Mudlarking

But can a book really be “boring” and “interesting”? Isn’t that a contradiction?

In my last post, I wrote that sometimes theology, which is “boring”, is also interesting— exhilarating even.

Here’s the paragraph:

David Kelsey, Eccentric Existence (2009); Dr. Kelsey, I will go down as your biggest fan. I love the way Kelsey’s mind works and how interwoven his theological reflections are. But this book is not interesting, nor is it readable. It is also 1051 pages. Now my third or fourth time through it, I’m finding that a lot of the ideas I have attributed to Kelsey were in fact my own wrestling with what he didn’t, and should have, said.

In Mudlark, Lara Maiklem writes about the British hobby of searching for treasure near the muddy banks of the Thames. In the coastal region where I live, we have a lot of shoreline. It is perfect or this activity. My children and I spend a lot of time looking for treasures. Since they were toddlers I have taken them to the tide pools or the shoreline to get their feet wet and look around. You can always find a crab, but we often find other things- pottery, old nails, or sea glass.

The best treasures bring with them a suggested past. They derive from another life, maybe on a boat or a distant coast. What makes searching for treasures so exciting is not that they are valuable in themselves. None of what we’ve collected is worth anything. What is fun is the unexpected thrill of finding things we didn’t expect. We’ve found the edges of a pottery plate and the bottom of a china teacup. We’ve found what looks like an arrowhead, and once an old coin.

My children have grown up doing this, but they never tire of it. We will be traveling in a few weeks and one of the activities on the agenda is “look for shark teeth”. Finding interesting things in the mud is a family hobby.

The truth is, a lot of dogmatic theology is muddy. It is compiled of generations of sediment, but this thick history means it can be hard to penetrate. Its a slog.

Some theologians love the mud. They have the narrow ambitions and the temperament to spend a lot of time in it, thinking about what its composed of and comparing it with other forms. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but I’m more of a mudlarker. I tolerate the mud for the treasures I find there. When I’m reading theologically, I’m looking for things- things with an origin, things that are unusual, or things that I can use. I am always adding treasures to my collection. I have quite a collection after all these years, jars full of treasures, and its a jumble of sorts.

Most of all, I search for things that are beautiful. Beauty, after all, needs no explanation. Theology for me is most like this.

If this is your working definition, its quite easy to think about something being “boring” and “interesting” at the same time. The mud is, well, muddy. Long theological tomes can be boring. But they are worth it for the treasures you can find. Thats the fun part. Reading becomes a form of mudlarking, as you work to unearth unexpected, beautiful things.