A few years ago, down with a bug and seeking a bit of couchside entertainment, I flipped through endless television channels in search of something fresh and new—anything that did not seem like a reworking of something I’d seen before.
I found an unusual-looking fellow performing an obnoxious dance, complete with lewd pantomime. His audience consisted of two unimpressed record-shop clerks, and when the dance abruptly ended a conversation ensued about life and music and the consequences of sullen attitudes and selfish behavior. The actors were Jack Black, John Cusack, and Todd Louiso, the film was a fairly faithful representation of Nick Hornby’s best-selling novel High Fidelity, and happening on the movie at precisely that instant was a moment of revelation. There was a freshness and energy to Black’s no-holds-barred performance and Cusack’s fourth-wall-breaking and self-obsessed monologues. After enjoying a few repeat viewings, an expectation formed: I wanted to see more work by these unexpectedly charming, gifted performers.
It didn’t last long. The actor’s subsequent projects were mostly tedious. High Fidelity had been interesting, but the performers—undeniably talented though they were—could not themselves sustain that elusive sense of freshness and depth that makes one want to keep seeking something out, keep chasing its mystery, keep refreshing one’s sense of wonder at seemingly boundless potentialities. A small thing that had seemed full of promise proved to be simply a moment, passing; it left no contrail against the empty-and-the-void.
Last spring, I had occasion to stand upon a colonnade at St. Peter’s Basilica and watch the sun come up over Rome. As it chased the damp and rising mists from the distance, I realized I was enjoying in those hills and columns and trees a prospect surveyed by Michelangelo and Raphael, and I suddenly understood the source of the particular color-choices and shadings found in much of their work and in churches throughout Rome: it all came together before my eyes in a hugely gratifying and humbling moment of revelation and wonder-connectedness.
A second revelation then hit, like a wave: the previous autumn my husband and I had stepped out on a Roman balcony high in the center of the city, and had marveled at the ancient beauty amid the bustle. Standing nearly alone on the colonnade, unable to share the view with him–or even with a professional acquaintance–dulled the power and sweetness of the moment and made me realize that what is great only becomes truly wonderful with human sharing. Lacking that, there is sterility, even where there is profundity. Again, emptiness; again, a void.
Our lives are made up of thousands of these moments of revelation—small glimpses of the less-ordinary that give a thrill—but because they are as illusory as a film or as elusive as hill-in-mist, ultimately they become a part of what fails to satisfy.
At the Midnight Mass of Christmas, before celebrating a mystery of communal prayer and worship and meal-taking, a young priest laid a plaster representation of an infant upon the straw scattered before an altar. He was completing a visual representation of a moment of revelation–and as he did it, the worshipers in a packed church sighed and dabbed at their eyes and sang with vigor:
Yea, Lord, we greet thee,
Born this happy morning;
Jesus, to thee be glory given!
Word of the Father,
Now in flesh appearing
O come, let us adore him…
The tableau before us was not illusory but illustrative; the elusive mystery confronting us was made more wonderful for the human sharing of what we do not fully understand–the empty void filled with creation and the Creator who condescends to join it for the sake of restoration–amid challenges all-too-common: disruption, humiliation, discomfort, uncertainty. In our togetherness, there was consolation, and in that consolation, a confirmation: the God willing to enter into all of that—to literally “set his tent” with us—could only do it out of unfathomable love.
The moment of this revelation is a constant: “of his fullness we all have a share, love following upon love” (John 1:16); it’s a lesson that pulses through eternity, like a sonar-blast, seeking us out; love is constrained only by your fear of losing it; do not be afraid; live in the boundless stream of my love and all shall be well, because all shall be One; there is nothing to be afraid of in my love…
Nothing becomes transcendent. Transcendence, rather, is itself: one-in-being; consubstantial with its own source; love following upon love. It is ever-fresh; ever-ancient, ever-new.
The moment of revelation that is truly transcendent is the moment without end.
Elizabeth Scalia is the Managing Editor of the Catholic Portal at Patheos and blogs as The Anchoress. Her previous articles for "On the Square" can be found here.
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Comments:
Well done.
I'm having a hard time seeing your search for something "fresh and new" in a positive light when it encompasses repeated viewing of lewdness. You later realize that this longing is revealed to be not really about the fresh and new, but about the transcendent. It's likely that you celebrated the originality while tolerating the lewdness, perhaps in the spirit of not throwing out the baby with the bathwater (or, in this case, the afterbirth).
In this case, Bible verses come to mind such as these:
"Beloved, do not love the world, or the things in the world. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away, and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God abides forever" (1 John 2:15ff)
"But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy." (1 John 3:17)
Yes, you found transcendence in the end, and that in itself will tend to filter out some of the junk that you rightly discard in the end. But perhaps your scriptural media filters, so to speak, need to be raised a level or two at the front end so your senses aren't dulled by trying to sift out flecks of originality from shovelfuls of fresh, stinking river mud. Better yet would be to find a new stream.
One of the master filmmakers of the 20th/21st centuries is Jean-Luc Godard. He despised a Hollywood that became entrenched in titillation at the cost of art. Only once did he agree to work with Hollywood, on his masterpiece "Contempt" that has Jack Palance brilliantly performing what Godard saw as the archetypal Hollywood producer that embraces all that money corrupts.
At one point Hollywood insisted that Godard put a nude scene in the film. He refused, and they threatened to close down shop. After all, that's why they paid Brigitt Bardot a hefty sum, to provide a titillating sex scene to satisfy all the audiences the corrupt producers think are just like them. Godard, in defiance, gave them what they wanted, but it was a fractured, not in any way representing a titillating sexual encounter. It turned out to be one of the best artistic shots he ever filmed.
Then there is the Atom Egoyan masterpiece "Exotica" that includes many scenes inside a strip-tease club. Truly a great work of art. And the American distributor, against Egoyan's wishes, distributed the film as a sexually titillating drama. The man sitting next to me in the theater, after it was over, said angrily, "What a waste! There's nothing sexual about this film!"
The point: what is corrupt is not in what you see, but in what the person displaying it intends, and my ongoing experience late in life is that God has a great sense of humor. The “High fidelity” scene Scalia references is hilarious, and it’s Jack Black at his physical comedy best (clown art). Also, I’m on board with Raymond Takashi Swenson in my appreciation of Black’s performance in “Nacho Libre” and Cusack’s in “Grosse Point Blank”.
