My Two Favourite Americans Ever

1)

(c) Gilbert Stuart Williamstown, from Wikipedia

2)

(c) Alexander Gardner (1821-1882) also from Wikipedia

Also, my favourite living American poet is:

Long-Term Memory

by James Tate

I was sitting in the park feeding pigeons

when a man came over to me and scrutinized my

face right up close. “There’s a statue of you

over there.” he said. “You should be dead. What

did you do to deserve a statue?” “I’ve never seen

a statue of me,” I said. “There can’t be a statue

of me. I’ve never done anything to deserve a

statue. And I’m definitely not dead.” “Well,

go look for yourself. It’s you alright, there’s

no mistaking that,” he said. I got up and walked

over where it was. It was me alright. I looked

like I was gazing off into the distance, or the

future, like those statues of pioneers. It didn’t

have my name on it or anything, but it was me.

A lady came up to me and said, “You’re looking

at your own statue. Isn’t that against the law, or

something?” “It should be. But this is

my first offence. Maybe they’ll let me off light.”

“It’s against nature, too,” she said, “and bad

manners, I think”. “I couldn’t agree with you

more,” I said, “I’m walking away right now, sorry.”

I went back to my bench. A man was sitting there.

“Maybe you’re a war hero. Maybe you died in the

war,” he said. “Never been a soldier,” I said.

“Maybe you founded this town three hundred years

ago,” he said. “Well, if I did, I don’t remember it

now,” I said. “That’s a long time ago, ” he

said, “You coulda forgot.” I went back to feeding the

pigeons. Oh yes, founding the town. It was coming

back to me now. It was on a Wednesday.

A light rain, my horse slowed…

from Return to the City of White Donkeys

Oedipus’ Eyes

image from Wikipedia

When I was about fifteen, I wrote an essay entitled “The gods are unjust” about Oedipus Rex, the ancient play by Sophocles  – it is one of the great Greek Tragedies, replete with chorus and tragic hero. It was my first tragedy. Oedipus was condemned by Apollo’s prophecy, related by an oracle, to kill his father and marry his mother, and bring down the Kingdom of Thebes he ruled in so doing. This is, of course, the same Oedipus that Freud referred to when he describes the Oedipal Complex – that is, his observation that small boys want to marry their mother and usurp (kill) their father. It is one of Freud’s most controversial claims (in fact, he had based it on his observation of Hamlet’s behavior, but wanted something less silly sounding than “Hamletal Complex”, I suppose). In Greek Tragedy, the tragic hero brings about his own downfall due to a tragic flaw. A traditional tragic hero is a giant among men, upright, dignified and just, except for one aspect – the tragic flaw.

Oedipus’ tragic flaw was the most fundamental one of all: Hubris – that is, pride, the willingness to defy the gods.

Full article with links at the Harvard Ichthus

Mission Statement

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

- Revelations 21

When art comes to terms with both the wounds of the world and the promise of resurrection and learns how to express and respond to both at once, we will be on the way to a fresh vision, a fresh mission….

Art at its best draws attention not only to the way things are but also to the way things will be, when the earth is filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. That remains a surprising hope, and perhaps it will be the artists who are …best at conveying both the hope and the surprise.

- NT Wright,
Surprised by Hope

The Boat was an idea conceived at Summit, an InterVarsity Harvard-Radcliffe Christian Fellowship retreat in Toah Nipi, New Hampshire. I was floating on the lake in this beautiful, serene place. The water was so clear and calm – it was a mirror. Dimmer than the sky, and shimmering with the quiver of waves, but still, a mirror. I looked from water to sky, and saw an analogy: I thought to myself, this is a little slice of heaven on earth, right here. And it really was. I was in the Garden of Eden, and all nature was tuned to God and I was with God. I knew He was there. And for once in this sad world, there was nothing deceptive about this beauty – I could not find in it one jot of pain, or sorrow. My friends were on the other side of the lake, and I was covered with love. I knew it wouldn’t last – I mean, it was a retreat, but of course at the end of the week I had to go back out into the world. But I thought, if only the rest of the world was like this! If only I never had to leave! If only my work were done, and I could simply be at peace, at this peace. If only the whole world were with me right now, in this kayak, seeing this beauty, and knowing this God!

