Silence - Movie Review

Thoughts on the Movie

 “Silence”

            Silence, directed by Martin Scorsese is based on a book by Japanese Christian Shusako Endo. Scorsese, a practicing Roman Catholic, read the book long ago and has been thinking and working on bringing an adaptation of the book to the screen for twenty years. It may be the work that he personally views as his most important. As a director he is one of the more profound directors of recent decades having directed such movies as Taxi, Raging Bull, Gangs of New York, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

            Many of my readers are Evangelicals, and for many Evangelicals, watching Scorsese films seems questionable. This is probably due to how his films can be brutal, and also how he tends to use movies to ask questions rather than give answers. An Evangelical sermon somehow does not seem complete if the audience is left contemplating a question. We Evangelicals concentrate on showing how Jesus is the answer and the reason for the season. Questions often rattle us in our search for a secure faith. The story shown in “Silence” is a story of a brutal time of Japanese persecution of Catholic Christians in and around the city of Nagasaki. It is a story in which many unannounced questions are raised in the mind of the film goer while watching the movie. There is little if any sermonizing – the questions rise naturally from the scenes and plot. They linger. To me, that is the genius of the film, In real life spiritual issues rise from events and they linger within us.

            I would recommend this film to mature and thinking movie goers who don’t mind coming out of a theater a little bit provoked, and perhaps left unsettled by a sense that sometimes our ideals are going to be tested in ways we didn’t expect. This is how this film develops. It begins with two priests getting off a ship along the shore line. Historically, the area around Nagasaki doesn’t have great harbors, so the movie captures this with the priests coming ashore making their way walking towards the beach in the shallows some distance from where they come ashore. There are rumors of persecution of the Christians. There are rumors that a missing priest has apostatized. The priests hope to prove the rumors wrong, for the priest is someone they admired, whom helped them to choose to devote their lives to being missionaries.

            Once ashore they are happily rewarded with the enthusiastic greetings they receive from the Catholic Christians seeing a priest having come ashore. Soon they meet with other Christians and enjoy pleasant fellowship with simple believers, mostly people of limited means but who eagerly desire to partake of the faith.

            The initial phase of the film is agreeable to our Christian ideals. The missionary priest or minister lands ashore, meets believers, strengthens them with the Word and sacraments, and begins to proclaim the message freely to all who will hear. But then the opposition comes and changes the picture. The reality of persecution meeting the weakness of human fresh begins to become real. There are people who feel the anguish of conscience for failing to stand firm when the trial of persecution began. Such a person feels himself outside of the community of the Christians who treat him with suspicion and outside of the Japanese culture resisting the spread of Christianity on their isles.

            Many questions confronted me as I watched the film. They would rise unspoken in the moment of a scene. I would wonder what I would do if I were caught in the reality of this scene caught in a passing frame of film. Is persecution ever only about our faith? Did the Japanese reject the spread of Christianity on their shores because they rejected the message of Jesus or of the Jesuit priests who brought the message? Or did the persecution arise because beyond the shoreline, but connected to the missionaries were the European ships that brought not only priests and a Christian message, but connections to the rising European powers who were staking out claims on ports and territories throughout the world? The Japanese rulers knew that Portugal had taken control of the Chinese city of Macau, and that the Spanish had taken control of the Luzon region of the Philippines. The English and Dutch were latecomers in the establishment of colonies but wherever European ships came to port, European claims of supremacy and the right to rule would soon follow. These questions are not set forth as much in dialogue as understood as the movie goer is drawn into the scenes of the film flickering in and out of our sight.

