Totally unconventional

I've been interested in the wilder and unconventional aspects of Andy Warhol for sometime and particularly the spontaneous elements when he, with film clips etc, together with the Velvet Underground improvised together in the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (EPI) multimedia performance art show. I happened on a PBS show about him and this event really caught my imagination. What also caught me is that the EPIs took place in 1966-67 and many elements now form an accepted part of art installations. Yet much of the worship arts and content of spiritual events do not have a participatory spontaneity within their practice.

It seems that that Warhol was a Eastern Rite Catholic and attended church regularly, though his lifestyle and values were less than conventional and many would say unChristian. I was interested to note the claim that in Warhol's eulogy John Richardson depicted his faith as devout: "To my certain knowledge, he was responsible for at least one conversion. He took considerable pride in financing his nephew's studies for the priesthood". You may like him, or hate him, or like me simply be challenged to think more about life because of him.

I am still interested in the participatory spontaneity as a possibility within the worship arts and sometime ago I produced a backing track for part of a larger Passion/Easter reflection project which I hope one day will happen. Elements I had planned were words and phrases from Isaiah 53 to be called or shouted out and images and film reflecting the passion of Christ to be blended with this, together with other possibilities.

(click here for streaming audio)

The Pain of God

In May 2003 I was feeling pretty broken, feeling the effects of rejected love and dealing with a lot of unfinished business in my life. I was also reading profusely and had been thinking a lot about The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen. On Monday May 12th I read the whole of Theology of the Pain of God by Kazoh Kitamori, a Japanese theologian. In my journal notes I recorded :-

"The fact of Jesus Christ becomes the fact of the Gospel only when seen as the fact of the love of God enfolding us. Only when the birth and death of Jesus Christ as seen as the "pain of God' and his resurrection as the "love rooted in the pain of God" do these facts become the fact of the gospel." ... "The love of God which loves only those who love, fear and obey God may be called simply "God's Love." But the love which loves sinners who become his enemies is called "God's love rooted in the pain of God." And the "pain of God" means this coexistence of the wrath of God with the love of God in tension."

Kitamori wrote further :-

"To forgive is to forget... However the pain, if real, penetrates the one who forgives and issues forth in the intent love. ...Forgiveness exhibits its true nature and pain proves to be real, only when intent love enfolds others, forgetting its pain."

Through my life I have the awesome experience of being aware of people's inner lives and frequently their pain and tears have become a part of my journey in life. Yesterday a student told me that when younger she learned that despair leads people to death and now years on she knows it is true both physically and mentally. All I can do is watch, care, monitor for I feel all I can do is to extend an intentional love and bring the God of hope to them. It is important to me that people should never cry alone.

On Tuesday morning May 13th 2003, the day after reading about the pain of God, I drew the image of the heart being held together by the hair which was growing buds. (As I write now I remember the woman who came to Jesus and washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.) Later that Tuesday night I dreamt I was in the garden clearing up and it was getting more and more muddy and more and more water was coming from inside the house. Everything was becoming waterlogged even though there was a slope for runoff. I went inside and could see the water was coming from a pipe in the lounge. There was no wrench to be found and the tool I found wouldn't do the job of switching off the water. I wasn't worried or distressed by this.

Kitamori asserted towards the end of his book, "Only by the sustaining hand of transcendental grace at this moment can the study of pain be pursued." I, in writing now, am also a recipient and continuing receiver of that grace.

Taking things apart

You know perhaps that I love to take things apart literally and conceptually. I've never done that to a cello and never will; though I am building a cello out of bits from other places, not necessarily originally a cello. It's the reverse action where I put things together to see if they will work together as a cello.

Often something that doesn't work requires a minor repair. I've assembled a family of formerly broken folding wooden chairs. Some have come from the garbage thrown away, though a few also came from garage sales sold cheaply because they wobble. One came with a broken foot and I had to put a metal pin to repair it. Others I have taken apart and re-glued the complete frame. The most ambitious projects have been folding pews left outside so the wooden veneer was cracked, warped and broken. I had to split, steam and re-bend the wood before applying glue to the hot pliable wood and clamping the peieces together. With my family of orphaned chairs, oddly I can still tell you where each came from.

