Publications:
Way of Life: our magazine
WoL, as it is affectionately called, is a 32 page, colour A5 quarterly, available for £8 a year. An excerpt from the January - March 2012 issue follows. Help your self to more by subscribing!
Modern Art & Theology:
Given by Rev’d Charles Pickstone
Art Critic and Vicar of St Laurence, Catford.
His start point was that as our brain filters and adjusts the crude perceptions delivered to it by the senses, the way we understand our world can only be inadequate. Pushing it, we live in our own worlds and we cannot know how far these worlds correspond to one another’s, let alone to Ultimate Reality. If at best, we can only get a working knowledge of the world, how can we know God? Scary stuff, but Art, Charles claims, can help.
Many will know how the human brain’s top layer is divided into two halves, each preferring, but not immutably dedicated to, different ways of thinking. The left hemisphere prefers to stand aloof, and in a detached way will analyse what is going on by abstracting from reality. It likes logic, detail and sequence. The right hemisphere has a preference for holism and association, seeing itself as connected to the world, making it much better at being in touch with the ‘big picture’.
The problem with Left Brain thinking is that it is two dimensional and thus cannot help but misrepresent all that it attempts to interpret. Moreover, it interposes another organisational level of confusion between the individual and the world - Language. The ability to use words is among the most precious, subtle, complex and defining skills of humanity, but the down side is that words are labels, and as such, have an inertia by which it is assumed they will be universally and eternally applicable. In turn they will become increasingly inaccurate and continually need ‘translating’. Thus when we ‘do theology’, we use words, concepts and labels that are atrophied by centuries, spun by kudos and nuanced by culture. As an example, compare the relevance of a paraphrase of scripture with a translation: which offers accuracy? Which offers liveliness? Which potentially conveys more of God?
A listing of publications follows. More details from the editor:
phone (01303) 277399, or email editor@gohealth.org.uk
Rev’d Dr Denis Duncan,
Past President & Council Member of The Guild of Health
Past President & Council Member of The Guild of Health
John Pritchard Bishop of Oxford, President of The Guild of Health
