colors unearthed.

As I work through reading assignments and papers, I want to feel the color beneath the words. After reading or writing a few pages, I want to close my eyes, and with patience uncover in my imagination those vivid images beneath the sentences. What is this making me feel? What fiery passionate red does it awaken? What vibrant green is unearthed? What sweet blue rest is here, waiting to comfort and envelope me in its fold? What golden orange speaking of hope or light?

This printed black on this clean white surface is so much more than it seems. There is life in these words, born and unborn. Waiting to speak such truth, to ask such questions, to demand such feeling, to dream such dreams that our minds can hardly fathom. All I can do is read, write, dig, contemplate and slowly unearth the dynamic color coming into view. To get beneath these sentences and find the abundance that they signify.

Theology, like poetry or music, is not mere fact: contained, small, certain. It is not an instruction manual. But like art, theology speaks of a flowing truth, rich in color, beyond the description offered by the words themselves.

“We are set free on an ocean of language that comes to be a part of us… The sky is bright and very wide, and the waves talk to us preparing dreams we’ll have to live with and use. Toys as solemn and knotted as books assert themselves first, leading down to a delicate landscape of reminders to be better next time, urging us all to return to our senses, to the matter of the day that is now ending.” –John Ashbery, poet

"In his incarnation Christ gives himself totally for our salvation by identifying and consecrating himself to the task of reconciling us to the God of covenant. He identifies with everything human, including the worst most inhumane kind of death, so that no one stands beyond the reach of his oneness with us in the incarnation... His sacrifice is far deeper and more personal than a settling of accounts. The problem Christ confronts in his sacrifice is one of broken relationships that need healing, not simply a breach of contract that needs legal redress. His sacrifice is a passionate expression of his profound love." -R. Larry Shelton, Professor of Wesleyan Theology