Christian Art

About a year ago my family read a graphic novel version of A Wrinkle in Time. Somehow this book had escaped all of my high school reading lists (or perhaps I had skipped it in favor of Tom Jones?), so I have not read the original. All the themes and plots as expressed in Madeleine L'Engle's classic book were new discoveries to me.

In addition to my failure to read L'Engle's classic work, I had failed to take notice that Madeleine L'Engle was a confessing and practicing Christian. A book by L'Engle, passed along to me by a friend, entitled Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith & Art (1980) piqued my interest as I pulled it out of the box. What faith was this that I had never heard attributed to this world-famous author?

Walking on Water comprises a collection of mini-essays delivered as talks at an international conference on the topic of faith and art. Through the book I found L'Engle describing her own mature, orthodox faith and a thoughtful, piercing critique of how the Christian faith has neglected the proper place of art--or the proper function of art--in the life of the Church and the believer. As a Christian artist myself (you'll have to read the book to get L'Engle's helpful definition of "Christian art") I found her experience and theology of Christian art deeply inspiring and refreshing.

True to the calling of an artist following Jesus, L'Engle does much of her teaching in discrete stories. So a small sample of those moments is in order when I felt compelled to dog-ear the pages:

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She cites the story of a village full of clocks but with no horologist (the former one had died). When a renowned clockmaker and repairer later visits the village, he declares he can fix the clocks that--though inaccurate--have been kept wound. The ones left unwound are forever lost.

"So we must daily keep things wound: that is, we must pray when prayer seems dry as dust; we must write when we are physically tired, when our hearts are heavy, when our bodies are in pain. We may not always be able to make our 'clock' run correctly, but at least we must keep it wound, so that it will not forget." (p96)

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"I have often been asked if my Christianity affects my stories, and surely it is the other way around; my stories affect my Christianity, restore me, shake me by the scruff of the neck, and pull this straying sinner into an awed faith." (106)

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Upon encountering rigid and sealed theology next to open and wondering science: "I had yet to learn the faithfulness of doubt. This is often assumed by the judgmental to be faithlessness, but it is not; it is a prerequisite for a living faith." (118)

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"So a children's book must be, first and foremost, a good book, a book with a young protagonist with whom the reader can identify, and a book which says yes to life. Granted, a number of young adult books have been published with a negative view of life, just as with anti-heroes. Again, from all I hear from librarians and teachers, they may be read once, but they are not returned to." (121)

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Wisdom perhaps for all Christians as well as the practicing artists: "If my stories are incomprehensible to Jews or Muslims or Taoists, then I have failed as a Christian writer. We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it." (p122)

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"So I start the Ballad of Barbara Allen. I have sung only a couple of verses when Charlotte says, her voice quavering slightly, 'Gran, you know that's a bad one.' 

'What, Charlotte?' 

'You know that's a bad one.' 

Both Barbara Allen and her young man are dead and buried at the end of the ballad; I ask, 'Why, Charlotte? Because it's sad?' 

'No! because she doesn't love anybody.' 

Charlotte knows what it is all about. The refusal to love is the only unbearable thing."

~

Quoting the words of Hawaiian Christian Alice Kaholusuna: "Before the missionaries came, my people used to [pray at the temple] and afterward would again sit a long time outside, this time to 'breathe life' into their prayers. The Christians, when they came, just got up, uttered a few sentences, said Amen, and were done. For that reason my people called them haoles, 'without breath,' or those who failed to breathe life into their prayers."

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I am especially struck by one thread that runs through L'Engle's mini-essays, mini-memoirs: how Christians are co-storytellers with God. I have always been troubled by the thoughtless repetition of "Word of God" to refer to scripture, especially since the equivalent given by scripture itself for "Word of God" is Jesus Christ. Book = person, person = book, living being = fixed cipher, text = life are troublesome equivalencies for me.

