Peripatetic of Light

 

Not long ago an idea hit me for how I want to be remembered.  If I decide this is something that should go on my tombstone, I will need to make sure my family knows how to spell it correctly, for it involves a word you don't hear everyday.  I would love to be known as a Peripatetic of Light.

It's Not Just For Aristotelians Anymore

If people are familiar at all with the word "peripatetic," they will most likely associate it with Aristotle.  As a term related to him, it comes from the Greek word for the walkways of the Lyceum, the school founded by Aristotle.  There is also the thought that the word in this context derives from the fact that Aristotle liked to walk around as he talked.  As far as that goes, I am a huge believer in walking while thinking and talking, but that is not what led me to this moniker for myself.  The word περιπατητικός (peripatētikos) simply means "related to walking around," and this was what caught my eye while reading a passage from the first letter of John.

Plato and Aristotle in Raphael's The School of Athens, 1509-1511

It Has To Do With Jesus

Not long ago I was reading 1 John 1:6-7, which in the English Standard Version reads as follows.

"If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin."

Language teachers are forever talking about how the nuances of one language cannot be expressed in another, a point I explored in some depth in the post "Words Matter."  This is why Christian teachers and preachers will often refer to the Hebrew or Greek text of a biblical passage, and when I was reading 1 John 1:6-7 in Greek, I was struck by something.  Those verses run like this.

ἐὰν εἴπωμεν ὅτι κοινωνίαν ἔχομεν μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐν τῶ σκότει περιπατῶμεν, ψευδόμεθα καὶ οὐ ποιοῦμεν τὴν ἀλήθειαν· ἐὰν δὲ ἐν τῶ φωτὶ περιπατῶμεν ὡς αὐτός ἐστιν ἐν τῶ φωτί, κοινωνίαν ἔχομεν μετ᾽ ἀλλήλων καὶ τὸ αἷμα ἰησοῦ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ καθαρίζει ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ πάσης ἁμαρτίας.

The highlighted parts are where John talks about walking in darkness and walking in light, and he uses the verb that literally means "we walk around," περιπατῶμεν (peripatōmen).  That's what I want to be.  I want to be someone who walks around in the light.  By focusing on the literal meaning of the Greek verb, I have an image not just of walking but of doing everything in the light, even when there is darkness around me.  I can imagine doing the laundry and making my lunch for work and going to the store while enveloped in a cloud of light.  I can see myself in the stygian blackness of the pains that assail us all, yet going through such fearsome darkness cloaked in light.  After all, as David says to God in Psalm 139:8 (138:8), "If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." (KJV)

Years ago I taught with Jeannie McNew, who taught English and Theory of Knowledge at our school while also sponsoring Philosophy Club.  She was certainly a peripatetic in the Aristotelian sense of the word and shared her great interest in science and philosophy with her students, but she was also what I would call a Peripatetic of Light.  As a passionate Catholic, she played flute at her church, and she and her friends recorded an album of worship music, one of the songs of which captures what I'm talking about.

So, there it is.  I want to be a Peripatetic of Light because I want to have fellowship with Jesus, and if He is in the light, then that is where I want to be, too.