Seen / Unseen

In spite of some of my earlier posts I'm not always a fan of 'religious' or 'Christian' art, which can often be twee, or mawkish, or both.  Illustrating some of the narrative sections of the Bible can avoid some of these pitfalls, as in my posts on Elijah or the crucifixion of Jesus, but trying to depict some of the Bible's concepts can be more challenging.  Which is why I'm very fond of this photograph:

(Mary Gaston, Mystery & Ignorance, used with permission)

At first glance this both disturbs and baffles, creating a puzzle as we look at it.  Of course, this can and can't be read as a picture with a spiritual dimension and perhaps it's that level of uncertainty which creates the appeal for me.  If there's a link between this photograph and the Bible, I find it in words Jesus speaks:

"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8)

As in the picture, so in this statement, there are ways in which the unseen can become tangible, the spiritual part of our everyday lived experience.

A brief interlude on questions...

though truth and falsehood be
Near twins, yet truth a little elder is;
Be busy to seek her; believe me this,
He's not of none, nor worst, that seeks the best.
To adore, or scorn an image, or protest,
May all be bad; doubt wisely; in strange way
To stand inquiring right, is not to stray;
To sleep, or run wrong, is. On a huge hill,
Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will
Reach her, about must and about must go,
And what the hill's suddenness resists, win so.
Yet strive so that before age, death's twilight,
Thy soul rest, for none can work in that night.
To will implies delay, therefore now do;
(John Donne, Satire III)

Zero Yorkshiremen

Others will comment more eloquently on the literary merits of The King James Bible - published 400 years ago - than I can.  It's true that the influence of its language has been widespread: how could the following piece of parody from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail be possible if the words and rhythms of the Authorised Version were not so well known:

LAUNCELOT: We have the Holy Hand Grenade [...]
ARTHUR: Consult the Book of Armaments! [...]
BROTHER MAYNARD: Armaments, chapter two, verses nine to twenty-one. [...]
SECOND BROTHER: And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that, with it, Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits in Thy mercy.' And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats and large chu--
MAYNARD: Skip a bit, Brother.
SECOND BROTHER: And the Lord spake, saying, 'First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.'

The Monty Python team were also famously responsible for the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, but it's a source of mischevious delight to me as a 'Southerner' living in exile in the North that neither Yorkshiremen nor indeed Northerners of any description had any significant influence on the language of the King James Bible:

[W]ith virtually no exceptions, the scholars assembled [by King James I] for the purpose of translating the Bible were based in the South of England [...] Northern forms of English made little, if any, impact on the translation.  Alister McGrath In The Beginning - The Story of the King James Bible

Mischief aside there's an interesting feature of the language of the King James Bible which the Monty Python parody (unintentionally?) emulates, and which brings it very much into the world of this blog.  The Authorised Version uses the Thou/Thee/Thy forms of address for both God speaking to people, and people speaking to God, as in the 'Lord's Prayer': Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. (Matthew 6:9)

The (singular) Thou/Thee/Thy form of address had been used in Mediaeval England amongst family members; the (plural form) Ye/You/Your as a mark of respect when addressing a social superior.  Whilst this distinction was slightly old-fashioned by the time the translators of the King James Version set to work it fascinates me that the translation made this familiar way of speaking to God, as though to a family member, a commonplace in our language.  A relationship with transcendence might beg a respectful form of address; in the language of the King James Bible, people speak to God as though to a family member.  Heaven in ordinary.

The insignificance of Jesus' crucifixion

Visual arts relish the crucifixion of Jesus: the courtroom drama of the trials, enormous crowds, the potential for enormous crosses silhouetted against a darkening sky - there can be moments of bathos too: who can forget the portly and aging John Wayne as the centurion at the foot of the cross in The Greatest Story Ever Told drawling "Surely this was the Son of Gaaaaaad"?

A lot of this visual drama may be mis-placed.  Crucifixions were commonplace enough in the early first century.  Following the death of Herod in 4 BC there were outbreaks of revolt throughout Judea. Varus, the Roman legate of Syria took two legions and brutally pacified the country, particularly in Galilee:

Upon this, Varus sent a part of his army into the country, to seek out those that had been the authors of the revolt; and when they were discovered, he punished some of them that were most guilty, and some he dismissed: now the number of those that were crucified on this account were two thousand.  (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 17.10.10)

Commonplace, and perhaps in easy public view: "those who passed by hurled insults at him" (Matthew 27:39). 

