Tag Archives: faith

Beauty Will Save the World: A Review

photo by daveynin (Creative Commons)

When you go for a drive around town, how often are you struck by the beauty of the architecture of strip malls, fast-food joints, and freeway exits? Does the brown cloud camping over your metropolis plant awe in your heart?

We are growing ugly. Logically, we’re growing ugly because we are losing beauty–it isn’t important to us in our architecture, in our studying, in our politics, in our entertainment, in our daily interactions with each other.  In Beauty Will Save the World, Zahnd asserts that our world is ugly because the axis on which the world revolves is one of power and violence. According to Zahnd, we (globally) spend over 3 billion dollars a day on defending ourselves. The United States accounts for 56% of that number. As we spend exorbitant amounts of money on political campaigns, weapons, and walls, there are places where people can’t even get a drink of fresh water, or enjoy a full meal for that matter. (Side note: check out globalrichlist.org. If you make $25,000 a year, that places you in the richest 10% in the world! Obama considers this income below poverty. Really? Really? I’m not sure if any of our politicians really understand the true depth of poverty. Do you? Do I?)

Zahnd’s main premise is that Jesus, through his death and resurrection, tilted the earth’s axis to one of love. His argument, while inefficiently written, is powerful and fascinating. Zahnd takes us to the beginning of history, when Cain killed Abel. God cursed him, and Cain went and founded a city. Zahnd asserts that this city was essentially founded on murder and violence, the consequence of his murderous actions, thus setting into motion a pattern of building power through violence. Zahnd does an amazing job of calling out the American church in its support for our imperialism. Zahnd writes,

“[T]here is always a particular temptations faced by the church when it is hosted by a superpower. The temptation is to accommodate itself to its host and to adopt (or even christen) the cultural assumptions of the super power. . .[T]he problem that is distorting American evangelicalism is that it has become far too accommodating to Americanism and the culture of superpower. . .The dominant American script is that which idolizes success, achievement, acquisition, technology, and militarism. It is the script of a superpower. But this dominant script does not fit neatly with the alternative script we find in the  gospel of Jesus Christ. So here is our challenge: when those who confess Christ find themselves living in the midst of an economic and military superpower, the are faced with the choice to either be an accommodating chaplain or a prophetic challenge. . . We need to bear the form and beauty of the Jesus way and not merely provide a Christianized version of our cultural assumptions.”

This is a kick to the stomach of any church who preaches both the gospel of grace and salvation and justifies any act of violence against another human being (bombing, slaving, trafficking, etc.). Jesus himself undermined the Roman axis of power in his day by claiming to be the king of heaven (and eventually all of Earth). Zahnd explains that through grace and forgiveness, Jesus undermined and invalidated Caesar’s power. Additionally, Zahnd points out that Jesus was able to take one of the most offensive, painful, frightening, and ugly symbols of death in Western history and turned it into a beautiful symbol of faith and life.

“It is the beauty of Christ’s love and forgiveness as most clearly seen in the cruciform that is able to save us from our vicious pride avaricious greed . . . [which] are often pawned off as virtues in the culture of a superpower.”

Zahnd  believes that it is the role of the Christian then to not “protest the world into a certain moral conformity, but to attract the world to the saving beauty of Christ . . . because God is more like a musician than a manager, more like a composer of symphonies than a clerk of keeping ledgers.”

And this is why art is important. Zahnd asserts that art is not as valuable in a pragmatic culture like a 21st-century United States. Whether it’s politics, economics, education, technology, business, or career, practicality reigns over aesthetics. Art is not practical, but it sure is beautiful. Zahnd uses the cathedrals found in Europe as an example of architecture exhibiting beauty and awe.  Art most likely will never provide a consistent paycheck for most of us. It just isn’t practical. And neither is Jesus dying on the cross or resurrecting from the dead. But both are awe-inspiring, mysterious, life-changing, beautiful.

Would the gospel of Jesus Christ be beautiful to those who don’t believe it if it weren’t based on pragmatism, logic, and usefulness? Would the beauty of the gospel be seen if Christian art sought to reflect originality and uniqueness in an axis of love?

photo by Eric Lars Bakke

I will leave you with this thought. I think the Tim Tebow phenomenon is an accurate microcosm of how evangelical Christians treat people outside of their (our) circle of belief. And I’m not talking about Tebow himself. I’m talking about his fans. Those who disassociate themselves with any who say something critical of their idol. It’s an us vs. them mentality, which often resorts to name calling, verbal abuse, and all around ugliness. If that’s how the followers of Jesus act to those who have a different world view, how will the gospel of Jesus’ grace and salvation ever be beautiful?

