Thoughts on rising
No, I'm not thinking about the difficulty of getting up in the morning. That's actually getting easier as the sun climbs over the horizon earlier and earlier. I'm talking about Easter, about the resurrection it represents. But mostly I want to talk about some differences in how I've seen people approach religion.
All during Lent this year, I felt pretty spiritually stagnant. In the past, I've looked forward to the 40 days and 40 nights before Easter--my favorite holiday of any kind (my second favorite is November 11 which I still insist on referring to by it's original title of Armistice Day). For me Lent has always been a quieting time, a time for reflection and self-examination, for digging down into my own spirit and clearing out the inessential. But this Lent, I found myself struggling.
The problem, I think now, was words. That may be odd for a writer to say, but the funny thing is that words for me have always been the interface where my spirit and the world meet. Words are a kind of surface, something I can touch. But it's crucial for me to recognize that they can never, ever represent accurately the experiences or truths they talk about. They're just a beginning, a way in.
In so much of conventional Christianity, though, words are at the heart of what it's all about. Fundamentalists cling to the literal words of the Bible. More moderate Christians return again and again in disputes to what's Biblical, what particular passages present as god's word, though, of course, we are perfectly willing to ignore the words we don't like in other passages. "That's not what it means," we say. The parts we don't like we treat as anachronisms or poor translations or remnants of Hebrew culture at a particular time. The parts we like we treat as the revealed word of god.
Now, aside from my belief that that's theological cheating, I'm wary of giving words that kind of authority. No words written anywhere by anyone can ever accurately represent the reality they deal with. When we say the word "Jesus" or "Christ" or "God" or "resurrection," we haven't come close to naming the true nature of any of those things. And to think that any words will tell us that true nature strikes me as the height of folly. That just isn't what language does.
Words, like any artistic medium, reveal us, the user of them. Language is a mirror that shows us what we value, how we're thinking, which is why the Bible is so different now from what it was 200 or 500 or 1,000 years ago. It's changed because we've changed.
To treat words any differently is like watching Oliver Stone's JFK and thinking you now understand the Kennedy assassination, or watching Amadeus and believing you now know what Mozart's life was like. They are fascinating films, interesting and even enlightening artistic works. But they are only points of departure in understanding and living the reality that is each and every minute of our lives.
As much as I love them, I've believed for a long time that words--whatever text they come from--can only represent the beginning of the quest to understand god's nature. In fact, that's what I love about words and writing. They remind me constantly that I've never gotten "it" and I never will. In their imperfection and inability to capture the immediacy and vitality of existence, they admonish me to remain humble whenever I think I know the way with certainty.
The greatest, most beautiful, most powerful text in human history is rendered mute beside the lived experiences of holding my children for the first time or watching my father mute and dying in a VA hospital bed or listening to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. Reality--the reality of this moment, right now, mundane though it may be--holds more sanctity than any words because right here right now is where god dwells: in my fingers, in the keyboard, in the air I'm breathing, in my blood, in the light and trees outside my window.
Remembering that on Sunday was like being resurrected, like being brought back. It reminded me that I always want to rise beyond words into life.
All during Lent this year, I felt pretty spiritually stagnant. In the past, I've looked forward to the 40 days and 40 nights before Easter--my favorite holiday of any kind (my second favorite is November 11 which I still insist on referring to by it's original title of Armistice Day). For me Lent has always been a quieting time, a time for reflection and self-examination, for digging down into my own spirit and clearing out the inessential. But this Lent, I found myself struggling.
The problem, I think now, was words. That may be odd for a writer to say, but the funny thing is that words for me have always been the interface where my spirit and the world meet. Words are a kind of surface, something I can touch. But it's crucial for me to recognize that they can never, ever represent accurately the experiences or truths they talk about. They're just a beginning, a way in.
In so much of conventional Christianity, though, words are at the heart of what it's all about. Fundamentalists cling to the literal words of the Bible. More moderate Christians return again and again in disputes to what's Biblical, what particular passages present as god's word, though, of course, we are perfectly willing to ignore the words we don't like in other passages. "That's not what it means," we say. The parts we don't like we treat as anachronisms or poor translations or remnants of Hebrew culture at a particular time. The parts we like we treat as the revealed word of god.
Now, aside from my belief that that's theological cheating, I'm wary of giving words that kind of authority. No words written anywhere by anyone can ever accurately represent the reality they deal with. When we say the word "Jesus" or "Christ" or "God" or "resurrection," we haven't come close to naming the true nature of any of those things. And to think that any words will tell us that true nature strikes me as the height of folly. That just isn't what language does.
Words, like any artistic medium, reveal us, the user of them. Language is a mirror that shows us what we value, how we're thinking, which is why the Bible is so different now from what it was 200 or 500 or 1,000 years ago. It's changed because we've changed.
To treat words any differently is like watching Oliver Stone's JFK and thinking you now understand the Kennedy assassination, or watching Amadeus and believing you now know what Mozart's life was like. They are fascinating films, interesting and even enlightening artistic works. But they are only points of departure in understanding and living the reality that is each and every minute of our lives.
As much as I love them, I've believed for a long time that words--whatever text they come from--can only represent the beginning of the quest to understand god's nature. In fact, that's what I love about words and writing. They remind me constantly that I've never gotten "it" and I never will. In their imperfection and inability to capture the immediacy and vitality of existence, they admonish me to remain humble whenever I think I know the way with certainty.
The greatest, most beautiful, most powerful text in human history is rendered mute beside the lived experiences of holding my children for the first time or watching my father mute and dying in a VA hospital bed or listening to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. Reality--the reality of this moment, right now, mundane though it may be--holds more sanctity than any words because right here right now is where god dwells: in my fingers, in the keyboard, in the air I'm breathing, in my blood, in the light and trees outside my window.
Remembering that on Sunday was like being resurrected, like being brought back. It reminded me that I always want to rise beyond words into life.
posted by A Pilgrim at 6:39 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home