New Wineskins Spring 2009

VOLUME IV t NUMBER 1 t SPRING 2009

NEW WINESKINS Brent Anderson

Mutual Fulfillment: A Theology of Religions for the Third Millennium

David A. Sylvester

Popular Art as Scripture: The Theological Failure of Secular Vision in American Beauty

Susan Haarman

In a Slum in India, I Met a Man with a King’s Name

Gina Carnazzo

Made in his Image, Laboring in his Likeness

Joseph Goh

Elegant, Happy Memories Moving in Sacred Space: A Phenomenological Investigation of Memory Work at the Poriziuncola, North Beach, CA.

IHS A Journal of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley

NEW WINESKINS New Wineskins is a collaborative effort of Jesuit and lay students at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. The ideas expressed herein are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.

All articles and materials contained in New Wineskins, the Journal of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, are the intellectual property of the authors and may not be reproduced or used without the written consent of the authors.

Please direct comments, letters to the editor, and student submissions to: wineskinseditor@jstb.edu

ISSN 1941-9570

Cover Design by Oliver Putz Layout and Typesetting by Molly McCoy

Š Copyright 2009 The Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley

NEW WINESKINS Table of Contents Mutual Fulfillment: A Theology of Religions for the Third Millennium

Brent Anderson invites us to look forward towards a theology of religion that takes multi-religiosity seriously.

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Popular Art as Scripture: The Theological Failure of Secular Vision in American Beauty

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In a Slum in India, I Met a Man with a King’s Name

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Made in his Image, Laboring in his Likeness

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Elegant, Happy Memories Moving in Sacred Space: A Phenomenological Investigation of Memory Work at the Poriziuncola, North Beach, CA.

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David A. Sylvester looks deeply into the 1999 hit film American Beauty to find the transcendental.

Susan Haarman invites us to look within our surroundings, our scripture and ourselves in this Lenten homily.

Gina Carnazzo looks down at the work done by hands in this photo essay that looks towards the work hands do as creators, teachers and sanctifiers.

Joseph Goh invites us to look around, as he did when he visited the Poriziuncola remake located in North Beach, CA.

Editor’s Foreword These last few months have been a tumultuous yet historic time for our country. Like millions of others nationwide, I ran to my television set on January 20th to watch the inauguration of the first biracial president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama. With the recent economic meltdown, the prospect of two foreign wars and because I simply want him to prove my republican parents wrong, Obama has an insurmountable task before him as the ruler of one of the most powerful yet failing countries in the world. But the feeling in my heart on that historic day was hope — a sober hope, acknowledging the uncertainty of our times and the work ahead.

During his inaugural speech, President Obama addressed the myriad of problems we face, but offered a ray of hope by looking into the industrious past of the United States and demonstrating that, as a collective nation, we have the power to create change. In essence, by looking forward, looking deeply, looking within, down and around, we have the power to find what needs to be fixed and fix it; we have the power to create profound moments of contemplation of the hard work we and others do to make our society great. It is with this metaphor of paying close attention, of looking intently, that I introduce this issue of New Wineskins.

Brent Anderson starts off the issue with his piece entitled Mutual Fulfillment: A Theology of Religions for the Third Millennium. Brent invites us to look forward to how the multi-religiosity of our country and world will spark changes to theology, as religious traditions mutually fulfill and transform each other. David A. Sylvester challenges us to look deeper with his analysis of the 1999 hit film American Beauty. His review points to the overlooked transcendental aspects of the film, rather than the carnal ones that gave the film its fame. He challenges moviegoers and reviewers everywhere to look deeply for what lies under the surface of the popular films we encounter. Susan Haarman offers a homily that reminds us to look within our surroundings, our scripture and ourselves. Susan reminds the JSTB community of the trip to India in this Lenten homily, and how these experiences challenge us to reflect on scripture in new ways. Gina Carnazzo offers a photo essay dedicated to hands. Gina challenges us to look down to our hands and contemplate the various roles they play in society — as creators, teachers and sanctifiers. Finally, Joseph Goh finishes us off with his piece entitled Elegant, Happy Memories Moving in Sacred Space: A Phenomenological Investigation of Memory Work at the Poriziuncola, North Beach, CA. Joseph challenges us to look around, as he did when he visited the Poriziuncola in North Beach. He reflects upon the role of this structure, and how it affected him during his visit. Each of these pieces challenges us as a community to look intently at our lives, our world and our futures — an excellent practice for a country and world in peril. I hope that all who read this issue will take a moment to look intently at our surroundings and act accordingly.

