“I don’t understand why we have to read these old stories,” the student said. By old, he meant the book of Genesis. He went on: “They don’t make a whole lot of sense and besides, science has proven they’re wrong.” My students regularly struggle with biblical stories, reading them as factually true or false; to them, “myth” means “false.” Such a literalist reading is quite understandable – the Bible is a confounding set of texts! In the past I would try to explain the concepts of metaphors and analogies, or give an overview of the Babylonian Exile as the context for composing the Book of Genesis. I would provide information that I felt sure would reveal the purpose of the text. But my approach was intellectually incomplete; I needed to engage their minds more broadly to teach them about myths.

Contemplation is a dense term with a diverse range of meanings that have shifted semantically across different times, cultures, and languages. For instance, the terms “contemplation” and “meditation,” from early Christianity up through Early Modern European usage, have ironically evolved to mean the opposite of what they mean in contemporary English parlance. Contemplation now typically has the connotation of cognitively engaging a topic, thinking it over; meditation has come to mean a quiescent concentration. In the classroom, and across contemporary secular settings, the term “contemplation” has been adapted and expanded to include a broader scope of meaning.