 This page is an archive from the previous version of The Row Boat, which is why it doesn't look and work the same as the current version. However, these archives are fully functional and integrated with the new system.
Why does this site permit advertising?
Powered by Little Logger |
The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
Weights and Measures11/28/2006 02:15:38A few days ago, in my last class before AAR and the wonderful Thanksgiving break, I got to go on a tour of the American religions collection in the UC Santa Barbara library. It is a tremendous archive with shelves and shelves of books, followed by drawers and drawers of files, all gathered by a professor writing an encyclopedia on American religions. Standing in the middle of that dark, cramped room was plainly a stunning experience. Particularly for a person who spends lots of time ostensibly trying to get at the heart of what religion is, the sensation was humbling. There, recorded in texts, tracts, and loose papers was the evidence of thousands of wild creeds and human visions, from manifestations of the divine to sex handbooks for witches. I say humbling because the room was a statement of the incredible enormousness of the thing we set ourselves to deal with (religion), that we presume even to call a thing, with such diversity that a unity can hardly be imagined, each with a fervor that forces all one's favorite assumptions into question. The group of us, graduate students in the religion department, went at the stacks like hungry birds. We were very good at digging up the exciting stuff. The Church of Latter-Day Surf. L. Ron Hubbard's lecture notes. Theosophy and imported gurus. Immigrant sects. Some of the wildest hidden under the wings of the mainline. I found a section of books about memory-improving practices. From somewhere behind dark shelves we would announce our discoveries and everyone came running to see. It was a lot of fun. Afterward we came back to a little seminar room to talk about what we'd seen. The librarian had prepared for us there a collection of satanic stuff and witch porn which we gobbled up. At the end of the table, though, was a really big book. He explained it was a 14th century vellum illuminated Bible. There it was just sitting there. Gradually most of us put down the witch porn and gravitated around the thing. We touched the pages and turned them and found the most elaborate illuminations. We looked closely at the writing, each letter made by a person's hand. We took turns with it and made the sounds of being amazed. In all honesty, which is so hard to come by, I think all of us were. The book was a thing to be quiet by, for a few moments at least. That sequence made a graceful juxtaposition, I think. The two moments of awe: those thousands and thousands in the stacks and shelves and files, and then the single big book on the table, with words we could hardly make out much less understand. Both the many and the one seemed able to carry a whole infinity, one that could fill a life, or overwhelm it, or satiate it. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
|
| |
