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"Even before a child is capable of whispering a secret, he is always capable of playing Peekaboo. It is the most basic human game. Before 'I think, therefore I am,' there is something else: 'I hide, therefore I am.' Because I can withhold myself, this proves I exist. This is why Peekaboo is so delightful to a baby--because it involves the discovery that there is a self to withhold."
--Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty, pg 134.
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| "Good artists are people who can stick things together so that they stay
stuck. They know how to gather things into formal arrangements that are
intelligible, memorable, and lasting. Good forms confer health upon
the things that they gather together. Farms, families, and communities
are forms of art just as are poems, paintings, and symphonies. None of
these things would exist if we did not make them. We can make them
either well or poorly; this choice is another thing that we make."
Wendell Berry in Life is a Miracle
When we think about art and artists, we still tend to think in terms of the individual. There is nothing really wrong with that, and certainly individuals have different talents. But I think we can also learn something from the notion of collective art. Thinking of "farms, families, and communities" as works of art reveals an aesthetic dimension to these collective human endeavors. I disagree with those who would reduce ethics to aesthetics. Rather, I think of them as additive. Sometimes when you are having trouble finding the ethic behind an idea or institution or artifact it is helpful to look instead for the aesthetic that it embodies for a clue. It's just another way of saying that while the true the good and the beautiful are distinct, they never exist in isolation from each other.
Of course, the whole idea of a collective art itself springs from a particular aesthetic--one that privileges not spectacle, not uniformity, not even originality, but participation.
It is pro-creational.
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| Well, it's been a busy summer. My wife and I are getting settled in here in Iowa, but we still have a lot to do. I still haven't decided whether to continue this blog, but I thought I'd let my few readers know that I'm still around.
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A husband and wife were at a party chatting with some friends when the subject of marriage counseling came up.
"Oh, we'll never need that. My husband and I have a great
relationship," the wife explained. "He was a communications major in
college and I majored in theater arts. He communicates real well and I
just act like I'm listening." | | |
| The men's group at my church is reading John Eldredge's Wild at Heart together. I have read this book before, and I do not like it. It think much of the material is heretical, what isn't heretical amounts to psychobabble, and what isn't either heretical or psychobabble is little more than secular wisdom dressed up in a Christian veneer. You can read my earlier thoughts on the book here.
Even so, rather than cause controversy and stir up dissention in my church, I'm playing nice and reading along. One thing I learned from my graduate studies is that the first question to bring to any book you read is "What true thing is this author looking at?" So, I'm giving the book another honest chance to see what there is to learn. Even if you find that a book is horribly misguided, at least your own thinking has been strengthened by engaging it. So, here are my most recent thoughts on the book. In fact, I emailed these thoughts largely as written (sans these two introductory paragraphs  )to my pastor.
I've been doing some more reflecting on the wound (chapters 4 & 7) the last few days. I question whether such a thing really exists as Eldredge describes it, but I think we can find scriptural support to state that we are all broken and in need of healing.So, here's goes.
When
I push on the wound, so to speak, I find that the wound is not really
the problem. It's a result of the problem, a symptom. The real problem is
sin. It's the sin of our fathers. The only reason anyone gets a wound
is because our fathers are sinners like we are. They commit sins of
commission and sins of omission, and it wounds us. Maybe they fail to
bestow masculinity, which is part of their god-given responsibility.
[In a way, to pass something as important as our core identity on
through unreliable channels (other fallen humans) is foolish. But
isn't that just how God always works?] That's the thing with sin.
Most of all, it alienates people, including our fathers, from God, but
it also hurts the people around us. But there's more. It's also the sin
that is endemic to the fallen world that we were born into and in which
we still dwell. One way this manifests itself is in the fact that our culture is emasculating in many different ways.
Yet, we can point our fingers all we want, but we also have to
recognize that we, too, are culpable. It is also our sin. Maybe the wound (again, assuming that such a thing exists) is not our fault, but how we deal with it certainly is. It's our sin of self-absorption and
self-concern and self-pride. The reason the wound is able to fester is
because it not only wounds our heart, but our pride. The wound may not
be our fault, but we can't get healing for it and keep our pride. So, to summarize with different words, we sin against God and hurt other people, but other people also sin against God and hurt us. We live in a very nasty world. I think that might be the kernal of truth underneath Eldredge's talk about the "wound."
The only solution to sin is Christ. And along with that, Peter
says that it is by Christ's wounds that our wounds are healed. I know
that Peter is talking about persecution, but I think it can apply
here. In the verse, Peter says that "He himself bore our sins in his
body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for
righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." My Greek isn't
good enough to parse it out in detail, but I wonder if the phrase at
the end, "by his wounds you have been healed," isn't Peter revealing
the link between "die to sins" and "life for righteousness." It is the
link between what Christ has done for us and our following his pattern.
Christ heals, but "after" he removes our pride. And of course, we
are all still works in progress. I think I disagree just a tad with
Eldredge's read of Jeremiah on pgs 133-34. He is right that we now
have a new heart, but not completely. What we speak comes out of our
hearts, so to the extent that we sin against God and others with our
words, our hearts are still deceitful. The new heart business was begun in Christ, and will be completed in
Glory. In any case, we need to remember how it is given to us--in
Christ. What is more, just like the bestowal of masculinity generally,
our new heart is created in us by the Holy Spirit through the
proclamation of the gospel, which is carried in the mouths of other
people (especially other men). If it weren't all God through and
through, I'd say it was a pretty shaky plan.
So, the wound comes from sin in the mouths of other people, and
healing comes from the gospel in the mouths of other people. And,
being healed, we are empowered to "live for righteousness," and to
speak the gospel into the lives of other men. I just think we have to
remember that the gospel addresses its hearer's own sin at the same
time as it addresses their brokenness. The Bible never lets us get off
playing the victim.
But there's still more. Since it is God who deals with our sin,
and it is God who heals us, we cannot but acknowledge our utter
dependence on him in order to speak the gospel into the lives of other
men. That is, because we have been wounded, and healed, we can suffer
for others as Christ has suffered for us (2Pe 2:21). And that's the
deep mystery--that God deals with sin and the wounds that it entails
not by countering it as such, but by incorporating it into his plan.
So the amazing thing is, we can ultimately come to see our wound not
merely as healed, but as a foundation for ministry.
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