It's like being in a scene from "Mona Lisa Smile"...

I thought I'd take a break from reading and put my mind to more reflective use. Now, if I felt like being a real swot, I could of course get on with next week's homework for Pastoral Theology and start a narrative theological reflection on something or other. But since I have absolutely no idea what I'm meant to do and currently can't be doing with reading another slightly obscure text to try and work out what I'm suppose to be doing - I'll blog instead!

Now, as some of you out there know, I'm dyslexic. Which means, though I'm apparently a visual learner, reading is really not one of my strengths, and when I see page after page of words I get slightly disheartened and start wondering what's on telly. And of course in lectures, when we do get handouts or even the odd powerpoint, they are general pages and pages of words. This is why my first degree was in engineering - very few words and lots of pictures!

But this year, things have changed slightly - I've found a paper which involves pictures! To be precise it is all pictures (well there is talking from the lecturer too, but all the same there are no words on the screen). Being that the course is entitled 'Icons and Images', I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised, all the same I did find it very amusing when in the first lecture the lecturer walked in to the class with a box of slides tucked under his arm.

I don't know how many of you have seen the Julia Roberts' film 'Mona Lisa Smile', but at that point this lecture started I was transport to a scene in the film where the Julia Roberts who is teaching art history to a group of girls is going through picture after picture, exploring what these pictures represent, what the artist is trying to get across to observer. I never thought I would every find myself in such a class, but every Tuesday afternoon this is now what I do - look at picture after picture, being taken on a journey through religious art and iconography, learning to see what the artist is trying to show me. I may not agree with some of the theological aspects of the art, and I definitely can't get my head around veneration of images and icons. But I'm being to appreciate how artists have tried to depict pictorially things that even the most esteemed theologians struggle to put into words.

So here's to images and icons - my picture-based theology paper, when I get two hours off from looking at words (bliss).