So I have tried in teaching my own children to impress on them that the bible is God's story, and it is Jesus' story, and it is the story of the people of God, and it is our story. I think that to simplify--or mask the complexity of--the nature of the scriptures as story is to take the breath out of them. I think I understand the impulse to make the 66 canonical books into a Third Law, but I am also keenly aware of the chasm between Law and Person that Saul met on the Damascus Road (Acts 9).

L'Engle, in Walking on Water (a work that she herself was hesitant to undertake, as she reflects in the book), brilliantly traces the sinews of the divine story and leads the reader to appreciate its power. One will emerge from L'Engle's work with a greater appreciation for God's story, a greater confidence that our stories are important to that divine story, and a greater determination to tell stories that will help unfold the tesseract of God's love in the world.

~ emrys

Science

There was a time when to be a naturalist was the same thing as being a scientist. To observe the natural world in all of its complexity was to test it, to make hypotheses about it, and to search out patterns. Now "science" has become a discipline requiring knowledge of sterile techniques and statistical analyses. Naturalism has stepped down to the silver or bronze pedestal of fame.

But this shift betrays the meaning of "science," from "scientia" or "experience." Taking human experience--that which can be grasped by the five senses--and drawing conclusions from it. In this sense anyone who wonders and explores, anyone who will touch, taste, turn in the hand, or listen carefully is a scientist.

I just finished a wonderful gift from my brother: Oliver Sacks' Everything in its Place: First Loves and Last Tales. This collection of Sacks' essays, published after his 2015 death, deals with just about everything. Sacks was a physician--a neurologist who spent much time at the bedside of patients with disorders of memory or dementia--and naturalist extraordinaire. Nothing in the three-dimensional world rose above his scrutiny; nothing descended below his sense of wonder.

A work of essays like this does not submit to summing up. Sacks writes about so many different nooks and crannies of life that there is no use in doing anything but reading the whole thing. However it is worth saying in reflection that I deeply enjoyed Sacks' sense of fascination with every phenomenon. His professional passion was the human brain, of which he confessed that there was nothing more interesting or compelling in the world. But he writes with equal zeal and zest about hunting ferns in the crack of New York City concrete, about the power of gefilte fish, and about the joy of swimming. I get the impression that Sacks wandered around the world, all the time, with eyes wide open and mouth agape in enchanted wonder.

What's more, as he observes the complexities and depth of life he refrains from pronouncing meaning or judgment, avoiding all the pitfalls that come with such pronouncements. He revels in the world as it is, desiring less to know the whys and wherefores and more to know what is to be found just a little bit deeper. So, like the hand of a botanist turning over the frond of a fern thought to be extinct, Sacks' mind turns over the leaves of life gently, lovingly, so as to let life present itself.

I want to have this sense of gentle wonder, especially about people. I want to know not what "makes them tick" but what makes their hearts beat and their souls hope. I want to stroll through this grand creation and view every creature as a gift to be admired, explored, and then released to discover if it will fly.

~ emrys

Truth in the Body

Toni Morrison called Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, "required reading." She is correct.

This little (5"x7" with 152 pages) letter from a father to his teenage son admits no distillation or summary. Like The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, one must read the whole body of prose-poetry in order to capture its essence. And you, dear reader, will receive a reward for that dedication.

So as I sit with Coates' words, swimming still in their height and breadth and depth, their piercing brilliance and brutal honesty, I can only share one facet of what I read there. This insight, though it is just one of many, hints at the effect on a reader of the fullness of the book.