New Wineskins is a symbol of hard work and dedication — small potatoes compared to the work we must accomplish nationwide. Nevertheless, it is symbolic of the hard work our theologians, philosophers, sociologists, artists, etc. in training go through in their hopes of contributing to the world. It is symbolic of the hard work and dedication of our editorial staff as well, as they service our student body by choosing among dozens of qualified pieces to make one unit that gives the community a sense of the hard work our students are committed to. Thank you to our editorial board, our faculty advisor, Thomas Cattoi, and the students for the wonderful work you do.

Wendy Monique Arce Editor in chief †Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

Wendy, Andrew, April, Deogratias, Etchi Wendy Arce is a doctoral student in Interdisciplinary Studies at the GTU. Her fields of interest include Social Theory, Sociology of Religion, Latino/a Theologies and Film Studies. She plans to conduct research in immigration issues, religious experience among new immigrants as well as the role of film in culture and society. She aspires to teach in a university context and work towards change that benefits the Latino/a community in the U.S. and beyond.

Andrew Kirschman, S.J. is a member of the Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus, and in his first year of the Master of Divinity Program at JSTB. Previous to studying at JSTB, Andrew worked at the UCA in San Salvador, El Salvador teaching classes in sociology and assisting in the law department. His academic interests include sacramental theology, the reality and phenomenon of Latin America migration, and liberation theology.

April Renee Lynch is a doctoral student in Art and Religion at the GTU. Her fields of interest include aesthetics and the paintings of the Baroque era. April’s project is to research certain of Artemisia Gentileschi’s seventeenth-century paintings, using the Bible’s Book of Daniel and theologians such as Jonathan Edwards as guides to the significance of the paintings’ “spiritual aesthetics.” Her aspirations are to teach and to curate.

A Eugene Cota-Robles Fellow while an M. A. student and a classically-trained pianist and organist April, prior to her entry into the GTU, was a distance-race runner and a student pilot. continued…

‌continued Deogratias M. Rwezaura, S.J., is a member of the Eastern Africa Province of the Society of Jesus. He is a doctoral student in Social Ethics at JSTB. He researches on forced migration issues with special focus on the Great Lakes Region of Africa. Deo had a two-years social and pastoral exprerience working with Rwandan and Burundian refugees in the camps in western Tanzania prior to his first cycle of theological studies in Nairobi, Kenya.

Besem Etchi is a pioneer Cameroonian (African) Catholic lay student. She is in her first-year of studies in the Master of Divinity program at JSTB and has previously studied and taught Mathematics and Information Technology. Her academic interests are Postcolonial Biblical studies, Spirituality and Computer technology. She works towards being an activist for the dignity of women and for integral development on return to her country.

Mutual Fulfillment: A Theology of Religions for the Third Millennium Brent Anderson

Thanks to modern communications, travel, and immigration patterns, the United States and Europe,

which were once considered to be predominantly “Christian� polities, have become home to a wide array of cultures and their accompanying traditions, philosophies, and religions. As Christians come into greater contact with (1) the wisdom enshrined in texts of other religious traditions, (2) the witness of non-Christian saints to the highest Christian values of love, selfless service, and justice, and (3) the profundity of their religious experience, theologians have been prompted to reexamine if, and how, Christ functions as the ultimate source of wisdom and truth and how these traditions are to engage each other. Paul Knitter identifies four general theological models for exploring these questions: (1) total replacement, (2) fulfillment, (3) mutuality, and (4) acceptance.1 Each of these models has significant shortcomings, and the new model that I propose, mutual fulfillment, overcomes many of the obstacles that have stood in the way of creating a theological synthesis that is both reflective of the past fruits of religious exchanges and provides the necessary framework to deepen the dialogue and engagement.

