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Yesterday I listened to a radio show which asked callers to share the day their life changed. One woman gushed about the day her husband died and she was finally free. He had been terribly abusive and she feared that if he hadn’t died he might have soon killed her, so I could understand her sense of freedom. But a part of my brain—a part far removed from that understanding part—winced, wanting to ask, “But he was a human. Wasn’t there something good about him? Was there no grief?”
Most of our experiences and feelings are hard to express simply. We can’t say, “I love my coffee black,” without making our listener also hear, “She hates coffee with cream.” In every family, as soon as a parent tells one child, “Your sister is very good at drawing,” that child feels somehow like he has no drawing talent. There’s always a “but”or a “yet” that makes statements feel more balanced, more true because our lives are complicated. “I’m healthy except for …” “I’m satisfied, yet …” So we often choose one of two ways to respond to the complexities of life: We’re either too willing to cling desperately to closed, black-and-white statements or we’re always suspicious of simplicity.
The first really well-educated man I ever met was a real disappointment to me. Not because he wasn’t brilliant or fascinating, but because all his answers were very long, difficult to remember and peppered with language like “on the other hand” and “however.” I had always thought the more you learned, the simpler things got. He showed me that the more you know, the more you see how nuanced everything is. I’m starting to see that the most true things I know are two-sided and hard to hold down. Jesus is man, but God. I should hold my children close, but also set them free. Life is wonderful, but it kinda stinks. Chocolate is bad for me, but good for me … but actually pretty bad for me.
It takes a lot of energy to hold these squirmy kinds of truths. “God doesn’t exist” fits in a nice box called “atheism.” “God is always great” can be shelved under “faith.” But, “I think God exists, but I can’t see him and sometimes I don’t even feel him, which is when he may be doing his best work, so I’d better watch for him. Or maybe he really doesn’t exist. But I kind of hope he does,” takes more effort to carry, only in small part because it has so many more words.
Before I even had my driver’s license I went to a foreign country for the first time. This was my first proper ride in a proper plane and it took me clear across to the other side of the world. And I unpacked my bags and lived there. For the first year I didn’t have a car. So I went from one rather small world to another rather small world, and they were worlds apart. Now, over 20 years later, my life can be divided into two halves: when I lived there and when I lived here, the people I know there and the people I know here, the foods I love there and the foods I love here. I will never have a party in both places with both kinds of people and both kinds of food. And so I live with a lot of caveats. I have this, but I remember that. I want that, but it would cost me this. Just when I think I can get my head around my existence, I get a phone call from the other side of the world and am reminded I’m only living half of my truth.
I’ve been really sad a few times in my life. The way I know I’m really sad is if I get tired of doing this flip-flopping thing. If all I can see is the broken thing in front of my face and I no longer have the energy to say, “But it could be made into something new.” So it’s not that I’m seeing through the clouded-vision of depression—what I see is truth. But I only see one half of the truth. The engine that says “but” refuses to run.
It’s been out of commission for a few months now. And I’m understanding it’s not just a general sense of hope that requires that engine. But faith in God’s existence requires it. When you live in a world that is both measurable and a mystery, you need to be able to say “but.” When your world is both beautiful and flawed, you have remember to use the words “yet” and “although.” It’s the task of the minister to remember those words and give them to others. The Gertrude Stein character in the movie Midnight in Paris says, “The artist’s job is not to succumb to despair, but to find an antidote to the emptiness of existence.” On hearing this quote, as both an artist and pastor, I never felt more strongly that those roles were one.
Which brings me to art. The art I like best usually expresses (at least) two co-existing realities. It’s made of trash, but it’s beautiful. It’s chaotic, yet it has a kind of balance. See? “But” and “Yet.” I have just finished my first finger-painted painting. I started with the brightest colors I could find and spread them around with hopeful abandon. Then, when they were dry, I took a bottle of shoe polish and covered all the color with a cloud. Except for one small piece which resisted and so in one corner there’s a tiny war between exuberant color and impending grey. The whole time I painted I hummed to myself the U2 song, “40,” which is based on Psalm 40. To the Psalmist’s promise of, “I will sing a new song,” U2 adds the question, “How long to sing this song?” The hopefulness of a song which promises to sing (so of course the promise has already been fulfilled) paired with the whiny impatience of an exhausted child: “Are we there yet?”
Which reminds me of one of the best conversations about art I’ve ever enjoyed. It was with a sweet and incredibly gifted young composer who said,
“I like the aesthetic of broken things.
I don’t know if I am attracted to the message of Jesus because I like broken things
or if I like broken things because they remind me of the message of Jesus,
but either way I like how Jesus confirms brokenness as a part of beauty.”
He was a little disturbed by his own thoughts: Did that mean he wouldn’t like heaven? That he was somehow twisted? All the perfection might be just too perfect. We talked about Christian art and how it is often syrupy. It expresses truth, but only part of the truth—the pretty part. It often feels uncomfortable with the uglier truths. We wondered together if maybe broken but beautiful feels more like truth because that is this existence. Maybe when our existence no longer involves brokenness, pure, unadulterated, uncomplicated beauty will be truth. And that will be enough for us.
Photo (Flickr CC) by Robin
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