CHRIS HERMANS

RELIGION AS A SPECIAL WORLD OF MEANING SET APART

On Imagination, Experiences and Practices of the Other-Than-Rational

INTRODUCTION … a world of symbols, odour, colour, gestures, actions that are full of meanings Being raised in a catholic family, I went to school with a view on the church. My parents were not particularly religious, rather average catholic in the early 1960s. As a child I was an altar boy whereby I assisted the priest at liturgy. During my time at primary school I was permitted to leave the classroom during school time in order to go to church for a wedding or a funeral. From all celebrations I attended, the funerals are those I remember most. A catholic liturgy is a world on itself: a world of symbols, odour, colour, gestures, actions that are full of meanings. The world of rituals is full of meanings, and those meanings constitute a world in itself. The everyday meaning is put between brackets: water is not for drinking but represents purity and purification; myrrh is not for the odour it emanates but represents the rising up of the prayer to God. The world of imagination is provided with a splendour of reality in liturgy (Geertz, 1966, 1973). For one moment it becomes Heaven on earth – just as real as everyday life. The experiences of that little boy in the churched shaped me to what I am. Add the loss of my mother at the age of ten to that, and you will understand that death and religious imagination will stick in my mind forever.

PRACTICE AND IMAGINATION The world of imagination in symbols and rituals creates a world of meaning (Ricoeur, 1991). Symbols and rituals as embodied practices are a vehicle for our imagination. In these practices is the grief of people during a funeral lifted in a world of meaning that transforms this grief in new meaning. In this practice, it acquires an unexpected, yes even (seen through the eyes of the existing world) impossible meaning. Death suddenly has no longer the final world, nor brokenness, nor speechless grief, nor invisible suffering. The liturgical practice that pastor and church-goers shape together takes up the grief in a world meaning that – for a brief moment – constitutes a doorway to Heaven: an imagination of human wholeness or fullness (Taylor, 2007) where people long for. The world of meaning in these

I. ter Avest (ed.), On the Edge: (Auto)biography and Pedagogical Theories on Religious Education, 47–55. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. CHRIS HERMANS practices need to be connected to the world of life of the participants outside the church (and liturgy). Religion is a practice, a way of life that orients human life towards fullness (see Ward, 2004).

Imagination Mankind in search of meaning cannot evade imagination, because certain experiences of people cannot be mastered by reason. In the educational field in the Netherlands, there is a renewed attention for the so-called ‘non-cognitive’. However, this idea remains rather vague in this debate. I believe that the concept of ‘contingency’ could to clarify what we mean by it. In religious philosophy in Germany, contingency is one of the core concepts (see specifically Wuchterl, 2011, 2012). Contingency refers to experiences that could occur to me as human being, but are not necessary. They are possible, not necessary – but for me as personal they have become topical. As a human being one can experience that a loved one (child, parent, partner, friend, family member, etc.) passes on. Just think how often this indeed happens at schools. This kind of situation cannot be controlled by reason. What happened, could have been different; it is not necessary or compulsory (i.e. it is ontological contingent). There is no way that I (or the other person) could not have acted in such way that it could have been prevented (i.e., it is absolute contingent). One is confronted with a situation which is ambiguous, open, has become a question. In these experiences, the taken-for-granted meaning of existence is interrupted; the world of meaning does no longer fits. A human being is literally not capable of living in this world anymore, as the saying goes: “I have no life anymore like this!” or “I don’t know how to get on anymore”. Experiences of contingency are inherent to human existence. Before reason they constitute the other, strange, uncontrollable (see title of the book by Wuchterl, 2012). This does not mean that every human person acknowledges contingency: it is possible to ‘manage’ or ‘control’ is through reason (and its rational explanations). However, if one accept the unexpected and uncontrollable, in our imagination we have to search for meaning. Why imagination? Because, reason does not enforce a sufficient reason for what happened to us. Religion is a play with imagination – a serious game. A game of symbols, stories, rituals. Just like you enter another world in a game, with different rules of play – a space that is delimited by the rules of the game – you enter in religion a world world of meaning where other rules apply with regard to what is and what is not important, what is and what is not true, what is just and what is not. In liturgy, this special world of meaning obtains a splandour of reality. During the game of imagination you are usurped in a design of world in which redemption of brokenness is promised. The desire for wholeness, fullness, human dignity becomes reality –albeit for a little while. What reason cannot grasp becomes reality through human imagination (poetry, symbols, rituals, sound, etc.). In a poem line by Huub Oosterhuis: “to be what cannot be, to do what is unthinkable – death and resurrection”.

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