The Golden Ass

I’ve long been fascinated with the idea of “tohu va vohu” – “formelss and void.”

The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
– Genesis 1: 2.

We are thoroughly shaped by the modern world, in which our dominant modes of perception are not governed by the image of humans dwelling in mystery with finite limits of life and understanding upon the earth and under the dome of heaven but, rather, by an exterior, “objective, factual view” of the earth after astronauts actually CONFIRMED the speculative theories of Copernicus and Galileo. The analytical nature of this objectification, this obscene exposure of reality, makes it difficult for us to remember our intuitions about beginnings. To analyze is to dissect, to cut up, to look back upon something already long dead.

On top of that, we are also thoroughly shaped by a postmodern world in which modernity’s completion of its global project of creating a cosmopolis means that, quite literally, everything’s already been done. Not only is it difficult for us to remember and intuit beginnings, but we live in a cynical world of bad remixes and hastily produced secondhand sequels of 25 years later, lol. It’s a world in which people on Twitter think that a collaboration between Kanye West and Paul McCartney is about to make Paul McCartney famous, LOL. So, not only is it difficult to imagine the formation of things, but we live in the constant CONFIRMATION of things and times having already long ended.

There’s something about poured in place concrete that has always struck my imagination with the peaceful and rhythmic but jarringly acute force of a two thousand year old hammer upon a primordial anvil shaping and forming and working some dark and fiery raw material into a shiny, reflectively ordered image of a higher truth by a good master craftsman who teaches me about a wondrous beauty present in the world. That image pierces my previously blinded soul like shafts of sunlight breaking loose the reign of thick darkness in a caving void of dying, a cave whose only sound is the running waters of the river of Lethe (2 Peter 1: 9). Jarring shafts of warm sunlight striking softly against prime matter being formed by the still-appearing impressions from the Forms that gave it shape in the face of an ever-impending “decay” – a voiding formlessness - tend to baptize in wakefulness a soul so thoroughly “gazing with closed eyes, imbibing forgetfulness.”

I barely knew what love is when I learned this poetic lesson about concrete. Heck, I probably loved concrete more than humans! As God has poured out grace upon grace over my life and into my soul, however, I have gradually softened and warmed to the point where my imagination can begin to be open to the image or idea of such beauty making an appearance in humans, in human community, in right relationships between and among the image bearers of God and His higher order. Said "higher order" IS the Kingdom of the One whose “Spirit was upon the face of the deep’ (2 Peter 1: 11), the Law of Love of the Spirit who brings conviction regarding righteousness.

Well – apparently a lesson that was impossible before my heart was being strangely warmed over the course of 20 years - I learned this cool and earth-shattering new thing last night while reading Doug Harink's commentary on (1 &) 2 Peter. More precisely, I saw – like in a flashing shaft of sunlight - something that God has been teaching me for a long time.

In community among humans, the re-creation of all things in a new time inaugurated by and revealed in the King of creation is CONFIRMED in and by our practice and living out of a life of virtue, and specifically Christian virtue bookeneded by faith and love! Like the role of concrete in my dark, lost soul, this King is the Uncreated who took form(ation) in the ever-decaying flesh of humanity (ever-threatened by voiding formlessness), specifically for the purpose of our re-membering our beginnings. Concrete bathed in sunlight, however - beautiful though it is - was "merely" a glimpse. The "glorious excellence" (2 Peter 1: 2) enacted in the faith and love of the flesh of Jesus (2 Peter 1: 5) fulfills in my life a love that was previously just being awakened.

Poured-in-place concrete was like my Israel, and Jesus is the better poured-in-place-concrete. A well-fed but hungry child giving away their meal to a hungry drunk who is well confirmed in his participation in his ways of decay is the fashioning of a beautiful masterpiece; the child is filled more with compassion than hunger, full from pouring out rather than receiving. A conscientious objector is not passively biding the world's baptism in violent, bloody chaos; he stands firm in his trust that the Master is not absent.

