Well, here it is, Easter Monday. Lent is officially over, and somehow I made it through without my daily custom of espresso. I still think I should have given up tea, but I just can't start my day without it, so I'll have to find a way to do it next year.
But I've also made an effort to put some religion back into my life, particularly lately since the death of one my students, which I talked about in my last post. I feel like something's been missing. I've been reading parts of the Bible in Latin. I went to Eucharistic Adoration at my old church a few times to say the rosary. I've been watching documentaries about Christianity. This weekend I watched two grand epic films, The Ten Commandments and King of Kings, and also caught half of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan on TCM.
And on Good Friday, one of my favorite religious holy days, I decided to go to the Living Stations of the Cross at my old church. As a kid in a Catholic grammar school, Stations of the Cross and Benediction was one of my absolute favorite religious ceremonies. The whole school would participate every Friday in Lent. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the Stations of the Cross are 14 points of meditation along the journey of Christ to his death on Calvary; Benediction is a ritual in which the officiating priest places the consecrated Body of Christ into an elaborate viewing vessel called a monstrance and lifts it up for the veneration of the people while they chant in Latin and the sweet, tea-like fragrant frankincense is burned. I haven't been to Stations and Benediction since I moved away from North Jersey in the fourth grade, some seventeen years ago, and this ceremony still sticks with me. *sigh* I guess there is no going home, or else I have to make a pilgrimage to my old church in North Jersey because the local Living Stations I went to this weekend just weren't up to snuff for me.
The first problem was that I arrived 10-15 minutes early, and the Stations began about 20-30 minutes after they were scheduled to. I can deal with the tardiness, as the youth minister explained that those involved had been very busy that day with afternoon Mass and serving afterward in the community. However, during that waiting time, religious music was piped through the speakers. But it wasn't sacred sounding religious music. It wasn't Gregorian Chant or MGM epic film soundtracks. It wasn't even the songs from from Sister Act, which I LOVE. It was country style religious music. Which I DESPISE. I enjoy many different kinds of music. I thrive best when I have opera and Beethoven playing. But I also enjoy jazz, traditional ethnic sounds, and I have on occasion even been impressed by individuals performing their own original rap at coffee houses. But if there is one kind of music that tempts me to bulimia, it's country. Alright, I admit I do enjoy "Earl Had to Die." And Lester Flatts and Earl Scruggs of Beverly Hillbillies Theme Song fame. But this was nothing like ol' Jed Clampett's buddies. It was that slow and sentimental music. You know. Mushy stuff mixed with praise. With maybe even a chummy attitude towards God. I felt like Don Corleone, when he slaps his weeping godson in the face and tells him to be a man. Chumminess with the Divine and Almighty? What have we come to?
I don't mean to sound like the father from Mary Poppins. I like tea. And I would love to have tea parties on the ceiling, particularly with my spouse and small children, if I ever get married or have children. But tea parties on the ceiling—with God? Praise for the Almighty? The love of God? And the general attitude of "Yay Jesus!" These are just a few things that I find a need to rant about somewhat.
First of all, praise of God. If a god is almighty, creator of the universe, and is utterly beyond my comprehension, then what praise can I, a poor, individuated mortal subject to death and limitations, possibly give? Why the need to proclaim what is in my heart to the whole world? Alright, I can admit that confession is healthy, which is one of the reasons I am keeping this blog. But why the urge for the finite to praise the infinite? Why the urge for the single point to laud the limitless plain? Why does the powerless praise the all-powerful? Maybe this is cynical on my part, but it sounds like sycophancy to me. Praise? Wonder and awe are more to my liking. Feelings of speechlessness are more appropriate to me. I think it's absolutely true—the best things in life can't be told. True rapture is speechless—a state of mesmerization. It is only after the return journey has begun, once the initiate has gone a distance away from his destination and back towards his home—when the memory of what he has seen is no longer seared so freshly into his mind—when he has begun to forget—that speech becomes once again possible. Praise of God? Either the man who praises God hasn't truly experienced God or else he has but has forgotten God.
