The Sneaky Guise of Selflessness: Part 2

At the risk of beating this particular tired, nearly worn-out horse past the point of usefulness, I have a couple more thoughts to add. One was a moment of self-understanding (that may border on self-justification) about my desire to blog what I feel like blogging without having to worry much about whether I'm being helpful to others.

"Ahhh, yes," I thought in a flash of recollection. "Writing sermons all those years (22, to be more precise), I was altogether focused on what would be helpful, elucidating, enlightening, encouraging, or challenging in a positive way. No wonder I not only find it hard to allow myself to do otherwise but also have a burning desire to follow a different (i.e., self-determined) path of inspiration!"

I suppose this bit of awareness should have been obvious to me--I'm sure it has been clear at various times. It's just one of those slippery fish that easily wriggles free of my grasp. I have put in my dues in an other-focused profession. Even if the stuff I wrote was drawn from within myself and the quirkiness of my own creative process, the writing and speaking of all those sermons took place within externally determined boundaries and a fairly set liturgical framework, for a clear purpose that had little to do with free personal expression.

Preaching is an an art form, for sure, but one in which the goal of the particular religious inclination can clash mightily with the hungers and longings of an individual creative person. My soul has borne the brunt of that clashing of agendas, goals, longings.

"But you can exercise your creativity in your sermons," people used to say.

"Yes, but..." I used to try to respond. Often as not, I would give up trying to articulate the struggle, the intensely felt clash of forces, because no matter how I tried to frame it, my desires for true creative freedom to express myself however I chose (meaning, in whatever medium or language I chose and on whatever topic I felt moved to speak) always sounded just...so...damn...selfish.

How can the fires of individual self-expression ever come off sounding as morally or religiously legitimate as the ideals of serving others? Especially from within an institution whose stated goals and norms are the service of others in the name of and in the spirit of Jesus?

I remember a poet leading a poetry workshop I attended while still in seminary, who took a rare (among the rather bohemian poetry world of that workshop) positive view of my religious affiliation. He suggested I read one or two poets who wrote what he thought of as "religious poetry," even if not overtly religious poetry.

I'm not sure I could have said so very clearly at the time, but I think I knew even then that I didn't want to write "religious poetry!" Over the years my poems, when I wrote them at all, were a means (or at least kept alive a hope for such a means) of keeping alive some other voice within me, a wilder, truer, sometimes even a deliberately irreverent or skeptical voice, a voice outside the boundaries of the church.

And my pursuit of other art forms over the years sprang from a similar motivation. My forays into drawing, painting, knitting, dyeing yarns, weaving...

"Oh, wonderful!" at least one parishioner said after I had learned weaving during one of our sabbatical breaks, "you can weave new altar hangings for the altar!"

I remember how suddenly and totally my heart sank when I heard those words (and the moment was at least seven years ago). And I remember how a fiery, feisty energy had risen up almost as suddenly, ready to defend my creative pursuits as my own, to mark off a place where my own quirky, peculiar, authentic to myself as possible self-expression would be guarded from that seemingly insatiable hunger of the church to own it all, to own all of me, and for parishioners to want to claim my creativity for themselves.

As you can imagine, there's still more to tell of this story. But right now I'm off to deliver some paintings to the church where that very same exchange happened seven years ago. For the second year in a row, I will step into that building (that I still love very much), not as a priest but as a painter. Somehow I think I would do well to repeat that last sentence to myself many times over, and to savor it.

And then to keep telling about the "sneaky guise of selflessness", and especially about the time when I finally saw it for what it was and dared to choose a different path.

A Little More about Painting Flowers

A couple of months ago while visiting a recent exhibit at the Portland Museum of Art, I was swept off my feet before I even got to the third painting among the dozens of still life paintings, drawings, and collages that made up the exhibit. But it wasn't even a work of art that stunned me; it was the written text that accompanied a 16th century Flemish (I think) painting. I know I took out pen and paper and wrote the quote down, but I've not been able to find where I wrote it, so this is from memory.

