Cyber Willard

My favorite class in seminary was the Philosophy of Art and Literature. We spend six weeks studying the notion of beauty (from Plato, Aristotle, etc.). From a Christian standpoint, the existentialist position "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" was rejected, based on the proposition that there are "forms" (very abstract) which have a redemptive quality, and "forms" which cannot possibly have redeeming potential (pornography is legally defined, for instance as "utterly unredeemable"). But this whole way of thinking assumes that the product is the thing of beauty. And it focuses on talent - GREAT works of art (Bach, Rembrandt and so on).

I was reading chapter one the other day while watching Connor play in his room. The song in the background was "Your Eyes" by Diana Krall. Moved, the thought crossed my mind "beauty is in the Eye of the Behold!-er." I wanted to post a blog with this title only and an upload of the song, until I remembered this was illegal. So, I implore you to find a copy and listen to it reverently.

The Enlightenment has been the worship of the individual creative genius. It's hard for me to even think about beauty without conjuring these celebrated giants (Shakespeare, Mozart, Michelangelo and the like) and thinking that everything else is "settling" and sadly normal. I hope the future of art in the emerging world has less to do with fame, as I see signs that simple things are being recognized for beauty's sake. This, I suppose, is one of the reasons I want to defend some of what Willard called cute. For me, the Simpsons is an innovation of significance, not merely one of many media counterfeits (I wouldn't expect Dr. Willard to take the time to notice this).

What I'm trying to get around to is that God is still the source and measure of all things beautiful. Like all heavenly gifts, we can receive, capture, describe, allude to, hint at, long for, wrestle, defy, curse, shrivel, and possibly gaze. But the product of our creative wills is only beautiful to the extent that Christ has looked upon our hearts and found Himself Present. Ironically, the absence of His Presence can still produce Beauty, because the human soul yearns deeply to fulfill what is sought for. The "great" artists that I'm trying not to deify consistently raise my armhairs with this realization.
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Well, I said I had plenty to comment on beauty. I've written dozens of pages on this in the last couple of years. And then I sit down at my computer tonight and find that Dave has successfully reduced my dozens of pages to the two sentences found in his 3rd paragraph. Thanks a lot Dave!
Actually, that really is a good summation of my rambling thoughts. Years ago in a teaching philosophy blurb I wrote at CIU, that was high on my list. If I can send my students off with the ability to see beyond their own artistic motivation, they will be open to far greater opportunities to experience what God is saying through others with different criteria.
Dave rated high here by using the word "good" instead of "beauty". We define beauty more narrowly than is allowed by contexts in which we use it, and we assume that desire for beauty and our definition of it is the motivating factor within all who create. Anyway, I'm rambling and Dave said it in two sentences.
Some of this actually came up again today at noon when we were discussing the image of God as creator and we being created in His image, create. The act of creating (not necessarily the product) is an example of the image of God. This is one reason that, as Greg pointed out, we are able to interpret some cuteness as potentially beautiful. We recognize the process. I was thinking that this explains why truly creative people are so driven to revise and rewrite and edit. Because it the process that we're driven to. It also accounts for the extreme emotional crashes and depression at the completion of a project; just when everyone expects us to be elated at accomplishment. This also is an example of how we creations can never really create as God, who did it, saw that it was good, and then rested, pleased. Its not just our inability to create ex nihilo that shows our humanness. We feel that God was pleased with creating us, and we feel his pleasure only when creating, in the process. Its very easy for me to imagine a divine smile while I'm playing, but very difficult to imagine God enjoying listening to a recording of me playing. So its time to move on and do some more playing.
I'd also like to chase some of the stewardship stuff implied in all this and how it relates to God expecting us to attempt to mimic Him. But I'll wait to read some more of y'alls thoughts.
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So the sardonic humor was not a big hit, eh? My bad. Sorry for messing with the art thing.

But I do want to add to the "kingdom" theme. If our lives are always in process and change, then is the kingdom actually ever realized or is it always "at hand"?

On the bottom of page 26 and top of page 27 Willard says that "only when we find the kingdom [of God] and settle into it can we human beings all reign...". When do we recognize that we have settled into the kingdom? Personally, I have just gotten myself "settled" on the process and not worrying about the outcome or product of my life. If I filter the Willard thought through my current thinking then I will never be fully settled with the kingdom and as a result will never enjoy or experience this nirvana of "...individualized 'reigns' with neither isolation nor conflict". Is there a sense in which we live the kingdom in light of the beatitudes, but never actually realize the full potential of those "beautiful-tudes"? If this is not the kingdom then what is?


