Art as Prophecy

 "Words strain,

Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,

Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,

Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,

Will not stay still..."

T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton."

 If art is communication of vision, then true art is prophesy. Each human person sees, or at least is called to see, some aspect of God that no other creature in existence can ever see. I believe that this is the true basis for that mysterious quality which we call individuality, but that requires a good deal more thought. What I am certain of is that God communicates a part of Himself to us that He communicates to no other person. Or to put it differently, He communicates His whole being to us in a way that He does for no other person. Whenever a human being sees a glimpse of that communication and tries to share it with another human being, art is born. This transcends the formal arts, music, writing, painting, sculpture, acting and so forth. This permeates all truly human activities down to the most mundane. Thus we can speak of an "art" to good conversation; an "art" of letter writing; an "art" to hospitality; an "art" to flipping burgers. When we say that someone does some mundane task artfully, we meant that he or she is doing it purposefully, meaningfully, in the best manner possible and this raises their activities to the level of art. 

humanly.They are not simply tying a shoe, they are tying it well, with attention to the shape of the knot, the length and balance of the loops and tails. They are seeking to do what must be done

Art is prophecy, in this sense, because the beauty that one person sees in the restrained elegance of the Japanese tea ceremony is a reflection of God. The beauty that another seas in the barely controlled chaos of the mudroom when the kids come in from a ramble through the woods in mid-March is also a reflection of God. To share either beauty with the other, to translate it so that they can see and appreciate it, is to broaden their appetite for beauty, to show them a truth they were not aware of, or had forgotten, or simply had never exercised. It shares a part of God with them that otherwise they would not have seen.

It is this that I mean when I say that art is prophecy. It is usually unconscious, I suppose, a reaching after "we know not what." That is what makes art universal when it is at its best. It is an expression of longings that remain inarticulate. The methods of art can be used as a distraction from those longings, which I would classify as entertainment rather than art. This too has its place as a rest, to help us refit until we are strong and ready to begin the pursuit once more. Art, however, should not distract from the longing, the not-enough-ness. It should point it out, set a finger on it and say, "I try to capture the 'more' but it will not be captured."

It need not be unconscious, though.

"The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music

While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,

Hints followed by guesses; and the rest

Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action."

  T. S. Eliot, "The Dry Salvages."

An artist may know what he is truly striving after, put a name to Him, and by discipline, prayer and observance, the "lifetime's death in love/ ardour and selflessness and self-surrender," bring himself more and more to mirror that light, to enter into that relationship, and to gaze upon the beauty he seeks to communicate. It is necessary, in the end, or else he runs the risk of being more in love with his communication of the beauty than with Beauty Himself. In the end I suppose he will come with Thomas Aquinas to know that everything he has ever created has been only straw, valuable to God only because God loves Him. In the end, the reader, the viewer, the sharer of the art will also be drawn beyond the art. They will leave behind our best works like forgotten toys, and that which once inspired us will be no longer relevant, loved for old time's sake, as a grown up may keep a teddy bear in the box in his closet.

This is to be expected, even to be hoped for. Our glimpses are partial, shadowy, incomplete. They were never meant to satisfy. They were meant to introduce, to excite, to tease and urge onward. The reality is "further up and further in."

If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing;
if tongues, they will cease;
if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.
For we know partially and we prophesy partially,
but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
When I was a child, I used to talk as a child,
think as a child, reason as a child;
when I became a man, I put aside childish things.
At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror,
but then face to face.

Prophecy: Your Own Kind of Crazy

A Leader

is a fellow

who refuses to be crazy

the way everybody else is crazy

and tries to be crazy

in his own crazy way.

                                Peter Maurin, "Easy Essays."

The idea of prophecy has been rolling around in my head for a while now. I am not sure why. I remember in my early days of blogging, coming across Christian bloggers who would write about "prophetic words" that they had been given, or which their pastor had uttered, or some writer had shared. Some were concerned with the end times. I passed over them. Jesus seemed pretty adamant that worrying about the end of the world was not our business, and was rather a distraction than anything else (Matthew 24:36, Mark 13:32). 

Perhaps the issue was that I, and all of these bloggers, seemed to interpret prophecy as a prediction for the future. I have very little to say about that. I acknowledge that such things are possible, by God's grace, but am not much interested in it. I know that the future is in God's hands. My task is to live it with Him as it happens. The same goes for the end of the world. In all likelihood, whether the world ends any time soon or not, I will die sometime in the next 70 years or so. My task is to die a little bit every day in order to live more fully the Divine life. The world ending or continuing is largely irrelevant to that task.

