More stuff learned it seems

Scince this autumn, when we went to NY, and I spent 5 hours in the Metropolitan Museum, I've pondered the exhibition of Giorgio Mordani works in the Lehman collection. I find these simple still lifes and few landscapes that he did between 1920 and the early 1960s fascinating: they're grayed out, with some limited color range and contrast; the brushwork in the still lifes is is made of long strokes, left to right, with some up and down movement. In the Landscapes the brushwork is more vigorous.
What I think he does is what Merleau Ponty and other positivists talk about "describing more to understand better." To Morandi you have to look beyond the repetition of subject matter and the tonality. What he's done is limit himself. Part of that limitation is to ask himself What it is that he needs to do in a painting - what is a painting? So with this limitation of artistic vocabulary he set out to translate the intensity of his gaze onto the canvas: that is, the canvas becomes the site of a translation of the object through the subjectivity of the painter. For Morandi I think the task is that this gaze not be a glancing blow - in a way his method is the opposite of Monet's: not impressionistic though certainly not given over to detail. I feel I really know the objects Morandi paints, even though the duration of his application is belied by paucity of detail. what comes through in paint is the density and silence of the objects and their arrangement.
What I've pondered is how to apply this to myself. Certainly it's a lesson in paint - and paint is a lesson in life. I ask myself What is essential to me? What can I limit myself to? The thing is not to paint Morandis anymore than Morandi painted Cezannes or Cezanne painted Pousins. Morandi's work is entirely unique to himself. Much as Sean Scully's work is: you know what you'll get with him, but you're surprised all the same.
And so it is.
Along with this I've pondered Donald Kuspit's Art Criticism issue of the last year - a survey of the last 90 or so years of art making. I'm surprised at how conversant he is with Freud Klein and Bion; and it's that association he makes with art as healing that strikes me in his whole argument. Basically he argues against the formalism that took hold in midcentury and the ironic vantage point that brackets that formalism in the 1920s and the 1990s. I've approached art in formalistic terms for many years (the subject of painting is paint, the materiality of the materials, etc) and I have to say that something in Kuspit's argument touched me. Certainly I've thought of my art as a psychic necessity for me but have not considered whether it might heal those viewing it. Jami has helped me here, pointing out how Out of Chaos, the painting I painted in chapel, affected the congregation and her. It's true, people approached me afterwards and commented on how moving it was to watch during the week's services the painting change and unfold.
Kuspit's text has made me look more closely at Beuys and Rauschenberg and Hesse, as well as wondering what I've accepted too readily in Johns and Duchamp.

Things I think I've learned

One day Jesus casually tells his disciiples that it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. It's quite a hyperbole, saying more than is necessary to say that it would be impossible - for the most part. But Christ doesn't say it would be impossible, only that it would conurre up the image of a camel, somehow, passing through the eye of a needle.
It occured to me that one way to invision this, considering that a camel is in viewing distance, is to imagine someone holding the needle to their eye. With their eye looking through the eye, and being a sufficient distance away, the image of the camel indeed passes through the eye of a needle. You have to admit that this is the only practical way to get a camel through a needle's eye. Off course thte camel remains a fixed distance away; the observer can approach only so far before the camel ceases to pass through the eye into the person's eye. The person's eye was considered by the ancients to the be the window of the soul. So in my imagining Jesus is refering to wealth's relationship to the soul as a quality of entering the kingdom of heaven.
A camel is a means of conveying wealth for long journeys.
The person who would view their camel laden wealth through the needle's eye cannot ride it, cannot even get very close to it. Their wealth remains, not at hand, but at the limits of their horizon. It can more easily be used by others than by its owner.
Jesus' saying relates to his parable of the rich man responding to his abundance by building bigger barns - hoarding his wealth at hand. Through the eye of a needle we might look at our possessions, our house, our cars, our land, our cash, and ask ourselves Would you really give this in exchange for your soul?
What has value when seen through the eye of a needle? A thread perhaps that we might mend a garmet with or that we might stitch a wound with. Consider the use of the needle: how it changes the nature of the wealth, from something hoarded to something that can heal, something that can bring the fabric of our lives together.
Jesus' invitation is not just that wealth be given away, but that it be used to heal the souls of others. When used for healing wealth is taken into the fabric of the kingdom. The rich man divests his wealth not as the price of admission, but in acknowledgement of being in relationship with God and with the community of faith.
When we look through the eye of a needle we see all we have as not ours but as the warp and woof of the kingdom, a tapestry we've participated in, but which ultimate artistry is God's.