Coates, as he reveals himself through Between the World and Me, is a materialist. No, not the kind that wants to amass more stuff. His writing embraces philosophical materialism. When he digs down, down, down into the "whys" and "wherefores" of his existence and the existence of the world, he finds only what is physical. Thus the "original sin" of America is its treatment of the body, specifically the black body. The American system, the American culture, the American Dream has been so constructed that the black body is subjected to the unpredictable, crushing forces of those who call themselves white. Every human is dehumanized and rendered an automaton: blacks as expendable bodies, whites as simple machinations of destruction:

"And no one would be brought to account for this destruction, because my death would not be the fault of any human but the fault of some unfortunate but immutable fact of 'race,' imposed upon an innocent country by the inscrutable judgment of invisible gods. The earthquake cannot be subpoenaed. The typhoon will not bend under indictment. They sent the [police officer who killed] Prince Jones back to his work, because he was not a killer at all. He was a force of nature, the helpless agent of our world's physical laws." (p83)

In this rich and honest letter, Coates tries to tell his son what he sees, how the world is. He consciously and purposefully avoids hope. Not in favor of despair, but because hope betrays the facts of the world. There is not betterment, improvement, or hope; only struggle:

"Perhaps struggle is all we have because the god of history is an atheist, and nothing about his world is meant to be. So you must wake up every morning knowing that no promise is unbreakable, least of all the promise of waking up at all. This is not despair. These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope." (p71)

Coates keeps his feet firmly planted in the present, in three dimensions, in the body that can act. One might intuit that he was driven to this tight focus: autonomy, ownership and safety of the physical body are precisely the things that America has plundered from those with dark skin. Thus what was or what will be are irrelevant. There is only alive or dead. The overriding concern and fear to which Coates returns is the loss of the body: that America allows the black body to be arrested, incarcerated, and killed at the whim of those who call themselves white.

"I have no praise anthems, nor old Negro spirituals. The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible--that is precisely why they are so precious. And the soul did not escape. The spirit did not steal away on gospel wings. The soul was the body that fed the tobacco, and the spirit was the blood that watered the cotton, and these created the first-fruits of the American garden. And the fruits were secured through the bashing of children with stovewood, through hot iron peeling skin away like husk from corn." (pp103-4)

Here is Coates' materialism writ large. Here might be the philosophical grounds on which I could accuse him of incompleteness. (I am not a materialist.) But wait! I wonder now whether this--even this!--resistance to materialism arises from the fact that my so-called whiteness has delivered to me privileges that are not afforded to Coates.

The color of my skin and the society in which I was raised (which came first?) give me a bone-deep confidence that I do not need to worry about the safety of my body. (For another time: how my gender also affects that confidence.) Police are a comforting symbol and source of law and order. I expect that they exist to serve and protect us, and will respect my safety even when I should run afoul of the law. And I look at the world and see it as a prelude, a pointer to something greater, something beyond. This body is a gift partnered with the gift of spirit, which will carry on in a different way when my body is laid in the soil. Which is to say: I am something more than my body.

But what if the several generations leading up to me had all been told--directly and indirectly--that their bodies were not their own? That they were not safe, because the typhoon of America could tear them apart without respect for personhood or humanity? Perhaps those raised to wonder if their bodies will survive cannot see so far as to wonder whether their spirits will survive. If the body is esteemed worthless, perhaps we are prevented from finding value in a soul. Perhaps my body must be valued as human before my spirit can be considered divine. That is: perhaps Coates comes by his materialism honestly.

I think about the over-spiritualized understanding of the Christian faith (some of which contributed to the plunder of black bodies throughout American history). But many--if not most--of those I know who verbalize the exceeding value of the spirit over that of the body live with great bodily security. And I think about Jesus' teachings and his resonances with the Hebrew prophets who offered scathing condemnation for those who took away others' physical security. And if we wish to call heaven as a witness, then we must remember that Jesus' resurrected body (!) still had scars from his crucifixion; Paul asserts that we will be given bodies (!!) in the new creation.

So perhaps an understanding of spirit, virtue, and justice begins with materialism. Before we can answer questions of what we will become or what we must do, we must first be able to declare that our bodies are safe. The innovation of Jesus and the prophets with respect to Coates' book is that before we can get to spirit, virtue, and justice we must first confirm that our brothers' and sisters' bodies are safe.

And in America, the answer is still No. So we cannot go any further.

