Reflection: Artists hub meetingeweysession: 25Oct2011

The sorting exercise.

In the beginning when You created;The earth was formless and desolate.

In the beginning was the Word;and all things were worded into being.

In the beginning, was the Word;And all being was worded into world.

The Word was with You in the beginning:And Word-less, nothing is nor can be named.In the beginning when You created;The earth was formless and desolate.

In the beginning was the Word;and all things were worded into being.

In the beginning, was the the Word;And all being was worded into world.

The Word was with You in the beginning:And Word-less, nothing is nor can be named.

Genesis 219 So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.

God is effectively saying Look at the varieties here. What do you make of them? How do you see them? How are you going to classify them? and this is something to be celebrated rather than rued as a curse following on from the disobedience of Woman (later Eve) and Adam.

Adam gives names to the animals

Naming seems to me to imply, in one sense, contemplation. If you want to name something, that is to give a name, you have to sense it, feel it, hear it, taste it, move with it, smell it and/or look at it. You have to become familiar with it as a whole entity and you have to see it in relationship to other things and decide just what those relationships are.

Naming ...

Naming... we have to decide what the 'object' actually is. ... The word which we may translate into English from some languages as 'hand' may actually in some cases also normally include in its meaning what we would label 'forearm'. ... how we group things together or distinguish things from other things. If we label something as a 'finch', that is sufficient to distinguish it from 'warblers' or 'buntings' or 'sparrows'. But if we put it alongside certain other birds, we might want to look for further distinctions and name further using labels such as 'chaffinch' or 'bullfinch'. ...

O Lord, open our senses:That our perceiving may draw us further into fullness of life.

O Lord, open our thinking and affectivity;That our naming may disclose your love and your will.

O Lord, open our lips;That our mouths shall proclaim your praise.

O Lord, open our art and expression:That our work may nourish humanity and resonate your praise.O Lord, open our senses:That our perceiving may draw us further into fullness of life.

O Lord, open our thinking and affectivity;That our naming may disclose your love and your will.

O Lord, open our lips;That our mouths shall proclaim your praise.

O Lord, open our art and expression:That our work may nourish humanity and resonate your praise.

Naming:

In Surah 2, v.31 the Qur'an reads in English

Allah taught Adam all the names of everything.

This takes us on a rather different trajectory of thought from the Genesis version. It seems to me that the Qur'anic version could encourage an approach to naming, knowing and taxonomy which is all about finding, preserving or even perhaps imposing a single naming, one way of knowing, a sole taxonomy. In the Hebrew Bible, in our canon, God allows Adams names to stand. Adam names something and that was its name.

... It is not imposed by God on Adam, but instead God is happy for, gives space for, Adam to have his own ideas and then to endorse them. The Genesis picture is friendly towards the observation that human signs are, in the naming of semiotics, unmotivated, that is arbitrary. ...

Adam gives names to the animals

The Genesis story then, is giving us in embryo the namings that human culture brings to us through art and science. Art automatically gives us perspective from which to view certain things. For example, there is a way of looking at particular incident from scripture in a piece of art such as we get in the Sistine Chapel, for example, the artwork offers us particular interpretations. It offers us the fruit of the contemplations of an artist both of 'a something, of the materials being worked and the contextual issues of production and sharing. A work of art, in a sense, offers us a name for something. It is in a sense a kind of name in itself: a 'name' that is a painting, a sculpture, a piece of music, a poem, a dance, a novel or a play.

Together we pray:May our work be faithfulMay our work be honestMay our work be blessedMay our work bless othersTogether we pray:May our work be faithfulMay our work be honestMay our work be blessedMay our work bless others

when your imaginations
freeze behind
the grey window
and the tight fist of blockage
grips in on you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight;That you may speak again in tongues of colour, form, movement and sound.(altered: original by John ODonahue)when your imaginations
freeze behind
the grey window
and the tight fist of blockage
grips in on you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight;That you may speak again in tongues of colour, form, movement and sound.

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