Understandings

"Fie, fie how franticly I square my talk!"

I actually saw the animated film some time before reading the book. I always thought that Eliot Noyes made it, but can no longer find his name in references to the short, made in the 1960s. It was simply called Flatland, the title of the book published some eighty years earlier. It’s simple yet powerful illustration of the difficulty we have in entering into other people’s ways of seeing and understanding made quite a contribution to my education.

Edwin Abbott, author of the original text, long dead when I emerged from the womb, was my master teacher. Noyes, if indeed it was him, was a superb translator.

This first person account from an inhabitant of a two-dimensional country struggling with dreams and encounters which suggest another dimension of reality, is an encouragement to the heretic in us. Yet piercing the veil of established wisdom causes him great discomfort and alienation from family and society.

Edwin Abbott was not only a schoolmaster, but a theologian of note. His book can be read online.

Personally I prefer to explain my present state of grace in terms of “understandings” rather than “beliefs”. The latter often seems so final, absolute, and inflexible.