Matthew Lee Anderson on Questions: “We need some kind of formation to get our explorations started…. ‘Home is where one starts from,’ T. S. Eliot wrote. We do not enter life as though it were formless and void: we inherit a framework, an intellectual shelter from which we explore the world. Every child is indoctrinated in a way of seeing things. The only question is, which one? … We do not begin our lives by choosing our beliefs because we do not “possess” our beliefs at all. They are not pieces of clothing that we pull off the rack and replace with ease. Our beliefs possess us, establishing a pattern for our lives and shaping our desires and dispositions. We inhabit our beliefs like we do our homes, and changing them can often be extremely painful.”
The Catechist as Poet: George Herbert on Catechesis
Catechesis and Contemplation
Matthew Lee Anderson on contemplation: Yet we should speak about rest within the intellectual life, as well—and by ‘rest’ I do not mean having obtained an answer. The vision of contemplation is a much more leisurely depiction of what we do when we think. In contemplating, we hold the object before our minds and turn it over without any pre-set determination of what we are searching for. The person who contemplates cultivates an openness to the unbidden: in contemplation, we consider something without needing a question about it—a thing that must hold some considerable value to be worth it.