“The Spirit of God was moving,” says the text. When creating began, chaos did not reign supreme. In fact, the Spirit of God exhibited purposeful action even in the presence of chaos. Chaos was mastered by God. If you were an ancient Babylonian reading Bere’shiyt (Genesis), such a statement would come flying off the page. Your understanding of the world would be rocked. “Do you mean that life isn’t a tragic accident? Do you mean that there is a purpose behind all this? Do you mean that we are not left as temporary aberrations in the destructive path of chaos?” Yes, that’s what this means! God reigns over chaos. The end is not supremely negative.
- tohu va-vohu | Hebrew Word Study | Skip Moen

So, last night I learned that the lesson of poured-in-place concrete doesn’t have to be confined to the creation of a piece of art, a technology that I myself am in charge of manipulating, forming, and controlling. We are the art, and we aren’t the makers or masters of it. We just get to participate in - and become - it by practicing Christian virtue.

…Whereby he has given us his precious and majestic promises, so that through these you may become sharers in the divine nature, having escaped from the decay that is in the cosmos on the account of desire. And for this very reason also, having brought along all your earnestness, supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, And knowledge with self-mastery, and self-mastery with steadfastness, and steadfastness with piety, And piety with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For, when these things are increasing, they render you neither idly barren nor barrenly unfruitful for the full knowledge of Jesus the Annointed. For the one in whom these things are not present is blind, gazing with closed eyes, imbibing forgetfulness of the purging of old sins. Therefore, brothers, be eager instead to make your calling and your election FIRM: for in doing these things you will surely never fall. For thus the entrance into our Lord and Savior the Annointed’s Kingdom in the Age shall be lavishly provided to you.
- 2 Peter 1: 4-11

By way of explanation for clarity and to tie those verses in with my point about Jesus, virtue, and poured-in-place concrete: “For, when these things are increasing, they render you neither idly barren nor barrenly unfruitful” is a reference to our participation in the re-creation of all things in and by the One who is the Light of Life, through whom all things came into being. Ontological goodness (“fruitfulness”, creation, mastery "over" chaos) is not separate from ethical beauty (“these things,” i.e. Christian virtues).

In summation, in the same way that shafts of sunlight upon concrete awakened my soul to our primordial beginnings, I saw last night that the practice of faith and love CONFIRMS and makes apparent in the world the (re)Creation of all things in and by Christ, who is the beautiful King of virtue.

*all photos from the work of Tadao Ando

When I was at Pembroke Mall a couple weeks ago, there was an art exhibit there showing the work of some of the local schools. I am super impressed with and encouraged by the work of two of these kids. I guess intuition and insight are still, like, things, despite all we have going against them...

This 8th grader Bryan has presented to us a pretty amazing translation for our times of, "Faith the size of a mustard seed moves mountains." Mountains in scripture are doubly associated with, on the one hand, imperial oppression and, on the other, God's Holy City, visible to all, the Glory of God's goodness and love made manifest and visible in a community's way of life. The kinds of mountains that require faith to "move" are the oppressive ones, like the powers of the Roman empire that put God in the flesh on a cross.

This kid is tuning and tapping into how such oppressive powers are so prevalent in our world today, now masked as temptations and callings to identities branded on us like cattle by the oppressive, seemingly-immovable powers of consumerism and market participation, masks we're all called, enticed, and commanded by these oppressive powers to put on with our endless, illusion-filled, death-denying striving higher and higher up a social ladder made of straw that's already on fire, at the top of which is only dark alienation, cold anxiety, and the revelation of the death that fuelled the competitive striving all along.

This kid probably hasn't studied any of that, but he has the gift of sight. He gets it. He senses, deep in his bones, that something is off. And he's able to articulate it for others to see. This painting nearly brought me to tears a couple weeks ago when it was presented at Pembroke Mall. We have in our midst an 8th grade prophet; I hope he finds the holy mountain of light that requires no sun or moon.

And little Felicity Kung. 5th grade. FIFTH grade! And her intuition and insight have her tapping and tuning into deep, wondrous, awe-commanding open secrets, whispered mysteries of and by the cosmos. That man and nature are participants in a higher order of forms of beauty that can and have been accessed with math and geometry. This likely adorable little 5th grader is already a student of Pythagoras and Phidias, Moses (Exodus 25-31) and Ezekiel (Ezekiel 40-48); she has already gleaned insight into their visions for Temples and city plans that are in accordance with higher orders now largely lost to our perceptual fields because of the way oppressive, secularizing forces have come to dominate our patterns of sensation, perception, and thinking.