I love to take things apart to see if I can make them work again. My microwave's door latch stopped locking - I took the door apart and deduced how it worked and what had broken and figured out a fix. I have taken apart all my broken tape answer machines though my successful repairs are zero for four so far.

Today I had to write a reflection on what elements have affected my adult learning. I think being diagnosed as short-sighted/near-sighted quite late has made me a listener i.e. an audio learner rather than visual learner, and because I never learned to read through reading aloud, I became a speed reader lacking the habit of subvocalisation. Probably the greatest effect of all this has been that writing became a speaking activity for me and as I write I am discovering what I think because I am out of synch with the action of writing and conscious reflection. Writing is literally talking to myself or having a discussion with myself. The oddest effect is re-reading what I wrote after a long gap. Both academically and in my journals reviewing creates a new consciousness because the moment of thought has been lost.

I believe this is something akin to Paul Riceour's second naivete, the last of a 3 stage movement. The "first naivete" signifies the human's embededness in the symbolic foundations of their world and for me this is the act of writing. "Critical distance" signifies their use of interpretive structures to create distance from the symbol systems. Here this is the act of hearing my writing and taking it in as a conversation. The action of reading what I have written and re-reading becomes an act of interpretation and taking apart the ideas which is the "Second naivete". It signifies the human interpretive stance, informed by the use of critical models, open to a deeper understanding of symbols and meaning.

The Aged Cello

I found this little animated sequence to music by Arvo Part called The Aged Cello, you can play it here on this page below or (you can download it here). The music is melancholic befitting the instrument. However there's a strangeness I find in the title and theme which is Should aging be sad? The cello as an instrument itself has a melancholic tonal quality but valuable cellos are old and in fact age is valued in them for the better seasoned wood and sonority. This seems to reveal a Western cultural value or attitude. It also reminds me of issues I've raised in discussions about mentoring with the twenty somethings for over a year now. At core they are issues of relying on peer mentoring for significant spiritual growth rather than seeking for older and deeper experience. I have been reading for a course on critical thinking and one item struck me, intellectual humility. This trait I think is also an indicator of growth, knowing what you don't know, whether it be in academia, spiritual faith development or other aspects of our lives. This is humility, a true self-awareness when we measure ourselves either the corpus of human knowledge or even more so against the greatness of God, we discover the need for more wisdom.

Film and Spirituality

Film I think is another form of visual journalling.

Tonight I went to the first of eight movies shown under the theme of "The Love of God". This is not a conventional Christian series as the opener was The Motorcycle Diaries under the title of Kingdom meditation. This is the story of young Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado who began a journey by motorcycle across South America in 1952. Their encounters bring changes to their worldview and values and in a sense they are transformed by the poverty, by their encounters, by the generosity and hospitality they meet.

This film series seeks to address the Love of God by asking:-

• What is love?
• How do I love?
• What stops me from loving? What happens when I love in an authentic manner?

For me, I am struck by a particular point where Guevara and Alberto end up at the San Paolo Leper colony in Peru. The low-contagious patients live on one bank of this wide deep river and the staff and doctors etc live on the opposite bank. I could see this incongruity being considered by the 24 year old trainee doctor Ernesto (the later revolutionary). At the conclusion of his birthday party with the staff, he exits and looks across the river to where the patients are and declares 'I want to celebrate my birthday with them.' An asthmatic he almost foolhardily jumps into the river and begins his long swim. The staff and friend call for him to come back, the lepers come out hearing the shouting and realize who is coming to them and encourage him... helping him out of the water as he completes the almost impossible.

For me, love and solidarity have a strong association. How can you love the leper when you place them on the other side of a wide river? Guevara responded with a solidarity noticing the presence of the river and the separation it caused, You can see the beginnings of a solidarity right at the start shaking the hands of the lepers without gloves. I notice love includes a refusal to conform, based on love as communion and love as robust concern and love as valuing. (see my earlier post) Furthermore I am constantly struck by those claiming to have concern for a given group, live somewhere else, or they erect either physical, conceptual, or programatic barriers.

