Defining Beauty

 I'm back in Florence.

This time, I took the whole family. There are nine of us - children,  one of the spouses, and all five granddaughters. And me. And this time, they made the itinerary. I told them to choose whatever fascinated them the most, hoping of course, they would see in it what I did: the grandeur of the Renaissance, the beauty of the art, and the history of politics, and the glory of God. And, of course, they did not. They chose very differently. A favorite winery, an interactive museum, a fortress town from a video game. Except  to see the David, no one wanted to go near an art gallery. Except for the Vatican and the  Pantheon, no one was interested in a church. 

It's not generational. It's more temperament, I think. Anyway, whatever it is, what brought me to Florence, and what keeps me going back, is the beauty. In art, in architecture, in science, in literature, in music, in the easy statliness of the ringing bells and the delightful lilt of Italian voices. It is all beautiful, and weaves an intoxicating web that catches me every time. I don't care much about the shopping or the gelato. I do care about the chanted rhytum of the nunc dimitis and the graceful swing of the bells in the campanile. I care about the marbeled eyes of a hero that seem to really see.

 I care about the medallion in the Piazza de la Signoria commemorating the hanging and burning of my favorite renegade monk, Girolamo Savanarola, 

I care about the  second floor garden that confined the imprisoned Galileo. I care about trying to figure out whether the Medicis, who largely financed Renaissance art, were benefactors or tyrants (they were probably both).

Lorenzo the Magnificent

For a long time, I couldn't figure out why I cared about any of this, then Simone Weil told me:

"Beauty is the incarnation of God in the world so all first rate art is inherently religious. Beauty is the real presence of God in matter."

That's exactly it. Beauty is how God shows Himself in the world. That's why we all recognize it in some form. God is in all of us, but the extent to which we seek out God determines the extent to which we are able to appreciate beauty. Beauty is part of our blood and bone in the same way as is oxygen or iron. There's a disease in Florence called Stendahl Syndrome - literally a malady characterised by dizziness or fevers- that is the result of too much beauty too fast. 

Beauty is the way we bridge the gap between God and man. Another piece of Weil wisdom: 

"Workers need poetry more than bread. Only religion - God - can be the source of this poetry. Its deprivation explains all forms of demoralization. Slavery is work without the light of eternity." 

And we are meant to bridge that gap. That, I think, is our main job as humans. That's the reason for the Eucharist - to apply the glory of God to material cells. 

"Manual work is time entering the body. Through work, man becomes matter like Christ in the Eucharist. "

Exactly. God gives us Himself. In bread. In art. In work. In beauty. 

Florence image: History Extra

David image: Fine Art America

Savanarola image: Alamy

Lorenzo image: Wikipedia

More Simone Weil: The Choice or: Nobody Ever Wins a War

 Every once in a while, not often mind you, a philosopher will say exactly the right thing in a short, concise form that really hits home. Today, Simone Weil did that for me.

"Whoever takes the sword will perish by the sword. Whoever lets go of it will perish by the cross."

Perfect.

Now let's do a little unpacking. The first part will be familiar to most people. Jesus said, "Whoever lives by the sword will die by the sword." We get that, well, in theory anyway. None of us do it. Not really. Everybody doesn't have a basement full of guns and ammo, but almost all of us are inclined to take God's justice ("Vengence is mine; I will repay, says the Lord" - Deut 32:35) into our own hands. Defending the defenseless, or even giving the bad guys what we think they have coming to them, seems like standard procedure. What else are we to do? 

Well, maybe take God at His word. Don't do it. Just don't. 

But what then, some of us wonder. What if no one stops the playground bully? He grows up to be Don Trump. What if no one stops Hitler? We all end up speaking German and clicking our heels. Or do we? I mean, no one really knows what would happen because no one has really tried. 

OK, a few have - Ghandi and Martin Luther King, for example, but things didn't go really well for them, did it? Minor victories, but nothing universally world-changing. And yet we admire them for what they did do. We know on some level that humans were not meant to exact violent revenge on one another. We were not meant to kill each other. Even in an effort to save innocent lives.

I've often wondered what would happen if we stopped taking revenge, or even defense, against a clearly evil enemy. First off, I think a lot of innocent people would die. A lot more even than in the fighting, perhaps. And at the end of it. we would still be stuck with a tyrant. That's not a happy ending, and it kind of proves Simone's second point. Once we lay down our weapons, we will die anyway, but by the cross, by sacrifice, without personally perpetrated, heart-destroying violence. It could happen, and I can't help feel there's some kind of salvation in it. After all, nobody wins a war. Ever. 

That's one thing about philosophers. They are some of the few people who admit everyone is going to die and really believe it. That's most of the cause of all their angst, but it does lead to a good, heavy dose of reality. We have to choose how we are going to live and in doing so, choose to a great degree how we are going to die. Because we will die, you know. We all will. And what will we be holding onto at the end? The self-righteous end of an .357 or  the cross? If my own death is going to count for something, let it speak of love.

