I was in a meeting over at the church hall to discuss some of the practical issues arising from our latest arts project, “Visions in the Wilderness.” This ambitious project includes six events on consecutive Saturdays through this coming season of Lent, including a film night, classical concert, art exhibition, some drama, and something called ‘Captured Voices.’ This is billed as a Poetry Recital and Procession which actually sounds a little quaint now I come to write about it. I hope it is anything but! The title ‘Captured Voices’ is borrowed from a poetry anthology by ex-hostage and news reporter John Mc Carthy. After returning from Beirut where he was held as hostage he compiled this collection from the writings of fellow victims of torture and injustice around the world. Before stumbling on the book in my school library, I had the idea of developing the Catholic ritual of ‘walking the Stations of the Cross’ for one of the arts events, using poems rather than images as the stimulus. I wanted to focus less on Christ’s historical journey to Golgotha, and more on contemporary characters who were suffering around the world today. After all Christ is especially visible in the suffering of the marginalized and persecuted according to the Holy Scriptures. I wanted to illustrate the fourteen poems or 'stations' with small art installations to provide a visual focus for each piece of writing. For example, I might display a pile of copies of 'The Big Issue' resting on a plinth along with an old harmonica for Peter Kavanagh's poem 'Street Corner Christ.' Once the fourteen poems had been heard by the congregation, they could move from station to station re-reading them, as they would be displayed by the installations. However a couple of folk at the meeting did not initially share my enthusiasm, having read through the poems. ‘It’s all a bit grim,’ they said. ‘Where’s the hope?’ Where indeed?
For Christians, poetry and art in general, can provoke some awkward questions. We want to come across with passion and conviction to those groping for answers in the spiritual wilderness of the twenty first century. Yet the function of art is to reflect life 'warts and all!' It holds ‘a mirror up to nature’ according to Hamlet, and if it is to project a true and profound image of life for it's audience, then it will ultimately reveal the complexity, ambivalence and apparent contradictions at the heart of the human condition, whether we like that or not. The poems I have chosen, from Blake to Rilke, to the Nigerian Ken Saro-Wiwa (executed in 1995) are grim indeed! Blake’s London echoes with ‘the youthful harlot’s curse’ and ‘the infant’s cry of fear.’ Rilke sees how in the ‘lost’ and ‘rotting’ cities ‘children waste their days/ on doorsteps always in the same shadow,’ while Saro-Wiwa writing about the compliance of citizens with the dictatorships which govern them, highlights the ‘Cowardice masking as obedience/Lurking in our degenerated souls.’
My response to the concerns of my colleagues, was to assert that a true Christian response to the misery of human suffering was to listen first and foremost to the victims; to share the darkness with them, as the Christian activist Sheila Cassidy once wrote. Art enables us to do this most intently, whether we stand before Picasso’s ‘Guernica,’ listen to Samuel Barber’s "Adadgio for Strings,"or walk "The Stations of the Cross". Such contemplation as this, becomes a form of prayer. Aristotle, the original art critic, recognized its profound spiritual nature, when he described the cathartic impact of Greek Tragedy. The initial horror and pity he felt in the theatre, as an actor narrated the self mutilation of Oedipus and the suicide of Jocasta when they discover the truth of their incestuous union, left Aristotle strangely uplifted when he finally left the auditorium in the gathering gloom. Perhaps he percieved a deeper intimacy between the vast Athenian crowd as they silently returned to their homes sharing the darkness both literally and metaphorically. I remember something like this at the end of Spielberg's masterpiece 'Schindler's List' in Edinburgh several years ago. As the credits rolled no one moved. There was an intensity in the cinema which was profoundly spiritual. No one wanted to break the bond that had been established witnessing the horror of The Holocaust together and the heroic struggle of Oscar Schindler to somehow take a stand against this tide of evil. We are so desensitized by the mental clutter of our busy lives. We so desparately need to be still and feel both the agony and the ecstasy of the human condition. This intensity of feeling, according to Aristotle, is not a negative or indulgent experience but a positive ritualistic purging of our souls. It is a cleansing which restores us. Oedipus's blindness leads him to enlightenment at the Greek city of Colonus as St.Paul's did once he reached Damascus.