But not beautiful little Felicity Kung. No! She's a Soul Rebel, a little Princess of Priests! I hope the burning wick her intuition for beauty isn't soon quenched by Rage Against the Machine. I hope she dives deeper into our gifts of beauty so as to be enraptured by an awe-struck wonder saturated with overwhelming Love.

"Insofar as we control people, they cease to exist and become merely an extension of ourselves. To love the person under our control is to love ourselves, not them."
- Jeremiah Mitchell, via Michael Gonzalez

image from "the medium is the MASSAGE, An Inventory of Effects," by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore

This quote applies to all relationships, but when I saw this image from Marshall McLuhan, the context of marriage immediately came to mind for me as a case study. We hear that joke a lot about "the old ball and chain," but what is that joke really saying? We can tend to feel constrained in and by all relationships. I would suggest that this apparent tension between constraint and love reveals and pierces into what and who we worship.

A man or woman beholds his or her future husband or wife and they are then drawn to each other, drawn towards a world that the two of them share together. "Beauty evokes desire. It precedes and elicits desire, it supplicates and commands it, and it gives shape to the soul that receives it." - David Bentley Hart "We become what we behold." - William Blake.

The "ball and chain" joke - as well as that feeling of being constrained and enslaved rather than free to love in any relationship - assumes an unquestioned fate of the world the two come to share. Every time I hear that joke or its sentiment, though, I want to ask a question. What does the fulfilling of our desires come out looking like in our relationships? One flesh or dead flesh? Gift or curse? Faithful, covenant love, or dark parody? Cross or resurrection? Death or life?

If this quote about control and love is true, then, to control people is for people to become our technologies. We turn people into idols. Psalm 115:

Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but do not speak;
eyes, but do not see.
They have ears, but do not hear;
noses, but do not smell.
They have hands, but do not feel;
feet, but do not walk;
and they do not make a sound in their throat.
Those who make them become like them;
so do all who trust in them.

The case study of marriage as the fulfilment of a human desire through either love or control, then, reveals that all desire is a quest-ion of worship. Because control(ling) is and implies (worshipping of) an idol - a technology, an extension of our selves. Modern technologies are always about control of something outside of ourselves rather than participation in something in which we share.

"[W]e shape our tools, and therafter our tools shape us." - Marshall McLuhan. In this case study of marriage, a man's idol doesn't just wear his technology but becomes it. A man beholds his wife, and she becomes a mirror. That's why and how marriages - and all relationships in general - are opportunities and gardens to cultivate growth and maturity into love. And, love is life.

In relationships, we are confronted, as though in a mirror, with the unhealthy elements in the soil of our soul bearing fruit in our lives. At the same time, relationships are mirrors in another way. There is a unifying element of all relationships as we come to work towards a goal and share in a world together; as we behold our partners and teammates in a shared world on a path to shared ends, we begin to see ourselves in one another. In both of these ways in which relationships are like mirrors for us, they are opportunities to grow in love and freedom.

On the other hand: "The concept of 'idol' for the Hebrew Psalmist is much like that of Narcissus for the Greek mythmaker. And, the Psalmist insist that the BEHOLDING of idols, or the use of technology, conforms men to them." - Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Idol or living human? One flesh or dead flesh? Life and love, or death and technologies of control?

Our making our wife or husband into our crafted, treasured, golden idol, then, shapes us into one who is incapable of actual love of a real person who uses his or her own hands, mouth, ears, nose, and feet. In other words, controlling precludes loving, because love builds up into freedom. The "ball and chain" joke presumes a blindness and deafness to actual love of another - by blinding and deafening us to the mouth and ears of the actual other person, to their words and to how they perceive the world. This is why love listens first and speaks second. This is why I am struck by the difference in the above photo between my actual thumb as compared to the photo of the hand (remember that photography is another technology).

If we are tempted into the image of "the old ball and chain" (or of relationships being constraining for us), perhaps we should ask: is beauty a free gift or chained curse? Is love a trusting faithfulness unto death, or are we enslaved into a dark world of alienating death? Doe we create our own world or participate in the refashioning of Creation with the Uncreated?