In Stopping: A Poem

In Stopping

by Joel E. Jacobson

“When a woman has a discharge of blood for many days at a time other than her monthly period or has a discharge that continues beyond her period, she will be unclean as long as she has the discharge, just as in the days of her period.” Leviticus 15:25

“She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.” Luke 8:44

“While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. ‘Your daughter is dead,’ he said. ‘Don’t bother the teacher anymore.’ Luke 8:49

In stopping to ask,
“Who touched me?”
a woman is healed,
a girl dies–
and both had faith.
I would easily
rush to the street
and beg for Jesus
to heal my dying child;
I would slice
through the crowd
just to brush up
against his cloak
and be okay
getting struck
by lightning
because either way
the bleeding stops.
But my prayers
would have ceased
years and years ago,
died with the hearts of men
who made sure to mention
all that was unclean,
all that was me.

In the face of laughter
Jesus heals the dead
and bleeding, though
I’ve only seen them
die. Determined
to win out
and be healed–
I’ve seen the faithful
bleed–embalmed
and buried with the rest.

Me of little faith,
stuck in the middle
of the story,
the middle of the crowd
pressing in
on a busy Jesus.

___

“In Stopping” is part 9 of the Storytellers project.

2 More Books (part 2)

Walking on WaterI don’t know why I’m in the habit of trying to do 2 book reviews in one post. If tricks and old dogs are involved, I’m in trouble. In my last post I reviewed Makoto Fujimura’s Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture. The second book is Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle (author of The Wrinkle in Time). While L’Engle is a novelist, I think her views apply to poetry just as well. This book reads like a journal, and it takes her a little while to get to the point, but she admits early in the book that she was asked to write some reflections on faith and art, and she had no idea how to do that. On with the show:

When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening.

*

This questioning of the meaning of being, and dying, and being, is behind the telling of stories around tribal fires at night; behind the drawing of animals on the walls of caves; the singing of melodies of love in spring, and of the death of green in autumn. It is part of the deepest longing of the human psyche, a recurrent ache in the harts of all of God’s creatures.

*

Christian art? Art is art; painting is painting; music is music; a story is a story. If it’s bad art, it’s bad religion, no matter how pious the subject. If it’s good art–and there the questions start coming, questions which it would be simpler to evade.

*

Generally what is more important than getting water-tight answers is learning to ask the right questions.

*

All art is cosmos, cosmos found within chaos . . . There’s some modern art, in all disciplines, which is not; some artists look at the world around them and see chaos, and instead of discovering cosmos, they reproduce chaos on canvas, in music, in words. As far as I can see, the reproduction of chaos neither art, nor is it Christian.

*

Obedience is an unpopular word nowadays, but the artist must be obedient to the work, whether it be a symphony, a painting, or a story for a small child. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius or something very small, comes to the artist and says, “Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.” And the artist either says, “My soul doth magnify the Lord,” and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessarily a conscious one. . . .

*

In art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we are asked to endure, we who are children of God by adoption and grace.

*

The artist, if he is not to forget how to listen, must retain the vision which includes angels and dragons and unicorns, and all the lovely creatures which our world would put in a box marked Children Only.

*

But when the words mean even more than the writer knew they meant, then the writer has been listening. And sometimes when we listen, we are led into places we do not expect, into adventures we do not always understand.

*

I have come to recognize that the work often knows more than I do.

*

Many atheists deny God because they care so passionately about a caring and personal God and the world around them is inconsistent with a God of love, they feel, and so they say, “There is no God.” But even when one denies God, to serve music, or painting, or words is a religious activity, whether or not the conscious mind is willing to accept the fact. Basically there can be no categories as “religious” art and “secular” art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore “religious”.

*

But to serve any discipline of art . . . is to affirm meaning, despite all the ambiguities and tragedies and misunderstanding which surround us.

*

We human beings far too often tend to codify God, to feel that we know where he is and where he is not, and this arrogance leads to such things as the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch burnings, and has the result of further fragmenting an already broken Christendom. . .Unamuno might be describing the artist as well as the Christian when he writes, “Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.”

*

Art is communication, and if there is no communication it is as though the work had been still-born.

*

The poet wrote the poem, no doubt. But he forgot himself while he wrote it, and we forgot him while we read. . . .We forget, for ten minutes, his name and our own, and I contend that this temporary forgetfulness, this momentary and mutual anonymity, is sure evidence of good stuff (quoting E.M. Forster).

