Lovely stories as usual, so wonderful. How I wish I had known more about all this when I was an au pair in Oxford, 1971-1972 and in later years when I came visiting my Oxford student-boyfriend. We did enjoy Port Meadow and we too sat and smoked and drank things, but we didn't have the historical information. Then again maybe I would not have been this fascinated back then. Thank you again.
In a conversation with Bernardo Kastrup, Iain McGilchrist recounted stories of indigenous peoples who claimed that they could hear the voices of the Elders, referring to those who could not be seen. There are also stories where they heard voices of people a hundred miles away calling because they were in trouble, which often turned out to be the case. I have read similar accounts. But when we moderns are told that Ediva heard a voice telling her to build a house for God, I don't think most of us believe she heard an actual voice. Rather, we think of it as more of a metaphor or just a literary device; she had a hunch. McGilchrist, however, wondered if maybe we moderns have lost certain abilities we once possessed as people. Quite a speculation from a man who was trained in psychiatry. I think we must evaluate such claims with a bit of skepticism, but when you hear the same stories repeated over and over and in areas with no contact with one another, you do begin to wonder. Perhaps people can fly, and maybe God does speak on occasion.
Coincidentally, I just had a similar conversation with a friend.
We were observing that most of us who were raised in our denominational traditions took the "God spoke" passages in the Bible -- particularly the Old Testament -- fairly literally. And we graciously allow as how when our contemporaries use the same language to describe their intuition as "God spoke" to them, we know they don't mean it literally.
But then it dawned on us....
What if they do mean the same thing when they say "God spoke"? ....and not that they mean He is literally speaking to them now, but rather, they believe that the "God spoke" passages in the Bible were equally non-literal?
How much different would your theology be if you thought that revelation was never any more direct and clear throughout the history of man than it is today? Would you see the Bible as any more or less authoritative than you currently do?
First, I wouldn't call my grab bag of thoughts and speculations anything as elevated as a theology, but thanks for the compliment. I was trained as a lawyer, so I'm well aware of the limitations and ambiguities of language. So, if I had an Old Testament prophet on the stand, my first question would be, "Well, what do YOU mean when you say you heard a voice?" Since that is not possible, I would not speculate about in what manner they heard it. Perhaps it is a literal voice, and perhaps not. Perhaps sometimes it is literal, and other times not. I figure that God can deliver messages in the way He sees fit, and it would be unseemly for me to demand consistency. So whether the message is spoken, or is in a vision or a burning bush or a rainbow, the point is that a message was sent and received. As far as the Bible being authoritative, it wouldn't matter to me if details peripheral to the message of Jesus were not factually correct or inconsistent. What is not important to me is whether the Bible is consistent, but whether it coheres. I find that it generally does, and I leave the details to the real theologians. I hope that this answers your question.
Thanks for the reply. My apologies for being so lazy (and I admit to a Midwesterner's sensibility that "one's" theology sounds stuffy) and I typed "you" when I was musing more generally. Your original comment just raised those questions I'd been so recently pondering.
This is the case made by an older book by Julian Jaynes, called 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.' Terrible title, interesting book. I think it influenced McGilchrist. I have a feeling Owen Barfield said something similar, but I haven't read him. I find the case quite convincing.
At a very troubled point in my life I "heard", while praying before my icons, a voice saying "It's going to be OK". Now, why did I put the quotes around "Heard"? Because this wasn't hearing an external sound with my ears as I can hear my fingers typing this at the keyboard. It was something I heard inside my head, and yet also, it was not a thought of mine.
If you open your Old Testament to 1 Samuel, chapter 3, you will read, "And the child Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Eli. And the word of the Lord was precious in those days ; there was no open vision." If you read the entire account of the way God manifests himself to the child Samuel, and manifests to others that he has chosen Samuel to be his prophet, you can see ? how important the voice of the Lord is, and how difficult it is to distinguish between a "vision" which comes from the eyes, or from the ears. A great deal of modern psychiatry, modern medecine even, involves disqualifying this kind of experience as going against "rational" reason.
A film came out in France a few years ago, "The Apparition", or something similar, which showed the process whereby the Roman Catholic Church investigates people's claims to have had visions. There is a formal inquiry, as in "inquisition", you might say, and I see nothing wrong in this, particularly when huge sums of money may be involved to establish a convent, or church.
My mother, long ago, claimed to have heard Jesus calling her name one night, in extraordinary circumstances, and I like to say now that I consider that no human being has the legitimacy or authority to establish that she did NOT hear Jesus calling her name. Maybe that is a Protestant attitude, and maybe not, but I am not troubled about affirming this position now. After all, my mother was not asking for a convent to be built...