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I may have prematurely agreed to be a part of this cyber-book club. I don’t know what Darmstadt means or what serial music is, and I’m not a big fan of Homer, but I want to comment on this page somehow. So here goes…

Oh yeah. One other question. Are we supposed to comment on each others comments, or just on the book itself?

When God was in the process of creating He felt it was “good” to create in the image of Himself and when He was done creating, He also emphatically stated that the finished product was “good”. I think that when we judge the “art” (product, by-product, music, etc) by the criteria that we personally hold as the standard, we may do the artist a great disservice by not understanding her criteria in the purpose of creating.

Secondly, the kingdom. I think the metaphor that I can best understand it with is in relationship to operating systems on a computer. MSDOS is the base system upon which everything is built. Then the Windows “kingdom” came and modified the whole way that we operate computers. No longer do we key stroke and command, instead we can point and click. Amazing!

Now, we can choose to let this new "windows kingdom" be our enabling power, or we can bring up the old DOS system and still try to go the command route. However, the old DOS system has many limitations and cannot adequately use the “full potential” of a computer. We can also try to use other “windows type” systems as our operating system, but they have bugs and limitations as well.

So there is my best metaphor for the kingdom. It is something that exists in us, around us, and is also something that empowers us. But as I see it we must choose to use it or it does no good. To claim that you are a windows user and to be still computing with DOS commands is a contradiction that anyone with any sense can see right through.
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sorry, fellow willardons, i've been swampified with school reading and the like and haven't been able to reread chpt. 1. i've made it as far as pg. 101 in the book before but it's been a while. be patient with me, though - i'm on a three novel a week pace with class reading and so will have to work hard to carve time for willard. i'm still in though. don't make walk the plank just yet. i've got plenty of thoughts brewing in kingdom stuff.
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Well, in truth, I did have a blog ready when I thought we'd start posting last week. But through the week my thoughts wandered elsewhere and I thought I'd just freshly re-write anyway. I'm not ready to do that until I get home this evening, but I do want to toss out my reactions to the cutesy passage. I was spared the brewing over the Simpsons because I zeroed in on the what I perceived as a jab at the direction of "serious" music at about the middle of the century. I had never heard these directions referred to as "cute" before. But I interpreted, "give me attention". When I chased that thought, it described both the aleatoric, indeterminate schools of writing and the Darmstadt "bullies", as I so affectionately call them. In serial music, some composers surely found an outlet for redeemable art. But because the music enhanced the text, rather than being redeemable as absolute music. Penderecki's "St. Luke Passion" fits here. A friend of mine wrote "Requiem for a man on a wooden cross" that is the musical realistic equivalent of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ". "Wake up people, this is serious business." But so often, the fact that I can be outrageous or cute becomes the whole motivation and art is degraded in the process. If the public had the ability to reject the means that becomes the end, one wouldn't be confused for the other and the bar would not be lowered. But generally people believe what they're told and we end up with art and spirituality based on cute slogans and catch phrases and memorable mission statements which have no action or theology to back them up.
Second, I've got plenty of blog about "beautiful"...
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For some reason I thought Rod would have an already pre-written blog ready to post at 6:01 a.m. mountain time this morning. Oh well, I guess I'll try to get this thing going.

First, I'm still brewing over his pot-shot at the Simpsons. Of course his overall indictment of pop art and media dumbing-down everything into cuteness is insightful. But when he singled-out Bart and Homer, I had to pause and defend some of this cuteness as having a place in the world of potentially-redeemable "art." Later, Willard says (p.11) "no act of beauty is senseless, for the beautiful is never absurd. Nothing is more meaningful than beauty." Words to live by. And yet, I have to be careful not to be a "beauty snob." Fellow artisans, correct me here if I'm wrong, but I'm thinking God sees beauty in the act of creating more than in the final product. In other words, what was in the heart of the artist while creating was beautiful to God. And what is in the heart of the "beholder" can also be beautiful. So, yes, the world inevitably misses the mark by settling for cuteness, but Kingdom people should be able to interpret this cuteness in potentially beautiful ways.

Second, I have had several discussions lately about the Kingdom of God. I've been trying to filter other people's comments through Willard's descriptions. I think Willard has done as good a job as any here, but I'm still searching for my own language. I want to yield to your thoughts here before I take a shot at it...
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