*

But I am a story-teller, and that involves language, for me the English language, that wonderfully rich, complex, and oftimes confusing tongue. When language is limited, I am thereby diminished too. In time  of war language always dwindles, vocabulary is lost; and we live in a century of war. . . .We cannot Name or be Named without language. If our vocabulary dwindles to a few shopworn words, we are setting ourselves up for takeover by a dictator. When language becomes exhausted, our freedom dwindles–we cannot think; we do not recognize danger; injustice strikes us as no more than “the way things are.”

*

An artist is not a consumer, as our commercials urge us to be. An artist is a nourisher and a creator who knows that during the act of creation there is collaboration. We do not create alone.

*

Another problem about identifying what is and what is not religious art, is that religious art transcends its culture and reflects the eternal, and while we are alive we are caught within our culture.

*

All children are artists, and it is an indictment of our culture that so many of them lose their creativity, their unfettered imaginations, as they grow older. But they start off without self-consciousness as they paint their purple flowers, their anatomically impossible people, their thunderous, sulphurous skies. . .What looks like a hat to a grownup may, to the child artist, be an elephant inside a boa constrictor.

*

…[L]ie and story are incompatible. If it holds no truth, then it cannot truly be story. And so I knew that it was in story that I found flashes of that truth which makes us free.

*

The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort toward wholeness.

*

Creativity opens us to revelation, and when our high creativity is lowered to two percent, so is our capacity to see angels, to walk on water, to talk with unicorns. In the act of creativity, the artist lets go the self control which he normally clings to, and is open to riding the wind. Something almost always happens to startle us during the act of creating, but not unless we let go our adult intellectual control and become as open as little children. This does not mean to set aside or discard the intellect, but to understand that it is not to become dictator, for when it does we are closed off from revelation.

*

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.

*
Art is an affirmation of life, a rebuttal of death.

2 More Books (part 1)

Besides my summer reading to prepare for teaching a new class (I read Catcher in the Rye, The Grapes of Wrath, Othello, and King Lear. I have Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserable left to cover first semester.), I read two books on art and faith that really challenged my way of thinking.

Refractions, by painter Makoto Fujimura, is a collection of blog posts Fujimura wrote after 9/11 (click the link just to check out the website…it’s amazing). He lives a few blocks from Ground Zero and spent time reflecting on a new world that was created when the towers fell. As response, he formed The International Arts Movement to bring artists, writers, musicians, and dancers together. Here are some tidbits:

Art, and any creative expression of humanity, mediates in times of conflict and is often inexplicably tied to wars and conflicts. Art can play a central role in the making of peace. . . When jazz musicians travel around the world . . . their music carries a message of collaboration, the freedom of improvisation, and community–really the fruits of democracy. Jazz communicates beyond the barriers of politics and ideologies, as music speaks a universal language.

*

The arts provide us with language for mediating the broken relational and cultural divides: the arts can model for us how we need to value each person as created in the image of God.

*

Artists are often found at the margins of society, but they are, like the shepherds, often the first to notice the miracles taking place right in front of us. Since sensationalism, power, and wealth dominate our cultural imaginations, we may not be willing to journey to the ephemeral, as the Japanese poets of old have, to see beauty in the disappearing lines or to see poetry in a drying puddle of water. The world seems to demand of us artist-types that we be able to explain and justify our actions, but often the power and mystery of art and life cannot be explained by normative words.

*

Will we artists admit the vulnerability and unguarded innocence of a true artistic experience? Will we, the church, allow a community of broken, brutally honest, creative people lead the way for admission of our errors? If so, then the culture at large can espouse a deeper and authentic confessional experience, giving it permission to have a powerful experience of forgiveness and healing.

*

Art is a building block of civilization. A civilization that does not value its artistic expressions is a civilization that does not value itself. These tangible artistic expressions help us understand ourselves. The arts teach us to respect both the diversity of our communities and the strength of our traditions.

*

Our culture of betrayal goes way beyond individual failures; it is a culture that has lost belief in the good, the true, and the beautiful. Without the a priori conscience that believes in civilization’s own integrity–that wronged can be righted and that creativity is a gift to society–no art, and now work of our hands, can be infused with a transcendent vision. The culture of betrayal denies the potential to hope and is determined to quickly self-destruct.

*
Artists smell the poisoned air and sing.