However, recently I have been drawn to considering prophecy outside of the strict theological sense of a prediction of future events, or revelation of unknown events, and drawing a broader meaning. For instance, very little of the work of prophets in the Bible relates to predicting the future. Predictions occur, but they seem to be a highlight of the job, rather than part of the day to day grind. Instead, the much of the times the prophets of the Old Testament seem to be more concerned with reminding, correcting, exhorting, warning and admonishing. They give concrete instructions, and they bring the law back to mind. 

In a sense, they communicate the idea of a living relationship with God, based on dialogue, rather than simply a set of rules that no one remembers anyway. I am most struck by the fact that being a prophet in the Old Testament is an uncomfortable proposition. People don't like being told they are not just wrong, but dead wrong, and they are going to pay the price if they don't shape up. "They say to the seers, 'See no more visions!' and to the prophets, 'Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions.'" Isaiah 30:10. 

This admonishing of sinners can be thought of as a reminder, call back to their true desires. Of course, in strict mystical theology, a prophecy is a direct revelation from God, in this broader sense it is the birthright, and indeed the calling, of all Christians. In my last blog I spoke of the central aloneness of each human being, created as we are in calling to a "unique, exclusive, and unrepeatable relationship with God Himself." In the blog before that I spoke of art as a sort of prophesy. Both of those posts anticipated this one. 

In the poem I posted on August 10th I dimly saw the necessity of prophecy as a reminder. The question, "Are you happy?" is a prophetic question, because the answer for any thoughtful, honest person can never be an unqualified, "yes." There is always some dissatisfaction, some incompleteness. We do not live as fully as we might live. We do not give as fearlessly as we might. To be reminded of that is uncomfortable. It makes me squirm. To be shown the gifts that currently sit stagnating in the abandoned warehouses of my life is to be reminded that I have never done enough. I fall short of total gift. The thought makes me squirm and I turn on the x-box and play Nazi zombies to distract myself. I putz about on youtube, clicking from one epic rap battle to the next, as all the while precious moments slip by, moments in which I am not praising God or serving my fellow man. I am not creating art, or absorbing beauty. I am being entertained. I do not want to be reminded. I want to be "distracted from distraction by distraction."

But this reminder is a spiritual work of mercy. If I cannot be holy yet, I should at least be uncomfortable. I should not be content with mediocrity. "Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness; let him rebuke me—it is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it. Yet my prayer is continually against their evil deeds." Psalm 141:5.

I think this is why I talked the day before yesterday about the necessity of doing something radical. I remember saying once, at a party of all places, when the conversation had turned to tricks and gimmicks that people resort to in order to seem mysterious, that a human being should not need to try to be mysterious. Each human person is a mystery. If you live as you were meant to live, true to the face of God that you alone and no one else can see, then you will be mysterious. People will not get you. You will be asked to explain yourself. 

In fact, if you have never done something that seemed absolutely crazy to everyone else, but which you knew you had to do, it is probably a good indication that you have never lived.

Set Apart Humanity

 I have watched a number of movies lately that seemed to have a theme in common. The two that come to mind had a definite "teen sci-fi" flare to them: "Divergent," and "The Giver." While I hesitate to lump the two into the same category (and will no doubt be mentally excoriated for doing so by any who have seen both) they have a lot of similarities. Both are based on novels marketed primarily for teens, both involve dystopian futures in which an apparently benevolent government or cultural schema controls all aspects of life. However, this controlling, impersonal authority (personalized in the character of an older, neatly dressed woman in both cases) is revealed to have sinister designs, and the cultural schema is shown to have dark secrets. It must be resisted by the protagonist who is singled out in a coming of age ceremony. The protagonist has talents and abilities which set him or her apart from everyone else, and he or she must make the choice whether to use those talents to serve the power or to challenge it for the sake of true freedom. The choice to pursue freedom for themselves leads to the choice to sacrifice in order to provide freedom for everyone else in their society as well.

In fact, the main difference is the writing and the depth of the themes explored by the nature of the differences. These differences are significant; I would not consider "Divergent" worth a second watch, although I plan on reading the book. "The Giver" I would watch again, and I plan on re-reading the book several times, probably out loud to my children when they are old enough.

