A Catholic in the Art Museum

So, two Sundays ago, I went to the Indianapolis Museum of Art with the family.  Lovely place, full of art and artistic people.  I had been there several times before, and its always been a perplexing place for me.  Why?  Because, art is perplexing.  Or more accurately, our definition of art is perplexing.  You see, I walk into an art museum and expect to see something like this:

St. Dominic and the Devil  by Pietro della Vecchia

And not something like this:

What the hell is it?

And yet, in the IMA, both are art.  Or at least they would be by today's standards.  Bring the latter of the two into Vecchia's studio and tell him that you're holding art, and he'd laugh and chase you out into the Italian gutters.

So, my inner philosopher asked:  What constitutes art?  To what point can we say "This, this is art, and ought to be on display" or "This is utter bullcrap and shouldn't even be displayed on the refrigerator door."  I could make that same black smudge on canvas, give some mumbo-jumbo explanation of it, and it is doubtable I'd be hailed as a celebrated artist and put on display.  After pondering for a while, here is my philosophical conclusions about art:

1.  Art requires discipline. 


No one sees a 5 year old's artwork on display at a museum, no matter how pretty their mom has told them it is.  Why?  Because a 5 yr old is not disciplined enough to make genuine, display-worthy art.  Art requires a demonstration of skill, of talent refined by countless moments of practice, patience, and skill-honing discipline.

2.  Art requires purpose.


One of the greatest crimes against art is making art for absolutely no reason.  Art ought to reflect something, to image something previously unseen, to shape something out of nothing, to reflect a truth about the world without or the world within.  When we make art that doesn't reflect that purpose, or doesn't reflect it in some plausible way (i.e. not a black inkblot on paper that's supposedly meant to reflect the rhythm of the universe.) it ceases to hold artistic value.

3.  Art requires beauty.


This is the one that is probably going to get me in trouble.  If you take a walk through many modern art exhibits, they tend to lack beauty.  Rather, they've supplemented it with absurdity or grotesqueness.  And that's not to say many beautiful works of art in the past are not also somewhat absurd, or grotesque, but even in their absurdity and grotesqueness, there was a beauty about them.


In conclusion, I learned something about the purpose of art (or at least, of genuinely good art.)  Art is the reflection of a mind.  That's why we don't find sheer chaotic things to be artistic; they have no mind reflected in them.  Most art reflects, primarily, a human mind.  Truly great art, however, reflects the Divine Mind, however small or minute a reflection it might be.

Why I'm Catholic, Pt. 2

Continuing the saga of reasons as to why I'm Catholic.  These reasons are those usually not mentioned in other accounts of people's Catholic experience, so that's why you're not seeing the obvious ones in here.  Of course I'm Catholic because of the Eucharist, Blessed Mother, etc. etc.

6. Because it doesn't move.

My inner 2nd grader refuses to acknowledge any
Pokemon past Mew.  There are only 151.  Ever.

Remember Pokemon?  That craze rose and fell when I was in second grade, and literally took over the school, to the point of administrative intervention.  Looking back it was ridiculous, because it lasted all of about 18 months, and had absolutely no point to it.  Then came Digimon (which I personally thought was just plain absurd).  Usher in Yu-Gi-Oh, etc. etc.  It seemed every other year, the Japanese assaulted the Western world with the newest thing, and then it died off.  Upon reflection, its rather absurd how we kept buying into the next fad, even though we new that it had a lifespan of less than 3 years.  We did it because it was popular.


Catholicism, for the most part, doesn't really care for popularity or fashion, and thank God it doesn't, because people today treat their life philosophy like my classmates treated Pokemon.  It seems every couple of years there's a new Deepak Chopra or Eckhart Tolle pitching a new spirituality to us, and of course, their books go straight to the top of the best-sellers list until something new comes out, and we do it all again.  This isn't good for our souls.  Our souls aren't geared to feel good, they're geared to be good, and so we need a solid spiritual tradition, a spiritual tradition rooted in the Truth.  Catholicism doesn't move because it claims to be that tradition.  Rather than giving into the spiritual fads of the world, Catholicism has been leading people to God from the same stony Cathedrals it had built in centuries past.  The Cathedrals reflect how our soul ought to be, tall, graceful, resolute and firm, and yet, breathtakingly beautiful.  In a world that's always on the move towards the next big thing, Catholicism has been anchored in the presence of the Eternal Big Thing.

