Interview with Lanta Davis, author of “Becoming by Beholding”

Lanta Davis is a professor of humanities and literature in the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Indiana. Her new book is Becoming by Beholding: The Power of Imagination in Spiritual Formation (Baker, 2024).

How would you describe your new book, Becoming by Beholding, to someone who hasn’t read it yet?

It’s about the beautifully strange world of the Christian imagination. The historic understanding of the imagination is less about playing pretend and more about the way stories and images shape our sense of identity. There is a very real way that we become what we behold. Training the imagination to equip our spiritual eyes to see God was historically a key part of formation we’ve largely forgotten about, and so this book looks at some of the ways early and medieval Christians actively formed the imagination to help them become more Christ-like.

What inspired you to write this book? Why write it now, in particular?

I fell in love with early and medieval Christian art. Its particular weirdness, with its staring saints, surreal shades of gold and blue, and layers upon layers of symbolism enchanted me. It felt like discovering this treasure trove I hadn’t known existed, and I wanted more people to know about it. 

It also felt timely because I think we’ve really lost an understanding on why our imagination is so powerful. We’ve stopped paying attention to it, and don’t realize the ways it’s being (mal)formed. And that’s very dangerous, because the imagination persuades the heart in ways that the mind cannot often overrule. By neglecting the imagination in our spiritual formation, we’ve let other imaginative influences, such as politics or consumerism, shape us instead, and consequently, we find ourselves supporting things that are not compatible with the Jesus in the Gospel.

I think so many people are trying to combat some of the Church’s most pressing problems through logic. And obviously that’s important. But I also started to notice that logic doesn’t work if the imagination is convinced otherwise. This book is an effort to step back, to look at how to persuade the heart and realign our imaginations with the Gospel.  

The title of your book includes the word “imagination.” We usually say that children have better imaginations than adults. What are some things adults can do to cultivate imagination? Or is it that adult imagination is just different and we often fail to recognize it?

It is so odd to me that we acknowledge the importance of the imagination in children, but then seem to vanquish it when we grow up, as if it’s something we need to outgrow.

Children practice the more well-known kind of imagination, in that they dream worlds and play pretend and fashion new lives for themselves. But they also are good at the kind of imagination I’m talking about, too, in part because they show us so clearly how stories and images imprint upon us. Children love to play, and their play is often a form of imitation. That’s the kind of imagination I’m talking about—our tendency to imitate the types of stories and images that capture our attention.

Adults definitely don’t lose their imaginations. We just stop, in part, paying attention to it. We’re shaped by movies, news stations, social media, sports. Or take, even, how an American might describe their American identity. They probably won’t describe their American identity by citing the entire Constitution or Declaration of Independence. American identity tends instead to rely on symbols, like the flag or eagle; narratives, such as the American Dream or the self-made man; heroes, like Washington or Lincoln or MLK Jr.; and places, such as the White House or Mount Rushmore. These are all aspects of the imagination that have shaped a sense of what it means to say, “I am an American,” and they influence how we see ourselves and our role in the world around us.

Most adults don’t do a good job training their imaginations. Children read and play and discover and wonder. Children see the world as enchanted in part because they read stories about enchanted worlds. Works of the imagination, such as a great fairytale, can open our eyes so that we see the truth more clearly. An imagination shaped by good fairytales helps train our eyes to recognize that our world is, in fact, magical; it is full of mythical-type beasts worthy of awe and wonder. A malformed imagination makes reality less true, less clear, but a trained imagination helps us see more clearly. We begin to see what’s really there.  

One more title-related question. Your title is Becoming by Beholding, can you share some of the things that you have beheld which you think have shaped who you are?

So, so many books. Some of the most formative for me were Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov and Dante’s Divine Comedy. They’ve helped me wrestle with difficult questions and gave me models for the type of person I want to become.

Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece is the first work of visual art that changed my way of thinking, and I still think about it often. Its outside view, and its most famous, is a very vivid depiction of the crucifixion. You get such an immediate sense of the agony that he’s in. This altarpiece was commissioned for a hospital, and what makes it especially powerful is that Jesus’s body resembles the hospital’s patients, who were suffering from a deadly, tormenting disease. In their suffering, they could look up and see a Savior suffering with them. The altarpiece also told them that suffering isn’t the end of the story: it opens up, so that behind the crucifixion is the birth and resurrection of Jesus. Behind death is life. The same white cloth that Jesus wears on the cross is his swaddling cloth. The red blood in the crucifixion is transformed into the red of the resurrection image. I could write pages and pages about this—and have—but this painting really helped me grapple with the question of suffering. I think often of Jesus’s upturned fingers, lifting himself up for our suffering, and how we too are called to lift up our sufferings to participate in the work of the cross. When I’m struggling with my own pain and sorrow, it helps me remember that there’s another part of the story.

I could write for days about this topic, so I’ll just also add everything in my book, of course, but especially the double-faced sculpture of Prudence and the Sinai Christ the Pantocrator icon.

What do you hope someone who reads your book will come away with?

That the imagination needs to be intentionally shaped! That stories and images aren’t just “entertainment” but shape who we are. That the Christian imagination is full of wonderfully weird things that can equip us with the vision to see with spiritual eyes. 

There is a natural audience for your book, but if someone is not particularly religious or interested in spiritual formation—what do you think would make your book worthwhile to them if they were to pick it up?

I hope they do! I’m working from the Christian tradition, but more broadly, this book shows us how art can help us live more beautifully. Bestiaries reawaken our appreciation of the many magical, mythical-seeming creatures in our backyards. My last two chapters, on vices and virtues, are just good, practical ways to help us understand how virtue is the path to freedom, and vice the path to self-destruction. The imagination helps us name and recognize feelings and habits that often sneak up on us. Dante’s description of wrath as walking around blindly in a haze of smoke, for instance, shows us that we’re prone to bumping into something and hurting ourselves when we see with the red-eyed-rage of wrath. Wrath suffocates us in far more smoke than the spark of injustice may have merited. His visualization helped me see wrath as something that may seek revenge, but ends with me hurting myself. So now, when I start to feel the prickling beginnings of wrath, I can identify it and remember Dante’s advice to slow down and listen when we’re surrounded by wrath’s smoke. The imagination gives us names for the monsters within and thus helps us be better equipped to battle them. And let’s be real: everyone has some monsters they need to face. 

You are a professor of honors humanities and literature at Indiana Wesleyan University. How does teaching inform your work (this book and other work)? 

I’m very lucky to teach at an Honors College committed to interdisciplinary, big-picture type classes. It’s allowed me to pursue a lot of different interests, and I can wander much more freely between art, architecture, literature, poetry, and theology than the average academic. It’s been fun, and helped me discover some fascinating connections I never could have found otherwise. I also love that we sincerely try to educate for character, and that’s helped me really think really specifically about how the things they’re reading and looking at—what they’re beholding—is helping them to become better people. 

So yes—a lot of this book started from the classroom. I’ve taught Dante for years. I frame my Great Texts class around the four cardinal virtues to help students see how these pre-Christian writers could help them become more courageous, wise, etc., so I brought in personifications of the virtues to teach students them basic virtue literacy.

I teach a class called Rhetoric and the Sacramental Imagination, which is a writing class, but is also about helping students to see the world as a mirror of God, as enchanted and full of wonders. And eventually, I thought, why not make the class itself be imaginative? So I designed it around a hero’s journey, and along the way, kind of discovered or further researched some of the things that ended up in the book. I originally got into bestiaries because I wanted them to pick a “noble beast” to accompany them in their journey. And they chose a pilgrimage place for their destination, which is fun because it’s a combination of art, history, and sacred architecture.

