The Great Overturning

"Literature is, in a strict etymological sense of the word, subversive. It wants you to think about something in a way that you would not otherwise. The same is true of poetry. And sometimes people who subscribe to goodness in a programmatic way are resistant to surprise. Christianity is subversive in that sense. Christ became a slave. That undercuts cultural assumptions about what is valuable, what the hierarchies are. Art reproduces that great overturning whenever it’s good art."

Marilynne Robinson with Rowan Williams at a theological conference in Wheaton College, IL

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Dear Kate,

I am going to write very quickly this morning.  Mowed the lawn last night before it rains for days, very happy about that, the lawn mowed that is.  Woke really early cos my son has a field trip; my wife drove him to school but still I woke at 4:15 with everyone else.  Walked my usual 1.5 hours to arrive at work just now instead of succumbing to the temptation of transit.  I want to maintain my number-one spot in the "Walk 30" Challenge.

Last night I shared with my son a segment of a debate between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris, and I am glad for once he could hear from another sometimes angry man speaking passionately about Christianity and arts, music, literature, and more.  It's good for him to know his Dad is not the only one who's crazy.

I ended the night with asking him, "How many of the Parisians looking on and crying at the sight of Notre Dame cathedral's burning otherwise would not care about religion or might even spit in the face of a priest or take a piss on the Bible if they find the right indignation and proper occasion to make the incendiary statement?  Then what were they crying about?  What were they lamenting?  Losing a landmark?  A piece of themselves?  And if yes, then a land that marks what?  Which piece of their Self?"

Do not choose a coward's explanation
that hides behind the cause and the effect
And you who were bewildered by a meaning
Whose code was broken, crucifix uncrossed

"Sometimes people who subscribe to goodness in a programmatic way are resistant to surprise."  It is true with an atheist like Sam Harris, and doubly so with a religious person who asks no question and seeks to shut God up (with everyone else).

"Israel" means "to struggle with God," I told my son last night.  So to wrestle and tussle with God is not just a kind suggestion from the Bible, but the very name by which the people of God is called and called to live into.  It is necessary that we fight this one out.  My son plays rugby.  I think he likes the idea.

Holy week.  Easter.  How many sermon on Jesus' resurrection are really just "a coward's explanation that hides behind the cause and the effect"?  We are meant to be bewildered by the uncrossing of a crucifix.

Yours, Alex

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Dear Alex,

Cut the crap. Get to the point. Be honest here: literature sounds more like a scholarly joke than reality.

Subversive? Etymology? Life is too real, too fast and short to dally with fantastical tendrils of art stemming from any surprising or surreal origin. We have meals and mutual funds to manage.

No crap was detected from my first conversation with an elderly widow at a casual gathering of families and friends this past weekend. She raised the hem of her shirt to expose a brown leather belt enfolding her waist. An ordinary, coarse belt without good or bad art. No embellishment or logo. The origin of the belt upended her world: it belonged to her late husband of nearly 60 years.

I touched the belt to feel his presence gathering around her diminishing trunk, holding her core in a single frame of art, literature and poetry when the colors and language of her life had been drained subversively during these solitary years without his voice and dreams.

The belt is hers in the strictest etymological sense of the possessive pronoun. No higher grade of art could sustain her pulse.

If a point of her story were to be uprooted from the frays of her belt & be rooted into a headline for social media post, the words would likely sustain minimal intrigue in our ocean of priorities laboriously launched from business lounges and vacation resorts claiming space scarcely satisfactory to our first-world kingdoms in oligarchy or democracy. Life offers too much to grab, too scant for scattering.

None of this matters to the widow now. She is busy humming a tune of resurrected hope. White lashes encircle her eyes, striking out in invisible strokes to stoke questions subversively offensive.

What are you keeping and letting go before literature hovers above your tomb?

In my garden yesterday, this miniature bush bothered me. Half of it was flourishing while the other withering. The angle of sunlight might have cast a point or two on its blooming form of art: same root on soil with different shoots arriving at a point subversively unexpected.

Yours, Kate