7. Because it forces me to give way.

Spirituality 101:  Don't be the mule.  Ever.

Back in 1930, the Anglican Church made an unprecedented move.  The Anglicans announced that they would allow the usage of contraception in marriages, and were the first Christian denomination to do so.  The rest seemed to topple like dominoes and followed the Anglican Church's lead, until only the Roman Catholic Church was left.  Many people applauded this as a step forward (And yet no one stopped to ask if we were supposed to be going forward in the first place.) but the Catholic Church, ever anchored in the Middle ages, didn't change.  Still hasn't.  No, the Catholic Church, rather than taking into careful consideration the general opinion of the people, has simply said "You're wrong.  Repent."  And thank God Almighty the Church stays this way.

Catholicism is not a democracy.  Catholicism has rebuffed and rebuked the idea that it ought to teach the views that the faithful generally come to a consensus on, and while that may make Catholicism insanely unpopular among progressives, its what gives it credit to me.  You see, Catholicism forms me, not the other way around.  I'm a broken person, and I sure as hell don't want to decide how I'm going to get fixed.  There's a great line from the less than great movie "School for Scoundrels" in which a character is trying to teach a bunch of wimps how to get some confidence.  Addressing the class he says "How many of you have self-help books? Okay, that's your first problem. You can't help yourself, because your *self* sucks!"  Blunt, but correct.  Blind people can't lead blind people, nor do the students teach the class.  We need the Church to form us, and we need to stop trying to form the Church.


8.  Because it tells me what to do.

Ever been in a McDonald's, lined up behind the register, waiting on some guy staring up at the menu board in glassy-eyed wonder, taking a small eternity to make the simplest of decisions?  Of course you have.  We all have.  And the general majority of us have wanted to do something violent to said person, mostly because we are impatient and hate indecisive people.  Unfortunately, many of us have also been the indecisive person, facing a whole load of choices and having no idea which choice to make.


Catholicism solves this problem.  As we stand glaring up at life's choices, we may have a million and a half options, but the only one we really want is the right one.  We want the best option, we want to find ourselves with the choice that will make us most happy.  Therefore, it seems that having a million and a half choices is merely complicating the situation.  Catholicism gives us the right choice when it comes to our moral and spiritual life.  Catholicism, in its wisdom and divine plan, shows us the path we need to take, rather than the gazillion paths that we can take, so rather than making the wrong choice all the time, we make the right choice and become all the better because of it.


9.  Because I'm a schmuck.

Don't let the robes fool you
 he's "just" a fisherman.

In case you haven't noticed, we live in a world of less than perfect people.  Really, this is the only problem in the world: how do we deal with the fact that we're not perfect?  The modern consensus seems to be one of two things: either we pretend that there's no problem at all with us, that we're perfect people, or we acknowledge that we're screwed up and pretend that its supposed to be that way.  Regardless, doesn't solve the problem.


Catholicism has the courage to say "Yeah Joe, you are a schmuck, but you can be better" and actually give a game plan to achieve such a goal.  Most great empires and institutions are built by great men, and with great men in mind, and when they get less than great men, they tumble and decay.  The Church was built by Jesus Christ, but not with great men, or even for great men.  It was built with fishermen and tax collectors, ordinary men, with ordinary men in mind.  The Church is fully aware of less-than-perfect men, that's why it can make saints.  It's foundation is sunk in a realistic understanding of mankind, and from that foundation, it can rise to soaring heights.