But the theme they held in common is what you might call the "set apart" theme. It is different from the lone hero theme, which is common to much great literature. For instance, Frodo Baggins is a consummate lone hero, but he is not a "set apart" hero. He becomes a lone hero by the end of the trilogy, but he does not start out that way. He starts out as a perfectly normal hobbit, just like every other hobbit. He is thrust into abnormal circumstances by external factors, and the experience of carrying the One Ring to Mordor sets him apart. When he departs from the Grey Havens, alone, he does so because he has sacrificed his ordinariness so that others might keep it.

The "set apart" hero is a little different. The set apart hero begins the story different from everyone else. Either he is born that way, or something (e.g. a mutated spider bite) makes him that way. The story is about him exploring that difference, coming to terms with it, and deciding what to do with it. 

In "The Giver," Jonas is different because he can see and feel things that everyone else has forgotten how to see and feel. He sees color, feels emotion, and looks beyond the surface of things. In "Divergent," Tris is different because she has the ability to embrace the traits of more than one of the dominant social classes. They are born with these traits without knowing that they have them, but in the coming of age ceremony they discover them, and it is this discovery which prompts the growth arc.

What struck me about the "set apart" theme was how deeply it seems to resonate with people. I know one man (in his mid-thirties) who insists that "Divergent" could have been written about him. He doesn't fit into everyone else' categories, his brain works differently, he sees possibilities that no one else sees, etc. The "set apart" hero taps into a very powerful longing that everyone has to be different, to be unique, special, mysterious.

Perhaps this is why the ordinary hero tends to be better literature, in my opinion. It is more realistic. Ordinary people without special powers or special talents how have to rise to extraordinary challenges make better stories. We want to root for them, the people who have to struggle, fight for it, earn their specialness. We root even more for those who have no choice but to fight for what they love, and so specialness is thrust upon them when they would like nothing more than to remain ordinary.

But the "set apart" hero has a place too. It calls to the place in us that wants to be different, unique, special, because we are different, unique, special. At the very center of every human being there is an intransigence, something that is utterly incommunicable. The reason that these stories resonate so deeply, especially among the nerds, weirdos and outcasts, is that they are most used to not being understood. Everyone, however, knows what it is like to be misunderstood. Everyone goes through times when they feel that no one "gets" them. Everyone feels, occasionally, an uncrossable gulf yawning between them and even their closest friends.

There is a reason for this. It is important. It means something. In truth, each human being is unique because each human being: "is 'alone': this is to say that through his own humanity, through what he is, he is at the same time set into a unique, exclusive, and unrepeatable relationship with God himself" (John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body. 6:2). Each human person is, at his very core, utterly and irrevocably alone. That is why it is natural for everyone to feel at times like no one understands. No one gets you. Of course not. Only God can get you, because there is an aspect or facet of God that you, and you alone in all of time and space, were created to see and know and love. 

Gaze on that face of God, allow it to suffuse your being. Then share that being with the world, and you will find that you are unique and original, without having to look at yourself at all.

Prophetic Work

In a dream the angel said to me: “Lift up

O Man, prophetic voice to ask the world

‘Are you happy?’ Noting with compassion

The desperate dullness, unspoken in their eyes

Behind vehement affirmation.”

                                                            Why so shrill,

The gray voices of the elderly choir ladies,

Cracked, wavering, unmatched?

                                                        “You hear matter

Only, which has been only partially ruled

Since its Lord and Lady long ago

Abdicated their authority in rebellion

Surrendering to a spirit the world of things.

Atoms have not obeyed so well since then,

Atoms and the movements in between

In ear and air and throat.”

                                                Alas, I said,

Unruly matter! Such a clumsy tool

For so sublime a task.

                                       “Unruly matter?

Matter is innocent, docile to its law,

Perfect as ever it was. It is the spirit,

Unruly and therefore most unfit to rule,

Which bears the blame for this. The blame for all

Disharmony which plagues the life of man:

Unworship of molecular machines in cancerous cells, and

Of worms inside intestines, drinking blood, and

The preying of man upon his fellow man, and

The withering fear of being preyed upon, which

Shrinks the soul, bitters the tongue, pinches pennies.

The ownership of the poor by the middle class, who

Flatter themselves that they are not the rich, so

Not to blame.”

                        Complicit up to my eyeballs

I stood ashamed.

                              “Prophesy, O man,

And ask the world, ‘Are you happy?’ For all these crimes

Those curly heads and balding heads and gray

Trembling hands, enforce imperfect obedience

From dry larynx, arthritic knees, kyphotic spines,

Offering the very best of all their so,

So imperfect work. This we call “the Liturgy.”