The love of God. Another problem. Because many of us today have forgotten that God—including the god of Abraham—has a dark side. Why else does God become man (in the person of Jesus Christ) and teach men to pray, "Our Father,… lead us not into temptation?" The ancients knew what they were talking about when they said, "Fear God." The Great Flood, the Sodom and Gomorrah of Genesis, and the promise of a great destruction to come in the Revelation of John were fresh in people's minds once upon a time. Jonathan Edwards reminded the settlers of Massachusetts of this with his "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" sermon. If God is a loving parent, then why does he destroy his children by flood and by fire? For sin? Why does he punish the good along with the guilty? Does not the parable of Christ suggest that the master wishes to leave the weeds in his garden undisturbed until harvest time in order to not also uproot the good crops he has sown—should he not by his own lips delay punishment? Why does he try his servant Job—with the destruction of his family, his livelihood, and his body? What about the fig tree that Christ commands to wither and die? God may be loving, but God also has a dark, destructive, wrathful side. That side is not the only side, but it cannot be eliminated by being ignored. It would be well to remember this. What kind of parent kills his child—besides Ivan the Terrible? A loving one? Is it a loving parent who kills his child for disobedience? Maybe we should ask this of parents in the Middle East who have killed their gay adult children for disobedience—it doesn't happen every day, but it does happen. Is a parent's killing of the disobedient child justified? One of the steps towards growth is to learn to agree to disagree, even with a loved one. Sometimes one whom we love takes a path that we know will be hurtful—to us or to our loved one—or that we simply don't want our loved one to take, but what can we do? Unfortunately, we cannot make that choice for our loved one—he or she must learn it on his own. I don't know if God knows this or not (but I have my inklings), but I do know that this is a lesson that men and women need to learn, myself included.
Finally, the "Yay Jesus" movement. Above, I've already voiced my criticisms of praise for the Divine. However, there is a further problem. Back in Catholic grammar school, I was taught—right out of the catechism—that Jesus Christ has two natures: human and divine. When debating about theological issues in the 300's, the Council of Nicea declared Jesus Christ to be consubstantial with the Father, meaning "of the same substance." This is the meaning of that fancy new word in the Nicene Creed in the new translation of the Mass: consubstantial. This is also in accord with the Gospel of John, where Jesus declares, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). It is also the meaning behind the mysteries known as the Trinity and the Incarnation. The whole driving force and message of these doctrines is one thing. To wit, Jesus Christ is God and man at the same time. My objection to the "Yay Jesus" movement is that it stresses the mortality of Jesus and forgets the divinity. It emphasizes Jesus as a literal, historical person, which as a man he truly is, but at the expense of the divine portion, which he also is, the part which is eternal, mysterious, unbounded, and completely unfathomable to the mind of man. It is therefore inappropriate to speak of God as being thus or not thus because as soon as we do, we are dealing with categories of our own human thought, which is limited. (It's "the best things in life can't be told" again.) We cannot properly speak of the love of God or the wrath of God—if God is infinite and unbounded, then he must surely encompass both extremes and then some, no? If we treat God (or Jesus) as a literal, historical person, but forget the ineffable mystery, have we not broken the Second Commandment—"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image?" For we have given a form to the ultimately unknowable; we have set a shape to something limitless—if not in stone or in wood, then in our own minds. Certainly, we may become familiar, but we must not become too familiar—with a force that can crush us—or create us. It is well that the Norse depicted Loki the god of fire as both a friend and a trickster to the other gods, for fire can warm, and fire can harm. And we must not forget that the God who so sorely tried and tempted Job is the God who taught us to pray, "Our Father,… lead us not into temptation." When viewing a work of art, there is a certain distance that is optimum, where details can be seen but the whole is not lost. We need to establish this optimum distance in dealing with God.
