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.

Nada te Turbe

Nada te Turbe.

Neither depths nor heights,

Neither length nor breadth,

Neither pleasure nor pain,

Nothing can separate

The ocean from its bed.

Nada

I shall not be perturbed,

I shall not be turbulent,

I shall not be disturbed,

Neither shall my soul be turbid anymore.

Nada te Turbe

Once I looked up to see the point

Of an iron spike in a sinister hand

Stabbing down upon me. I shook with fear

And thrashed and splashed away, but the spike passed

Through my heart and left not a single mark.

Nada.

And now I rest in limpid clarity

For well I know no evil in the world

Can harm me. No knife in the world

Can harm the sea.

Nada te Turbe.

I rest undisturbed, calm, at peace

Salt made sweet and ever filled

By water flowing from the Temple’s side

Opened by a Lance.

Transparent, the all but infinite sea He holds

In the hollow of His hand. And I drip

Through the hole left by the spike,

Mingled,

Lost in His Blood.

Nada te Turbe.

The Busy Mystic

I turn away with an ineffable sense of loss,

From the overwhelming presence of the thunderous Dove

To the silence of Monday morning push and shove.

But then amid the rush and rumble and toss,

In traffic, the grocery line, or while arguing with my boss

I pause and looking up I see above

My heart the piercéd Corpus, dripping Love.

I have never been elsewhere but at the foot of the Cross.

Here I stand, not by my will, but bidden

By numbered bones, flayed back and riven side;

Invited, asked for, called at His behest.

In silence, in safety, from the shallower “me” well hidden

“Thou” workest, transforming my “I” from deep inside

The camouflage of business.

                                                             Ite! Missa Est.