Coates, at least in Between the World and Me, does not have a framework or an anchor for hope. But as for me, perhaps by a gift from God I may have the ability to ask, Is your body safe? and hear the answer. And maybe in hearing that answer we will find the beginning of something different.

~ emrys

Circling Back Around . . . to Hope

 Sometimes being a little behind the times brings a helpful perspective.

The inside flap of my copy of The Audacity of Hope states this about its author: "Barack Obama is the junior U.S. senator from Illinois . . ." Published in 2006, this book served as Obama's political manifesto, the document that launched him into the graces of the Democratic literati and therefore into the White House. In hindsight, of course, it is easy to see with 20/20 vision the roots of Obama's work as president--the promises and designs that got him elected and the decisions that caused such disagreement with the Republicans during his two terms.

But the book provides so much more than a political platform. With witty and revealing personal narrative, Obama connects both the universal and unique aspects of human experience with a calling to public political service. With honesty and wisdom he reveals both why the work of politics is so hard and why it is necessary for the thriving of a nation.

I appreciate especially Obama's penchant for a diachronic approach: He delves into specific political issues that face us in the present and digs back in time to assess the historical roots of those issues. The Audacity of Hope clarifies the author's position on a host of issues facing the United States (in 2006, but also strangely still today), but also gives readers a series of instructive history lessons about the sources of those issues and the disagreements that plagued them from the beginning. We remember, with Obama's encouragement, that the United States has always been a place of public disagreement and political tension.

Though unabashedly Democratic in terms of its political leanings, the book does not condemn the opponents of the Democratic party. Obama, in the lines and between the lines, makes it clear that he respects the positions his opponents may take, even when he disagrees with them. Audacity thus serves as both a textbook on political theory and an example of civility in political discourse. I found myself thinking as I read it that it would serve well as a textbook for high school U.S. government courses.

I consider it providential that Audacity came into my hands as a gift just at this moment, as the 45th president disappears from a term wracked by extremes, incivility, and bitterness and the 46th president (as if simply stepping from vice-presidency to presidency) attempts to lead the country with calm, civility, and a gentleness that some have bewailed as boring. No doubt Democrats and Republicans will continue to disagree on--well, perhaps most things. One's foundational assumptions about the role of government, politicians, and individuals force mutually exclusive choices that only seem to be weakened by compromise. Therefore strength as commonly conceived will continue to breed staunch and intransigent opposition in America's political bodies.

But maybe, just maybe, when we can be clear-eyed and articulate about the experiences and reasons why we hold our assumptions and come to our present conclusions, then we can actively seek to work with our colleagues from across every aisle in order to develop a more perfect union. This possibility--that underneath our most foundational assumptions about politics lie even more basic assumptions about goodness and love--might be what resonated most in me as I read Obama's book. That in spite of disagreement we might still be able to uphold the good together I will continue to be audacious enough to hope.

~ emrys

What Could We Have Done?

The pandemic has wrought havoc on small businesses across the United States (and, I assume, all around the world). Some businesses, like the outdoor equipment suppliers we have in our town, have made record sales since everyone started trying to get out and away from other humans. Others, such as the businesses that focus on bringing people together--to eat, work out, or socialize--have been struck with huge deficits.

As I listen to the stories of struggling business owners and operators I hear the pain and suffering that results from having to cut payroll, take on debt, and wonder how to plan for every next month with all of its uncertainty. I am an operator of a very small business myself, and we have experienced the pain of covid's economic impact.

At the conclusion of a good commiserating session, when we're about to shrug and get on with our days, several times now I have heard the question, "But what could we have done?" It's rhetorical. The implication is that there is nothing anyone could have done. The appearance of a fast-spreading disease requiring people to stay out of each other's air space brings an inevitability of damage. No, there's nothing we could have done about the slowing of all things in-person.

But from a business perspective, and from a personal perspective, I don't want to give up on that question so fast. What could we have done?

