An Artist with a Prophetic Voice

Click on the post title to read a letter to North American churches written by Makoto Fujimura. He is an abstract impressionist with a prophetic and learned voice.

History vs. News

C. S. Lewis once said that you didn't need to read the papers. If something really bad happened your neighbor would tell you. One of Twain's characters remarked that newspapers go and fetch everyones' bad news and lay it at your doorstep. Lewis argued that God did not make us big enough to bear the weight of the world. We are not psychologically capable of taking in so much bad news. God designed us to live in small communities, not in global villages. He made us to nourish our souls on permanent things, not the ephemeral news that passes away with the next update. This is why a steady diet of history, especially redemptive history, is better for us than constantly checking the news or watching television, much of which is trivial.

Thoreau: Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.

William Ralph Inge: Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.

C.S. Lewis: If it is not eternal, then it is eternally out of date.

G. K. Chesterton: The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.

Russell Kirk: In essence, the conservative person is simply one who finds the permanent things more pleasing than Chaos and Old Night.

E. F. Schumacher: Small is beautiful.

Isaiah 40:8: The grass withers, the flower fades,

but the word of our God will stand forever.

Out of the Mouth of Babes

Last night after my six year old Kate and I returned from a bike ride in the park, and she was getting ready for her bedtime story (The Magician's Nephew), she remarked "I love life. Better than being an animal." I smiled, and she added, "I can't believe I'm a person!" Then pointing to her forehead and crossing her eyes at her forefinger rested there she said, "I'm her!" Then getting tickled at herself and giggling madly said, "I can't believe I'm a freak!"

It reminded me that we didn't create ourselves. Life is something we discover. It's a gift meant to be a joy, not a problem to be brooded over or depressed about. I once read this quote:

We try to teach children about life. They try to teach us what life's about.

Ah! They often know, better than we do, the art of living. The Lord speaks to us, sometimes philosophically, "out of the mouth of babes" (Ps. 8:2).

If God Made It, It's Interesting

This is an argument for well-roundedness. If God made it, the appropriate response is not the flip "I don't like it" or "I'm not big on it." But the response doesn't have to be "I like it" either. The most interesting questions are "What is God doing here?" "How can I appreciate it?" "How can this make me more human?"

If it's been warped and perverted by the devil the question might be, even as we turn away, "How can I redeem this?" "What can I learn from this?"

If God made us for this earth and this earth for us and us for him, we don't do ourselves any favors if we look at something He made and then died to redeem, and say "I think I'll be bored."

Stomping Grounds

To wrap up London, we were also guests at the Tower of London where we saw the royal crown jewels, which sports the biggest cut diamond in the world and looked about the size of a lemon. The outer walls looked to be well-over ten feet thick and then you had another wall around the tower itself. The tower could only be entered by steps leading about thirty feet up the side. In an emergency the steps could be set on fire, leaving the enemy on the outside looking up. The walls also concealed perriers, which were small catapults, that launched massive projectiles that could take out three enemy soldiers at time. It turns out that only two prisoners have ever escape, and one was a priest who received a rope in a bottle of alcoholic beverage. I'll drink to that. Cheers!

In Westminster Abbey we saw Darwin's tomb in the floor of the church. At the top of the archway into the chancel there is a protruding face with tongue sticking out right above Darwin's final resting place. It turns out that the architect didn't care too much for Darwin's theory of unintelligent design! Pun intended.

On our last day in England, we spent the whole day stomping around the royal palace of Hampton Court, where Henry VIII liked to pass his time in luxurious country living. He was buff in his younger years but wasn't much for roughing it. I believe it was here or at Windsor, where Henry hosted emperor Maximillian and got into a fighting match with the young ruler. Report has it that Max knocked Henry on his bum, and Henry found it difficult to turn the other cheek. Wink, wink ....

It was hear that I had my first scone with jam and clotted creme. What a delicacy! Clotted creme is like the creamiest ice cream or frozen custard you've ever tasted, but it's served warm and doesn't melt, except in your mouth. Needless to say, it was delicious beyond belief, and I spent the rest of the day working off the calories in Henry's  sixty acres of gardens.  The gardens contained some of the most beautiful sights and smells on the trip, especially a huge walled rose garden almost the size of a football field!  

There are also over 170 chimneys of red brick and each one is of a unique and usually elaborate design. The small Tudor chapel was one of the most ornate spaces I've ever seen, and I've been in the Vatican! The whole interior reminded me of the Renaissance interiors of Italy. Henry VIII certainly set out to impress. There was also a huge maze of hedgerows where we took many wrong turns until finally popping out. 

Stay tuned for Scotland ....

Nature and Grace in the Public Space

Our Headmaster, Chris Baker, gave a lecture today and spoke about how modern secularism has separated nature and grace. He went on to enumerate the consequences in art, architecture, and music. My class and I saw the fragmentation that has resulted but also a kind of broken beauty that peaks through and resonates at times with the glorious ruin that we are. He also showed the stark contrast between modern art and that of the Renaissance, which still largely retained clear delineating lines, order, and realism.

This led me to think about the relationship between nature and grace. Since the fall we have been in dire need of special grace for salvation while a common grace, where God "sends rain on the just and the unjust," has continued to preserve us despite periods of terrible drought. There is also drought that cracks the cultural landscape, when we, as a society, lose touch with special and common grace. Nature here does not refer merely to the natural world of rocks, trees, and animals but all of creation including human nature and culture. Nature is what is natural as distinct from grace which is supernatural. Grace replenishes and rectifies nature so that we can envision its redemption. But when we try to isolate nature from grace in order to secularize society, we end up with ugly consequences.

Chris pointed out that when we began to lose God's input in art, images of man and landscapes began to smudge. Clear lines blurred and we were left with impressions, surreal bits and pieces, mere cubes, expressions of painful interior experiences, and even machine like depictions of man.

Let me paraphrase Chesterton: The separation of nature and grace does not leave us with the natural but with the unnatural. O' Lord give us grace in our personal lives that we may transmit it to a society in need of you.

Can We Say "Good" without God?

I've been watching the Hitchens and Wilson debate at Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia (click on title for the link). Wilson says there's no way to call anything true, good, or beautiful without God. Then Hitchens goes on explaining how atheists and people with no religious confession have produced some of the truest, most ethical, and beautiful cultural goods.

It seems to me that we're not saying atheists can't produce objects of the most magnificent beauty, but that there's no way to call them beautiful unless God exists. Anytime we say, "That's beautiful," about a sunset, we're not just appealing to our own subjective sense of beauty. We are also appealing to an objective standard of beauty beyond ourselves. There is a beauty behind all other beauties that makes beauty a coherent concept common to all people.

But what about when people disagree over whether the sunset is beautiful. Well most people agree on sunsets, but when we're talking about a cloudy, cold, winter day or a piece of modern art, we appeal to that God defined beauty when we argue that the day has its own kind of barren beauty or the piece of art is beautiful or not.

When we call something ugly we also appeal to an objective standard that has been violated. When we say Hitler was wrong we assume a moral standard beyond our feelings to which he was accountable. To paraphrase Lewis, we can't posit evil in the world unless we posit an object standard of good beyond the world.