Ahh..Oxford in the early 90s. The new rave scene was very evident but I preferred trips to The Trout Inn, a stones throw from Godstow. I vaguely remember visiting the nunnery at night but we got our scarey kicks from going to see the shrunken heads from Borneo in the Pitt Rivers museum of anthropology. I think they recently consulted a shamen and then got rid of them. What is a student to do now to get spooked?
Those were the days. The Perch was my favourite hangout on the meadow. I was never a raver; more of a wannabe crusty. I loved the Pitt Rivers back then, before it was tarted up. These days it apparently has a woke curator who wants to 'decolonise' it. Good luck with that!
I am really enjoying these stories. I have my own nun story. My beloved Bessie- my maternal grandmother- used to visit her cousin on the Isle of White. She told tales of her visits by boat and having to speak through an iron grid. The nun made a nun doll to show the family how she dressed. Bessie became the the holder of the nun doll. As a child, I was only allowed to look at the doll. It came out of a battered old box. I loved it. The musty smell gave way to incredible fine hand stitching- an exact replica of the Dominican nuns religious habit at that time. The doll itself is made from fine, dusky pink pottery . She carries a beautiful tiny string of rosary beads around her waist.
The nuns arrived on the island in 1856 to an anti catholic population. However a visit from Queen Victoria three years later helped community relations. It was her first visit to a Catholic monastery. The dwindling population of nuns left Carisbrooke in 1989- it is still a place of Christian support.
I now have the responsibility of the doll. It is in the same old battered box. I allowed my children to only look at it- even though, as a child, I vowed I would allow them to play with it. None of them, understandably, - all adults- want it. She belongs back on the island. I am going to see if Carisbrooke will take her- maybe they have a history display. However, her words, I will keep. Her letters are personal , and were sent to Bessie, her beloved, faithful cousin.
Always been a fan of English history since taught by my French order of nuns way back. Thought the nunnery sounded bleak as a teenager but now find it so quiet and restful. Ha ha ..a sign of age.
Thanks for filling in more of the background. Fascinating. If these structure were not built of stone would we have much to go on?
Lovely stories as usual, so wonderful. How I wish I had known more about all this when I was an au pair in Oxford, 1971-1972 and in later years when I came visiting my Oxford student-boyfriend. We did enjoy Port Meadow and we too sat and smoked and drank things, but we didn't have the historical information. Then again maybe I would not have been this fascinated back then. Thank you again.
What a sad story. Two women fighting each other over a man who would never be faithful.
Do the stories say why her grave was a pilgrimage destination?
I'm not sure actually. Maybe they knew more about Rosamund than we do.
https://www.redwoodsabbey.org/ where Tom Merton and I both spent time…
In a conversation with Bernardo Kastrup, Iain McGilchrist recounted stories of indigenous peoples who claimed that they could hear the voices of the Elders, referring to those who could not be seen. There are also stories where they heard voices of people a hundred miles away calling because they were in trouble, which often turned out to be the case. I have read similar accounts. But when we moderns are told that Ediva heard a voice telling her to build a house for God, I don't think most of us believe she heard an actual voice. Rather, we think of it as more of a metaphor or just a literary device; she had a hunch. McGilchrist, however, wondered if maybe we moderns have lost certain abilities we once possessed as people. Quite a speculation from a man who was trained in psychiatry. I think we must evaluate such claims with a bit of skepticism, but when you hear the same stories repeated over and over and in areas with no contact with one another, you do begin to wonder. Perhaps people can fly, and maybe God does speak on occasion.
Coincidentally, I just had a similar conversation with a friend.
We were observing that most of us who were raised in our denominational traditions took the "God spoke" passages in the Bible -- particularly the Old Testament -- fairly literally. And we graciously allow as how when our contemporaries use the same language to describe their intuition as "God spoke" to them, we know they don't mean it literally.
But then it dawned on us....
What if they do mean the same thing when they say "God spoke"? ....and not that they mean He is literally speaking to them now, but rather, they believe that the "God spoke" passages in the Bible were equally non-literal?
How much different would your theology be if you thought that revelation was never any more direct and clear throughout the history of man than it is today? Would you see the Bible as any more or less authoritative than you currently do?
Maybe that IS the way you see it?
First, I wouldn't call my grab bag of thoughts and speculations anything as elevated as a theology, but thanks for the compliment. I was trained as a lawyer, so I'm well aware of the limitations and ambiguities of language. So, if I had an Old Testament prophet on the stand, my first question would be, "Well, what do YOU mean when you say you heard a voice?" Since that is not possible, I would not speculate about in what manner they heard it. Perhaps it is a literal voice, and perhaps not. Perhaps sometimes it is literal, and other times not. I figure that God can deliver messages in the way He sees fit, and it would be unseemly for me to demand consistency. So whether the message is spoken, or is in a vision or a burning bush or a rainbow, the point is that a message was sent and received. As far as the Bible being authoritative, it wouldn't matter to me if details peripheral to the message of Jesus were not factually correct or inconsistent. What is not important to me is whether the Bible is consistent, but whether it coheres. I find that it generally does, and I leave the details to the real theologians. I hope that this answers your question.