Tonight's reflection notes were prepared within the tradition of Ignatian spirituality and one paragraph sticks out to me.

"Many projects and enterprises claim to be from God; many leaders use spiritual, religious, moral and ethical arguments to validate their ways of proceeding. Ignatius [in his Spiritual Exercises], instead, insists that it is God who does the choosing, not humans. They might try to conscript God into their own projects and dramas. But God's ways are not human ways, and the Spirit blows where it wills. The things and qualities we consider important .... in service to God do not matter to God ... [What matters is being] human with all the flaws and glories of being human, when being human asks us always to go beyond ourselves, and to move from sincerity to authenticity."

Let the world change you ... and you can change the world declares The Motorcycle Diaries. Our mass media and charity fund raising is generating compassion fatigue and we are in danger of not feeling anything anymore. But an authentic Christian spirituality, which includes wonder, declares "Let the world touch me. I will not avoid the feelings whether good or painful I will accept them and set my face towards God. " Guevara ultimately cannot set his face towards God rather sets it against injustices and the evils he sees.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 2 Cor 1:3-4

More about spiritual senses

Choosing life or death? The hand is from Michelangelo's Adam in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I drew this in August 2003 and as I reflected I wrote "Adam is recumbent, almost lacksadaisical, nonchalant, indifferent reaching out half heartedly to God ... I feel a lack of commitment as if leaning forwards to receive from God was too great an effort." Notice the inclination to the hand. I find drawing brings to sight the issues and attitudes deep within me. The spiritual senses are only semi-metaphorical because the physical senses are somehow linked.

In the main, concepts about the spiritual senses come from the early Fathers of the Church. However they are framed in spiritual growth terms and are linked metaphorically to the physical senses. The most striking piece (contra to my earlier posting) I found smell is the opening sense. Here I'm indebted to Thomas Keating's writings.

"The spiritual sense of smell is manifested by an inner attraction for prayer, solitude and silence--to be still and wait upon God with loving attention. ... The spiritual sense of touch is more intimate than the sense of smell and the attraction to the delightful perfume of God's presence. The divine touch, like the divine perfume, is not a bodily sensation. Rather it is as if our spirit were touched by God or embraced. ... A still more profound communication of God is the spiritual sense of taste. ... When we taste something, we usually consume it and transform it into ourselves; it becomes a part of us. ... When our whole being is rooted in God, we see him in everything and everything in him."

I am also surprised to find similar movements in the Protestant Methodist tradition in the writings of John Fletcher.

"Sometimes the spiritual eye is opened first, ... Then the believer-in a divine, transforming light ... reads the scriptures with new eyes; ... and everywhere it testifies of the One whom his soul now loves. ... Thus he beholds, believes, wonders, and adores; sight being the noblest sense ... Perhaps his spiritual ear is first opened. He knows, by the gracious effect that it is the voice of Him who once said `Let there be light'. ... Perhaps Christ will manifest Himself to the spiritual feeling. ... This manifestation is generally of the least order ... they [will not] be fully satisfied, until they find that the effects of this manifestation are lasting, or until they obtain clearer ones by means of the nobler senses-the sight or hearing of the heart."

I realise now the importance of sight as the pre-eminent sense used to express a movement to greater experience of the presence of God. Here I note the feminist critique of looking as objectification or capture but theologically this spiritual sight of seeing is because this seeing is secondary. The timeless God necessarily sees before, during, and after simultaneously.

A sense of wonder for the adult

Is this a violin or viola or cello? It's difficult but if you heard it then it would be possible, except when in the hands of a maestro the cello can confuse the ear. But any string player would look and say it's not a violin or viola because the shape is wrong. Just look at the shoulders! The cello is not simply a large violin. It's proportions are dramatically different and if you were to predict its voice from its shape you'd find it deeper and more sonorous than a guitar which is in the same pitch range. But even a non-musician can guess simply because I lean towards and I am inclined to only place pictures of cellos. Your foreknowledge of me provides a context to believe it is a cello.

Somehow today I have continued to talk and think about the presence of God and knowing God and how all this fits into human development with yet another conversation partner. I have been unhappy for a while with definitions of human faith development which focus upon the necessity or value-loaded presumption that movement forwards is always superior and better. In fact Jesus seems to suggest children and the poor seemed to be in a better position to have a relationship with God.

