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