#47071
Sheelah
Moderator

Yes, Andrew the true ‘I’ is being called into being, but in your case it seems to be from a narrative that is extremely rich and varied. As James indicates “ our Memories are produced in us over time by repetition in imitation of the gestures and sounds produced by others” and as you say “by the others who were beholding me at those times and places.”

Absolutely, as ‘revisionists’ we are revealing something to which we were formerly oblivious. A revelation is something happening outside of your control, but which is going to lead you into a process of discovering things about yourself and others that you didn’t know before.

I am sure you are not a “great big ball of confusion’, Andrew, but someone who is emerging into a different way of being. Let me quote here what James has to say of the ‘Jesus the Forgiving Victim’ course. “One of the really interesting things about theology, and the thing that makes it relevant to our lives, is that it contains within it an anthropology. This means that while theology is the academic discipline of making sense of who God is and what God is about, we can’t talk about God without remembering that it is human beings who are doing the talking. So while many theology courses jump right to the God talk, leaving considerations about who we are as human beings implied or unspoken, Jesus the Forgiving Victim begins by bringing the anthropology out into the open from the start. The questions guiding the first Part are these: What is the shape of God’s communication with us? And what is the effect on us of being on the receiving end of an act of communication from God? To answer those questions we begin with an understanding of communication on a human level. We will explore how human beings receive and are shaped by acts of communication from each other. For if God is communicating with us, it will not be in some form unsuited for us. God will not reinvent the communication wheel, so to speak, but will communicate with us at a very human level – hence the title of Part One: Starting human, staying human. To understand how God is communicating with us through Jesus and through the Bible, we need at the same time to understand ourselves”.

I think that we all feel like ‘great big balls of confusion’ when we begin to know and understand ourselves. I think Andrew that it just means that you are well on the way to doing this.

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