10.  Because I like to have a good time.

If you haven't seen the Simpson's
Protestant heaven vs. Catholic heaven,
you live a deprived life

There are very few people in my age group (and possibly in the world) that don't like to have a good time.  Sadly enough, these same people hold the Catholic Church as a foil to having a good time, and nothing is further from the truth.  You see, while they may find pleasure from a bottle of vodka, loud music, and a disco ball, they don't find it from many other places at all.


Catholicism forms people to enjoy life in many more situations than drunken weekends.  Catholicism can give a man the same sense of intense pleasure from a pleasant walk next to a river as he might get from a rave or whatnot.  The Catholic life of enjoyment is far healthier than the modern life of enjoyment as well, simply because there are a plethora of things in which a Catholic finds joy in, whereas there aren't nearly as many things in which a modern youth will find joy in.  Thus, while a Catholic, with his many exciting things, never gets bored of any one thing, a modern will get bored very quickly with his small handful of pleasurable things, and eventually all the booze, music, and parties in the world will fail to satisfy.

How to Win a Culture War (Or Any Other Sort of War For That Matter)

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”

-G.K. Chesterton

I need to admit something, to confess a bad habit of mine.  I like to browse the internet and find Catholic-bashing articles.  Not a hard feat these days, as it would seem.  Everyone's a critic, and the Catholic Church is too big, too odd, and far too shiny a target for people pass up, and so every Tom, Dick, and Harry, has a word or critique of the Church.  I have a morbid fascination of these criticisms, much the way people have a morbid desire to know what sort of things are said behind their back about them.

Anton Ego's been b*tching about
how low quality our altar wine is
for centuries

As I read these articles, blogs, comments, and Facebook rants, both the constructive ones and the destructive ones, I notice that there's an overwhelming number of problems people have with the Church.  You've got the classics, like ordination of women, contraception, abortion, sexual ethics in general.  You've got the anti-authoritarians, who are the ones who like to rail against anyone of authority in the Church.  You've got the rest of Christianity, which ranges from the mild disagreement to accusations of being the Whore of Babylon (Call my Holy Mother Church a whore one more time, I dare you...).  Then you've got your miscellaneous critic here and there, and God only knows where they are coming from.We all know the critics are a dime a dozen, and I'll discuss criticism in a future post.  We also know they have a plethora of different attacks on just about anything that's Catholic these days.  

For all sakes and purposes, its safe to say Catholicism is locked in a pretty dense culture war.  This war is not new, but the strength with which it's escalating is worth noting.  It'd seem that every Catholic is being called to the battle lines, as apologists hack through seas of intellectual debate, as priests hear confessions of an increasingly amoral society and preach homilies against a society that's at a serious risk of just not caring anymore (and not just about Catholicism.  About anything).  Our education system is struggling to keep up, assuming they haven't given up already.  Although it doesn't seem that way to the unperceptive mind, this is a rather vicious battle, and all signs point to severe escalation in the future.  At risk is nothing short of Catholicism's survival in our society.  

Anyone who gets out of the  Holy Roman
trench gets mowed down in a
Facebook flame war...

Despite some of the view expressed by Catholic thinkers and evangelists, this battle isn't anything new to the Catholic Church.  We've been doing this number for years, and we're going to be doing this for years to come. That's the sad consequence of sin in our world.  We're at a standstill, if you want to look at it strategically.  So how move beyond the standstill?  Well, to put it simply, bring in a game changer.  Ask any strategist: when battles are locked at a standstill, you break it with a game changer.  In World War I it was poison gas and tanks.  In World War II, it was the A-bomb.  In Korea, the Inchon Landings, etc.

We can fight our battles with apologists, pastors, and evangelists, and by all means, we need these sort of things very very much.  But even more so, we need our game changer:  The Saint.  You see, within their criticisms, there's a second question being asked.  Beyond their actual criticisms, you can find a hint of the same presumption, and it usually sound's something like "The claims that the Roman Catholic Church make are too far-fetched to actually be realized."  Its a question of practicality.  For the most part, the critics of the Church have heard the answers and explanations for the doctrine and the teaching, and have rejected them.  Why?  They see nothing to suggest practicality.

