"How It Begins" - Wisps, Learning and the Bible

Last week I posted a wisp I called "How It Begins."

In general, I don't typically explain my writing. I figure it should stand on its own merits. However, in this case, an explanation will tie a few things together - Writing, Learning, Great Courses, Faith and the Wisp. So, here it goes....

Since early 2009, I've been hooked on listening to college professors teaching me interesting things while I'm driving to and from work. My most recent of the Great Courses is this one:

Old Testament

Course No. 653 (24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)

Taught by Amy-Jill Levine

Back in college, I took a course in the Old Testament [from Richard Simon Hanson], but of course, that was over 25 years ago. In the intervening years, I've done countless Bible studies, but I have not re-examined the book which describes the foundation of my faith from a purely academic view until listening to this lecture series.

I am not going into my reactions about the course in general today -- it would take too long, and it's off-topic. But it was this course which inspired me to write the snippet.

You see, one of the methods used to study scripture is to study it as "story." And, as Dr. Levine describes, there are some "set scenes" in the Old Testament. These "set scenes" are repeating situations that likely represented frameworks around which stories of many types were built during the age when the Old Testament was being composed. The characters would change, but the general setting was pretty much the same, and the audience of the story had a pretty clear idea where a standard story should go, based on the scene. The stories differed, then, based on how the characters reacted to the scene, and how the results differed from what was expected.

We can compare these set scenes to situations in a sit-com, for example. When we see a scene at the beginning of a TV sit-com with a cute little kid, the kid's caretaker, and a little pet (think goldfish, hamster, or the like) we pretty much know what's going to happen. The pet will come to harm (get lost, die, something) and the caretaker will have to deal with it in some sit-com subterfuge to spare the feelings of the kid.

Well, in the Old Testament, the "set scene" is a male protagonist going to a well and meeting a woman there. The typical result is that the "hero" marries as a result.

Why does this work as a "set scene?" Because, I suspect, it's simple and it was a completely reasonable way for the same thing to happen in real life -- at the time. The biblical hero going to the well was an easy thing for people to relate to, because they did it all the time. And they met people there. But the interesting things that happen are a result of the differences in the people doing the meeting.

Anyway, as I was considering this bit of biblical analysis, I was inspired to break the set scene down to a poetic essence, and put the ending on it that resonates with me. "How It Begins" is the result.

So, there you have an explanation of the twenty-nine-word wisp. And, believe it or not, it took me far less time to write the explanation than it took to write the wisp.

That's poetry.