Topic

Gordon Matties (film buff and Professor Old Testament at CMU) spoke on “Living in the holy moment” by looking at several stories in Genesis (28:10-22, 32:22-32) telling of Jacob’s life. Gordon decided that since many of his students paid more attention to films than books, he would explore films, looking for moments in which stories were told which have Old Testament truths and themes. Our lives have isolated ‘holy moments’, and some great films can frame a few of life’s holy moments, playing them for us slowly, possibly helping us understand our own holy moments. But should we attempt to understand all moments in life as being holy moments and start looking for God in them, or is this best reserved for those rare times when we sleep with a stone pillow, dream of staircases to heaven and wrestle with angels? If we ever recognized that we have experienced a holy moment, can we, like Jacob, erect our stone pillows as markers so that we can return and recall what the moments meant to us and how they transformed our thinking? Gordon’s final challenge was that we learn to worship the divine stranger who wrestles with us, refusing to answer our questions (while we wrestle with life and even studies). We are not unlike Jacob, who received the promise, sought direct answers from the promise giver but never received the answers, and wrestled for the rest of his life. [JEK] (Note: See also Gordon’s personal web page at http://www.cmu.ca/faculty/gmatties/index.html )