Our world is obsessed with practicality and efficiency.  We have a million good ideas, but if it doesn't work, it gets shot down faster than you can articulate it.  The same goes for our religious sense, unfortunately.  All too often we pick our churches and our spirituality based on what's convenient and practical to us.  Thus, its no wonder critics and haters aren't liking the Church.  What's to practically show them that the Church works?  To put it simply, these folks:

Meet the A-team.  Meet the Catholic saints (Bl. Miguel Pro, St. Pio of Pietrelcina, Bl. Teresa of Calcutta are pictured above).  These are our game-changers, our all stars, the Atomic bombs of our Church.  It is these holy men and women that tell the whole world that Catholicism is real and practical, that the message of Jesus Christ isn't fluff and stuff, its true and its changing lives.  It is Saints who've brought the Church through its past troubles, and Saints who will bring it through them again today.  

We need apologists, pastors, mentors, and evangelists.  But we desperately need more Saints.  First and foremost, before we throw verbal punches and get into the nitty gritty of the battlefield., we have to strive to be saints.  We must be holy, because our Church demands nothing less than that. from us.  Pope Benedict XVI once said "The Church does not provide solutions, it provides Saints."  If we want to win these culture wars, we can't be content with merely being a good apologist, evangelist, what-have-you.  We need to aspire for sainthood.  We need to will it.  These are our examples that all this seemingly far-fetched stuff is not so far-fetched at all.  These are our testimonies to the practicality and reality of our faith.  We need saints.

Lessons Eleanor Rigby Taught Me

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”

-Mother Teresa

Ever felt lonely?  I might as well ask the question "Are you human?"  Of course you have.  We all have.  Loneliness is a sad affect of human life, an unfortunate inevitability.  We've all felt isolated, we've all been abandoned.  The only real question of the matter is why.  Why do we feel lonely.  As the Beatles noted "All the lonely people, where do they all come from?"

It seems odd, especially in today's world.  You'd think in the years before Facebook, before the Internet, before computers, phones and such that there'd be an epidemic of lonely people.  But that seems not to be the case.  In an ever-growing world, where the population continues to rise exponentially and we find ever new and unique ways to socialize, loneliness has done nothing but grown.  I have 577 friends on Facebook, and I'm ashamed to admit I probably wouldn't manage to say much more than "Hi" to 90% of them if I passed them on the street today.  This is a terrible crisis; in a world of great wealth, this is a horrid poverty that plagues even the richest and wealthiest.

As a side note:  This is not worthy of being called
coffee.  I don't even care if it has art on it.

The truth about loneliness is that it is a matter of quality, not quantity.  We keep adding Facebook friends, collecting flocks of followers on Twitter, texting terabytes of data every second, and yet, we rarely stop to wonder about the quality of those friendships.  We've reduced our communication with people to a pathetic trickle of likes, lolz, and 140 character hash-tagged flippantries.  We may tweet about how good our venti foamy salted caramel caffeinated abominations are, but when was the last time you actually went up to the barista who made our sissied-up frou-frou coffee-based travesty and said "Mmm, thank you!  You did a wonderful job with this.  Have a great day!"  or "This is pretty damn good.  Keep being awesome!"  or even "Well done, thank you."  Nope.  All we get is Twitter: "Mmm (insert incredibly long name of wussy "coffee" drink) is delicious #yaystarbucks!"

We've got people everywhere, but not a drop of community.  In a world where we are constantly told how important it is to stand out, to be ourselves, to express ourselves and generally insure that there is a marked difference between me and you, we wonder why we feel so isolated.  As we strive to climb ladders and smash through barriers and accrue for ourselves enough honors and awards to turn our resumes into a book, we fail to realize the horrific side effects:  That in our attempt to isolate ourselves, we've very successfully isolated ourselves.  Everyone has told us how important it is to be an individual, and we've discovered that we have absolutely no idea how to be a community.  Even in our prayer lives, we hear echoes of "God give me this, God give me that, blahblahblahblahblah...." and very little genuine prayer for other people.

"Where the hell is everyone else?!"