My conversations with a student climaxed in a story of a 2 year child and the wonder in her eyes as she collected leaves and her saying why she had to collect so many ... 'cos they were all different'... We both agreed there is a deep sense of wonder that comes in children which we lose but can catch for a moment.

While I was using the internet as a catalyst to form my ideas, I realised that many believe it is important to preserve a child's sense of wonder. Strangely there seems less material on how adults might recover the sense of wonder that has been lost. In spirituality, wonder seems to be confined to experience and specifically to developing intimacy with God in the aesthetic beauty of the created world. I'm OK with this if this includes a way of seeing and maintains a difference between creator and created. But it feels limited and dry conceptually even if it is rich experientially. Wonder has cognitive dimensions. Wonder in children is a wide-eyedness, they see almost what is there because there is an uncluttered uninhibited clarity which becoming adult removes. But I think adult wonder will have something in common with a child's wonder such as a similarity in seeing but it is not qualitatively the same. A child's wonder is infectious and adults and especially parents can catch a moment of it. But it is rarer for an adult to pass it onto a child or another adult!

This initially seems to run counter to my maxim that sincerity is not enough, proficiency is required. We cannot return to our childhood but we can be like children and learn to look and see in a similar way. Perhaps if our proficiency in wonder could make wonder contagious.

learning to look, hear, etc and learning faith

Dreams, dreams, dreams - This photo has to be a photoshop construction. The birds are the wrong size relative to everything else unless they are huge birds like pelicans. The cellist is too far out in the wash. The perspective and composition seems to be all wrong. Furthermore the end point seems to be on the middle of the left side running through from the cellist and from the wedding couple but the other elements don't support it. Just why am I looking at this picture? The romantic sweetness of the picture is not enough to overcome the incongruities of cellist in the ocean waves and the disruption caused by an almost solid line of birds two thirds up the photograph creating a false ceiling. Just what am I meant to be looking at? When I think about it learning to look is an important component to art, while learning to hear is equally important to music, and I suppose learning to taste and smell are essential to the culinary arts.

Yesterday I had two very important conversations about knowing the voice of God/recognising the hand of God/ seeing God at work and knowing that it was God. The language we use of God is semi-metaphorical because it uses sensory language see, hear, and touch. Sometime the Biblical "taste and see " is added but strangely I've never heard the fifth sense smell used. I think the language is only semi-metaphorical because although we use the language of the five senses the sensory dimension to the divine activity in human existence is not literally sensory but still impinges physical reality. There is a point where things are clearly of God or not of God. Of course there are times when you can't make a clear decision and other times when you can. I can see that a part of maturing in the spiritual life is living in the ambiguities of uncertainty which are yet rooted in former moments of certainty. Put another way there are moments in our lives where God has to shout to attract our attention but the rest of the time God simply whispers away and sometime we think we hear and other we don't. We also have to learn to overcome our selective deafness to only hearing what we want to hear. But then later things change.

As I've already reflected on it, the dark night (see the labels) is a period in transition to bring us to lose the sensory crutches and have only faith alone. Using sight and hearing and whatever language we wish to use to indicate an absence of God, this is darkness, deafness, a period of no longer feeling the presence. This is a call to cast our prayers into the darkness in the faith that there is a God to hear and act which is called the road of purgation in classic spirituality.

Is it or isn't it?

Is this a cello or not a cello? It’s called a theremin cello and was invented in the late 1920's by Leon Theremin who was incidentally a cellist. Lacking strings, it has a flexible plastic film fingerboard which, when touched, produces a tone electronically. Leon Theremin is not holding a bow rather a control lever. Is the instrument a cello? The verdict is out at the moment but I'm fascinated by it but sadly not sure I can ever get my hands on one to decide.

