The House of St. Anne's and Creativity

I am not sure how many of you have read Lewis' That Hideous Strength, so the title above may mean little to you. The final entry in the Space Trilogy is a much more daunting read than the previous two, but I found it engrossing on a variety of levels, not the least of which is the picture Lewis paints of Christian intellectual community.

The characters who live in St. Anne's on-the-Hill are from a diversity of backgrounds, from a university don in Arthurian legend to a working-class criminal's wife. In this Christian household, not only do these differences not prevent intellectually complex discussion, they actually seem to foster more and better thought on matters from daily life and academic scholarship alike.

I have admired the community described since first reading the book, and have wondered how to promote a similar sense of community in my own sphere. In some sense St. Anne's can almost be seen as an apology for literary discussion groups like the Inklings, Lewis' own intellectual community.

Yet it seems that such discussion groups need not be limited to those with literary tendencies. I have found that one of the best ways to foster creativity, even in highly technical work, is to be forced to explain my work in a way that makes sense to a layman. Laymen, incidentally, sometimes have insights and solutions that those of us immersed in technical literature are blind to.

What is to prevent an intellectual discussion group from hearing about a friend's research in the psychology of forgiveness? Or another friend's philosophical work on the purpose of life being found in narrative? The implications of the causes of lightning? Or--dare I say it--genetics?

I would love to see these people join with those in my own community who are developing their own works of fiction (I suspect several of you who read this blog when the mood strikes). I can see a table with several coffee cups scattered, surrounded by four or five friends discussing language death, minus its gory detail, while another table hosts beer glasses and bespectacled technicians listening with rapt attention to the latest chapter of another friend's burgeoning novel.

Such discussion would not answer the technical needs of a statistically-intensive paper, nor will it revive the momentum of an intricately-woven plot. But this mixing of different perspectives may spark the creativity of someone who has been stuck in the office/den/nursery/lab a bit too long.