Conversation Starter 19 | Story, Memory, Virtue and Imagination, with Josh Spears

In this conversation starter, Josh considers the connection between story and the Academy’s core commitments. 

----------------

Dear listener, we want to hear from you! Send us your questions and comments to podcast@theacademyok.org.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

I've seen some things recently that have abandoned my world. You may not believe me, they're so shocking, but I'll tell you, dear listener. I'll tell you what I've seen. I've seen Andrew in a t-shirt and shorts, cell phone in hand, laptop and lamp. I've seen Nathan in street clothes, colorless. I've seen Eric in a tie, a tie with patterns. It's an upside-down, inside-out world in which we live in. At times they are indeed a change in. I find myself in the library among stacks and stacks of books. Libraries and bookstores are two of our family's favorite places to go just because we find ourselves drawn to these rows and rows of books and the stories they contain. Recently, my daughter grabbed from my hand the nineteen sixties copy of a series of lectures by Dietrich Bonhoeffer so she could flip through the pages for the love of the smell of old books. Of late I've been thinking about stories and the structures thereof. Three happenings have prompted my thinking, happening the first, officiating my grandmother's funeral. Prepping for the funeral included the telling of her story, which in turn included some stories I'd not yet heard. I never knew, for example, her birth name, because the first chance she got she changed it. She hated that name so much she never let anyone know of it. But what really struck me was when I helped my mom write her mother's obituary. Seeing her entire story all at once brought the whole of her life into sharp focus. It turns out that my grandma had suffered significant loss throughout her life, setback after setback after setback, painful, hard setbacks. And yet at each setback, she by faith grew more to trust Christ. She grew in strength and joy. It made sense of my grandma in a way that I could never have known without having the whole of it in front of me, beginning, middle, and end. Happening the second, rereading C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces. Lewis retells the story of Cupid and Psyche. I read it years ago. I remember the broad outline of the story, but this reading, as the kids say, hit different. Something about reading this work in one's mid forties helps one see more of what Lewis was after. But I think the real strength of the reread is knowing at some level the whole plot and noticing the details missed in earlier readings. Knowing the ending, what my friend Josh Secret calls the prolectic power of narrative endings, both highlights and changes the meaning of those details. And this is exactly the point of part two of the novel. The main character is able to re-see the events described in part one, though how and whether she sees them differently. I'll leave for you to read and then talk to Todd Wedel, St. Joe's director, for insight after insight. In short, having the whole make sense of the parts and the parts contribute to the whole happening the third. Talking with my college students about the nature of worldview. I succinctly defined worldview as the story you tell about yourself, paramount to the story you tell about yourself is the answer to three key questions. Where do I come from? Where am I going? And how do I live in between? Each of these three is interrelated with the other two. These fundamental questions suggest that I cannot know what I ought to do with virtue without seeing how imagination, the future, relates to the past, memory. None of this is profound, mind you. But I wanted to relate story to our core commitments at the academy. Ready? Say them with me out loud. In your car on your way to work, or in your run, or while cleaning the kitchen wherever you enjoy fine podcasts. They are memory, virtue, and imagination. Good job. To be properly educated, students must be trained in memory, practiced in virtue, and baptized in imagination. Perhaps we might see in this triad of core commitments the narrative triad of rising action, climax, falling action. Perhaps we might see in this triad of core commitments the triad of questions related to worldview. Perhaps then we might see the connection between our core commitments and story, that the most powerful shaper of memory, virtue, and imagination is in fact story, that our very worldviews are a story and shaped by story. Perhaps we might see that education at the Academy is a steeping of your children in story, that they may grow into the redeemed humans Christ is working in them to be, that they might be able to see the whole and the parts, and the parts and the whole and live their stories well. So some questions. One, are you listening to or reading stories? Two, what stories are you listening to and reading? Three, are you telling stories? What stories do you tell? Four, how do you incorporate story into your lives in such a way that you grow in memory, virtue, and imagination? Five, do you retell and reread stories? Six, are you able to see the whole and the parts? And the parts and the whole