I have debated about how post some of the materials from a talk I gave the the Word Made Flesh staff in the summer of 2007. The workshop included staff from the many different Word Made Flesh Fields, a few have formal art training but most just seemed curious about finding and sharing ways that art may be a part of our lives seeking Christ among the worlds poor. I will try to cover the basic material in a series of blog posts. So here is the "Introduction to Beauty and Worship"...
Introduction to "Beauty and Worship Workshop"
1.Working Definitions for "Beauty" and of "Worship"
I am not a theologian primarily but an artist. I do believe in relying on the wisdom of great theologians, so I hope that my best guesses are informed ones.
Beauty = Diversity in Unity
Maximum Beauty = Maximum diversity in Unity
Worship = Gathering and offering back to God a transfigured creation
These are obviously short and over simplified definitions, so lets look into Chutnification to clear up some other issues before we start...
2. Chutnification and Aesthetic experience
What we find here in the genius of Salmon Rushdie's novel is a great example of the role of the work of art in social life, of gathering and offering back something transformed, and possibly even of worship itself as I conceive of it.
Gathering Raw Materials(fruit, vegetables, fish, vinegar, spices)
+ Focused attention (eyes/nose)
= empathy/insight/compassion( ‘how it felt to be’)
& a sense identity/vision (‘amnesiac nation’, collective memory)
3.The unexperienced experience...
It is often not until we journal that we realize the significance of the events. We are gathering the 'raw materials' of our day and adding focused attention. It is often not until we talk with some one about an experience that we realize its full significance. Again, the dialogue happening with another person is the result of collecting experiences within ourselves, sorting them, reframing them into a new form and making coherent conversation with them. We only then become aware often of the significance of the experience.
We only really experience our experience by processing it. We need a pickle processing plant! To process all the ingredients of our life and to integrate them into a meaningful whole. By ‘pickling it’ the experience changes into a form that transcends time, and can nourish us whenever we have need.
People spend 2-3 seconds per painting at an art museum. By never processing a painting with great concentrated attention, and by not suspending judgment in order to understand the work on its own terms, we manage to pass by hundreds of works of art without ever really experiencing a single one!
In a figure drawing session during college my Prof played Arvo Part’s Te Deum. At the end of the thirty minute piece he and one of the student were crying? I was unaffected at the time. How did I not have the same experience of the piece as they did? I was jealous of whatever it was they heard. There are ways we can prepare ourselves to be able to experience more fully art as well as life itself.
This is what happens on a broader scale when we never take time to reflect, contemplate, pause, to be present in the moment or to reflect on the days experience. We pass through life really experiencing very little. This is possibly scandalous for those claiming to possess passionate love for the Creator of the planet and all the life it possesses.
4.How aesthetic experience works...
It is also important to recognize how aesthetic experience works. This is generalized and applies to approaching a work of literature, a painting, or the beauty of a person. The elements are the same.
letting go (of control of the experience)
+ concentrated attention
=Aesthetic Experience (contemplative experience)
The process of experiencing a work of art and the process of creating a meaningful work of art use the same processes. To create a great jar of pickled chutney and to be able to enjoy it both involve this same gathering and focused surrendered attention.
5.Missing pieces...
It seems clear that much of the world has the absence of consciousness of the plight of the poor. We live as if poverty does not exist, ‘the experience of suffering destitute poor’ is not experienced.
I want to give a wide range of ideas or ways we can engage life, ‘suck the marrow out of life’ as Henry David Thoreau said, really experience life among the poor, survive it, and find the Kingdom of God among the poor.
6.Conclusion
We need to learn the process of chutnification, of taking the raw materials of our life, our experience among the poor, and of the beauty of the world and offering them back, food for our amnesic selves and our amnesic world.
we need to see that...
Beauty is gathering together many parts into a meaningful whole.
and that...
Worship is the uniquely Christian act of gathering in symbolic ways all of creation into a meaningful whole and offering it back to God.
In the future posts I will build on this foundation into...
- Art for Play (or Awe)
- Art for Contemplation
- Art for Therapy
- Art for Community
- Art for Advocacy
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