CTSA musings

So, patience pays off. I wondered earlier whether anything relevant was going to happen at this meeting. And it really has! Sandra Schneiders did a powerful reading of John 20 at one plenary session (I’m going to need to wait for the proceedings to work through the careful and complex analysis she presented), and this morning Roberto Goizueta’s presidential address moved me both to tears and to action. THESE are the kinds of reasons I come to the CTSA meeting. THESE are the kinds of people I’d like to be counted among, and I’d like to work towards emulating.

I'm still, admittedly, frustrated that the wonderful and profound interpretations of Christian life and belief offered at this meeting are relatively inaccessible to anyone who isn't willing or able to sit and listen for an hour at a time to closely reasoned, philosophically rich texts read out loud. I suppose it's my vocation and responsibility to find ways to make these ideas available to broader publics, to the church at large. But I'm also increasingly impatient that those of us who have the privilege and ability to sit around in beautifully appointed, air conditioned hotels aren't trying harder, even amongst ourselves, to find ways to embed our ideas, our interpretations, in image and music, in video and weblog, in media that can be shared with people for whom philosophical argument is not the primary medium of meaning-making.

I'll have to work on finding ways to do so in the next few weeks...