Questions to Guide Your Reading

Gilbert Meilaender, "Creatures of Place and Time: Reflections on Moving"

1. At the beginning of his article, Gilbert Meilaender declares that, "There is an important sense in which it makes no difference at all whether one moves every few years or never moves at all."  You will want to pay attention as you read his article why this is so, so that, by the end, you will be able to give reasons why this is so.

2. On p. 2 of his text, Meilaender says that his story "relates to what some theologians have been getting at in recent years when they have emphasized the categories of story and narrative."  What is important for us to understand about the self in this context, according to Meilaender?

3. According to Meilaender, "We are characters in a story of which we are not the [ultimate] author, caught up in a present moment that is always, in Stephen Crites' felicitous phrase, a 'tensed present.'" 
What does he mean by a "tensed present"?  Compare this notion  of the "tensed present" with the notion of time expressed in T. S. Eliot's four poem "Burnt Norton."

4. Meilaender seems to suggest that we are at once both the product of our past, and yet much more.  Explain this "tension."

5.  Meilaender claims on p. 3 that there are two truths about our nature, neither of which should be denied.  What are they?

6. What does Meilaender mean when he says (on p. 4) that "human beings need to 'nest'"?  Relate this to what Landgon Gilkey says in his book Shantung Compound about "the importance of space to the well-being, nay the existence, of a person ...."  What related point does Meilaender make about the legitimacy of having "possessions."

7. And yet, Meilaender says of possessions that "it cannot be altogether bad to divest ourselves of some, even if it hurts."  What is the hurt a reminder of?

8. At one point in his narrative (on p. 5), Meilaender talks about dealing with all the junk he has stored up in his attic.  His general attitude toward this stuff, he says, is "pitch it."  But his wife convinces him to keep much of it.  What lesson does he think it will teach his children to have to inherit much of this "junk" after he and his wife have died?

9. On p. 6, Meilaender compares the thought of St. Augustine and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes on the goal of life.  What is the goal of the journey of our life according to St. Augustine?  What is the goal according to Thomas Hobbes? 

10. Does Hobbes's notion about the "race course of life" apply well to the diagnosis of American consumerism made by Juliet Schor in The Overspent American?  Explain.

11. According to Meilaender, moving "brings one up short" and make you realize something about the "vulerability of human life."  He then points out that, although God may have promised to bring us to our "highest good" at the end of the journey, what else did he not promise?

12. In an interesting and very poignant section of this piece, Meilaender compares his attachement to possessions to his attachment to his wife.  In this context, he asks himself what it would be like if his wife Judy were to die.  He admits that there would be a great deal of pain.  What does he say about this pain?  Why is it necessary?

13. On p. 7, Meilaender turns to a poem written by the British author C. S. Lewis.  In the course of that poem, Lewis speaks of the "tether and pang of the particular."  What is the "tether and pang of the particular"?  How, according to Meilaender, are we different from angels in this regard?

14. According to Meilaender, "The God who, while loving universally, loves each person individually, has something more than that in mind for us -- that, having experienced vulnerability, we may one day 'quiver with fire's same substantial form' as God himself."  Why would a Christian be disposed to believe -- that is, to hope against all the odds -- that, having experienced vulnerability, we may one day be joined fully with God's substance?  [Hint:  What central element of a Christian's faith would allow him or her to believe that such a thing is possible?]