Of course, this being a case study, it applies beyond itself, as the original quote suggests. Other relationships besides romantic ones ask for fulfillment of other desires. What are we believing as we seek to fulfill desires in relationships with others? If we are tempted to govern relationships though control, what does that say about us and how we have been shaped? And, this question of what governs those relationships, as well as of what we believe about them, will always be between love and control. If what we are really loving is an image or technology that we craft for ourselves, then we are really worshipping ourselves. We are shaped by what and who we worship. And, this is precisely because a beautiful God of love and freedom who elicits and evokes a desire for worship sits on a Throne as the Uncreated Creator at the center of all that is. As we come to worship this One True God of Israel, we are more likely to believe that relationships are about love rather control, living flesh rather than deadly suffering. We will imagine relationships looking more like the life of resurrection rather than the blood of the cross.

I watched "Unbreakable" last night. I liked how it talked about comic books presenting exaggerations of true phenomenon in the world. I didn't like how it left no room for transcendence, as though all the powers of the heroes and villains are only and merely imminently present in the world. It still, however, speaks to us in powerful ways, I think....

In the scriptural narrative, which we are all living out, the God of all creation, in Christ, identifies with His people in his baptisms in water and blood. So, we are GIVEN an identity. Unlike Elijah in the film, we don't have to anxiously search for who we are while on a path of destruction. So, in Christ, we have an identity. We are His.

Also, in the scriptural narrative, Christ is the "Son of God," the one who "well pleases" God and to whom we are to listen. "Son of God" there denotes royalty. That means that Christ is the royal representative of God; Christ is the image of God on earth. But, wait, I thought that was what humanity is in the scriptural narrative? The "image of God" (see the creation story)? Ha. Exactly! This means that Christ was on a mission to restore and redeem humanity in Himself. In being given the gift of an identity we don't have to fight for, we don't lose but gain our humanity. In Christ, who was broken for us, we also aren't a bunch of nobodies living in darkness and hopelessness, the image of which haunted Elijah for much of his life. In Christ, we inherit His royalty (through participation in his suffering and on to glory).

But, practically speaking, what does that mean? Adam and Eve were also given the task or "purpose" of "tending" to and caring for the garden. Well, Christ upped the ante on our original purpose and launched the project to restore and redeem not a garden but the whole of Creation. And, He continues that work through His royal people with whom he identifies, who have authority, power, and meaning in Him! Only royalty has the right to shape the world, and it is inherited through His suffering. So, in Him, we have both identity and "purpose." And, that purpose is kind of a big deal. All of creation is all.

Unlike Elijah in Unbreakable, we don't have to achingly and anxiously take it upon ourselves to seek and pursue "purpose" while on a difficult and daunting path that leads to destruction. That would break anyone. Instead, Christ lifts us up, heals our wounds by His own, and sends us on His way.

The task given to Israel through Abraham of being "a blessing to the nations" turns into showing the world what His Way looks like.

It shall come to pass in the latter days
that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be lifted up above the hills;
and all the nations shall flow to it,
3 and many peoples shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
- Isaiah 2: 2-3, and Micah 4: 1-2

I was deeply moved when, in Unbroken, David Dunn is free from "the sadness" when he finds his mission and identity. I was reminded of my own life, when I was freed to love more fully and effectively - not to mention more centered on others - when I saw that I was taken up into the identity and mission (or task) of Christ. In other words, when I started "doing what I'm supposed to be doing." There were some cleansing waters flowing down my face.

We have a purpose, and we don't have to bear the burden of finding it on our own. In Him, we find rest. When Psalm 23 says He leads me beside still waters, I don't imagine them as the murky kinds of waters with darkness, serpents, and bugs swirling around beneath the surface that occasionally make themselves appear above for us to see and fear. Waters into which we will disappear and drown forever, David Dunn's kryptonite. Those seem to constitute Elijah's inglorious vision into which he's staring in this still pic from the film. Instead, I imagine the waters of our rest in His identity and vocation as clear and cleansing fires reflecting purifying, transcendent light.

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.
19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
20 He keeps all his bones;
not one of them is broken.
- Psalm 34