Thursday 31 January 2008

Poetry Wilderness


“The poetic imagination is marginal within our dominant scientific culture. This tends towards a deadening literalism. In most traditional societies, poetry, myth, song and music were central to the culture. In our society these have often been reduced to entertainment. The hunger for the transcendent is still there in the human heart. As St. Augustine said, it is restless until it rests in God. But in our postmodern society it is harder for the preacher to evoke that ultimate human destiny which transcends our words. Few preachers are poets. I am not. But if the preaching of the word is to flourish, then we need poets and artists, singers and musicians who keep alive the intuition of our ultimate destiny. The Church needs these singers of the transcendent to nurture her life and her preaching.”
(Timothy Radcliffe OP, ”The Sacramentality of the Word,” in LITURGY IN A POSTMODERN WORLD, pp.133-147, here p.145)

2 comments:

Bob MacDonald said...

Finally we see at least one of the Jerusalem crowd acknowledging the need for the children of Korah.

J. K. Gayle said...

Sorry to do this to you, Phil, but you've been tagged.