            There are scenes where we are called on to ask what constitutes actual faith. There were problems translating the Scriptures into the Japanese language expressed by representative characters. Did the Japanese believers suffering to death in the persecution actually understand the message of the faith? Or did they remain naturalists worshipping the power of nature through the symbol of Jesus like the sun rising from the night of darkness? Priests are urged to believe the people are dying not for their understanding of a Christian faith not meant for the Japanese soil, but for their willingness to die for their loyalty to these human priests. How do we know when one has begun to believe in Christ? Are these peasants dying for the faith or out of simple human loyalty to the priests they have come to respect and admire? In the world where God has become flesh, can one’s embracing of the Christian priest or messenger show a connection to the incarnate Christ before one understands the basic creeds of the Christian faith? I recall a story I once read of Adoniram Judson. He had landed in what was then Burma. Passing through the crowd Judson spoke kindly to a woman as he moved around her in the crowd. She was moved by the way he carried himself and the kindness in his voice. Her instant thought was that “his god must be the god.” At what point are we joined to Christ? Is it when we intellectually understand the creeds of the faith, or can it begin at an earlier time in a much less conscious manner? Can the Christ of our creeds and doctrines be separated from the Christ who fills the Church, and might a peasant who sees divinity in a representative of a church already have be connection to the Christ of the Church communicated through its members united to Christ? Conversely, could some seemingly strong connections to Christ be simply the expressions of simple and ordinary human affections having little or no actual spiritual communion taking place? Such questions plague the devoted educated priest as much as the struggling believer with a lack of solid instruction to battle our human tendencies to superstition.

            There are questions of what attracted the foreign people to the European messengers of the faith. One apostatized priest tells how though he lost his faith he still had a mission to the Japanese, since they were eager to hear about matters of science that he understood which had not yet been discovered in the Japanese world. Life is complex. In our Western world we invariably compartmentalize the complexities into separate spheres. When we come with our Christian message to another island, or approach the island of another individual, we imagine bringing our Christian message in its own separate sphere to the people to whom we bring it. But they see our Christian message in the package of our humanity and cultural influences. They see us and our message in a single unified manner. The Japanese rulers who saw a European missionary, saw a European ship not far from the shoreline hoisting a flag of a nation actively building an empire of colonies around the globe. They saw valuable trade and new understandings of science that might with wisdom be pried from the traders without the loss of their national independence.

            There was another question I was confronted with in this film worth pondering.At one point it is said in reference to a character in the film, “This man is strong, he wall fall easily.” Strength of faith, strength of purpose - what is it? When does the seeming strength of our inner purpose actually more a frailty ready to be exposed than a resource to help us through the coming trial? We fortify ourselves hoping to become strong only to discover that our fortifications were the one weakness that became the reason for our downfall.

            I suppose there is a movie-goer who will see “Silence” and grumble on the way out about a movie presenting a wishy-washy perspective regarding the Christian faith. But I think for others it will highlight questions needing to be contemplated, which have always silently plagued us, that somehow we could easily ignore. But the scenes of this movie and of life itself have a way of bringing such questions vividly before our eyes when we are least expecting such questions to have any relevance to life.

            I wish I knew how to recommend this movie to the specific people who would find this movie as enriching to understanding life as I have found it. I can't do that. I can't even predict the people I know who will like or dislike the movie because you never know which people will thrive facing questions or shrink at the questions. Sadly this movie did not remain in theaters long. After two weeks in my Tulsa area, the closest theater showing the film is slightly over 100 miles away. Most of you will probably have to wait until it comes on Netflix or is sold as a DVD. If there remains a theater near you showing it, I recommend it. I don’t understand why the marketing for this movie seems to have been done so poorly. It seems like instead of a movie one of film's great directors worked on for decades, it was simply treated as a film no one would want to see. I think we underestimate how many people are interested in a realistic film about faith and doubt that ponders the great questions that plague us even if regarding those doubts we simply speak in "Silence".

Manchester by the Sea - review

Review of

Manchester by the Sea

Reviewed by Dan McDonald

 

            Manchester by the Sea is a well-made movie which explores the difficulties that arise when someone experiences a second chance. The movie’s focus is on the character of “Lee Chandler” presented by Casey Affleck. Lee Chandler is the brother of “Joe Chandler” whose role is played by Kyle Chandler. Lee Chandler is not the only one troubled by a past and given the hope or troubling responsibility of a second chance. Michelle Williams presents the character of “Randi” whose difficulties seem to be opposed to Lee Chandler’s while mirroring his own difficulties.

