I have experienced one of those lovely confluences in my reading this week. One of those times when two separate and seemingly unrelated things form a new whole in my little brain. First, here is a lovely quote from David Hicks:
It has become almost commonplace to divide ancient consciousness thus between the logos and the mythos, but when fully understood, this division is recognized as timeless-- a precondition, as it were, of the human mind. No one exists who does not in some measure possess these complementary defenses against an unintelligible and hostile world. The mythos represents man's imaginative and, ultimately, spiritual effort to make this world intelligible; the logos sets forth his rational attempt to do the same. What is not hedged off in the severely symmetrical German garden of reason belongs to the uncharted wilderness of mythopoeic imagination-- well, perhaps not entirely uncharted, for even the most rational man spends most of his life wandering in this wilderness, learning its ways and doing his best to follow whatever rudimentary maps come to hand...
~David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education
, p.29
This put me in mind of something recently read by Paul Tripp:
The second thing that distinguished Adam and Eve from the rest of creation [after the fact that we were created to be revelation receivers] was that they were created to be interpreters. people are meaning-makers; we have been created with the marvelous ability to think. We are always organizing, interpreting and explaining what is going on inside us and around us...When we say that God designed human beings to be interpreters, we are getting to the heart of why human being do what they do. Our thinking conditions our emotions, our sense of identity, our view of others, our agenda for the solution of our problems, and our willingness to receive counsel from others. That is why we need a framework for generating valid interpretations that help us respond to life appropriately. only the words of the Creator can give us that framework.
~Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change (Resources for Changing Lives)
, pp.41, 43
In some mythopoeic way, this gets to the heart of why I teach. Since we are built to be interpreters, and we search for meaning, it seems important to guide the young in that important search. What a calling it is to teach! (And what a lovely word: mythopoeic...)