True hope is not found in trite platitudes served up by Christians or anyone else, however noble our intentions. It may, however, grow almost imperceptibly like a tender shoot- even in the bleakest of landscapes. The joy of Easter morning was felt only once the horror of Good Friday had been experienced. Walking through the season of Lent which culminates in the horror and pity of Holy Week with its betrayals and brutality should indeed be cathartic. "Visions in the Wilderness" is at St.John's Church Broadbridge Heath -W.Sussex from February 28th -April 5th. It is an opportunity for believers and agnostics to encounter the God who walks with us through the desert, all the way to the promised land.
For Christians, poetry and art in general, can provoke some awkward questions. We want to come across with passion and conviction to those groping for answers in the spiritual wilderness of the twenty first century. Yet the function of art is to reflect life 'warts and all!' It holds ‘a mirror up to nature’ according to Hamlet, and if it is to project a true and profound image of life for it's audience, then it will ultimately reveal the complexity, ambivalence and apparent contradictions at the heart of the human condition, whether we like that or not. The poems I have chosen, from Blake to Rilke, to the Nigerian Ken Saro-Wiwa (executed in 1995) are grim indeed! Blake’s London echoes with ‘the youthful harlot’s curse’ and ‘the infant’s cry of fear.’ Rilke sees how in the ‘lost’ and ‘rotting’ cities ‘children waste their days/ on doorsteps always in the same shadow,’ while Saro-Wiwa writing about the compliance of citizens with the dictatorships which govern them, highlights the ‘Cowardice masking as obedience/Lurking in our degenerated souls.’
My response to the concerns of my colleagues, was to assert that a true Christian response to the misery of human suffering was to listen first and foremost to the victims; to share the darkness with them, as the Christian activist Sheila Cassidy once wrote. Art enables us to do this most intently, whether we stand before Picasso’s ‘Guernica,’ listen to Samuel Barber’s "Adadgio for Strings,"or walk "The Stations of the Cross". Such contemplation as this, becomes a form of prayer. Aristotle, the original art critic, recognized its profound spiritual nature, when he described the cathartic impact of Greek Tragedy. The initial horror and pity he felt in the theatre, as an actor narrated the self mutilation of Oedipus and the suicide of Jocasta when they discover the truth of their incestuous union, left Aristotle strangely uplifted when he finally left the auditorium in the gathering gloom. Perhaps he percieved a deeper intimacy between the vast Athenian crowd as they silently returned to their homes sharing the darkness both literally and metaphorically. I remember something like this at the end of Spielberg's masterpiece 'Schindler's List' in Edinburgh several years ago. As the credits rolled no one moved. There was an intensity in the cinema which was profoundly spiritual. No one wanted to break the bond that had been established witnessing the horror of The Holocaust together and the heroic struggle of Oscar Schindler to somehow take a stand against this tide of evil. We are so desensitized by the mental clutter of our busy lives. We so desparately need to be still and feel both the agony and the ecstasy of the human condition. This intensity of feeling, according to Aristotle, is not a negative or indulgent experience but a positive ritualistic purging of our souls. It is a cleansing which restores us. Oedipus's blindness leads him to enlightenment at the Greek city of Colonus as St.Paul's did once he reached Damascus.
True hope is not found in trite platitudes served up by Christians or anyone else, however noble our intentions. It may, however, grow almost imperceptibly like a tender shoot- even in the bleakest of landscapes. The joy of Easter morning was felt only once the horror of Good Friday had been experienced. Walking through the season of Lent which culminates in the horror and pity of Holy Week with its betrayals and brutality should indeed be cathartic. "Visions in the Wilderness" is at St.John's Church Broadbridge Heath -W.Sussex from February 28th -April 5th. It is an opportunity for believers and agnostics to encounter the God who walks with us through the desert, all the way to the promised land.
No comments:
Post a Comment