            In clichés we say “Past failures don’t define you.” In real life, past failures become the demons, or are used by the demons seeking to define us. In American film, movies are generally made to show us that if we play our parts right there will be a happy ending. In “Manchester by the Sea” the suspense lingers as we hope for a happy ending and yet things happen that show us it is not going to be easy for all the characters to discover a happy ending. Perhaps the reality of it, whether or not we believe in a hope of redemption is that there are chapters in each of our lives that shatter our self-images and come partially or substantially to own and possess us, and our knowledge that this is so only deepens the sense that we are seriously broken and might well be for a long time, and maybe throughout our lives.

            Manchester by the Sea is a movie where a boat has a motor about to go out. Each trip to sea reminds those in the boat that the defective motor might fail and leave them stranded. That is the perfect symbol for most of the characters in this movie. They feel that within themselves they have a failing motor, and now they must struggle to figure out if they can set out to sea or insulate themselves in some sort of safe lives.

            I loved this movie but it is one of those movies where certain profane words fill the script. My life has never been far from such a lifestyle and perhaps I have given in to the words too much myself. I can understand why a movie goer who doesn’t wish to give himself into a film using that one four-letter word as an adjective to be used in every other sentence. As I seek to inform people interested in seeing the film of this and also some uncomfortable situations morally speaking, I found myself lead to think about how the film uses these situations.

            Lucas Hedges plays the role of Patrick, a son left behind by his mother’s troubles and his father’s death. Now he is trying to grow up when the man appointed his guardian seems like he hates Patrick’s presence. Patrick’s actions seem like the proverbial son who asks for permission to do things wondering if the person he is asking will ever care enough to say “no” to the things he asks. Growing up is not learning to do everything one wants to do as an adult, but learning to navigate life by the boundaries of wisdom or learning to treat others with respect. Patrick is testing boundaries wondering if anyone even cares to talk to him about what he is doing.

            After watching the film and wondering what I would say about all the profanity, it seemed to me that when we explore people who have given up on themselves or have consigned themselves to the role of the eternally broken, we should not be surprised if their language is filled with profanity. Most of us use profanity the most at some point in our lives when we are trying to be adults. Adults say the words we are not supposed to say as children. But when we get through the phase of adult language being cool we find ourselves less comfortable using the profane words. There are reasons adults taught us as children not to use the words and there are reasons why adults end up falling into relying upon the words. It is not so much hypocrisy of adults, as it is the failure of adults to be true to their own better understanding. The use of profane language by a parent or guardian who knows better is sometimes less explained by hypocrisy as it is by surrender to the demons that plague us.

            I’ve learned in the aftermath of watching this movie to think about our use of profanity differently. The reasons we try to teach our children and ourselves to not use or to limit the use of profanity is that profanity so often is used to express either bitterness or hopelessness. Both of these attitudes need corralled and overcome. It seems to me that there is another reason why profanity is to be avoided. Profanity should be avoided because ultimately our profane words become mere clichés which express and communicate virtually nothing. To give in to profanity when bitter or hopeless is to give up on seeking answers to the questions that plague us. Human beings are reflective creatures who use their minds and seek language to explain their trials, to express their hopes, and to seek the meaning of things in their lives. So often the f--- word no matter how momentarily satisfying is in the full analysis an announcement of an end to our dealing with what plagues us. The f--- word is not the word of our human language we are seeking to understand our situations or to find the wherewithal of moving forward. The forbidden word merely becomes the conversation closer so that we quit looking for words to better understand our plight. Film-makers have understood that is how we so often speak when instead of looking for answers we are pulling ourselves away from the possibilities of seeking, understanding, and discovering whatever answers we might be capable of finding.