If we want to live in a world where we try to set ourselves apart from everyone else, we have to understand the consequences of such a life: namely, that we'll actually be set apart from everyone else.  When we let our ambition get the better of us, it takes us to a very dismal place.  Sure, we can set goals for wealth, power, pleasure, and honor, but as the saying goes, "What a tragedy to climb the ladder of success, only to reach the top and find the ladder leaning against the wrong wall."  We may walk on city streets and dream of standing at the top of skyscrapers, but when we find ourselves at the top, we realize that we've traded everything worthwhile to get there.  We've quite literally sold our soul to gain the whole world, and the sad fact is, when we stand on the highest mountains or the tallest skyscraper, the whole world looks so very small.

You and I and all the lonely people need to realize one thing:  human beings don't flourish by standing on the shoulders of other human beings, we flourish when we stand together.  Skyscrapers, ironically enough, are so tall because people built them together.  Mankind is not meant to be a collective of individuals, its meant to be a community.  We need to give up our addiction to securing things for ourselves.  We need to stop asking "What am I entitled to?  What are my rights?" and start asking "What can we do together?  How can we genuinely care for each other?"

...and no one argued about who got the last
piece of pie.

The Church has a model for this, although we seemed to have lost it.  Not once in the early Church did we  hear anything such as "Well, I'm entitled to..." or "But I think I deserve..." or "I've earned..."  The disciples lived in one accord, of one mind and heart.  They weren't lonely!  They understood that friendship is more valuable than possessions, success, honor, or pleasure.  In today's Church, we've lost this sensibility.  Rather, we're taught that we ought to be critics and spectators, quick to judge and slow to believe.  Everyone comes to the Church with demands for themselves, whether it be the woman demanding ordination because "its my right!" or the people demanding gay marriage "because who are you to deny me what I want!" or the government demanding that we foot the bill for sin because "people have a right to it."  Yeah, sure, say we give you each what you want and you go home happy, then what?  You've manipulated the community for your own ends and found that you're still lonely, because you've made yourself the more important than the moon and the stars, only to discover outer space is a very cold empty place.

Its time for all the lonely people to find a home.  Our culture is tired, our culture is sad.  We're sick and tired of being used and abused and used again.  We're sick and tired of living lives in 140 characters and hash-tags.  We're sick and tired of climbing the long and lonely ladder to success.  Its time we returned home.  Its time we reclaimed the message that the Church has been echoing all along:  its about people.  Talk to be people.  Be with people.  Love people.  Fight with them if you have to, but for God's sake, experience people.  Acknowledge your barista and your janitor, give them a minute of your day and more than a two word conversation.  Tell your mother you love her, tell your father how thankful you are for him.  Set aside ambition for a few minutes and connect with people.  Pray for people, and I mean really pray for them.  If you genuinely seek to be with and for other people, to set aside yourself for a while and put on genuine care and concern for others, I guarantee, you'll never live another lonely day for the rest of your life.

One big happy family.  Just like it is supposed to be.

P.S.  If you like this blog, feel free to share it.  If not, please write your complaint in the form of a limerick and send it to me.  I'll answer the one I find most clever.

Why I'm Catholic

*This is not an all-inclusive list, nor is it necessarily a list of reasons why anyone ought to be Catholic.  These are my reasons.  If they resound with you, good for you.  If they don't, good for you, keep looking.  Regardless, it is for these, and many other reasons, that I have chosen and continue to choose to be Roman Catholic:

1.  Because my parents gave it to me.

My baptism was something like this,
only I cried a bunch and my mom didn't
have anything on her head.  Oh, and I was bald.
And not a girl.

I'm Catholic because my parents are Catholic, and there's nothing wrong with that.  To say that being Catholic because that's what your parents chose for you is a bad thing is like saying that being human because my parents were human is a bad thing.

