Making Meaning Zachary Davis

It's common to equate meaning with depth, but the surface of things, with its wild and rapturous beauty, can coax us into life.

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Stephanie Paulsell is the Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies in the Harvard Divinity School and served as the Interim Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church from 2019 to 2020.  An ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), she is the author of  Religion Around Virginia Woolf, (2019), editor (with David Carrasco and Mara Willard) of Goodness and the Literary Imagination (2019), and a regular columnist in The Christian Century.  
 
SHOW DESCRIPTION
Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. 
Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas.

We are finite creatures who struggle to accept our finitude. But if we can learn to embrace our limits, we will find that our relations with one another, the created world, and God allow us to experience a love so exquisite, it need not last forever.  

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Matthew Ichihashi Potts is Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University. He studies the thought and practice of Christian communities through attention to diverse literary and theological texts.

Meaning paradoxically has to be both made and discovered, an inescapable entanglement of the singular and the universal. And though the fruit of such wrestling may not be uncomplicated happiness, it often leads to a deeper awareness of the ecstasy of existence, the holiness of an hour. 

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Zohar Atkins is the Founder of Etz Hasadeh, a Center for Existential Torah. He is a Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He holds a DPhil in Theology from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and semikha from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was a Wexner Graduate Fellow.

Science often draws a picture of the world as a giant machine, a meaningless mechanical clock ticking and tocking forever. But religion and poetry offer a different view, one that is teeming with life and overflowing with spirit. 

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Michael Ruse  is a British-born Canadian philosopher of science who specializes in the philosophy of biology and works on the relationship between science and religion.

Though life’s ultimate meaning may be elusive, the goods of love, work and play are so deeply rewarding that for most people they are sufficient for creating a happy life. And with new advances in neuroscience, we increasingly understand why that is at a molecular level. 
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Paul Thagard is a philosopher, cognitive scientist, and author of many interdisciplinary books. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo, where he founded and directed the Cognitive Science Program. 

There is a deep mystery to the existence of the universe. And although a final answer to the question of meaning is not possible, it is our highest responsibility and greatest hope to seek one.

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Francis J. Ambrosio is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at Georgetown University. Dr. Ambrosio’s teaching interests are in the areas of Plato, Dante, Existentialism, and Postmodernism.