Image: Sportsman Outdoor Superstore

What is Your Myth? - or - Living with Comfortable Fictions or Taking the Red Pill

 

We are obsessed with truth. We want it. From everyone.

But do we really? My late husband Dave had a reputation, not always a good one, for always telling the truth, a reputation that included unwelcome truths as well as welcome ones. Some folks thought this some kind of superpower, but some thought it anathema and issued warnings to anyone asking his opinion about anything. 

We spend so much of our time keeping company with pleasant truths, you see. Did you ever watch a Hallmark movie? Did you ever just want someone to tell you that, in spite of appearances, everything was going to be all right? I do. And I want to hear it because I know that often, it won't. Pleasant fiction.

John F. Kennedy has something to say about this when he gave an address at Yale University in 1962: 

"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

Oh, boy.

Myths. Preconcieved ideas. Cliches. Ideas that look like truths but feed vacant wishes. Premises that distort all of our possible futures with unlikely or impossible promises. Happily ever after endings.

That just isn't life. 

But we still color our outlooks with worldview. Here are a few examples:

• The Cleavers - the concept that there is or was a perfect family whose every member understood their role and lived contentedly in it, not making waves, and smiling when they took out the garbage.
• John Wayne - the idea that there is a simple world where black is black and white is white, where the good guys wore the right hat so you could recognize them and always win in the end without being scarred by the men they had to kill to get there.
• Consipracy Theory - the worldview that knows nothing is what it seems, that everyone you meet is out to get you, that no one can be trusted
• That Old Time Religion - A basic assurance that everything one needs to know about God is in the Bible, that church structure can be trusted implicitly, that nothing good can ever be added to or subtracted from what one hears in church on Sunday
• Blood is always thicker - the idea that family precludes every other relationship, that blood relationships inevitably tie people together no matter what, that even though people grow and change, family will love one and respect another forever.

Forgive me if these betray my own personal prejudices - they undoubtedly do - but I know folks who hold these worldviews and even though they are a source of consolation to them, a comfortable way of living in a confusing world, they are also a source of almost constant disillusionment because, well, because they're not true. 

No worldview always applies. No overall ideology works in every circumstance. They are myths. Myths that help us cope, to be sure, but myths nonetheless. 

The truth is that the world is a constantly changing combination of goods and evils shifting every moment, necessitating that we keep on our toes if we are going to stay within rails of reality. In short, we have to THINK. We have to go through the agony of figuring things out if we want to live in the real world. We have to take the red pill. It isn't always fun, but at least it's real. 

Image: The Telegraph

Being Blind Bart

 

Years ago, I was the fortunate writer of and participant in an annual passion play my Richland Center, Wisconsin church wrote and produced called "The Keys, the Cross, and the Kingdom." There are lots of stories and memories arising from those years, but one of the enduring is Blind Bart's. You know, Bartimaeus the blind, annoying beggar from Mark's gospel:

Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and His disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus, was sitting by the roadside, begging. When he heard it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!" Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more. "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Jesus stopped and said "Call him." So they called to the blind man, "Cheer up! On your feet! He's calling you." Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. "What do you want me to do for you?", Jesus asked him. The blind man said, "Rabbi, I want to see."  "Go," said Jesus, "your faith has healed you." Immediately, he received his sight and followed Jesus. --Mark 10: 46-52.

Good old Blind Bart, persistent Blind Bart, annoying Blind Bart. I like him. There he crouched, in the middle of a pressing crowd, yelling at the top of his lungs to get Jesus’ attention. People around him told him to shut up and he wouldn’t. And what did Jesus do? He stopped dead and looked around, telling his disciples to bring this loudmouth closer and when Bart got there, Jesus looked at this blind beggar and asked him a question. “What do you want me to do for you?” SERIOUSLY? Here’s this guy, blind, ragged, and dirty, and Jesus doesn’t know what he wants?

Of course He does. But He wants Bart to know it, too. He wants Bart to say it. 

Something similar happened to my late husband and I years ago. When my husband was very ill near the end of his life, he was referred to a doctor who looked him right in the eye and told Dave he would not get better, that he would continue to sicken and at some point not too distant he would die. That took courage to say and for us, courage to hear. But the part that came next was the most important. Dave was given homework. He was to determine the thing he valued most about life, that thing should he be left without, he would not want to get up in the morning. Then he was to focus what remained of his life on that thing. Sound familiar? Sounds a lot like Jesus.

Predictably, Bart says, “I want to see”. Ironically, that’s what Jesus wants for him, too. In fact, that’s what Jesus wants for all of us. To see. He wants us to see Him. He wants us to see ourselves through His eyes. He wants us to understand what we’re asking for when we pray and to look deeper than our latest catastrophe. He wants us to acknowledge what we desire and more importantly, why we desire it.

When Jesus asks us “What do you want me to do for you?” it may be that the best answer is to remember that He is already in us. Maybe the best answer is for Him to help make us holy.

Image: Jesus Film Project