"Trishamolson" <trishamolson@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040528144927.09837.00000076@mb-m06.aol.com...

All day I have been struggling with the idea that suffering is a

of

the soul even when experienced as bodily pain (such as being broken on

wheel or tormented with hot irons and being dismembered). I have been

buried

in Aquinas, Peter the Lombard and other theologians and it is all very

dense

stuff. But also, I am reading secondary literature and there is this

woman --

Caroline Walker Bynum -- has anyone read her? Anyone, any lurker or

ASDer??

SPEAK if you have.

I want to be her when I grow up. She is so luicid, so fluid, so

effortless and

yet compacts into her work the most complex and inaccessible scholastic

thought

while at the same time rendering it in concrete, vivid and sharp -- her

imagery

is so sharply drawn -- Most here know that I espouse some sort of weakly

lived

faith and remain tied in my heart to Catholicism if not in practice as I
should. But rarely in my work reading theology or in my life does

discourse on

faith move me. Rarely.

It is often too dry, too analytical (in the case of the scholastics),

void

of sensuality (in the case of modern pastoral speech), too lacking in

passion

and/or rejecting of the world (Paul). But Bynum, who is but a medieval
historian, her work moves one. I read her and tears well in my eyes.

Anyway -- I have no one to share this with -- so I posted it. I hope

someone

out there has read her. It would be nice to share with someone.

Rosena

The abode of your soul is where you feel the fire of fear, and the power

that owns your soul controls your mind. You never lied in your life

fear telling you to. The door through which thoughts born of fear enter
your mind can be closed, tight, secure, and your house is at peace,
free..............Never trust a politician, a preacher , or a skinny cook.
eagle...........

greyeagle@asarian-host.net

i lie whenever i feal like it and fear has nothing to do with it because i