Changing Books

Spiritual reflection to start the day with Professor Alison Jack of Edinburgh University's School of Divinity.
Script:
Good morning. Today the Edinburgh International Book Festival opens its speigeltent doors in the grounds of the Edinburgh Futures Institute. The theme of this year’s Book Festival is ‘Changing your mind’.

The theme neatly plays on at least two of the meanings of ‘changing’. Either a structural change in the collective mind or brain- think of what happens in the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly- and the image on the festival programme is a representation of that very dramatic change. Or, a change of mind might involve a volte face in one’s thinking; a moment of enlightenment or new information which makes it impossible to hold on to something we used to believe.

Writers of detective fiction are experts at leading their readers in one direction, and then persuading their readers that they need to change their minds completely. In many novels of all kinds, the function of the plot is to put the characters in situations which lead the reader to move from suspicion or even dislike towards a new understanding of those characters’ past and present experience. As the characters develop in self-understanding, so do we about them - and Jane Austen was an expert at leading her characters and her readers on this narrative journey. There are some modern writers, such as Ian McEwan, who take us in a different direction entirely, and carefully reveal aspects of a character which shock us into wondering why we ever trusted them in the first place. The very best novels change our minds in both senses of that phrase, expanding our capacity for empathy and understanding in contexts we’re unlikely ever to experience, honing our skills at critical thinking, and asking us to grapple with ethical issues we might otherwise ignore or avoid.

Creative God, we thank you for the talents and skills of writers of all kinds, and for the power of imagination to change minds for good. Amen.