My parents love me.  Very much.  My parents have gone to extraordinary ends to ensure that I become the best that I can be.  They realized that I had a gift and they ensured that I be raised and educated in an environment that allowed that gift to flourish.  They taught me how to accept discipline and to discipline myself, they gave me books to read, adventures to undertake, people to meet, all because they loved me very much and wanted what was best for me.  And it was in that same spirit that they gave me the greatest gift of all:  the joy of being Baptized as a Catholic.  They gave me a gift, a gift I continue to reap the marvelous benefits of, a gift that I'll never fully understand until I'm in (Good God let it be so) Heaven.  They gave me Catholicism, and every day I enjoy and reaffirm that gift.

 2.  Because it has all things good in it.

Catholicism is big.  If a person's understanding of Catholicism stops at clerics and cathedrals, they are very sadly mistaken.  Religion today has been shrunk to a Sunday ordeal, restricting religion to one day a week and before and after meals.  Unless something specifically mentions God, its not of a religious nature.

Catholicism is cut from an older notion of religion.  Catholicism is practiced on the bar stool and in the pew, within politics and within prayer.  Catholicism, by its mere presence, summons what is good about any given thing while defeating that which is evil.  Whether it be in a pew or a pub, Catholicism impels the best in us, the best in everyone else. Catholicism brings us to what is worth being brought forth, it celebrates what is worth celebration, and it criticizes what is worth criticizing.  Being Catholic means finding what is good in everything while letting go of what is bad in anything.



3.  Because it is committed to excellence.

There's a sad resignation to mediocrity in this world.  We live in an ocean of rented apartments and work in a sea of cubicles, and very very few of us ever achieve our cherished dreams.  Most of us, rather than seeking to achieve dreams, just look to get by.  We want to get by, and if we're lucky, we want to have a little fun while we're at it.

Pier Giorgio Frassati and friends.  They frequently went
mountain climbing, drinking, philosophizing, chasing evil
 fascist assassins down the streets.  You know, the usual.

Catholicism isn't satisfied by just getting by.  Lukewarm and tepid people are more loathsome than the person who tried and miserably failed; you can be hot or cold, but for God's sake, don't be lukewarm.  The hot person has strove for excellency, for goodness, truth, and beauty, and they've achieved it.  The cold person strove and fell, and finds themselves at the bottom, but they tried nonetheless.  It is the lukewarm, the tepid person, that the Church finds irritating.  This is the person who gave up before they even tried.  This is the person who never strove for excellence at all, but rather for contentment.  They said "I'm ok" and never moved forward, never set out to be more, never aspired to higher things, and in it, they began the long, slow, and boring slide into obscurity.  The Church says "NO!" to being mediocre.  Rather, the Church demands saints of us, and saints it will make us, if we let it.  Saints are the great and the brave.  Saints are the best mankind can offer, our shining examples, those resplendent in heavenly glory.  And they never lived in a spiritual cubicle.

4.  Because it is beautiful.


Ever hear the phrase "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"?  Its a nice idea, but I'm not sold.  I'd revise it to say "Beauty is only seen by those who have the eyes to behold it."  The difference is that, in the former, man defines beauty.  In the latter, beauty defines man.  There's a common anecdote about a young boy who sat in Michelangelo's studio and watched the Renaissance master sculpt marble with chisel and hammer.  This continued for days and weeks, until the boy asked "How did you know there was a man inside that block?"  This is the Catholic eye for beauty:  not a creation of our hand, but a process of liberation.  Beauty is sought after, not made.

Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhol:
Eat your hearts out.

Catholicism has a 2000 year history of seeking after beauty.  In its art, music, literature, prose, poetry, it has relentlessly pursued beauty.  Why?  Because beauty is worth pursuing.  Beauty is the sweet touch of God, the reassurance of God's resolute tenderness and the soft assurance with which he has created all things.  Beauty is much like Michelangelo's masterpiece sculptures, smooth and sweet, but firm and resolute.  Beauty, by the act of being beautiful, demands that we be discover our beauty too.  It demands that we liberate our true beauty from the stoniness around it.  Catholicism is built on cathedrals of stone and hearts of gold, and the thing they have in common is that they are both resolutely beautiful.

