each one of them will also testify
what we did for them or to them.
The shift in perspective from our own to
others' perspective
is a spiritual
and ethical
exercise.
The ants,
from the ants to the camels
to the baby.
It's an exercise that we can engage in
regularly if we allow
these passages to engage our imagination.
If we truly
adopt this
shift in perspective.
Every deed is significant,
and this is
a very sobering
thought.
Now sometimes,
it can be
very burdensome
as well. I think of
those of us who care so much about
doing good in the world, about all the
evil and all the injustice in the world.
Sometimes we feel so burdened down.
Yes, we have to take this seriously, but
we also have to take another perspective,
And that is the perspective
of our place in the cosmos.
One of my favorite passages of the Quran
gives us this
broader
shift back in the
our place in the
timeless eternity.
Has a person ever considered
the endlessness of time
which has passed before he was even a
thought in a person's mind?
We're not
in charge
of the cosmos.
We're not in charge
of all of the universe and creation. That's
God's place. It's not our place.
So this shift
from looking at each and every one of
our deeds and the impact of it
to the fact that we are
such a small,
here for such a small time, and we're
such a small
piece in the cosmos and all of creation
can give us some perspective and some relief.
It matters very much what we do for
our own souls, but we're not in charge
of the world.
And so we also can take it a
little bit easy when we feel
so burdened by all the work there is
to do.
This,
you know, Quranic shift in perspective
can be found in
different parts of Muslim culture as well, and,
you know, from the very
profound
and heavy thought of the day of judgment,
I'm going to shift you now to a
joke that a student told me.
The student who is from,
Southern Arabia,
and
I think it really has a lot of
resonance
with this Quranic message.
I'm not a comedian, and I can't carry
a tune, so
I'm gonna tell you the joke anyways.
So there was once
a man
who was blind from birth.
He lived in a farming village in the
mountains of Yemen.
He used to pray to God,
oh, Lord,
just let me have sight for a few
minutes, so I can see the beauty of
your creation.
One day the man was sitting in the
empty courtyard of his house
while various members of his family were busily
engaged in tasks close by.
His wife was scrubbing clothes in the laundry
tub beside the kitchen to his right.
His children, 2 mischievous
boys with wind blown hair and callous, but
delicate feet
were climbing a fig tree behind him,
and his brother, a strong ruggedly handsome man
with great physical strength,
was repairing a stone wall on the other
side of the yard.
As a man sat and quietly uttered his
prayer one more time,
suddenly, without warning,
he had a moment of sight.
Just as he realized what was happening,
that he was finally seeing
a rooster dashed by,
the red combed head bobbing directly in front
of him.
Seconds later, his sight faded once more.
The next day, the man heard a tremendous
noise coming from outside his house.
Voices were raised in song, tambourines
were thumped and shaking,
and hands were clapping.
It was a wedding procession passing in front
of his home.
The man moved towards the doorway passing,
facing the road where his family was gathered
to watch the joyful parade.
What a beautiful bride, his wife exclaimed.
The man turned to his wife and said,
is she as beautiful as the rooster's head?
This joke
seems to me to be rooted clearly in
an Islamic or Quranic sensibility.
The moral of the story
is that human beings have extremely limited
knowledge of reality.
While sighted people have more knowledge of the
visual world than a person who has sight
for only a moment of his life,
In relative terms, when we consider the vastness
of the earth and the universe,
the difference in our knowledge is so minute
as to make it almost irrelevant.
Further, the story tells us that visual knowledge
is selective,
superficial, and limiting.
It's impossible to see your pace, pay close
attention to all the things that are even
close to us.
The blind man, when he has sight, sees
the rooster,
but not his wife,
his children, or his brother.
He does not notice the trees in his
yard or the mountains surrounding his property?
Similarly,
every human being is limited in his or
her perception
and attention.
Finally, the man's experience of the visual world
is limited to what he saw of the
rooster's head.
Now, this forms the basis
for comparison to everything else in the world,
even a bride.
Similarly,
every human being has limited experiences in the
world,
but it is experience
that greatly influences our convictions
about what is possible
or probable
in the world.
And just as importantly,
these experiences
frame
every new issue or challenge.
And this is why imagination is so important.
If knowledge is limited
to our experience,
we will have a very narrow understanding indeed.
A major component
of childhood moral formation, and I believe this
is universally true,
is the imparting of lessons through imaginative
role playing songs,
poems, and the telling of stories,
through imagination, the child can experience the perspective
of another person
or even a non human living creature.
Imagination allows a child to vicariously
experience
emotions of others.
A child who is deprived of these imaginative
experiences
can be stunted
in their moral formation.
And certainly, we as adults
need to have this imaginative
capacity
regularly
renewed as well.
Empathy
rests
on a strong imaginative
capacity.
How are we to fulfill the prophetic imperative
to love for your brother what you love
for yourself
without this empathy?