Thanks for the reply. My apologies for being so lazy (and I admit to a Midwesterner's sensibility that "one's" theology sounds stuffy) and I typed "you" when I was musing more generally. Your original comment just raised those questions I'd been so recently pondering.
This is the case made by an older book by Julian Jaynes, called 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.' Terrible title, interesting book. I think it influenced McGilchrist. I have a feeling Owen Barfield said something similar, but I haven't read him. I find the case quite convincing.
At a very troubled point in my life I "heard", while praying before my icons, a voice saying "It's going to be OK". Now, why did I put the quotes around "Heard"? Because this wasn't hearing an external sound with my ears as I can hear my fingers typing this at the keyboard. It was something I heard inside my head, and yet also, it was not a thought of mine.
The Lord has spoken to me, often enough that I worry that He speaks to me frequently and I am only listening occasionally.
I have also had this experience. It's rare, I'm sure, but it's real.
If you open your Old Testament to 1 Samuel, chapter 3, you will read, "And the child Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Eli. And the word of the Lord was precious in those days ; there was no open vision." If you read the entire account of the way God manifests himself to the child Samuel, and manifests to others that he has chosen Samuel to be his prophet, you can see ? how important the voice of the Lord is, and how difficult it is to distinguish between a "vision" which comes from the eyes, or from the ears. A great deal of modern psychiatry, modern medecine even, involves disqualifying this kind of experience as going against "rational" reason.
A film came out in France a few years ago, "The Apparition", or something similar, which showed the process whereby the Roman Catholic Church investigates people's claims to have had visions. There is a formal inquiry, as in "inquisition", you might say, and I see nothing wrong in this, particularly when huge sums of money may be involved to establish a convent, or church.
My mother, long ago, claimed to have heard Jesus calling her name one night, in extraordinary circumstances, and I like to say now that I consider that no human being has the legitimacy or authority to establish that she did NOT hear Jesus calling her name. Maybe that is a Protestant attitude, and maybe not, but I am not troubled about affirming this position now. After all, my mother was not asking for a convent to be built...
Ahh..Oxford in the early 90s. The new rave scene was very evident but I preferred trips to The Trout Inn, a stones throw from Godstow. I vaguely remember visiting the nunnery at night but we got our scarey kicks from going to see the shrunken heads from Borneo in the Pitt Rivers museum of anthropology. I think they recently consulted a shamen and then got rid of them. What is a student to do now to get spooked?
Those were the days. The Perch was my favourite hangout on the meadow. I was never a raver; more of a wannabe crusty. I loved the Pitt Rivers back then, before it was tarted up. These days it apparently has a woke curator who wants to 'decolonise' it. Good luck with that!
I am really enjoying these stories. I have my own nun story. My beloved Bessie- my maternal grandmother- used to visit her cousin on the Isle of White. She told tales of her visits by boat and having to speak through an iron grid. The nun made a nun doll to show the family how she dressed. Bessie became the the holder of the nun doll. As a child, I was only allowed to look at the doll. It came out of a battered old box. I loved it. The musty smell gave way to incredible fine hand stitching- an exact replica of the Dominican nuns religious habit at that time. The doll itself is made from fine, dusky pink pottery . She carries a beautiful tiny string of rosary beads around her waist.
The nuns arrived on the island in 1856 to an anti catholic population. However a visit from Queen Victoria three years later helped community relations. It was her first visit to a Catholic monastery. The dwindling population of nuns left Carisbrooke in 1989- it is still a place of Christian support.
I now have the responsibility of the doll. It is in the same old battered box. I allowed my children to only look at it- even though, as a child, I vowed I would allow them to play with it. None of them, understandably, - all adults- want it. She belongs back on the island. I am going to see if Carisbrooke will take her- maybe they have a history display. However, her words, I will keep. Her letters are personal , and were sent to Bessie, her beloved, faithful cousin.
That's a great story. I hope the doll gets back home.
Hopefully she will. I think she deserves better packaging after all these years before she sets sail. Thanks Paul.
This is such a lovely commentary. You brightened my Sunday afternoon!
Always been a fan of English history since taught by my French order of nuns way back. Thought the nunnery sounded bleak as a teenager but now find it so quiet and restful. Ha ha ..a sign of age.
Thanks for filling in more of the background. Fascinating. If these structure were not built of stone would we have much to go on?