I’ve been thinking recently about what love is and what it is not? I think I've fallen in love seriously three times in my life. What was it the rest of the time? As life has gone on I’ve learned to distinguished between love, lust and obsession within human relationships but what makes love love. I've trying to think this through philosophically, theologically and psychologically. This isn't the end of my thinking but a pause to record things. (two websites have helped 1 & 2)

Formerly I have rejected definitions that love is a physical or hormonal thing but it might contribute to the state of being in love i.e. the experience. Yesterday sitting in service I was thinking and finally rejected the idea that love is an emotion because emotions or feelings are part of the experience of being in love. Philosophically there seem to be three points of view. 1/Love as communion - which creates a “we”, a community, 2/ Love as robust concern - which takes seriously choice and will in dealing with altruism, and 3/ Love as valuing the other - this may take the form of judging the loved as having worth, or the placing of value on the other. I think these are quite helpful to provide a deeper and less causal and casual understanding when we take them as motivational towards the goal of Christian spirituality being to fall deeper and deeper in love with God.

Theologically, when I consider Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind... I note I have still have much to learn about different understandings of the human person, but I will assert that love is set separately from emotions and cognition and even the will. I have come to understand through many conversations this summer and Saturday's re-reading of Martin Buber, (see previous post), I think love is not a relationship, not something one person can have alone, but the mutuality of an I-Thou relationship. I noticed that Buber wrote a postscript to the second edition of I and Thou which I think is helpful.

As a Person God gives personal life, he makes us as persons become capable of meeting with him and with one another. But no limitation can come upon him as the absolute Person ... The [hu]man who turns to him therefore need not turn away from any other I-Thou relation; but [t]he[y] properly bring... them to him, and let... them be fulfilled "in the face of God.

This takes a deeper significance if we accept that God is love. A recent study caused us to compare a Chinese translation and the Greek/English versions of 1 John. The predicate construction around the verb to be exposes two possibilities, (as I see it, though I am not a Greek scholar), 1/ love as adjective naming a quality of God or 2/ love as noun God is literally love and love is God. In terms of the first, I think in human terms we can only really know love and see love in practice and not God. In the second God defines what is authentically love by being love.

Cello and human relationships

From 2001, Cello is a robotic sound installation, which combines autonomous behavior with interaction by Beatriz da Costa. The cello sort of tunes itself and then plays a set of simple phrases. Each phrase is repeated until somehow it is played correctly and moves on to the next. However if you get too close it will stop playing and act irritated.

Strangely the poor thing is never programmed to reach satisfaction. The cello is an instrument which is demanding for the technology to play and the feedback loop which assesses the robot's ability to perform is perfectionist and never satisfied.

Technology is an amazing thing. but my relationship to these objects is one of ambivalence when compared to more organic items. My electric cello has no identity nor relationship for me it is a thing and objectified. However my wooden cracked cello and I have an interesting relationship. (Read the earlier post) A recent discussion with a student has caused me to revisit Martin Buber's I and Thou and reconsider a key point. Buber sets an either/or situation where relationships can either be I-Thou or I-it. His focus seems to be human to human relationships and I had assumed that an I-Thou relationship with a thing, an object without consciousness was impossible.

Strangely as I reflected over the different relationships I have with my scarred cello and my electric cello I can find fundamental differences. They are at core best expressed in the difference between I-Thou and I-it relationships. My organic acoustic cello has the quality of being more autonomous than an electric cello. I feel Buber's insight rings now true.

Every particular Thou is a glimpse through to the eternal Thou; by means of every particular Thou the primary word addresses the eternal Thou. Through this mediation of the Thou of all beings fulfilment and non-fulfilment, of relations comes to them: the inborn Thou is realised in each relation and consummated in none. It is consummated only in the direct relation with the Thou that by its nature cannot become It. [i.e. the eternal Thou]

I feel that all relationships have the potential to reflect the I-eternal Thou. Now I have to consider music and the cello has that potential also. But we must be wary because there is strong tendency to confuse aesthetics i.e. beauty with spirituality. But Buber placed spirituality or transcendence in relationship and in particular with reference to the eternal Thou. In the robotic sound installation the cello has no relationship it lacks two-foldness as I-Thou and I-it - there is no player, there is no I and there is no ultimate Thou. However my electric and I have the potential for an I-Thou if consummated in the context of the eternal Thou.

By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgement is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. John 5:20