Tradition and Ownership

Tradition and Ownership

By the Panhandling Philosopher, Dan McDonald

 

            Hooker’s formula for remembering and moving forward in the truth was a three legged stool of authority set in Scripture, tradition, and reason. Tradition was that heritage of faithfulness in which the truths of Scripture had been held by the people of God in the many times and places which God’s people have inhabited. We learn important values by realizing they have been valuable to generation upon generation of people. Holy or Sanctified reason was a way of thinking through issues which percolated up from the soil of fertile thoughts trained by the teaching of Scriptures and the absorbing of those timeless values reinforced by the ancient traditions expressed over many generations. Hooker understood Anselm of Canterbury’s appreciation that when we become believers it is not because we have learned everything and can therefore choose the faith, but rather it is because we have tasted something and now enter the faith and live among the people of God that from henceforth we might learn about what we have come to believe. We do not understand so as to believe as much we believe so that we might come to understand. We are those who know in part while being fully known, and so we seek from that point of initiation to learn, and to progress towards  understanding.

            During the past few weeks I returned home for Christmas. Home is a flexible concept, and I use it as such. I returned home, meaning to be with the family and its offspring that was of the family of which I grew up. I returned home and drove through the town where I once went to grocery stores with my mom, or to the barber shop, hardware store, or Snyder’s Tap when I went with my father. I returned home to drive by the house where I grew up on a small farm. I do have a home where I now live in Tulsa, but sometimes I leave that home to return home.

            I grew up on a farm, but I grew up during an odd season in my father’s farming career. Modern farming is constantly winnowing the number of farmers. Modern farming has from generation to generation required fewer farmers to do what many farmers were once needed to accomplish. My father came to realize that he was being winnowed out of the farm business. He never much sought to invest farming into me. In a few years the amount of farming done on our farm changed. We quit raising hogs. We quit raising chickens. We sold the dairy cattle. Eventually he gave up farming some pieces of land in the neighborhood. He was a good welder. He had welded during the war in the shipyards. He could weld using mirrors. He never taught me welding. Late in life I asked him why he never taught me welding. He simply said, “You already had bad eyes you didn’t need to weld.”  I grew up not learning a lot about the farm, not being encouraged much, and maybe on my part not having the hunger or thirst. But still where I grew up and how had an impact on me for my entire life. There is an old saying that a boy can leave the farm but the farm never leaves the boy. I think that is true of history, tradition, and heritage. We can never live in the past, but neither can we fully keep the past from living on in us. I left the farm that I learned so little of, but it never left me.

            I know there are people that rebel who hate the entire idea of tradition. But tradition is everywhere. It is stored up in a word like “conservative” where people hope to conserve the values they believe made us great, or if not great, at least contributed aspects of meaning to guide us in our lives. Tradition is the material we pass along in education, learned from one generation and taught because of its value to another generation. Tradition is contained in science as Newton stood upon the shoulders of giants, and as Einstein paid homage to what he had learned from Newton and James Clerk Maxwell. Tradition is also learning from the past to understand a vision for the future. To progress within a tradition is as much a part of being traditional as to conserve the lessons learned from tradition. We learned to value freedom and liberty and began to imagine a day when there would be no slaves. We learned the advantages of literacy and began to envision a day when all participants in society would have an opportunity to be educated. We began to lengthen lives for those with the ability to be treated with medicinal breakthroughs and began imagining a society where all its members would have access to affordable health care. Tradition allows both the conserving of the valued lessons of the past and a vision for the possibilities of the future.

            Cultures grow when they believe in a past within tradition to be conserved and the promise of a future to which they may progress. In 2016 our American culture seemed to have separated the concepts of progressing and conserving even as we separated politics along the fracture lines of the urban left and the rural right. Personally, a couple of days after Christmas I went home to drive by the house where I grew up and to take a drive around the city where we had shopped and as often as any identified ourselves as being from the city of Streator, Illinois.

