How does one put into words a powerful experience that raises deep questions, explores ambiguous meanings, and stimulates honest and open dialogue so we are all teachers and learners together? It's almost impossible, but I will try.

The ICJS Spring Mini-Course, Art and the Religious Imagination: Jewish and Christian Perspectives, engaged fifty participants and our four outstanding scholars to wrestle together with selected poetry, narratives, and visual images. Bringing our own lenses and experiences, we grappled with our understanding of God, humanity, and the world. We listened to each other's ideas as we searched for meaning and raised searing questions of the provocative texts -- and each other. I could hardly sleep after each session!

Dr. Rosann Catalano set the stage with the importance of language: ordinary, scientific, and poetic/metaphoric that is close to religious language. How do we read a text? What does it mean? What is "true" for me? Ambiguity was immediately evident. Together we explored Matthew 14:22-33 and two challenging poems: Questions and Answers by Lucille Clifton and A Prayer to the Mad Dollmaker by John shea. How do we view God? Do we read a text differently as Jews and Christians or as human beings? We each brought our own stories. The interchange was electric. What do you "see" in Shea's poem?

Lord God,
you are too much like us.
When lonely,
you make mistakes.
When love struck,
you are impetuous.

But it was folly
to fall upon the unsuspecting earth,
knead a body of clay
and laying on it,
feet to feet, hands to hands,
breathe passion down its mouth
and wake the eyes to wonder
with tears.

When you put no key in its back
but trusted it to the heat of the heart
and the dimness the mind calls light
we knew, old dollmaker,
that you had gone mad.

Some say
You never guessed
till your love-child came to you
in the beauty of the garden and asked,
"When you die
will all this be mine?"

Dr. Christopher Leighton led the second session on Flannery O'Connor's short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find. In a startling, grotesque narrative, this Roman Catholic writer chal-lenges the reader to contemplate the meaning of the words and acts of the Misfit and the Grandmother, raising pene-trating questions and evoking heated responses. What was O'Connor trying to say in this story of a dysfunctional Southern family that meets three escaped prisoners on a journey in Georgia? We are thrown off balance. Is transforma-tion possible from such unlikely sources? How can we live a redemptive life in a world that is broken? Can God use even the most despicable for God's saving grace? No consensus in this group. Less sleep again!

On the third night, Rabbi Charles Arian introduced the provoc-ative poetry of Yehuda Amichai, Israel's poet laureate. Amichai, born in Germany in 1924, escaped the Holocaust and lived in Jerusalem. He wrote about the stuff of everyday life, relationships, survival, and the absence of God in post-Holocaust time. Charles led us through six poems, giving us the Hebrew meanings of key words. We were profoundly moved by the images, language, and themes. We debated the multiple meanings and shared our varied perspectives. Is this poem particular or universal? I still carry these poems with their indelible imagery and our insightful discussion with me in my heart. How does Amichai's poem God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children speak to you?

God has pity on kindergarten children.
He has less pity on school children.
And on grownups he has no pity at all,
he leaves them alone,
and sometimes they must crawl on all fours
in the burning sand
to reach the first-aid station
covered with blood.

But perhaps he will watch over true lovers
and have mercy on them and shelter them
like a tree over the old man
sleeping on a public bench.

Perhaps we too will give them
the last rare coins of compassion
that Mother handed down to us,
so their happiness will protect us
now and in other days.

The last evening of the course, the Rev. John Roberts showed us thirty-two images from religious art. The images were borrowed from Hebrew and Christian scriptures, everyday life, the cross, the resurrection, and Jesus. With scholarship and humor John presented each slide, and we responded to what we "saw." Each vantage point enhanced my own vision. We entered the world of Michelangelo, Salvador Dali, and Marc Chagall. We explored "The Word Made Flesh but Whose Flesh?" through multiple images of Jesus throughout art history, ending with contemporary depictions of Jesus through various cultural lenses. An energetic debate ensued as we viewed Janet McKenzie's "Jesus of the People" -- a young black person surrounded by symbols (a Native American feather, yin/yang), who stared directly out at us.

Deep concern was raised about the disassociation of Jesus from Judaism that is growing in many parts of the world. How can Jesus appear to us through our various cultural lenses? Should representation of Jesus be universal or particular? How do we value inclusiveness? This was another powerful moment.

Images, narratives, and poetry profoundly move us. How does God speak to us ... through our imaginations and through other people. Art and the Religious Imagination brought clarity, ambiguity, and transformation to the ways I "see" God, others, and our world.