What I've learned just a few days ago

The other night I had two insights: here is one. I was thinking about the pericope where Jesus' disciples ask to have their faith increased and Jesus' response is that if they had faith like a mustard seed they'd be able to toss a mountain into the sea through some kind of ttelekinesis. The telekinesis part is what gets emphasized in most uses of this text. Usually there is an exhortation to take risks, or some method of building faith is put forth - the focus being on the image of tossing the mountain into the sea, as if Jesus here is saying, "I want you all to toss mountains into the sea, or Faith is therefore the belief in impossible things - ergo Throw away your crutches, don't take your insulin; or else Ask for anything, no matter how outlandish, and if you have faith you'll get that rocket-powered cadilac bass boat sauna.
What I think happens here si that Jesus doesn't tell them how to increase their faith. A mustard seed could care less about tossing mountains into the sea. In fact the image Jesus crafts is of an insignificant seed growing and becoming what it is meant to be. Nothing could be less dramatic. Nothing could require less telekinesis - which is a good thing because telekinesis doesn't work.
Jesus describes a seed, and it doesn't matter if it's a mustard seed, it could have been a cotton seed - a seed is unlike what it will be and at the same time can become nothing else. A seed is more likely to be eaten by the bird than to provide a nest for it. Yet even in this event the seed emerges fertilized and able to grow.
It's almost as if Christ is telling them: Have faith to be who you are.
Eventually the mustatrd seed does grow and becomes a place of refuge for the birds that threatened to consume it.
Perhaps the disciples request springs from that story of Elijah and Elisha where Elisha wants to get Elijah's power. The disciples realizing that they're incapable of doing what Jesus does have begun to reckon that they may eventually be on their own with their own traveling messiah show and they got nothing. So they say We got nothing. Increase our faith. And Jesus is like So you'd like to throw a mountain into the sea? Who do you think you are? I'll telll you who you are: you're a mustard seed. You're not Vesuvius. You're a seed, a germ of what you could be. If you could only have the faith to be who you are you would really be something. A bush for instance doesn't seem like much. See I'm tying a donkey to one right now. I could uproot this with some effort - but why? Would I then plant it in the sea? What would be the point?
Have faith to be who you are. You are disciples. Have faith that that is good enough. Have faith that you don't need the largest house. Have faith that you lead by serving. Have faith that your life is in loving one another and sharing out of your abundance. Have faith that what you have is abundance and that you don't need to hoard. Have the faith of the birds and the grass.Have the faith to Be in the moment. To live in the present. And if you do this you will form a connumity that offers refuge to a world that now threatens to swallow you. That is who you are. That is the faith that is in you.

What I've learned lately

What have I learned? That age, wisdom, and friendship aren't necessarily enough to wean a person from the sound of his own voice. They try to teach us this in CPE, or I should say, we try to learn this in CPE. That the progression is something like presence, and wisdom and then guidance - and that "then" should be a good length. I'm still learning this.
At times I ask myself How is it possible to know so many of life's answers? Isn't this the very problem of Job's friends: Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar and Elihu? They're all philosophers. And they demonstrate in their speech that they have no stake in their friend, Job's, life; they have a stake only in their theories, the sound of their voices, echoing wisdom that sounds so right. Their words fit like finely crafted bricks walling a magnificent house.
And this is why these words don't work for Job: he is walled in by them. He is walled behind them like the Character in Poe's Cask of Amaltiado. And his friend's have done it in the best of intentions.
So the question is How do we separate our intentions from what we do? That is How do we do the good we intend, or the best good, we mean to intend? And how do we avoid scuttling real pastoral work under the cloak of intending good? Of course the answers are well known: beginning with James' admonition to be slow to speak and quick to listen.
My wife, Jami, reminded me as well that it's important to ask real questions. She's so much more Socratic than I am: ask questions that allow the other person to express their need.
Certainly Job's friends don't engage him on this level: that he might know and be able to come to his own conclusions - and that he should be allowed to rest in those conclusions.
We all think we know best for each other. It's that log in our eye and the mote in our sister's and brother's eye problem that remains with us.
How do we ask What is this log in my eye? The log in my eye is the projection of my desire onto others: my desire to solve life's conundrums and create a world in conformity to my own speech. The log in my eye is the rehersed bits of wisdom I've cobbled together. Job brings his worries to his friends and receives four logs in essence. How can he carry them? He refuses, which causes his friends to produce more logs. They never say He must have a good reason for refusing to carry our logs.
What if we refused to carry our logs as well? I think what I need to do is develop a muscle of spirit that shuts my mouth when invitations to advice are offered. A muscle that senses the inflation of my best intentions, a sense of when I'm driving into my blind spot.
Isn't that the healing stance I would want to receive from others. Certainly the pastoral goal is not the rehersing of wisdom but the healing of souls. And so the question is What is the place of healing here? - whenever we receive an invitation to promulgate wisdom. That there is speech that heals the world, that heals our friend. It is speech that invites the person asking from their need to stretch out their own hand and to rise up and walk. It is speech that offers an arm to lean on rather than a log to carry.

The New Year

I haven't posted in some time. I've been busy with CPE and Facebook. Also I felt that I'd become repetitive. So here is a new post.
When I was a teenager, 14 or so, I read Paul's letter to the Galatians and I was ecstatic. What good news. My mom immediately said that you have to be careful how you read that and it's easy to misinterpret. I had the experience of just as I was beginning to feel free of the law, the accuser, that there was a real joy to faith, I was slammed back into prison. Who was I to interpret Paul's "we know a person is justified not by works of the Law but through faith in Jesus Christ?" There must be some way that the Law continues to stand between us and Christ - Paul's just not very clear about it here. Otherwise I would not be made guilty by sermons leading to altar calls. And where would I be without guilt? Would I do anything but because of guilt and the sense that only by being obliged (and the very sense that I was obliged and not doing a good work simply qua selfless good work condemed even the "good" work that I might do with the taint of my own shoddy motives).
Only years later did I discover that Paul meant exactly what I thought he'd meant: Quit letting the law beat you up; quit letting the law keep you from a relationship with God.
In Christ I disovered that my hangup about God was entirely my own. God's like, "really you thought that?" Actually I had projected onto God the thoughts of my own super ego - that function of the subconscious that gets its energy from acting as a moral governor - although frequently its governance goes unexamined and expands its territory well beyond the bounds of its portfolio.
The odd thing is that as I've understood Grace I haven't lived in it. What's hampered me? mostly the good work of the super ego - that constant dripping "you don't really deserve it" that moves through my days like an ancient river.
What joy each day now when I realize that I'm living in grace and the sound on the super ego can go ignored, like a distant radio narrating a game I don't care about.