            I quickly felt melancholy as I drove towards the old home place, seeing houses that didn’t look like they did when I was sixteen, now that I am sixty-one. I was stunned to see the old house gone that had stood just east of our home place. It once had a historical marker set on the highway nearby its location. The house had been built in the 1840’s. It was a two-story, with a cellar. It didn’t have extraordinary architecture.  It was remembered for the history that took place within the home. Either an undertaker or a carpenter lived in the house. In any way there was always a storage of coffins kept in the place in its younger days. The coffins were sometimes used for burial, and at other times they were used for the hiding of what in those days before the Civil War were called “colored” people. An abolition minded family lived in the home and used the coffins in the cellar to hide runaways fleeing southern slavery and headed to the promise of liberty in Canada. It was a hush hush operation for not every neighbor would approve of breaking the laws requiring slaves to be returned to masters. But this was a house where those seeking freedom by leaving the land of the free, might escape the land altogether to find liberty in Canada which had refused to seek American liberty during the American Revolution or the War of 1812. Now the house and the historical marker of that house used to support runaway slaves to make their way to freedom in Canada were removed from the present landscape even if their memories were perhaps buried in archives somewhere or in the mystery of what a prairie soil might have witnessed. I am not sure it is good for that house and marker to have been removed from the nearly completely white community in which I had grown up. I fear communities such as mine live believing that they are kept a safe distance away from injustice. We can remain unmoved by another’s injustice if we feel we are separated by time and space from the injustice we simply choose to ignore. There used to be a sign of someone who did something about injustice. The sign is removed. The community I fear imagines itself separated from pockets of injustice in places like far away Chicago.

            I then came by my father’s house. Everything had changed. I felt the melancholy of having lost the past. The house had been thoroughly remodeled. It looked more impressive. I bet they even had heat in the upstairs bedrooms where I remember winter nights when we slept under piles of quilts and maybe even in a sleeping bag. I remember taking a thermometer upstairs to see what the room temperature was during a stretch where outside it never made it above zero for a few days. Inside my unheated bedroom the thermometer showed just 20 degrees above zero on the Fahrenheit scale. The property had been changed with old buildings torn down and new ones built. The buildings were built in a well-planned layout rather than the haphazard look that had characterized our property’s building arrangement in my youth.  The property looked attractive.  I felt melancholy all the same. The past I came to see one more time was now nearly gone.

            Then I noticed the trees. They were there. I was in high school when my Dad decided to plant a line of evergreen trees north of the house and more trees to surround the house. The Evergreen trees to the north would add beauty and provide a wind break when the howling winds of winter would drive the cold deep into the old house. The trees around the house would provide shade from the summer sun. It was one of the things he did for the property with pride and joy. He would die before the trees were fully grown to bring his initial vision to fullness. It wasn’t that he died particularly young. It was simply that trees like he planted took more years to fulfill a vision than one often had to live when the trees were planted. He wouldn’t have been surprised to die before the vision was fulfilled. Perhaps there was something inspiring about planting a tree that wouldn’t fulfill its purpose until years after one’s passing. A vision that cannot live past one’s own life seems a pretty inconsequential plan to pursue in one’s grey-headed time of life.

            My father’s birthday was January 4. I think he would have enjoyed the fact that most of the trees he planted remain on the property even when everything else seems thoroughly changed or gone. I think he would have missed the familiar look of the house and older buildings where a family of children once grew up. He would look on the property I am sure with a sense of melancholy. But I think unlike me, he perhaps might have knocked on the door of the house and said to the new owners, “I am glad you kept the trees I planted, and how you have built the buildings and arranged them – I can tell that you have shown your love to the property and to the land. It is your land now, but in case you wanted to know I love what you’ve done with it.”

