Three dense drawings these last days. The top is a St John Baptist in the wilderness; the middle is a subterranean kitchen; the bottom is a Jesus in the wilderness. In the last one I've pictured Jesus, having built a lean-to for shelter, holding a long stick. I don't know why - I like the gesture. I like the thought that he may have played around in the wilderness, thrown some stones, chased after some local fauna.
When I titled this post, I thought I had more melancholy meditations on the absurdity of faith and the brevity of life and the necessity of love - but I forgo that. I could say that I wish I'd had more success in my art - in terms of business. I have the experience in my life of being the best read - thinking that that would find approval; I've been the most conservative; the most orthodox; the most charismatic [in terms of that kind of religious fervor]. When I was young, 9 years old, a minister's wife shamed me for my incorrect theology (now imagine that!) - so throughout my life I've done everything theologically correct; I know the venerated book better than the most rabid venerator. And it simply doesn't matter.
I now read Deleuze, Lacan, Zizek etc because they meet a need for my own intellectual and spiritual rest. I woke up one day and discovered that the faith of my youth (even the faith of that correcting minister's wife!) is heretical down to the core. Truly amazing.
What matters, of course, is love. There is a way to respond to the inchoate enthusiasm of a child other than making him or her feel small and stupid. There is a way of faith that exists beyond tendentious creeds and proof texting - and it is a way of seeing the humanity of each person, to get at the core of Christ's peculiar enjoinder to love one's enemies (the golden rule is common, but that statement takes the cake as being his alone).
I know for myself - I can't answer the question what it is I want. My whole life I've been inculcated to have others tell me what that might be. The fact is subtle. Lacan says that the frustration of the ego is that we've constructed it for another, an other that doesn't care - that doesn't exist. That's a lot of frustration isn't it. I may say that this is a product of growing up in a mill town - basically working class, where the attitude that prevails is of being told what to do. In some churches even it's a sin, the height of selfishness to "do just what you want." And so, when I was asked what it was that I wanted to do in an interview for a chaplain residency I was caught off guard. I responded with some language about being in the team, doing what needed to be done. But I knew and he knew that I had no answer.
And that's what I carry with me each day now. This puzzle. Lacan locates ethics in this discovery of desire and not giving ground relative to it. Mark de Kesel posits that what Lacan's getting at is for the analysand to arrive at the point where she might act, can act, will act.
Deleuze and Guatarri locate the production of desire on a line of flight. A line of flight is a rhizomatic activity. Rhizomatic in that it remains firmly on the surface - giving in neither to the temptation of finding security in a large organizational hierarchy as well as avoiding the temptation of finding meaning bracketed into the certainty of small cells. The line of flight is creative when it seeks connections, fascist when it abhors connection and seeks its own destruction.
I'm sure I've left something out. Feel free to engage me. Perhaps we can help each other discover what our desire is, to find that line of flight.
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