Wednesday, October 13, 2004

"Where two or more are gathered in my name..." Continuing (from a couple of days ago) the image of the act of service as the key to learning to love, here's a summation of a thought my friend Nikki and I tossed around over lunch yesterday. It's working on me, and I thought I'd put it out there. The act of service is a kind of space created between the giver and receiver, and it is in that space that God dwells. It is a sanctuary, perhaps the sanctuary of the holy grail, the point of contact with the blood of Christ. In this way the act of mercy, compassion, or charity mirrors the cherubim arching their wings toward one another on the Israelites' ark of the covenant. It was between these cherubim that God dwelt on the "mercy seat," meeting the High Priest there as he offered sacrifice for the sins of the people. Much of modern life is lived as if one of the cherubim have abandoned their posts, so there is no longer anywhere for God to dwell. So where is the mercy seat today? When someone hands a needed meal, a needed bit of clothing, or offers a ride, or a place to stay--or perhaps more needed, forgiveness and grace--in the reaching of those hands toward the hands of those who would receive these gifts, a kind of space is created. It is a space that echoes the mercy seat of the ark of the convenant. It reminds me of Jesus saying "Where two or more of you are gathered in my name, there will I be also." (Matt 18:20) We've always taken "where two or more of you are gathered in my name" to mean worshippers, and I suppose that's what he meant. But when a thing is done for his glory, it really only takes the intentional reaching out of one toward a second to make two gathered in his name. The belief of unbelief of the receiver makes no difference. And in that meeting of two in his name, just as he said, there he resides. If we would learn his heart, we must meet him in that sanctuary. Isn't it there that he has always done his teaching? Dare we say community? 1:50:19 PM   comment []

Image Magazine "For those of us trying to work artistically within the scope of Christian faith, Image magazine should be considered primary reading." I've heard this sort of claim for years, and have skimmed the pages of Greg Wolfe's classy Seattle publication on numerous occasions, but Image never grabbed me like I thought it might. But this morning, several articles converted me--I now know what I've been missing. The first is Greg Wolfe's "The Culture Wars Revisited", also published on the Image web site. He articulates far better than I could some shared beliefs on why current cultural and political debate is so strident, and in the end, often feels like a self-defeating exercise. At the same time, he challenges me, as another friend did yesterday, to not bow out of the discussion, but to continue the work of culturing and serving. The second was by one of my favorites from the Act One: Writing for Hollywood program, longtime Hollywood pro Ron Austin, in which he draws character sketches of two imaginary people in Tinseltown:1) the secularist who has lost faith in not only tradtional religions, but in all the alternatives as well, and 2) the Christian who fears what Hollywood champions--personal freedom and inclusiveness. His article addresses how the story might move forward so that both characters grow toward understanding. And the third was by Bret Lott, a professor of English at LSU, a southern writer whose novels (A Song I Knew by Heart, and nine others) I've not yet read, but the manuscript of his address to the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College earlier this year published here makes me want to. With the telling title "Why Have We Given Up the Ghost?" Lott challenges writers working in the tradition of Christian faith to claim their belief in what secularism scoffs at--namely, God. Lott relates three stories of God's supernaturally working into his own life, and considers the question of writers writing about a God no one wants to hear about. But then he goes to the deep well of Flannery O'Conner, and that's where I'll leave off this morning. Lott quotes from O'Conner's essay "Novelist and Believer": "Saint Thomas Aquinas says that art does not require rectitude of the appetite, that it is wholly concerned with the good of that which is made. He says that a work of art is a good in itself, and this is a truth that the modern world has largely forgotten. We are not content to stay within our limitations and make something that is simply a good in and by itself. Now we want to make something that will have some utilitarian value. Yet what is good in itself glorifies God because it reflects God. The artist has his hands full and does his duty if he attends to his art. He can safely leave evangelizing to the evangelists. He must first of all be aware of his limitations as an artist--for art transcends its limitations only by staying within them." -- Flannery O'Connor I'll be reading Image: Art, Faith, Mystery from now on... 9:58:19 AM   comment []

© Copyright 2004 Jeff Berryman .