            I think through all the melancholy I now better understand tradition. Tradition is not a slave owner. Tradition is like a house trying to lead us on a journey away from slavery. Tradition is not the past holding us in chains. Tradition is not a demanding property that does not allow us to reimagine what we have received. Tradition is simply a past speaking to us saying, “I know you have loved something valuable you found on this property where I live, but it is yours now and if you show by your ownership how you have cared for the past living here and have shown you have loved this piece of land in your possession with your vision for this property how can I tradition be anything but joyous over your stewardship.” In the end we are stewards who own our places on earth for a short time and then ownership reverts to the tradition of the generations with its influence upon human life. Tradition is not our seeking to live in the past but our past seeking to live within us. We can fight it but it will still live. The boy can leave the farm, but the farm will never leave the boy. We can view tradition with contempt but one day we will be driving down a road and will see what we have lost and we will realize that we left the past but the past never has left us. We felt tradition didn’t matter but it dwells within us waiting for the moment when we will listen to what is important for us to pause and give place and space in which it will graciously teach us.

 

Diversity and the Reason for the Season

The Reason for the Season

In

An increasingly Diverse Culture

Written by Dan McDonald

 

The Christmas tree display at NYC’s Metropolitan Museum, December 2014

 

            I know that during this time of each year there are a number of blogs, memes, and articles written about the Reason for the Season. On one side there are those who believe the Christian culture in what is supposed to be a Christian nation is being attacked. Those feeling Christianity is being undermined often are seeking to defend the assumption that a reason the nation is being blessed is because of our national ties to the Christian faith. I am not going to argue against that belief. I won’t pretend to understand all the reasons why nations rise and fall, but I do believe that God has a plan for the world. We participate in that plan and it winds its way like a stream meandering towards the ocean. We are the waters that cannot truly understand our places as we journey towards the ocean but part of my understanding of faith is expressed as waiting for the fulfillment in this Advent season.

            As we anticipate Christmas Day, and participate in the cultural expression of the Christmas season, I can fully understand as Christians reminding ourselves of the Reason for the season. We want to remind ourselves that the reason for the season is not endless amounts of sweets at work, or constant hurrying and scurrying in the season of buying the most exciting gifts for our loved ones. The reason for the season, we try to tell ourselves is Jesus. I think there is a certain degree of rightness for Christians to be reminding themselves and other Christians that Christ is the reason for the season.

            At least for me I am not ready to expect others in the world around me to feel the same way about Christmas as I do. Having been once to New York City in early December, there is still plenty of evidence that the city is experiencing its Christmas season. Yet people are careful about how they share their expressing their offering of blessings to others. As one passes by Jewish temples and synagogues and universities; or sees the food trucks offering Halal prepared foods, or sees a Sikh, or is asked for a donation by a Buddhist monk, one realizes that many of these people have their own religious festivals during what we consider the Christmas Season. Those living in an environment of multiculturalism generally seek not to be unnecessarily offensive. I work in the oil industry. Often times in the oil industry companies seek out the best qualified people in the world for their skills. In an oil town or an oil industry there are almost always some Muslims working for the organization. As one gets to know people on a people to people basis there is a time and place to refrain from talking about faith matters and a time and place where one is free to discuss matters. One learns to be respectful. I think most of us, even the ones who put the memes of “He is the reason for the season” up on their social website pages, would wish their Jewish friends a happy Hanukkah. It seems that sometimes we expect store owners to wish everybody a “Merry Christmas” when we would reserve for ourselves the right to use the phrase with discretion. When I am in a store where a number of women are buying groceries, wearing hijabs – I would never think of going up to one and forcing upon her “a merry Christmas.” That is probably part of the reason when I am in a store and a cashier says “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” I feel honored rather than offended. Unless the cashier actually knows me, he or she doesn’t know what faith I actually practice if any.