I think I’ve instinctively been a Kantian all my life. But it was when I read Sophie’s World, when I realized that this was the philosophy that I subscribed to. Jostein Gaarder gave me the words for what I had always believed in, summed up in the beautiful phrase – “the starry heavens above me, and the moral law within me”. I am daily stunned by the beauty of the world I live in, and this beauty has always astonished something within me that made me want to imitate it. It made me want to be beautiful. It made me want to make beautiful things. It made me want to reveal beauty where I saw it, to imitate it, to become it. This was the first stirring of my art. I remember as a child, I would listen to music – I had a whole CD of classical music entitled “Adagio” – and my soul would soar along with it. It made me want to utter things – it made me feel utterly bereft, and therefore made me utter – I wanted to make music like that. I wanted to use all media, to be a medium myself, for this beauty.

I was also surrounded by story. I think narratively. I had three strands of story surrounding me when I was growing up: Chinese folktales told to me by my aunt, who lived with me, and for whom I am eternally grateful – the grand sweeping epics – the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the Dream of the Red Chambers, the Journey to the West, the Butterfly Lovers, the Art of War, the creation myths, the myths of journey and trade and travel, the histories of poets and dreamers and madmen and kings – the stuff dreams are made of. Then there was what you would loosely call the Western Cannon – I started with Enid Blyton, devoured her entire oeuvre, then moved on to the Classics – Wuthering Heights, A Little Princess, Watership Down, The Lord of the Rings, Roald Dahl’s fabulous tales and poems, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Greek and Roman mythology, all that good stuff. And thirdly, I grew up with the Bible – I was steeped from my birth in the stories of the Bible, Old Testament and New – everything I knew was filtered through the stories I heard every Sunday at church, which I heard from my parents and my various aunts and uncles in the church. I had crushes on St Peter and St Paul before I had ever heard of Mr Darcy – I wanted to BE St. Paul for the longest time – would trace the maps on the back of my Bible with longing, because he had these four routes mapped up in four different colours, and every one looked exciting, filled with shipwrecks and stories and snakes and journeys, with jails and healings and beatings and escapes. I always had a bit of a buccaneer in me, I guess – I wanted to be on a quest. I wanted to be the knight, not the lady. I wanted to be Odysseus, not Penelope. I wanted to act out these stories, except not act – I wanted it all to actually be my life.

When I heard stories of missionaries who would go all over the world to dangerous places, I didn’t really think too much about the bit where the cannibals put them in the pot. I was envious of the fact that they knew how to drop everything and just go – and go – and go – There was a romance in it all, a sort of wild abandonment, a certainty that whatever they did, even if they failed, they would fail beautifully. I wanted my life to be like that. I didn’t want it to be a poor imitation of a real life, pursuing dreams on the same shore, never getting to test out my wings. I guess I was also insatiably ambitious – I wanted to see the whole world, and I wanted to encompass it all, and write it all. For by the time I was nine I had discovered I was a bit of a poet, and since poetry didn’t take much – just a bit of pen and paper (my other professed ambition was to be a doctor – the influence of both my parents, I guess) – I kept at it, and worked at it through all my life. But that wasn’t enough. I still have a list of all the things I wanted to do from when I was about nine – I wanted to make films! I wanted to take photos! I wanted to discover things for science! I wanted to heal people! I wanted to reach all the world and make a difference for God! I wanted, above all, to make art that was true, and free, and beautiful – art that endured!

I guess the process of life started changing my dreams – they made them shrink a little, little by little. By the time I was eighteen, my dream was to get into a good university, to be an English major. Which I did. I stopped daring to think about what would come afterward. People assured me I would find out, eventually. Marriage, I assumed. Or at least, I hoped. Children. A job, a career that would hopefully be fulfilling. Making a small difference in the world. I knew I loved books and arts, so I tried to see if arts administration might be a nice compromise, or publishing. You know what, I thought those were practical things to do… but I didn’t love them. Also, they stopped me from creating art, because I was so worried about the practical aspects of them that I simply didn’t have the time or energy or frankly, confidence to make art since I was always evaluating it. So I’ve just decided to throw caution to the wind, take my life savings and go sailing around the world, just like I had always wanted to. I could say I am looking for the meaning of life, but actually I’ve already found that – it is in Jesus, my Lord and Savior, whom I love because he first loved me. I want to find Him – I want to follow Him throughout the world wherever he leads me, through friends, through writers I’ve admired, through a multitude of possibilities still unfolding at my feet. God really does take you one step at a time, through Time. I can’t put it any other way. I’ve decided to trust Him.

