Interesting Presentations

The presentations on Thursday were overall pretty impressive. A couple of my favorites were Shelby's, Melissa's, Craig West's and Ben's. This isn't to say I didn't like other people's presentations, I simply found these topics the most interesting.

Melissa's claim that the women of the Bible were in fact the key players to most biblical stories was interesting and completely valid in my mind, but then, the human race doesn't exactly continue its existence without them so this is a formidable argument in any story. She mentioned that women in the bible were constantly "pushing stories forward", and to add onto that, I think that they are not only pushing stories forward but acting as a hinge or joint in a fixed object. By this I mean they introduce new dynamics into their stories, rather than the consistent flatness possessed by so many biblical accounts.

Shelby's idea about the different paths of reading the bible was also an interesting observation. The image that stuck with me most was the 'picasso-esque' masterpiece of the person plunging from the cliff. That person was definitely me at the beginning of this class, I simply held my breath, opened the first page and dove into it. Now, I feel I have reached a 'higher plane (plain?)', and when reading the bible I approach it from a controlled literary vantage point. I no longer regard the bible as the heart of the historically harmful religious institutions, but rather as a foundational library of culture and modern thought.

Ben's presentation on the notion of anagogy was another idea that made the choo-choo in my brain start rolling. Naturally, anything stated by Frye, though severely intriguing, also severely surpasses my current powers of thought, so I can only hope that in time I will absorb more and more of his ideas. As Ben stated it, the notion of Anagoge is the ultimate level of reading a text. For some reason this rings a similar bell with me as the Buddhist (Hindu?) idea of nirvana. The ultimate level of reading a text... brilliant. Clearly Frye was a literary sage/medicine man. As wikipedia describes it, the anagogical is a method of spiritual interpretation of literal statements or events, and perhaps this was Frye's philosophy on reading the bible. This is probably something useful for me to find out but, either way, very cool.

Craig West chose to address the idea of 'hebel' on some level. A recap for you; 'hebel' is emptiness; a metaphorical kernal of fog; vapor. This idea from Ecclesiastes is that everything is but a breath, everything is pointless. When I think too much about this idea I find my thoughts become trapped in a maze of uncertainty. If everything is but a breath and nothing matters at all, why care about anything? But, from the other perspective, if everything is but a breath why should we spend one moment of our lives settling for mediocrity? Really, this idea of hebel is a ticket to some form of mental transcendence, the hard part is figuring out how to make it work. Craig confronted this issue, came up with some conclusions I can't remember, and quoted T.S. Eliot - "Surrender yourself in order to create a work of art." Great quote.