I've just read an excellent post by the Indian artist and theologian Jyoti Sahi entitled 'Dialogue and the Imagination'. I heard Jyoti speak last year in South London and posted a summary of that event here. Jyoti summarises his most recent post as follows:
"Over the last forty years I have been involved in a process of imagining the Christian Faith in relation to Indian Cultural forms. This process has taken place at different levels. There has been the process of translation. Culture here has been understood as providing a language of images, and in order to make the Biblical narrative intelligible to people who belong to a culture that is very different from the cultural context in which the Biblical texts were originally written, it is important to find ‘imaginal’ forms that might embody the spirit of the Bible in familiar images. But then, at another level of exchange, the Biblical Text is seen not only as something given, but as requiring to be re-enacted. This entails what is called liturgy, or celebration, and brings us into the domain of performance. Here what is being addressed is not only image as memory, or tradition, but a much wider power of the imagination as evocative, creating a new world of thought and action. Finally, this process of enacting the narrative, is re-telling the story in a new way, requiring an embodiment of the world of the imagination in spatial terms, and elemental materials derived from the local landscape, which can be understood in terms of a vernacular architecture. Here we shift from the idiomatic, to the concrete realization of an ‘imaginal’ world which is a total theatre, involving not only what is spoken, or seen, but also what is constructed in special and tangible terms. In other words what has been called “inculturation” functions on these three levels:
a.The trans-literal metaphorical world of the imagination which creates translations of sacred texts into local languages
b.The liturgical, or performed dimension of re-enactment in the lives of those who have internalized the images and words, and are now acting this symbolic world in their day to day lives
c.Finally at the level of built forms, where such performances can be “staged”, so to say in the context of local landscapes, and ecological constraints."
After unpacking each of the three inculturation levels, he concludes that:
"Spiritual art is ... prophetic. It works with local cultures, traditions, in the same way that it is concerned with local materials. But the purpose of art is to step beyond boundaries ... The creative work of a Faith, understood in this way, is not just about incarnation, or embodiment, but is directed towards human transformation, change, and Resurrection. Faith in that sense, is the imagination; it is a way of seeing another reality, and working towards its realization ...
A spiritual art is concerned with dialogue. This dialogue is not only with other persons, it is also with the very elemental world of creation with which we are constantly having to engage. The artist dialogues with his materials. We are dialoguing with the very landscape in which we are living, with the climatic changes that are affecting our lives, and threatening our livelihoods. We are in dialogue with the cosmos.
In the Old Testament this dialogue is understood as ultimately a dialogue with the Creator, with the Lord of History, and Space. The Prophet speaks with God. This is the I-Thou relationship which is the basis for a covenant between God and his people. We are all involved in that dialogue which interrogates the very nature of what we are, and how we understand our identity ...
True celebration is always a moment of discovery, of the wonder of a new heaven and a new earth. It is a space for such an openness to experience that the art work tries to create a space for."
The inculturation of which Jyoti writes is required in every culture including our own because, as Jyoti writes, "languages are not just ways of communicating ideas in the form of propositional statements." Instead, language are also vehicles for culture, that is they embody symbols, or metaphors, that are culturally rooted. As a result, every word in the Bible carries with it certain resonances which are beyond the so-called literal meaning of what is said and which require the inculturation levels that Jyoti describes in order to understood and authentically communicated. The prophetic and dialogical nature of art is vital in enabling such inculturation to occur.
My posts on inculturation in terms of plausibility structures can be found here, here, here, here and here.
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Aradhna - Bhajo Naam.
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