Thus, I bring my rant to a close. I have a need for something missing from my life of a religious nature. And I don't find it in the attitudes of many church-goers nowadays. It may be my own ancestry—I do take strongly after my mother's family, which came from the mountains of a region in Italy known for its hermits. It may be my own disposition, having always been inclined to the complex and difficult path and to strong, undiluted doses of arts and philosophy. It may be because I can stomach much intellectualism that I have a greater need for it to be content. But I am reasonably certain that what I am looking for cannot be found within a church—in the traditional, literal sense of an ecclesia, an assembly. What I am looking for cannot be found within a group. I may periodically find myself with a group if it has a strong dose of ancient ritual. But all my life, everywhere I go, I find I'm on a different wavelength from almost everyone else. And that means I'm going to need a different solution than the ones most other people are turning to. I honestly get a much greater thrill out of reading The Masks of God than I got at this weekend's Living Stations. Intellectually, I seem to get along best with intelligent, open-minded Catholics and ex-Catholics. I wonder how James Joyce dealt with the problem of Catholicism versus modernity. Maybe it's time I should read Ulysses…
But I've also made an effort to put some religion back into my life, particularly lately since the death of one my students, which I talked about in my last post. I feel like something's been missing. I've been reading parts of the Bible in Latin. I went to Eucharistic Adoration at my old church a few times to say the rosary. I've been watching documentaries about Christianity. This weekend I watched two grand epic films, The Ten Commandments and King of Kings, and also caught half of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan on TCM.
And on Good Friday, one of my favorite religious holy days, I decided to go to the Living Stations of the Cross at my old church. As a kid in a Catholic grammar school, Stations of the Cross and Benediction was one of my absolute favorite religious ceremonies. The whole school would participate every Friday in Lent. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the Stations of the Cross are 14 points of meditation along the journey of Christ to his death on Calvary; Benediction is a ritual in which the officiating priest places the consecrated Body of Christ into an elaborate viewing vessel called a monstrance and lifts it up for the veneration of the people while they chant in Latin and the sweet, tea-like fragrant frankincense is burned. I haven't been to Stations and Benediction since I moved away from North Jersey in the fourth grade, some seventeen years ago, and this ceremony still sticks with me. *sigh* I guess there is no going home, or else I have to make a pilgrimage to my old church in North Jersey because the local Living Stations I went to this weekend just weren't up to snuff for me.
The first problem was that I arrived 10-15 minutes early, and the Stations began about 20-30 minutes after they were scheduled to. I can deal with the tardiness, as the youth minister explained that those involved had been very busy that day with afternoon Mass and serving afterward in the community. However, during that waiting time, religious music was piped through the speakers. But it wasn't sacred sounding religious music. It wasn't Gregorian Chant or MGM epic film soundtracks. It wasn't even the songs from from Sister Act, which I LOVE. It was country style religious music. Which I DESPISE. I enjoy many different kinds of music. I thrive best when I have opera and Beethoven playing. But I also enjoy jazz, traditional ethnic sounds, and I have on occasion even been impressed by individuals performing their own original rap at coffee houses. But if there is one kind of music that tempts me to bulimia, it's country. Alright, I admit I do enjoy "Earl Had to Die." And Lester Flatts and Earl Scruggs of Beverly Hillbillies Theme Song fame. But this was nothing like ol' Jed Clampett's buddies. It was that slow and sentimental music. You know. Mushy stuff mixed with praise. With maybe even a chummy attitude towards God. I felt like Don Corleone, when he slaps his weeping godson in the face and tells him to be a man. Chumminess with the Divine and Almighty? What have we come to?
I don't mean to sound like the father from Mary Poppins. I like tea. And I would love to have tea parties on the ceiling, particularly with my spouse and small children, if I ever get married or have children. But tea parties on the ceiling—with God? Praise for the Almighty? The love of God? And the general attitude of "Yay Jesus!" These are just a few things that I find a need to rant about somewhat.