5.  Because it is tangible.

Of the arguments against religion, my favorite has to be the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the fictional deity of anti-theists everywhere who wish to make a sincere mockery of theistic folk everywhere.  And yet, its so easily surpassed.  You're God is a monster made of spaghetti?  Puh-lease.  I worship a God who looks like Bread and Wine.  And, quite honestly, I find that quite awesome.

Ecce Agnus Dei.

Catholicism, especially in its sacraments, is tangible.  We can experience it with our eyes, taste it with our tongue, hear it with our ears, and feel its touch in the absolving hand of a priest.  Many religions tend to over-spiritualize things, giving people a text and their imagination and letting them run amok.  Catholicism has nothing against texts and imagination, but by themselves, they run the risk of getting away from us.  We're flesh and bone as much as we are soul.  We walk, drive, eat, talk, and the other things in a very physical world.  Therefore, Christ, in making this Church, set it so we have tangible anchors to the divine.  Just as the disciples knew it was Christ when they see him and touch his hands and side, we too know God from the sacraments, from bread, wine, and water.  Catholicism has made the intangible tangible, the unseen seen, and thus, made you and I so wonderfully tangled in the midst.

More to come...

Why John Lennon Was Wrong

Great artist.  Terrible philosopher.

So, as I type this opening line, my Pandora radio station is playing Jack Johnson's cover of John Lennon's famous song "Imagine", a stirring guitar ballad promoting peace, love, and unity in true post-Beatles Lennon hippy fashion style.  Its a beautiful song, and paints such a melodic picture of world peace.  Except, unfortunately, it's wrong.

I play piano (sorta), and own the sheet music to this song, but I never actually sought out to play it, precisely because I had a nauseating, queasy feeling in my gut when I sang the first line, much like the feeling you get when you're a passive witness to something that you'd rather not be a part of.  "Imagine there's no heaven, its easy if you try."  I did try.  Scared the hell outta me, (which made the next line "No hell below us" seem redundant.)

Now I get it, Lennon is advocating for the dissolution of those things that traditionally divide us and prevent us from being one united worldwide hug-fest, or at the least, a world in which I don't shoot at you for doing something that I don't particularly like.  Lennon's dripping with good intent, but as far as his lyrical message goes, he's shot himself in the foot.

So pristine you want to vomit.

Why?  Because killing heaven kills the best of man.  When I say Heaven, I don't mean some picturesque, idyllic  pastoral scene that always ends up looking like a My Little Pony castle you can never escape.  I mean Heaven in a sense closer to (ironically enough) the very thing that Lennon is describing:  The absence of everything that divides us.  Which is why his song doesn't make sense:  You're describing a heaven, and in the same fell swoop, trying to abolish heaven.

Heaven reflects the absolute best in man.  Every burden, every sin, every lie that man every adopted is gone, forgotten from every record.  Heaven, even in the distance, makes man want to be better. Because we see the faintest glimpse of heaven, I want to be the best man I can be.  Because I see heaven in the distance, I'm discontent with the dysfunction in myself and in the world.  I'm willing to seek a better world, even fight for it against those who would seek to hinder me.  Because I see something that's true, I'm willing to defend it against lies.

If you separate heaven from man, you'll find that he has no purpose, no "raison d'etre."  And I'm not even talking about life after death, although heaven only seems to make sense after death. I'm talking about Heaven in the sense that its the place where everything and everyone is finally as it ought to be.  To say that there is heaven is to say that there is some redeeming quality within us, something that makes us worth saving, something that makes believing in goodness worthwhile.

I want a world like Lennon describes, believe me, I do.  But without heaven, it simply can't be done.  Man is fallen, such a thing is rather obvious.  If it weren't, there'd be no point in Lennon writing this song in the first place.  Before we unite into Lennon's perpetual Woodstock, we need to address the reason why we are not, and have not always been, united in Lennon's perpetual Woodstock.  What makes us to choose to shoot at each other rather than hug and hold hands?  Why are we fallen, and why should we get back up?  When we've answered that question, we'll find heaven.  We'll understand why we fell and why (and how) we need to get back up.  Heaven gives us purpose and destination.  It gives us a model by which we can shape our world, here and now.