Odilon Redon's painting The Crucifixion strips out much of the over-dramatisation, depicting a moment of strange everyday intimacy which would only be possible without theatrics.  Mary, Jesus' mother, and his disciple John are shown by the cross in a painting of this moment:

When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, "Woman, here is your son", and to the disciple, "Here is your mother". From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.  (John 19:26-27)

The picture is not prescriptive; the lack of detail both leaves space for the imagination to play but also suggests, very subtly, something other-worldly.  For me this picture achieves with greater credibility something that more over-dramatic portrayals strive for but fail to deliver: the way that an ordinary public execution in a culture in which these were commonplace brought something heavenly into the lived experience of Christians. 

Finding Sanctuary

A perceptive friend bought me a copy of Abbot Christopher Jamison's book Finding Sanctuary: Monastic steps for Everyday Life as a Christmas gift.  This is, and isn't, 'the book' of the BBC TV programmes The Monastary and The Big Silence.   

The appeal of the book for me is in the way that it demonstrates the ability of ancient Christian traditions - in this case the 'Rule' (a set of practical guidelines, or 'disciplines') written by Benedict 1,500 years ago for communities of monks - to offer an antidote to what the book calls the 'busyness' of everyday life.  Whilst this antidote is accessible, it is not just another consumer product, Jamison writes:

You cannot mistreat people one moment and then find sanctuary the next.  Finding the sacred space begins with the recognition of the sacred in your daily living.

In the world of this blog this is 'heaven in ordinary' - finding the spiritual in the everyday.  In other words, the benefits of religion can't easily be divorced from the practical discipline of actually living it. One of the pieces of practical advice in achieving this which particularly resonated with me, given by Benedict in the Rule and quoted in the book, is:

You are not to act in anger or nurse a grudge.  Rid your heart of all deceit.  Never give a hollow greeting of peace or turn away when somebody needs your love.  Bind yourself to no oath lest it prove false, but speak the truth with heart and tongue.

The Ox, and Ass, and Lobster

All sorts of animals crowd into the Nativity story, as in this piece of dialogue from the film Love Actually:

Karen: So what's this big news, then?
Daisy: [excited] We've been given our parts in the nativity play. And I'm the lobster.
Karen: The lobster?
Daisy: Yeah!
Karen: In the nativity play?
Daisy: [beaming] Yeah, *first* lobster.
Karen: There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?
Daisy: Duh.

Or in the carol In the bleak midwinter:

Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Or in the mediaeval Latin text O magnum mysterium, often set to music, and for me most memorably by Morten Lauridsen:

o great mystery

and wondrous sacrament,

that animals should see the newborn Lord,

lying in a manger!

Blessed is the virgin whose womb was worthy

to bear our Lord Christ.  Alleluia!

Lord, I heard your call and was afraid;

I considered your works,

and I trembled between two animals

Lobster, ox and ass are all missing from the narratives of the birth of Jesus in the 'canonical' gospels written by Matthew and Luke, as are any mentions of animals at all, apart from the 'flocks' watched over by the shepherds outside Bethlehem (Luke 2:8).

What interests me is the way in which the birth stories in Matthew and Luke are sparse enough to both beg, and to hold, an imaginative filling-in of details.  One of these imaginative 'fillings-in', and perhaps the source for some of the more traditional animal inhabitants of the Nativity story such as the Ox and the Ass, is the 8th century Pseudo-Matthew gospel:

And on the third day after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary went out of the cave, and, entering a stable, placed the child in a manger, and an ox and an ass adored him. Then was fulfilled that which was said by the prophet Isaiah, "The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib." Therefore, the animals, the ox and the ass, with him in their midst incessantly adored him. Then was fulfilled that which was said by Habakkuk the prophet, saying, "Between two animals you are made manifest." (Chapter 14)*

What all these texts betray are two deep human desires.  Firstly, a curiosity about the details of life of Jesus, and in particular his childhood, which the New Testament both stubbornly refuses to meet but also (strangely) prompts by allowing so many empty spaces within which the imagination can work.  Secondly, a longing for the divine to be made real and understandable within the span of domestic experience; the Ox and the Ass provide the realism, the prophetic 'authority' of Isaiah and Habakkuk appear to provide a divine sanction for their inclusion - heaven in ordinary.

*The Isaiah quote is 1:3, that from Habakkuk is 3:2 but where the King James Version has 'O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.' the Pseudo Matthew gospel relies on the Septuagint (LXX) which translates the words in bold as 'two living creatures'.