First of all, praise of God. If a god is almighty, creator of the universe, and is utterly beyond my comprehension, then what praise can I, a poor, individuated mortal subject to death and limitations, possibly give? Why the need to proclaim what is in my heart to the whole world? Alright, I can admit that confession is healthy, which is one of the reasons I am keeping this blog. But why the urge for the finite to praise the infinite? Why the urge for the single point to laud the limitless plain? Why does the powerless praise the all-powerful? Maybe this is cynical on my part, but it sounds like sycophancy to me. Praise? Wonder and awe are more to my liking. Feelings of speechlessness are more appropriate to me. I think it's absolutely true—the best things in life can't be told. True rapture is speechless—a state of mesmerization. It is only after the return journey has begun, once the initiate has gone a distance away from his destination and back towards his home—when the memory of what he has seen is no longer seared so freshly into his mind—when he has begun to forget—that speech becomes once again possible. Praise of God? Either the man who praises God hasn't truly experienced God or else he has but has forgotten God.
The love of God. Another problem. Because many of us today have forgotten that God—including the god of Abraham—has a dark side. Why else does God become man (in the person of Jesus Christ) and teach men to pray, "Our Father,… lead us not into temptation?" The ancients knew what they were talking about when they said, "Fear God." The Great Flood, the Sodom and Gomorrah of Genesis, and the promise of a great destruction to come in the Revelation of John were fresh in people's minds once upon a time. Jonathan Edwards reminded the settlers of Massachusetts of this with his "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" sermon. If God is a loving parent, then why does he destroy his children by flood and by fire? For sin? Why does he punish the good along with the guilty? Does not the parable of Christ suggest that the master wishes to leave the weeds in his garden undisturbed until harvest time in order to not also uproot the good crops he has sown—should he not by his own lips delay punishment? Why does he try his servant Job—with the destruction of his family, his livelihood, and his body? What about the fig tree that Christ commands to wither and die? God may be loving, but God also has a dark, destructive, wrathful side. That side is not the only side, but it cannot be eliminated by being ignored. It would be well to remember this. What kind of parent kills his child—besides Ivan the Terrible? A loving one? Is it a loving parent who kills his child for disobedience? Maybe we should ask this of parents in the Middle East who have killed their gay adult children for disobedience—it doesn't happen every day, but it does happen. Is a parent's killing of the disobedient child justified? One of the steps towards growth is to learn to agree to disagree, even with a loved one. Sometimes one whom we love takes a path that we know will be hurtful—to us or to our loved one—or that we simply don't want our loved one to take, but what can we do? Unfortunately, we cannot make that choice for our loved one—he or she must learn it on his own. I don't know if God knows this or not (but I have my inklings), but I do know that this is a lesson that men and women need to learn, myself included.
Finally, the "Yay Jesus" movement. Above, I've already voiced my criticisms of praise for the Divine. However, there is a further problem. Back in Catholic grammar school, I was taught—right out of the catechism—that Jesus Christ has two natures: human and divine. When debating about theological issues in the 300's, the Council of Nicea declared Jesus Christ to be consubstantial with the Father, meaning "of the same substance." This is the meaning of that fancy new word in the Nicene Creed in the new translation of the Mass: consubstantial. This is also in accord with the Gospel of John, where Jesus declares, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). It is also the meaning behind the mysteries known as the Trinity and the Incarnation. The whole driving force and message of these doctrines is one thing. To wit, Jesus Christ is God and man at the same time. My objection to the "Yay Jesus" movement is that it stresses the mortality of Jesus and forgets the divinity. It emphasizes Jesus as a literal, historical person, which as a man he truly is, but at the expense of the divine portion, which he also is, the part which is eternal, mysterious, unbounded, and completely unfathomable to the mind of man. It is therefore inappropriate to speak of God as being thus or not thus because as soon as we do, we are dealing with categories of our own human thought, which is limited. (It's "the best things in life can't be told" again.) We cannot properly speak of the love of God or the wrath of God—if God is infinite and unbounded, then he must surely encompass both extremes and then some, no? If we treat God (or Jesus) as a literal, historical person, but forget the ineffable mystery, have we not broken the Second Commandment—"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image?" For we have given a form to the ultimately unknowable; we have set a shape to something limitless—if not in stone or in wood, then in our own minds. Certainly, we may become familiar, but we must not become too familiar—with a force that can crush us—or create us. It is well that the Norse depicted Loki the god of fire as both a friend and a trickster to the other gods, for fire can warm, and fire can harm. And we must not forget that the God who so sorely tried and tempted Job is the God who taught us to pray, "Our Father,… lead us not into temptation." When viewing a work of art, there is a certain distance that is optimum, where details can be seen but the whole is not lost. We need to establish this optimum distance in dealing with God.
