Meletan offers Bible studies, reading groups, ancient language lessons, talks and exhibition workshops. For parishes, associations, groups, or for individuals, believers or not.
In Greek: to meditate, to study with care, to practise. To come back to a text, again and again, because it challenges us and because it resists us.
The verb the Septuagint uses in Psalm 1 for the one who “meditates” on the Law day and night.
One and the same gesture in different forms: opening a text, reading it attentively, in its own language when possible, and making room for everyone's questions.
Meletan is neither a Church nor a school. It comes to support those who keep a parish, an association or a group alive locally, without taking their place.
A theologian by training, I offer these activities in the field. I am neither a pastor nor a teacher: I read with others, bringing what training and research have taught me.
Two questions from my work, and a standard that theological training hands on, come back in one way or another in what Meletan offers.
“When I hear of grass, I think of grass.”Basil of Caesarea, Homilies on the Hexaemeron
My current research concerns the way Basil connects language, perception and the reality of the created world. In a Bible study, the standard is the same: let the text say what it says, before making it say something else.
Bible studies · The six days, in the book of walks (in French)
“Tongues will cease.”1 Corinthians 13:8
My master's dissertation, in Geneva, was on minoritised languages, from a theological approach. A conviction remains from it: the Word is never spoken outside the languages that carry it. Hence the place given to ancient languages, and the wish to read in several languages.
Rereading together, examining, contradicting one another.A collective work, in several voices
Parishes also ask for cultural and social topics: that is why the Exhibition workshop exists. It rests on a standard shared by exegetes, who are also historians, and by theologians, who by nature pay attention to the history of thought: start from the sources, distinguish what we know from what we suppose. It is not a guarantee, it is a way of working: reading over one another's work and accepting contradiction.
“He had promised me a teaching, but he taught me nothing. We talked about all sorts of things, casually, as old friends do.”Simone Weil, Prologue
Two pages found loose in one of Simone Weil’s notebooks. A promise of teaching that hands on no doctrine, but a presence, shared bread, words that can no longer be verified. This text says rather well what Meletan seeks, and what it cannot promise.
For a suggestion, a text, a group to form, or simply to get to know each other.