We started the day with a lecture from John (the only formal lecture he has planned for this week) on the topic of Theology and the Arts. He suggested that religious art has three primary aims: to teach social morality, to engage us in the creative event, and to help us transcend isolation.
I haven't been in divinity school even a whole week yet, but I'm already detecting a pattern. The three things you're likely to hear about as being "the" three things in any given class can be broken down to the three P's:
1. The prophetic (cf. teaching morality above)
2. The priestly (cf. engaging in the creative event)
3. The pastoral (cf. transcend isolation)
Of course, these three are not just the domain of ordained ministers, but rather are the responsibility of all members of a church community.
I got a triple-shot of the priestly (and priestessly?) aspects over the weekend, but with strong tinges of the other two. This week, our class is pretty well balanced between the three.
After the lecture and an interesting discussion of Rollo May's "The Courage to Create," today was dramatic improvisation exercise day. We started with relatively simple exercises (a very nice mirroring excercise, for example) and by the end of the day we were improvising whole scenes with props and character/situation suggestions. It became a little joke among the students that after each exercise, John would say, "We're going to ratchet it up a little now."
Some of us were wondering how much more ratcheting we could stand, but, in the end, everything was fine. I was really impressed with the creativity and good nature of every one of my classmates. And John is a first-rate instructor who really knows his material and does a great job making the exercises relevant to things that we're likely to face in ministry.
Another very good day at Meadville.