            In my mind I think we have it backwards when we expect others to say “Merry Christmas” to us as if that is to be expected from others. I am pretty sure that Jesus never was wished a “Merry Christmas” in his entire earthly life. That may seem trite, but it isn’t. On Christmas we Christians celebrate Christ’s incarnation. He became man that man might be reconciled to God. Christmas was a time when God became man despite knowing that it would mean that in the weakness of his assumed humanity he would be surrounded by the contradiction of sinners. He would be ridiculed, and he would go the distance in his calling to enter our weakness to the point of death in order to bring us to God. He would break boundaries by speaking to a Samaritan woman, healing a Syrian woman, embracing before healing an unclean leper, eating and drinking with sinners. If on Christmas Day we remember Christ as the Reason for the Season, we also remember the reason for the Incarnation is he came to be the bridge between heaven and earth and to reach out to a world where not one human being could claim privilege as a sinner before a holy God. He came not to be served with a proper greeting, but to reach out to those living in darkness.

            I try to be careful with how I celebrate Christmas. The first thing I want as a Christian towards others is to plant the impression that their humanity is important. I probably won't initially speak religious words, but when dealing with busy customers in an aisle, or with a cashier standing long hours dealing with customers in the check out line – I want to behave in a way that supports my belief that their humanity matters. I don’t think Jesus expects us as his followers to demand to be served. I do believe that he wants us to be his hands and feet to express his kindness and redemptive presence in the world. I had a moment today when I doubt I did a good job of that. I have a lot to learn, but because Jesus is the reason for the season, I won't demand blessings from others but I hope I grow in the grace of being and presenting a blessing unto others.

A Painting at the Whitney

A Painting at the Whitney

By Dan McDonald

 

 

            I think some of life’s greatest impressions upon me have happened during vacations. Perhaps it is because I have been relieved momentarily from the routines of life to which it is easy to become addicted. In many vacations I have seen or experienced at least one thing that has had a transformational tendency on my life. One such experience happened as I took time to look at a painting this year on display in the Whitney Museum. New York City has become one of my favorite places to visit on vacation. I have come back from my vacations each year having seen a sight or having experienced something that gave me something to think about in relationship to life.

This week was the second year anniversary of my first vacation taken in New York City. The photographs of my visit to the City in the memories on my Facebook page led me to reflect on a couple of brief exchanges. It seems that some of those transformational moments from my trips to the Big Apple have been impressions around a common theme.

In December of 2014 I went to New York expecting to stay in a room with a host in an Airbnb accommodation. When I got there I discovered I wouldn’t really see my Airbnb host for more than a few minutes. I found myself alone in New York City. It was a short vacation. I arrived on a Monday evening and was scheduled to fly back to Oklahoma on Monday morning. I began to wonder if my visit to New York City was to be the experience of three days of loneliness. Maybe this whole trip was just a mistake.

I hadn’t eaten yet, so I walked down 10^th West Avenue and began to look for a place to eat. I guess I wanted something to remind me of home. I was feeling as if the vacation was going to be a horrible experience of a farm kid lost in the big city where he was crazy to imagine he should have ever gone. I saw a pub that reminded me of one where I go in Oklahoma. It reminded me of a pub I would occasionally visit in Tulsa that had some decent food dishes that could be complimented with a really good pint of ale. That was a turning point. The server was the sort of person who would talk small talk and make you feel welcomed. There are many stories about how rude New Yorkers are, but my server was a true people person.

A couple of days later I was headed to the Dumbo area on the Brooklyn side of the East River across from Manhattan. Someone told me I should go there before leaving New York City so that my visit to the city wouldn’t just be a visit to Manhattan. I took a subway to the general vicinity of the area but I was always getting disoriented and going the wrong direction in New York. It was already dark and I wanted to make sure I got to where I was planning on going, and not wandering aimlessly in the dark in Brooklyn. One young tired looking woman with one young energetic looking son got off the train at the same stop as I did. So I asked her if she could tell me how to get to where I was planning on going. She tried giving me directions, speaking of certain landmarks and streets which registered as unknowns in my mind. I guess she could see the vacant expression on my face as I tried to follow her directions. The next part of the conversation astonished and overwhelmed me. She told me that she was headed to her apartment a few blocks away and if I would walk with her for a couple of blocks she could point the way to go and it would be a lot easier that way. It was already dark. The streets we took did not have an abundance of pedestrians but she invited me along to a place where she could give me directions I would more likely be able to follow. I have seldom been so overwhelmed by someone’s kindness in my life. Here was a tired Mom taking her more than energetic son home, taking the time to help a tourist find his way in Brooklyn. From that evening onwards you could never convince me that New Yorkers are rude or only think of themselves. I would borrow some words from a song entitled “In the Cathedrals of New York and Rome” to describe what I found in New Yorkers; “in the cathedrals of New York and Rome there is a feeling that you should just go home and spend a lifetime finding out just where that is.”