A few years ago, I asked my students about artistic works that gave them what Freud describes as an “oceanic feeling,” like when Sibelius saw the swans in flight that moved him and inspired his Fifth Symphony. You think and write a lot about wonder and imagination and formation and that seems related. Is there any way to incorporate that into the classroom? A classroom is not really the right setting for that type of transformative experience/oceanic feeling, but is there a way that teaching and learning can prime us for more of those experiences?

There are all sorts of ways to incorporate wonder and imagination and formation into the classroom. How we frame classes can make a big difference. In my Rhetoric class, I teach grammar, research, and how to organize a paper. But their research paper isn’t asking them to argue about some random issue they don’t care about. This year, they researched an animal, plant, sacred place, or saint, with an eye toward deepening their appreciation of their topic and sharing the most fascinating parts of it with others. Each student shared highlights of their topics on our last day, and we created a “World of Wonders” map together.  

Within the hero’s journey frame for that class, we talk about developing “heroic traits” like courage, attention, and wonder. I have students practice them with “training exercises” outside of class to apply some what we’re learning and practice those traits in different contexts. Students can pick from options like listening to a symphony without distractions; going for a walk in the woods where they pay attention to each sense and try to look more carefully at what’s around them; practicing courage by asking someone they don’t know well on a “friend date” and not bringing their phone, etc.

Educators could really think more about the tone they set in the classroom. I know we are trying to teach critical thinking, but at times we mistake that with being critical all the time. If I come at a work solely to criticize it, what am I even doing? Can’t I just use any random text at that point? When I teach a text or a topic, I do so because I genuinely think it can make us not only smarter, but wiser. I want to dig deep into an artwork or text, to appreciate its layers, to sit at its feet and learn from it.

Who do you consider fellow travelers in pursuing and appreciating wonder? Are there authors, books, films, etc. that you think operate with the same ambition?

Some that immediately jump to mind: The Little Prince; Mary Oliver’s poems; Maria Popova’s The Marginalian blog; Terrence Malick on a good day (The New World, The Tree of Life); Robin Wall Kimmerer; the Planet Earth series; Krista Tippet’s On Being; Anthony Doerr; Makoto Fujimura, both as an artist and a writer.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Annie Dillard, and Kathleen Norris (particularly her Quotidian Mysteries) were some of the first writers who helped awaken my appreciation for wonder.

Orange Blossom Ordinary is all about books, what are some books you regularly recommend to others (new or old)?

The Epic of Gilgamesh—so weird, so wonderful. It’s one of our oldest works of literature and it tackles all the big questions: What is friendship? How are humans different from the divine? Why do we suffer? Why do we die?

Laurus—the story of a medieval Russian saint in the making. The way it looks at how time, too, can be redeemed helped me navigate questions I didn’t even know I had.   

The Little Prince: it may be written for children, but its message is for everyone. I’ve re-read this book more times than I can count. Its simple story shows us the absurdity of many things we think matter, and points us toward what really does. The fox! The rose! It’s just so, so lovely.

Just to rattle a few others I often find myself recommending: Endo’s Silence; McCarthy’s The Road; Arabian Nights; Steinbeck’s East of Eden; MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin; Cisneros’s House on Mango Street. I also really love Irish women writers, especially Donoghue’s Room; Burns’ Milkman; and Keane’s Good Behavior.

And finally, what is your next project?

 Assuming there’s someone out there willing to publish it, I’m hoping to write about the art of death and grief. Becoming by Beholding is about looking at beautiful things so that our souls will become more beautiful. But reality is full of the ugly and the painful. So how do we form ourselves to be ready for that—and not just ready, but able to imitate Christ on the cross and transform the ugly into the beautiful? I’m very fascinated at how Christians have created art of and about death. For much of Christian history, there were bones in the altar of every church. Skulls often accompany saints in paintings. There are entire chapels decorated with femurs, skulls, and pelvic bones. Today, at least in my experience, we tend to hide from death and skirt around suffering. But the cross tells us these are part of our story. It shows us that we have to stare down death if we want to live. So I want to look about how the art of death and grief teaches us the art of life.

Interview conducted by Elizabeth Stice.