*

In our culture of betrayal, we are quick to impose our own views on layers of established systems. Thus, even a work of art is to be distrusted. Rather than trying to “under-stand” (context: these thoughts are reflections as Fujimura stands under Da Vinci’s Last Supper) the work, we stand over it and dismiss it as unreadable. Or worse yet, we impose a critical ideology upon it without first allowing the work to affect us.

In doing so we miss out on experiencing what the work of art can offer, and consequently we do not journey into the power of genuine art. . .We are drowning in a deluge of despair, and our memories of the good, the true, and the beautiful have nearly faded completely.

Refractions is a beautiful publication with lots of visual art (in color too!!). More important than good visual aesthetics, Fujimura challenges his Christian readers to rid themselves of a me versus them mentality, to be a part of culture, to pay attention, to love, and to create community with artists.

I have heard Matthew 18:20 many times in churches across the country:  “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” Fujimura asserts that people gathering to create also invites the presence of Jesus–whether they are Christians or not. I’ve said many times here before, but there is power and mystery in the act of creativity. Fujimura suggests that such power should be used to unify, heal, and connect. I like that. Now I need to figure out how to be a part of that.

A greater purpose for Poetry

When I was a child, my parents often wondered where I came from. Hmm. But really, how does a poet rise from two scientists–my father had a PhD in Geophysics and my mom double majored in math and chemistry. My brother? History (his educational focus, not the state of existence).  So even I can ask the question: where did I come from?

Joking aside, I really do like science…physics anyways. I don’t get chemistry and don’t care for biology (outside of evolution and creationism). I took calculus based physics in college. Yup, I was in way over my head. I like literature more than science, but there are aspects that grab my attention. I’m actually going to be studying optics for my capstone project in grad school. But there is a disconnect between science and poetry. This blog goes deeper into the problem than I care to, but here’s a quote:

One of the great dichotomies that Carl Jung drew in his book on personality types (which is retained in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) is that between feeling and thinking. Feelers are interested in human relationships, while thinkers are more interested in the objective world. Feelers are more interested in the humanities, while thinkers are more interested in the sciences.

And why can’t the two connect? Emerson saw a connection between humanity, nature, and God and labeled it the Oversoul. I think the Oversoul can be taken out of the equation, with God unifying man and nature through origin. In terms of origins, I do believe that humans were purposefully created, but I also believe the Big Bang set things into motion.  This is a tricky spot to be in: evolutionists accuse me of having bad science and some creationists accuse me of having bad faith. I don’t think I have either.

I believe in God–not a distant entity that can’t be bothered by the goings on of the planet Earth, but rather one that cares deeply about us and desires to see us choosing love above all us–and I believe that he has given us things to reveal himself, science and literature being two of them. Literature, over time, has recorded our attempts to find what’s missing, to fill a void, to achieve joy, to rise above an oppressive culture, etc. With literature, especially poetry, we have the physicalization of the spiritual, the realization of the idea, the imitation (and actuality) of creation. I also believe that God gave us science to reveal himself. From the greatness of our expansive universe to the information inscribed on a strand of DNA, I can’t accept that it just happened randomly, or even by chance. But this stance on science isn’t really popular with the Christian community. The Bible says the the world was created in 6 days, end of story. A sermon I heard at church last year presented this idea: God made things in six days–God could make an old rock look like a new rock–a three second old rock still looks like a rock!

Amen. Or not quite (I’ve gone round and round with my pastor on this, and we civilly disagree, so it’s not like I’m trying to call him out on this). Scientifically, a three-second rock is probably still glowing lava, cooling in ocean mists (oops, didn’t mean to get too poetic!). My question is, if God gave us science to reveal himself, why would he lie? I don’t believe that God has set out to trick us, so what’s the answer?

I think back to Galileo and Newton, who were coming up with really cool ideas…like the earth not being the center of the universe. These guys were persecuted by the church. Oops. Who has egg on their face on that one? I don’t mean to be anti-establishment, but the church was guilty of bad science.

What does this have to do with poetry? I think that all to often contemporary science doesn’t allow room for the supernatural, the mystical, the unprovable. I think religions often times don’t allow for evidence, questioning, and theorizing (i.e. the scientific method…I may have gotten things out of order, but hey, I’m a poet).

I assert that poetry is the unification of the two (I hope this isn’t too single-minded of me–poetry can do much more than this), taking the unseen, the supernatural, the mystical, and making it physical, taking the physical, the proven, and the tested and making it mystical and mysterious, all with the purpose of revealing the Creator.

[Edit]

I just found this quote on the top 10 reasons to attend a poetry reading:

Poetry is simultaneously emotional, intellectual, and spiritual.