The text said that the painter of the particular, very detailed still life had been a monk in a Flemish monastery. (I just had to look up Flemish--I was feeling unsure whether it was another word for Belgian or for Dutch--in fact it refers to the people, language, etc. of Flanders. It is in fact the Dutch language spoken in Belgium, one of Belgium's two official languages. The other language I believe is French, because my college boyfriend and I were once given a ride in the Loire valley by a Belgian couple in their tiny Citroen. We managed to converse via my French, but they spoke Flemish to one another, while Jeff and I of course spoke English. I am certain that their knowledge of English was far better than our knowledge of Flemish.)

But I do digress, rather far. Back to the text with the painting at the museum.

It said something about how the close observation and rendering of flowers was seen to be an aid to the contemplation of God. Well, that got my attention! Not that I haven't felt or experienced that myself, but to read that some male religious authority, even a whole religious order or institution believed and declared that four centuries ago, and even supported it (read on)--that felt different to me! 

I wonder if I was staring at part of the divide between Catholic and Protestant spiritualities, or the chasm between the pre-Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment relationship between science and religion, particularly Christianity (as well as Islam and Judaism). Science, one expression of the close observation of nature, was for centuries seen as a companion of religion, and all pathways of deeper knowledge about the world we live in--botany, astronomy, medicine, even mathematics!--were honored as ways of knowing the ultimately Unknowable. Art also has a stronger, more honored place in Christianity before the Reformation, with some forms of Protestantism so suspicious of imagery, music, and the like. (Think Chartres Cathedral vs. a plain white-walled Congregational meeting house.)

Without going too far down this path this morning, I will only say that human love and contemplation of the created world has not always enjoyed a central place in Christian theology, liturgy or practice, particularly in its American expressions. In my experience, love and contemplation of the created world have usually gotten a kind of a sideways nod--"Well, yes, dear, that's all very nice, but...what does it have to do with Jesus? what does it have to do with the cross and salvation? What does it have to do with this week's Scripture lessons?" (We might ask, what does it have to do with the oil still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and begin to get somewhere.)

When I still had a practice of going on silent retreats, the best part for me usually had to do with being outside, talking to trees and sometimes even "dancing" with them, drawing ferns and wildflowers, wandering in woods and meadows, conversing with birds. But somehow that's now what I thought I was supposed to be doing. I was supposed to be having three sustained "prayer periods" a day, or meditating on some passage of Scripture and letting it illuminate some heavy issue in my life. 

"Have you asked Jesus about that?" a retreat director might say. And I would shrink inside, crumple with a little more guilt and shame. "No," would have been the honest answer. "Why would I?" No wonder I stopped going on "directed retreats" and started "directing" myself--hanging out in the silence and the natural world, sometimes with art supplies. But always with a nagging sense that I was supposed to be doing my retreats some other way. Not trusting myself. And certainly not trusting delight.

To be fair and balanced, I did once long ago, when still a very new priest, tell my bishop that I had talked to and danced with some spruce trees while on a retreat. And he confessed his own "closet pantheism" in reply. I remember leaving that official meeting with effervescent joy and buying an ice cream cone on the way home to celebrate.

But I do digress again.

I didn't think about all of that while standing in the museum. I only registered viscerally that that little piece of text and what followed were chipping away at something in me, maybe even blasting holes in some armor of mine, or at some sort of wall.

The text continued by saying that the painter of the painting had been "employed by the monastery as a painter of flowers." 

"No way!" I thought.  "What a deal! Sign me up! I want to be employed as an observer and painter of flowers!" 

A whole cascade of similar sentiments tumbled through my mind and body. I felt breathless, dumbfounded. I had "glimpsed myself" in a piece of text on a museum wall--a bit of print I can imagine lots of viewers passed right over. 

I have been a close observer and a delighter in the close observation of flowers, fruits and vegetables, plants in general, for a long long time. In that sense it has been an "occupation" of mine. But it has not been a primary source of income for me, has not been my paid employment. A primary, though perhaps largely unacknowledged, source of sustenance and of great joy, yes; a natural way of getting out of my head and into a more focused, present attention; and an avenue for being "a bride married to amazement" to use Mary Oliver's lovely phrase.

To imagine that such an occupation was once upon a time truly honored as a way of contemplating God and was supported with financial reward (meaning, I assume, that the selling of the monk's paintings was a source of income for the monastery that fed, housed, and clothed him)--well, that just set me humming. 

And the humming continues.