Poetry, painting, praise, engaged in the company of others, presents a spiritual symphony to our sin-darkened souls.
My appreciation for the arts has been long in the making. But such is often the case for those durable, irremediable ‘tastes’ we acquire in life.
Prose literature was where it began, but it has since blossomed into an appetite for forms musical, visual, and architectural as well. Art has a way of reaching past the ‘default processors’ which we normally use to access reality. It bypasses those conventional, straightforward tools of perception we employ on a daily basis.
Art trades less in information and more in experience; less in instruction and more in transformation; less in volition and more in invasion. Art evokes an experience often impeded by quotidian realities. It generates a form of consciousness often unreachable through standard modes of attention.
One of the most evocative descriptions of art, of its debilitating and galvanizing habit, comes from the scarcely mentioned 20th-century writer Willa Cather. In her third novel, The Song of the Lark (published in 1915), Cather traces the life of a budding, Colorado-born artist (musician), Thea Kronborg.
Miss Kronborg, throughout the novel, is portrayed as an austere, resolute Swedish child, whose soul plays host to a mysterious artistic talent. After moving to Chicago, the then musical Mecca of the United States, she exhausts every reason to avoid the symphony until she cannot any longer.
In the fifth section of Part 2 (entitled “the Song of the Lark”), Thea finally attends the symphony, and Cather recounts her experience:
The first theme had scarcely been given out when her mind became clear; instant composure fell upon her, and with it came the power of concentration... When the first movement ended, Thea’s hands and feet were cold as ice. She was too much excited to know anything except that she wanted something desperately, and when the English horns gave out the theme of the Largo, she knew what she wanted was exactly that...
After leaving the concert hall, in what seemed a trance, a February storm was raging in downtown Chicago:
The streets were full of cold, hurrying, angry people, running for street-cars and barking at each other... For almost the first time Thea was conscious of the city itself, of the congestion of life all about her, of the brutality and power of those streams that flowed in the street... People jostled her, ran into her, poked her aside with their elbows, uttering angry exclamations... She stood there dazed and shivering.... Why did these men torment her?
Cather goes on:
A cloud of dust blew in her face and blinded her. There was some power abroad in the world bent upon taking away from her that feeling with which she had come out of the concert hall... If one had that, the world became one’s enemy; people, buildings, wagons, cars, rushed at one to crush it under, to make one let go of it. Thea glared round her at the crowds, the ugly, sprawling streets, the long lines of lights... All these things and people were no longer remote and negligible; they had to be met, they were lined up against her, they were there to take something from her... They might trample her to death, but they should never have it. As long as she lived that ecstasy was going to be hers. She would live for it, work for it, die for it; but she was going to have it...
Willa Cather is no Karl Barth, but she’s more of a theologian than most give her credit for. The musical art delivered (in the midwiferal sense) through the Chicago Symphony Orchestra awakened an ethereal fire in Thea Kronborg which the world seemed hell-bent to quench.
With this image, so delicately traced through the pen of Cather, I can’t help but think of two famous passages of Christian Scripture:
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 5:14-15).
We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies (2 Corinthians 4:7-10).
The ecstasy accessed by Thea Kronborg, awakened by the symphony’s art, is immediately threatened by the congested, harsh world to which the concert-hall doors rudely open. In the very same way, the ethereal light, the invaluable treasure, which is sheathed in the frail bodies of Christ’s followers, is bombarded from all directions by the forces of evil and darkness.
Jesus Christ awakens an energy which lay (almost) dormant in the recesses of our hearts, an energy which, when awakened, attracts the full and complete attention of this stormy, oppressive world.
As Thea spends the rest of her life protecting, cultivating, and unleashing this energy upon the world (in the form of musical art), so ought Christians to devote their lives to stewarding the ecstatic power which lies within us (i.e., the Holy Spirit).
While thoughtful intellection and dutiful instruction may help brighten this light, the medium of art is unparalleled in this holy task of stewardship.
Artistic media engages the senses, the emotions, the deep places where our “bushel-covered” flames are fueled. Poetry, painting, praise, engaged in the company of others, presents a spiritual symphony to our sin-darkened souls. By engaging art together, especially in the practice of Christian worship, followers of Jesus are thus awakened in truly unimaginable ways.
“She could hear the crash of the orchestra again... She would have it, what the trumpets were singing! She would have it, have it – it!” May we too have “it,” and may we never let it go.
Jonah Bissell
Associate Pastor