“And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.” (Luke 24:15-16; NAB)
Forgive me, but this morning I heard this as a withering critique of so much of our theology and the so-called “Discourse” that tries to suck us in. There’s something of Dostoyevsky in this passage: just as people are “conversing and debating” about the things that happened to Jesus, Jesus shows up and they can’t even recognize him. Now I have to wonder whether it was precisely their “conversing and debating” that veiled their perception.
Craft matters because only the best art will resist the lure of becoming propaganda for our debates. Whether a painting or a song, a film or a poem, the most enduring art is the most capacious. The best artworks make room for the messiness of the world around us, the swirling complexity of the soul within, and the infinite richness of the divine. Like harmonies and chords, the most enduring works of art hold together complexities—they give us a way to live with, and into, tensions, even contradictions. Debates have winners and losers, but literature makes room for even our enemies. Where a syllogism has to resolve to a conclusion, a poem remains open. While a treatise has to make an argument, a sculpture can evoke fourteen feelings and seven ideas all at once, and all of them can be true.
Friends, we hope you’ll leave here to make art that makes room for encounters with otherness in all its complexity, including a divine haunting that our neighbors sometimes don’t quite know how to name.
These remarks were excerpted from Dr. Smith’s closing talk at the Glen Workshop in Asheville, NC in July 2022.
James K.A. Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin College where he holds the Gary & Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology & Worldview. The award-winning author of Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? and Desiring the Kingdom, his most recent books include Imagining the Kingdom (2013), Discipleship in the Present Tense (2013), Who’s Afraid of Relativism? (2014), and How (Not) To Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (2014), You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (2016). The author of a number of influential books, Smith also regularly writes for magazines and newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Slate, First Things, Christianity Today, Books & Culture, and The Hedgehog Review. He serves as editor-in-chief of Image journal, which is one of the sponsors of the Catholic Imagination Conference (Sept 30-Oct 1 at the University of Dallas).
At the CIC 2022, Jamie Smith will be interviewing novelist Chris Beha, whose most recent novel The Index of Self-Destructive Acts was longlisted for the National Book Award.
Both Smith and Beha have been guests on the Sacred and Profane Love podcast, hosted by Dr. Jennifer Frey, who will record a live episode at the conference, with Dana Gioia as her guest (sponsored by Institute for Human Ecology). Other guests on this podcast were invited to be speakers at this year’s event, including:
Katy Carl (As Earth Without Water, Wiseblood books 2021)
Michial Farmer (translator of Thirst, Cluny books 2021)
Phil Klay (National Book Award winning author of Redeployment)
Like Klay, Phil Metres is a former recipient of the prestigious $25,000 George W. Hunt, S.J. Prize for Excellence in Journalism, Arts & Letters by America magazine and the Saint Thomas More Chapel and Center at Yale University, previously awarded at other iterations of the Catholic Imagination Conference. These are a mere handful of examples of the award-winning group that is congregating at the University of Dallas this fall.
Although most of the CIC events require registration, we have moved the grand finale of the event to the UD gymnasium to accommodate a larger crowd. The Saturday evening reading of “Heroes of the Fourth Turning” will be followed by a talk back with the director, Stefan Novinski, his cast, and Glenn Arbery, who is the President of Wyoming Catholic College, a theater critic, and novelist. If you are connected to schools, universities, or churches in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, please spread the word about this FREE closing event of the conference.