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Transcendentals for Tuscany Press
Based on my talk, 3-D Transcendentals:
In In Tune with the World, Josef Pieper shows that Speech, Art, and Festival are all rooted in the affirmation of being, the praise of God. When one prospers, or suffers, the others are likewise affected. These three forms of expression suggest three dimensions of being through which we are fully realized. One of these is too-often overlooked when we discuss spiritual formation.
Regarding the first form of expression, Speech, no one doubts the need for Christians to develop greater facility with words and logic. The dimension that Speech reflects is foundational to the person, to the Catholic Faith, to the Liturgy.
Regarding the third dimension, Festival, we easily acknowledge the need for Sacramental forms. The Liturgy is the ritual festival – a form which serves to communicate God to his people. This third dimension corresponds to our notion of ‘three-dimensional’ as ‘most fully realized’.
As reflected in Art, dimension two, the metaphoric, is less obvious and therefore, as I’ve noted, often overlooked. This is a way of communicating through forms that link what is known to what is less familiar. It corresponds to the arts, but is not limited to artistic expression.
The Word and the Body of Christ are ‘content’ that directly affect the recipient. Metaphor is a movement through which capacity – or ‘context’ – is developed for the truth and the life of Christ within us. This ‘way in the middle,’ is often overlooked as an important aspect of human development.
Education is the sphere in which we learn to use words well, while formation in ‘Sacramental communication’ occurs primarily at church. Of course both ways of learning involve the home, as the parents are a child’s primary educators. But where and how do we develop a capacity for the giving-and-taking of artistic forms?
There’s no particular, actual place for us to acquire the kind of mind that drinks deeply of meaning from artistic forms, or yearns to create them to communicate meaningfully with others. The arts get left out of both education and liturgy.
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