Thus, I bring my rant to a close. I have a need for something missing from my life of a religious nature. And I don't find it in the attitudes of many church-goers nowadays. It may be my own ancestry—I do take strongly after my mother's family, which came from the mountains of a region in Italy known for its hermits. It may be my own disposition, having always been inclined to the complex and difficult path and to strong, undiluted doses of arts and philosophy. It may be because I can stomach much intellectualism that I have a greater need for it to be content. But I am reasonably certain that what I am looking for cannot be found within a church—in the traditional, literal sense of an ecclesia, an assembly. What I am looking for cannot be found within a group. I may periodically find myself with a group if it has a strong dose of ancient ritual. But all my life, everywhere I go, I find I'm on a different wavelength from almost everyone else. And that means I'm going to need a different solution than the ones most other people are turning to. I honestly get a much greater thrill out of reading The Masks of God than I got at this weekend's Living Stations. Intellectually, I seem to get along best with intelligent, open-minded Catholics and ex-Catholics. I wonder how James Joyce dealt with the problem of Catholicism versus modernity. Maybe it's time I should read Ulysses…
I was not too much of a fan of the guitar/drum/choir combo during Easter mass. On the other hand, it worked out extremely well for the Spanish mass when the people behind the music sang with such joy and devotion. Nothing, however, may ever beat the Gregorian choir at a mass I attended in San Francisco last month. The very stones of the cathedral joined these men in their praise. Now THAT was praise... Some of these newfangled Christian songs they try doing at mass at times are what happen when you lose sight of the reverence in favor of modernity. In the example of the Spanish mass, I think they made up for it because it was something so infused in their culture....much like the Latin may be infused in our cultures.
ReplyDeleteYou have to try the Latin mass...or even a Greek Orthodox one...you may feel more at home at one of these more traditional settings.
We must discuss liturgical music at some point in the future because I think you may be on to something.
Indeed, contemporary music does find its way into church at the expense of reverence. I think that's what's going on in some of the mega churches. This is my Big Fat Greek Wedding-like moment when I say that the root of the word "reverence" is a Latin word—vereor, meaning "to fear." And if I remember correctly, fear of the Lord is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. That doesn't mean that God is the God of Silent Hill or a Vincent Price film. You don't have to quake in your boots all the time. But an I-Thou relationship could well be balanced or supplemented by an I-You. We need formal as well as familiar. I'm going to definitely check out a Latin and an Orthodox Mass at some point.
DeleteOne of my favorite musical pieces of all time is Beethoven's Ode to Joy. Which I first learned in church. As a hymn. And see what a lifelong passion that ignited! Music is everything. I think it was Pythagoras (and later Plato) who said that every star in the heavens emits its own musical tone, and so the music of the spheres is the harmonious sound that they make as they move along their predestined paths in the order of the universe. The medievals later took up this Platonic idea and pictured the universe as Dante saw it, with spheres and the stars whirling in orbit around the Earth—just imagine them producing a musical sound like a wet finger on a crystal glass, rather than a whirring sound of cogs and gizmos that we might expect today. And Schopenhauer said that music is the manifestation of the Will, because it is pure art, unadulterated by words or concepts. Whatever music you like says something about who you are, I think. There are different types of music for different types of people. You really need the kind that makes sense to you. It works for plants.
Have you ever considered making your own religious music? You'd make a killing...especially based on how beautifully you described the music of the universe. Physics principles be darned! Your musical description sounds a lot better and makes space sound a lot more appealing (pun unintended)!
DeleteI've never really written music. But I've been trying to convince my friend who's a composition student to write a piece about the Whore of Babylon or an Ode to Vigo the Carpathian. But you know what? I'll give it a shot. If Mel Brooks can write hit musicals, I can turn musical snippets from my head into religious music.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe I should write more prose.
ReplyDelete