What do I search for? Truth. What do I see? Beauty. What do I seek? Freedom. What do I reap? Love.

Phase One:
Phase One of the Boat is called Analogies of the Kingdom of Heaven. Heaven is not some far off place in the sky, beyond the clouds. We’ve already looked past the clouds – we know what’s there. It’s not heaven. It’s planets and vacuums and suns and stars. Heaven, I believe, is another dimension. Or rather, the ultimate amalgamation of all existing dimensions. It exists (for want of a better phrase) side by side with earth. All that prevents us from seeing it (since Jesus has already come) is a very thin veil – a gauze-like thing that hangs between this and that. Of course, there is the reality of Sin. Which means there is a very great difference indeed, between Heaven and Earth. And there is so much brokenness in the world… it manifests itself in the most innocent of places.

The places on earth that have been called lost – the Golden Ages, the Shangri Las, the Paradises, the Gardens of Eden – the Atlantises, the Babylons, the Romes, the Baghdads, the Kashmirs, the Hawaiis, the Jerusalems – oh, they are one and the same! Always, always there is the parable of the fall – how Mankind, reaching or grasping for perfection, comes away and is scattered forever. But sometimes it is given us to see Heaven for a brief moment – in the things that we love and the beings that love us. In family, in community, in church, in friendship, in art – the act of re-Creation. These are things which we have corrupted, but at their best, do remind us – do whet our appetite, for the Thing that is to come.

BOAT

I think my mission in life is to build a boat.
A boat is intentional, faithful, true.
It floats. It is apart from the land, and a part of it.
It can move from one campus to another
Up and down the Charles River.

It can move across to California!
- If I learn how to drive properly and take it on a trailer.

.

It is a symbol of Truth in a place
Where Truth is not capitalized on anymore
It will be a thing of Beauty
blurring bright with Love.
It is a symbol of Freedom
and of Responsibility.
A symbol of a time when it will come.
Like Grace -

I realize boats have been in my life.
I want to bless people with this boat.
It will be filled from wall to wall with books.
Like the barge of books that came once to my mum
on a sundrenched island which had just learned to read.
It will be the place of love
where my parents honeymooned in
and when they landed, turned into a pool
in, which I then loved to splash in.

It will be a sanctuary;
It will be a place of joy and beauty.
I do not want, Lord Jesus, to always be
a person who only talks about a boat.
I want to be, Lord Jesus, to really be
a person who, if commanded, builds a boat;
even if it proves lonely and difficult.

I will build this boat to plow the seas -
It will seed seeds which float back to me.
I will heal spirits in this boat -
I will reach new peoples in this boat -
I will speak of heaven in this boat -
It will be a slice of heaven, this this boat.

It will sit upon the banks of the Charles River
And it will gather Christian men all thither
to help to build the voice of love together
To feed and to be fed for once forever -

It is a boat. It is a place of hope.
It is a boat, a temporary home -
A boat in which a restless poet floats
And which must one day beach on some sweet shore
where Jesus o my Jesus went before -

It is a boat, it is simply a boat.
An amalgamation of my every hope
of every boat on which I’ve ever sat
and rocked and puked in, saw a lady’s cloak in,
for every boat whose commerce shipped the ship in -

for this is my dear boat
the one I hope
will be a boat.

And it is my wish
that I may sit in it and fish.

.

People will see us building this random boat.
And they will be like, “Why?!”
And we will say, well, it is a boat.
Its purpose in this life is to float.
It is a thing of beauty, brave and wise.
It is like all creation -
a thing of intentionality.
It did not ever need to be – but look!
It is a boat!
And it will come to be
no symbol
not a metaphor,
but real.

It is a boat. It is a boat.
I never thought I’d be on a boat.
on a big blue watery road…

And everyone will think it foolish and unwise
But when it’s done they’ll be in for a surprise!

.

Picture this:
After the long, dark winter
in which we have lost hope
in which nothing has gone right
about the boat.

But then, in Spring, the river begins to crack
and underneath it there will be this water
and underneath it we will see this water
The living living water which will buoy us
and guide us and persuade us and direct us
the living water flowing flowing through us
and we will take on our shoulders this finished boat
and we will set it on the flowing water
the river’s only water that flows through us -
and we will set it on the flowing river
and we will ship and sail away inside her -

and in it, I will one day reach Ithaca -
And there in a great pyre I will burn her -