Minister's Inter-faith Blog Page 5
Jacques
Cousteau and the First Disciples?
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| One word really hit me in this week's
sermon- "bathos." Dr.
Dan suggested that in the context of the calling of the first
disciples, the Greek baθos ((bathos) meant
that Jesus was telling those simple fisherfolk to search the profundity
of the lake in their quest for a worthwhile catch of fish. My
mind wandered to our Grade 8 English class, and the days when students
really studied English. Hadn't our poor English mistress
struggled to teach us just the opposite? My trusty "Dictionary of Canadian English"
seemed to support my distant memory. Bathos was defined as "dullness or commonplace in speech or
writing, especially when following more elevated expression: for
example, The exile came back to his home, crippled, unfriended and
hatless." I think the example we were cited was Caliban's
comment in "The Tempest:" "I must eat my dinner." For a moment, I was tempted to think that our gifted classical scholar had got it wrong. Then a picture of Jacques Cousteau flitted across my mind- the French marine biologist entering his bathysphere to study the mysteries of marine life on the floors of the deepest oceans. A little detective work showed that the fault lay not with Dr. Dan, but rather with the early eighteenth century poet Alexander Pope; he first introduced the word into the English language in 1727, and instead of accepting classical Greek usage, he chose to pervert it to a form of satirical rhetoric, a ludicrous descent from the elevated to the commonplace. Possibly, our search for the sacred can invoke both understandings- by all means probe to the deepest depths of mystery, but do not overlook the holy in that which is near at hand and commonplace. Roy Shephard.
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| A
lovely reflection on bathos! I think it is both-- the common and
the profound-- that may be important here-- I was dancing with a
metaphor more than anything else on Sunday! Fishing, as I
suggested could bring up bull heads--ugly and not particularly
profound-- or . . . . For those disciples, fishing was what one
did for a living, nothing profound. And yet they are called to a
new way of fishing and seeing, a trust in the depths of the ordinary. Dr. Daniel.
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