Pretty, Isn't It?

How at the Castle of Corbin a maiden bare in the Sangreal [Holy Grail] and foretold the achievements of Galahad...

Have you noticed how very few people in medieval art ever smile? They all look sad, in Lewis' sense of the word, that is: weighty, grave. I've been engaged all summer in exploring a question about whether classical liberal arts education is really an education--whether it is not more worthwhile to learn an electrician's trade than it is to debate the Great Conversation. No conclusions yet, but some interesting trains of thought. In the Middle Ages it is certainly true that people lived largely without books. On the other hand, they really lived the few books that they had. It's all in Lewis (The Discarded Image). I've been reading The Discipline of Grace all summer, and am being freshly convicted about the need to soak oneself in Scripture, to pickle oneself in it, as it were. Consider:

"The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father." - Spurgeon

The medievals look grave, and they certainly lived the non-contemplative life. I beg that you will not throw up monks to me; I know they were different. I mean the "everybody else." The farmers and merchants and artisans and fishwives, the bowmen and clothmakers and pig-minders and bean-counters. They weren't familiar with Plato and Aristotle, you know... or were they? For, remember, they really lived the books they had--especially the Bible.

So is the non-contemplative life a grave and weighty thing? Well, that's not all to the bad, especially since I know for a fact that they had dances and folk tunes and charming traditions. My tentative conclusion, which is of course an obvious one, is that one must live the Bible. My further conclusion, which is not obvious at all, is that it might not be a bad thing to focus on only living the Bible, at least for awhile. I don't mean that I intend to drop out of school. I mean that I want to discipline my mind in this direction: less academic speculation about my culture/subculture/modern evangelicalism/whatever, and more meditation on the nature, person, work, doings, and existence of the great God who is pleased to call himself, indeed to be, my Father.