Smart(ie) Pants

I have always been curious about the idea of a ‘Key text’ for a course. Expectant students are poised with their sharpened pencils ready to make notes for the term ahead. The ‘Key Text’ reveals more about the lecturer in some ways than the reliability of the tomb.

Over 10 years ago I was privileged to meet (somewhat vicariously) the author of the greatest ‘key text’ for my undergraduate degree, his name was Ninian Smart. Smart’s dimensions of religion are burned upon many a trainee-Religionist’s brain, World faiths are divided into:

Narrative

Ritual

Emotional

Social

Doctrinal

Material

Ethical

It is possible, according to Smart, to see these dimensions in most belief systems and philosophies. Quite often when I have to do something horrid:  vaccination, leg wax, boring meeting, CAT scan, waiting in traffic etc.,   I try and remember  the ‘dimensions’ and what we remembered through route in University.

Sad I know but this is how I roll….

I typed earlier that this was a somewhat vicarious meeting and it was, during his inaugural lecture I happened to sit next to his wife, Lubushka, who was, even more of a delight than her inspiring husband. She sat so neatly at the back of the lecture theatre, hands crossed in her lap and as her husband talked, she moved in the musicality of the anecdotes, supplementing information I’d never have known. It really was one of the most interesting lectures I’d ever been too.