There's a beautiful example of,
of this in the writings of
a scholar, a Muslim scholar who was born
in late 19th century Ottoman Empire,
who lived through the dismantling of the caliphate
and into a few decades of the 20th
century.
His name was Sayed Noursi,
and he is a
very influential,
Puranic scholar,
in the modern period.
Norsi,
ran into many
difficulties with the new secular Turkish regime
and spent a considerable
amount of time in prison
where he wrote some of his most compelling
work.
Nursi was keen to demonstrate the continuing relevance
of the Quran in a secular age
and often in a charming way, linked his
own experiences
and understanding
of the world's revelation.
Here, for example, he uses the setting of
his imprisonment
to discuss a verse
that emphasizes the unique creative power of god
and the need for humanity to live in
harmony
with the rest of creation.
And once again, it's an insect
who has something to teach us.
So Norci writes,
it was almost the time when flies are
discharged from their duties in the autumn.
Because of the insignificant
annoyance they give,
some selfish humans
applied insecticides
to our prison cell to kill them.
This aroused acute pity in me.
However, the flies and resistance to those humans
multiplied even more.
There was a clothesline in our cell.
In the evening, those tiny birds would be
lined up in an orderly fashion on the
line.
One day, Suleyman Rushdie
rose to hang up the washing,
and I said to him, don't bother those
tiny birds.
Hang up your washing somewhere else.
He replied in complete seriousness,
we need the line. Let the flies find
somewhere else for themselves.
Then in the morning, a discussion started in
connection with this small incident
about tiny creatures like flies and ants, which
exist in great numbers.
I said the following to him,
the species which exist in multiplying great numbers
have important duties and great value,
like an important book whose copies are multiplied.
Because of their significant duties, the all wise
creator greatly multiplies these tiny missives of divine
destiny,
these words of divine power.
The wise Quran announces,
oh, humanity,
a parable is struck, so pay heed to
it. So he's quoting the Quran right now.
Those whom apart from God you deify and
invoke will never be able to create even
a fly,
even if all of them were to come
together to do so.
And if a fly snatches away anything from
them, they cannot recover it from him.
Powerless indeed is the seeker and so is
the sought.
That is to say the creation of flies
is such a miracle of the lord's creativity
that if all things and beings to which
creativity is attributed were to come together,
they would be unable
to create even a fly. They would not
be able to imitate the miracle of the
lord.
And then Noorsy says,
oh, you egotistical
human being,
apart from the thousands of instances
of wisdom in the life of flies,
consider only the small benefit that they provide
for you and abandon your hostility towards them.
In addition to keeping you company in your
solitude and loneliness when in exile,
they prevent you from falling into heedlessness
or confusion of thought.
You see how through their delicate manners and
their washing of their faces and eyes,
as though taking ablutions,
they teach you and remind you of human
duties,
such as cleanliness,
performing the prayers,
and making your
ritual ablutions for prayer.
Here we see a remarkable demonstration
of the use of imagination
to learn a spiritual lesson that leads to
an ethical position.
First of all, Nursi goes beyond his narrow
personal perspective
and even the perspective of his species, that
is human beings,
and looks at things from the fly's perspective.
He has acute pity for the flies who
are being poisoned.
This leads him to take the ethical position
that his prison companion should not use insecticide.
What is interesting to me here is the
way Noursey is able to bolster his ethical
argument through a further exercise of the imagination.
I think I could say that most scholars
in the same situation
would apply the ethical principle,
harm
should be removed
to justify the killing of flies in this
case.
After all, these people are already in prison
suffering significant hardship,
and I imagine that their desire to remove
the flies from their environment
could be understood to reflect a true need
on their part.
But in weighing needs and benefits,
Noursin never forgets the spiritual benefits.
Could there be a spiritual benefit in allowing
the flies to remain?
Nersi discovers that benefit through his imagination
by seeing the flies' movements
to mimic ritual
evolution.
The flies are therefore an important remember,
a sign sent by god to remind the
prisoners to be attentive to their ablutions and
prayers. Thus, in order,
to have a
broader perspective
on the harms and benefits
of any ethical
dilemma,
Noursey shows us that we have to reflect
beyond reason
and engage our imagination.
Now in conclusion, let me say that, of
course,
imagination
is only one part of the puzzle.
It does not eliminate the need for research
to engage in fact find finding and exercise
due diligence in this regard,
nor does it eliminate the need for consultation
and representation and decision making.
So for example, it's not enough for me
to imagine what
a woman's perspective
might be or a young person's perspective might
be on a situation.
They need to be included and speak for
themselves as well.
But
imagination
and adopting and shifting our perspective
to others
is
part of what makes,
the process,
one of spiritual openings and one of true
understanding.
It is an essential element
in the Quranic stories and parables
and even in the Quranic language and grammar,
and it helps us if we truly
allow it to become better people.
Thank you for your attention.
Miss Shetika has the microphone,
and, if you'd like to make a comment
or ask a question, please go
ahead.