Businesses define life and death financially. If there's enough money, the business carries on. If there's not, it goes under. If the income stream dries up for a time--for 6 months, 12 months, maybe 18 months--then for a business to survive it needs to have cash reserves. If it's going to survive a covid drought of customers, then it's going to need savings.

It occurs to me then that "What could we have done?" is answered by "Save." We could have saved money. We could have operated within a business model that assumes there is a chance, no matter how small, that at some point we'll be crippled for a year or more. So we save up a year's worth of payroll, of electric bills, of essential supplies so that even if the customers aren't coming in right now we can keep telling the world, "We're open and ready when you are!"

Saving is hard. Look at the miserable statistics of Americans' saving habits and see that we're not very good at it. Certainly not good enough that most of us would feel stable if we suddenly fell out of work for a year or more. But life and economics are such complex animals that we ought to assume that we'll suddenly have a break in our income at some point. So saving makes sense.

It's just as hard for small businesses, I think. So much of business is running to catch up with the mercurial interests of a market that always wants something newer, faster, shinier. Every penny must be spent, or else tomorrow's client may not come in through the door. But to be on the edge of bankruptcy all the time makes something like a pandemic fatal. Market anxiety cannot choke out the mandate to save.

We had a surge of interest on our staff last year in the Dave Ramsey phenomenon. What a cool thing: having a group of college students thinking about how to lower their debt, save money, and be in a stronger financial position for the long haul. It takes discipline, and saying "No" to a lot of spending. It sometimes requires feeling like the spendthrift world is passing you by, macchiato in hand, while you're stuck at home drinking drip coffee. It means deferring that dopamine hit of shopping and spending until the frontal lobe says it's wise. It's hard work.

But it makes the difference between riding the tide of a pandemic with a little tighter belt and going under. "What could we have done?" We could have saved money. We could have held back our insatiable desire for cheap and numerous goods in preparation for a couple of lean years. We could have planned for this.

Will we plan for the next one?

~emrys

Passing Thoughts

I just finished reading a translation of Aulus Gellius' Attic Nights, a sort of journal compiled by a member of the upper-class Greco-Roman literati. His reflections span a wide field of philosophical inquiries, grammatical inquisitions, legal observations, and social and cultural critiques. Reading it gives a disjointed, snapshot view of life in the Mediterranean in the second century AD--sometimes affording tantalizing one-offs regarding the values undergirding that society.

Since my level of historical knowledge about that provenance is limited, the thin slices of detail about Gellius' world serve mostly to inspire reflection on our own time. In one brief passage, Gellius records the name of the "first Roman ever to secure a divorce" from his wife, on the grounds that she could not have children. In order to secure said divorce, apparently he had to cite the fact that upon his marriage to her he had sworn an oath that the purpose of the marriage was to have children. What a strange thing--to me, of course--to bind and delimit a marriage by oath to having children.

At that time, as in too many others, women were legal property of their husbands, so I suppose it would be the equivalent of winning a civil suit for the price paid for a "lemon" vehicle. I bought the car not because I wanted the vehicle itself per se, but because I needed it for transportation. Therefore if it does not run (or breaks down to often) it is not fulfilling its function and therefore the transaction can be nullified.

I wonder if this is why a commonplace set of vows has husband and wife declare "for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health"? Perhaps husbands had taken to divorcing wives because they were not successful entrepreneurs for the household or because they took ill and did not fully recover? Thus the vow at the altar had to ensure (for the wife and her family) that the husband would not see those "failures" as breach of contract.

Gellius also records that a Roman of high political office ("censor") was disciplined by the senate for owning an excessive amount of silver tableware. This excess signified too much luxury for said political position. The event seems even stranger to me given that Roman culture was not renowned for its austerity or elective poverty and simplicity.

How would politics change if "excessive luxury" were considered a punishable offence for public servants and elected officials? The cynical part of me thinks that the luxury would simply go underground. And it begs the question: Who determines what is too luxurious? I suppose that determination would have the usual legal channels, like any other law. An interesting idea nonetheless, that at some level a republic would officially declare a limit on the wealth owned or displayed by its ruling members.