Mr. Lennon, I know you're dead, but, please, do your vision and your species a favor.  Don't kill heaven, embrace it.

Boredom, Sin, and the Saints

We used to build cathedrals and
coliseums.  Now we watch this for
10 hours.

Ever sat for hours upon hours on your computer, shuffling your way through StumbleUpon, Pandora opened to your hand-crafted and well manicured internet radio station, while a Facebook has remained open as a tab for weeks?  Yeah, you're not alone.  Its quite fascinating what we'll do when we're bored.  People would rather watch their brains melt out of their heads scrolling through a never-ending stream of half-hearted memes (Oh, you made ANOTHER Willy Wonka meme?  You must be SO insightful.) than be genuinely bored.

We abhor boredom.  People will do great and terrible things to avoid being bored.  We'll waste our entire lives trying to mitigate boredom.  People have killed other people for the sole reason that it was certainly not boring to do so.  Why do we detest boredom so much?  Why is it so horrid to us that we'd rather kill someone than be chronically bored?

In order to answer such a question, we have to understand the nature of boredom.  People usually paint boredom as a deficit:  Not enough motivation, not enough stimulus, not enough excitement, etc.  I don't agree with this analysis; there are times in which I am bored watching an action movie, and a week later, I'm utterly fascinated by a fresh-cut lawn.  No, boredom isn't a deficit, its a surplus.  We become bored when we have a surplus of pride.  That's right:  pride is boring.   Think about it:  No one gets bored being passionate about something outside themselves.  However, everyone gets bored when they seek satisfaction for themselves.  When we genuinely invest ourselves in something other than ourselves, whether its playing guitar, enjoying an lively game of Frisbee, or sympathizing with the plight of the beluga whale.  Its as G.K. Chesterton once said, "There are no disinteresting things, just disinterested people."

Unfortunately, we're usually not perceptive enough to realize that boredom is merely a matter of pride and selfishness.  And thus, our typical response to boredom is a never-ending cycle of seeking new things, exhausting them, and moving on.  All too often, this results in sin.  I have a theory that most people don't use drugs, alcohol, or porn because they want to be high, drunk, or horny.  They use them because they are bored, and the initial thrill of something new mitigates that boredom, until the novelty of the idea wears off, developing a rather restricting cycle of sin-boredom-sin etc.

You see, there's only one real escape from the cycle of boredom: holiness.  Now hold up, before you roll your eyes and go "Dammit, you had to ruin it with the whole 'holiness' shtick, didn't you?"  People get holiness wrong most of the time.  They think holiness and see this:

And don't see this:

And certainly not this:

Yup, that's a mountain climber with a
walking stick and a pipe.

But all of these things are holy. You see, holiness is the universe's greatest paradox, and the eternal solution to boredom.  Holiness is the ultimate discovery of your true self.  It's the journey to understanding exactly who you are.  And the irony of it all is that the path of holiness isn't about you.  Just as pride is the greatest cause of boredom, its the greatest thwart to holiness.  No man ever became holy for his own sake.  Nor did he find out who he was by focusing in only on himself.  Holiness is found in coming to forget oneself.  We become holy by placing our focus outside ourselves.  We learn who we are by learning who everyone and everything else is.

This is the great secret of the saints.  They learned who they were, they became holy, and the conquered boredom, precisely because they lived outside of themselves.  Saints are fascinating people.  They are diverse, they are.  The above pictures are, in order from top to bottom, St. Bruno, St. Therese Lisieux, and Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati.  One was a monk, the other was a nun who had a missionary heart, and the last was a mountain-climbing, pipe-smoking, fascist-fighting, 20-something with a massive heart for the poor.  All were holy, all found themselves precisely because they emptied themselves out.  The searched for God, they found God, themselves, and a profound new relationship to the world.  Saints aren't bored, and they certainly aren't boring.  So quit being bored, and be a saint.