First of all, thank you very much for
your presence. Really appreciate it.
My question deals with
the point that you were making about
sometimes
when you're dealing with
yourself or within the other individuals,
that self indulgence
results in
either me or someone else not hearing the
thoughts and ideas of others.
So my question deals with,
what are the tools that you see
are helpful so that, number 1,
an
individual, is willing to not be so self
centered
and listen to others,
and then others
not be so self centered and listen to.
Right.
We are all driven by,
instincts
for
defending ourselves, defending our perspective,
defending ourselves from perceived criticism or attack. This
is our first instinct. We are defensive,
and we have to know that about ourselves.
And
and part
of a spiritual discipline really is to,
learn to
just be quiet
and to hear the perspective, give space for
another's perspective,
not immediately rush in with an answer.
And to this end, I think of,
how,
you know, my role model very much is
the prophet Mohammed when he had people coming
to him in his community, and especially again
and again and again, women
who would come to him and say,
you know, such and such thing happened to
me. Something's going on.
Why is this happening?
With a criticism or a complaint about what
was going on in their society, and what's
really amazing is
here he was,
you know, given this role by god to
guide the community.
But in every case, we see that
the the the encounter is described that he
listened
and then he waited.
He almost never gave an immediate answer,
and sometimes he waited until the next day,
and he always waited
to see if
god would give him a revelation
before he put his own perspective.
For example, a woman came to him and
said,
you know, I I I wonder when I
hear the revelation,
I wonder is this directed
at men
alone?
You know, or is there,
we believe in you. What about us as
women?
When
when the Quran says, oh, you who believe
or oh believers, does that include us?
And
the prophet Mohammed didn't answer right away.
But very soon after that,
when he allowed
time
to pass,
he came back with a revelation from God.
That was a beautiful affirmation
of the
spiritual equality of men and women. This passage
saying, verily,
the believing men and the believing women, and
the Muslim men and the Muslim women, and
the
men who pray and the women who pray.
And the the passage goes on and on
mentioning specifically
men and the women who do this
about their,
equality. So we need
we need to be,
to have that self discipline not to respond
right away,
because if we do our own our defensiveness,
our instincts,
will take place, and we won't have time
also to engage in this imaginative exercise, this
time to shift our perspective
and think,
you know,
what would it be like to be that
person who's raising this issue?
That takes space and that takes time.
Thank you so much.
The psychologist
of religion, Paul Preiser,
in his book Play of the Imagination,
says that we have to cultivate
and nurture imagination.
With our media obsessed world,
in which we live today,
how would you suggest we cultivate the kind
of imagination
that can bring difference of perspective?
I mean, I really believe that imagination
needs space, and and sometimes I think what
happens is,
you know, there are many creative works,
but
the creative vision,
is that's being given to us very often
doesn't allow
any space for our own engagement.
I mean, a true work of art does.
A true work of art
has an interactive
quality,
you know, whether it's film that leaves
leave space for us
to reflect and imagine or whether it's,
you know, a book,
a novel.
But a lot of entertainment
is is more about
kind of, firing up certain instincts in us
rather than engaging with our imagination.
So if I think about,
you know, the, you know,
car crashes and explosions and things like that,
they seem to play more on on our
on an instinctual
level than an imaginative
level.
The the the
the aim is to get is to make
us afraid,
excited,
rather than and doesn't leave space for this.
So,
I I you know, there I'm not saying
there's no role for that, but, I would
say that
we have to
just make some discernment among,
among these creative projects and and make a
distinction between
what may be pure entertainment
and
an imaginative exercise.
I think about how,
in the early Islamic period,
the one of the things that scholars
and preachers, sort of the mainstream
scholars and preachers,
preachers of Islam
complained about
were the storytellers
who were proliferating
on the, you know, streets and corners of
Baghdad
and the big cities of the Middle East.
They would attract such huge crowds with their
stories, which were which were like this. They
were all about
stimulating
the appetite. So about the
simply about the torments of * and the
delights of paradise and
everything given in very visceral terms. Now the
Quran talks about heaven and *,
but in a way that
that
brings you,
you know,
makes you think about what it means to
be a to be a soul in that
body, you know, not just kind of pushing
these buttons.
And so they were very alarmed at that.
So I think this is something that is,
that is a kind of that cheap thrill,
that humanity
has been tempted
to seek
for it's not a new thing.
The ancient storytellers knew how to do that
as well. You would you would end up
being exhausted,
but you don't feel that you've grown at
the end
of that,
process
of being engaged in this kind of fear
and terror and delight.
It's it's like junk food,
you know, creative junk food.
I wanna thank you all and particularly
thank you, doctor Matson.
You have given us many thoughtful
and provocative
and probing things to consider as we continue
on our journeys.
Thanks to you all. This concludes
this year's co lectures.
We look forward to seeing you next year
where the co lecturer
lecturer
will be doctor Daisy Machado,
Union Seminary in New York.
God's blessings. God's peace.
See you next year.