With that as background I can tell the story of how this year I was especially moved at the Whitney Museum as I looked into a painting that captured my imagination. At first glance it doesn’t seem like great art. I don’t think it will ever be viewed as a masterpiece. Yet once I saw it, I had to come back to it a half dozen or more times.

 

 

            I noticed how this piece of modern art captured the subjects of the painting in comic book like caricatures. But my attention seemed drawn to the woman on the bottom right. I began noticing things that made her unique. Her hair reflected light. Her eye seemed more as if drawn to be realistic rather than caricature. Her face had more color in comparison with the almost ashen color of the other people in the painting. She wore a necklace and her clothing was more colorful. She seemed to have her focus set on her neighbor to her left. It was as if she was more human and less caricatured than the others in the painting. It was all subtle. Was I only imagining what I saw, or was I seeing what the artist had carefully painted into this piece of art? That is why I kept coming back to this painting that fascinated me. What was it that I was seeing in this piece of art?

            For me this piece of art seemed to be capturing a mystery of human life. When we meet someone, do we see a person as they truly are or merely as caricatures in our minds based on the features we see? When I see a New Yorker walking towards me with their eyes not noticing anyone on the street do I see unfriendliness or is that only a caricature because I have never had the opportunity to hear about their hopes, fears, dreams, enjoyments and sorrows?

            There is mystery I believe in this painting. As a Christian I am moved to realize there I mystery revealed in the pages of Holy Scripture. God is their author. He reveals himself through His Word. But the Scriptures are also for us as people who ponder its message, a mirror that continually reflects us. The Word of God written by God to a people created in His image at once speaks to us of the God who is holy, who is glory, and who is love and we see ourselves in the mirror in our sins but also as the ones loved by God and as the ones intended to bear his image. A painting is often a similar sort of mystery. The author created in the image of God writes in his painting a story expressing something of his own values and convictions or lack of them. We who look at his painting see the same painting and imagine its message to us. The painting has become a mirror in which we seek to view our own lives.

            But what is it about our humanity that brought Jesus to quickly make the connection between the first and greatest commandment and a second commandment that joined to it summarized the entire law? What is it about “Love God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”?  Is it not that God in his creation of our creation has created us to be especially in his image?

            Whether consciously or unconsciously has this artist sought to show how someone focused on a neighbor is by that focus transformed through the experience? Her focus on her neighbor brings softness to her eyes, color to her cheeks, and tenderness to her appearance. She has moved from being absorbed in herself to being focused on another and she has broken from the caricature of our isolated individuality to the beginnings of discovering humanity by engaging with humanity the form of broken, wounded human beings created in the image of God.

            In the cathedrals of New York and Rome we get this feeling that we are meant to go home and find out just where that is. In the face of a neighbor as we refocus from our wounds, our dreams, our lives and become engaged in seeing and hearing another’s life story we are by the experience transformed. For it is impossible for us to love God whom we cannot see while not loving man, created in God’s image whom we can see. Whatever this artist understood about life and theology, the artist seemed to have understood that for us to be transfigured into a more radiant humanity we must become engaged with the humanity of people around us. Perhaps I would have never seen this in this painting in the Whitney except once I had been alone and a server cheered me up, and once I had been wandering in the darkness and a tired mom said “walk with me for a little ways and I can better point you in the direction you need to go.”