Don't pick up Attic Nights unless you're ready to skim over large bits about Latin and Greek grammar. Gellius was very concerned with esoteric questions of language, translation, and poetic usage. (This is why I enjoyed the book so much, I think!) Even passing over some of those, I appreciated the little oddities of ancient life. In the midst of the oddities, however, one will be rewarded with edifying meditations such as whether virtuous life necessarily brings happiness. Does it?

A dear friend once remarked that the famous ancient and Medieval authors "never had to wash their own socks." An overarching theme that surfaced for me was how much time Gellius had to walk around Rome and Athens, going to dinner parties, chatting with people in high office and station. He tries to put a great deal of weight on these matters of speech, writing, and society; but his are--to use a contemporary turn of phrase--first-world problems (wealthy problems). Gellius makes no reference to work or managing patron-client relationships in order to stay afloat. He is upper-class, it seems, and the life that allows literacy and time for ruminating on philosophical squabbles belongs perhaps entirely to the rich. It might be the same in every generation, though I hope that in the present-day United States we have come somewhat closer to allowing anyone in any stratum of society access to learning and discourse like Gellius'.

Maybe I can be an agent to extend the reach of that learning to another generation, whether of humble or luxurious means. I hope that perhaps the good work I do and the conversations I have are not limited to the ivory halls and wealthy dinner parties, but include anyone who wants to consider the deeper questions of life.

~ emrys

In the Name of Jesus

 I have a dear friend who has trouble considering following Jesus because of the harmful attitudes and actions she has seen on the part of many Christians and churches. While in our conversations I continue to try to point her toward the person of Jesus and how he himself critiques those harmful attitudes and actions, I understand that in her experience the voice of the humans on this planet drowns out any still, small voice of Jesus or the voice of the bible.

Then two days ago a rioting mob attacked the Capitol building with signs and words that made it clear they wanted their actions to be done in the name of Jesus.

More perhaps irreparable harm has now been done to the effort of inviting many into the glorious reign that I have experience in Jesus Christ. I fear that now when I say "Jesus is Lord" my hearers will hear a call to violently dismantle and elected government.

I believe the rioters at the Capitol two days ago were not citizens exercising their constitutional right to peaceful protest. I do believe that Jesus often calls us to peacefully protest wrongs in our society, in our government, yes even in our churches (for no humans are immune to the dangers of sin). I believe that the Spirit uses our presence and our words, spoken always in truth and love, to change the world.

I believe in the model of protest offered by Jesus is his own ministry: teaching truth, healing the sick and suffering, and offering his very body as both witness and response to the evils of the world. (This was the model of non-violent civil rights workers and protesters in the mid-20th century.) I believe that his resurrection is the example of entrusting vengeance to God and thereby empowering peaceful action.

As someone called to address the Church from the pulpit regularly, I expect every pastor and preacher to join me in condemning the actions of that rioting mob and make it clear that Jesus did not call for that act of violence.

I will admit that Jesus calls my brothers and sisters around the world to do different things than I am called to do. I will admit that I disagree in many cases with brothers and sisters around the world about what our faith in Christ calls us to do, but I cannot condemn those brothers and sisters for coming to different conclusions than I. However in the case of January 6th, any assertion that following Jesus Christ called these rioters to commit the violence they did is, in fact, condemnable. Followers of Jesus will reject and condemn those actions, pray for the repentance of the perpetrators, and anticipate that the structures of law and order in the United States will deal with them suitably.

Meanwhile, I hope that my brothers and sisters in the faith will seek understanding of why the rioters did what they did and use every peaceable means to introduce them to another, gracious, way to address those concerns. Just as God wrought life from the death of Jesus, I hope that Christ and his Church will discover how good can be brought from this evil.

Maybe, just maybe, some time from now those outside the Church will grant more credibility to the peaceful work of Christians in response to the tragedy of January 6th than to the banners carried by the mob.

~ emrys