While each religious system has a communal dimension in which the values, spiritual sensibilities, and traditions are transmitted to the young, the religious journey unfolds as a distinctly unique, profoundly personal, and deeply human expression of the Spirit. There is an undeniable unity within the explosion of this diversity of expression; a mystical bridge in and through which we find ourselves in union not only with all people, but with the heart of God. Though promoters of the total replacement and acceptance models tend to be on opposite ends of the conservative-liberal spectrum with 1

Total replacement: identifies Christianity as the ideal replacement to other religions.

Fulfillment: posits that the goodness enshrined in other traditions serves as preparation for the gospel.

Mutuality: recognizes that the major religious traditions are all paths to the Real.

Acceptance: affirms the real differences inherent in each religious system and is grounded in a postmodern sense of the particularity of truth to the context in which it arises.

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regard to their theologies of religions, ironically, they would both object to the basic assertion that there is a unitive dimension that pervades each of the major religions.2 The fulfillment and mutuality models, on the other hand, are grounded in the point that God, or the “Real,” is manifested throughout human experience and reveals God’s self in a transcendent manner. To deny this unitive point of contact among the religions, as the total replacement and acceptance models do, is to deny a timeless truth that had been attested to by countless saints and mystics from a wide spectrum of cultures, creeds, and epochs.

While the specific reflections on mystical experiences that arise in the contexts of various faith traditions can differ, the immense degree of similarity that emerges in the mystical poetry of these traditions cannot be denied. While poetry that is inspired from theistic traditions often describes a radical sense of love, or a burning heart that perceives the divine as an all-encompassing presence, As worshippers, we see ourselves Buddhist poetry often focuses more on themes regarding a sudden awakening within this fragmented body, which that allows one to gaze into the ultimate nature of the world and the self. five minutes earlier was clinging to Another common variant brought into reflection on the mystical experience life, and five minutes into the future is the “personal” versus “non-personal” dimension of the encounter. Some will be on its way to the sepulchre. mystical traditions focus more on one’s identification with God as one’s ultimate identity, while other traditions emphasize that a distinction remains between God and the soul. However, some of the common elements that tend to be ingredients of mystical encounters throughout traditions include a reduction in the sense of separation between the self, world, and God/Reality, a relinquishment of egoic attachment (humility), and a sense that the experience of God/ Reality is beyond any words or images. An example from St. John of the Cross illustrates a number of common themes that run throughout mystical poetry: On a dark night, afflicted and aflame with love, O joyful chance!, I went out unnoticed, my house lying silent at last.

In darkness and secure, down the secret ladder, disguised, O joyful chance!, in darkness, and shielded, my house lying silent at last,

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A Barthian would object because s(he) would claim that Christianity is the only valid path, while some from the acceptance camp would object out of a conviction that the truths within each religion are not readily exportable or experiential to people immersed in other religious systems.

Mutual Fulfillment One joyful night, in secret: no one was watching and I saw no other thing, my only light and guide the light that burned in my heart.

That same light led me more surely than the noonday sun to where one was waiting, the one I knew would come, where surely no one would find us.

O you my guide, the night O night more welcome than dawn night that drew together the loved one and the lover, each transformed into the other!

On my blossoming breast, kept untouched for him alone, there he fell asleep, and I caressed him while boughs of cedar stirred the air.

On the ramparts while I sat ruffling his hair, the air struck my neck with its gentle hand, leaving my senses suspended.

I stayed; I surrendered, resting my face on my Beloved.

Nothing mattered.

I left my cares forgotten among the lilies.3

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John of the Cross, The Poems of St. John of the Cross, ed. & trans. by Ken Krabbenhoft (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 19–21.

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The third stanza illustrates the door into the tender silence and abyss of God that so many Christian mystics have entered through, the door of the heart. When St. John ultimately reaches the top of Mt. Carmel, where the peak of his mystical experience resides, the only word he can muster is “nada.” If God is so far beyond any thoughts, sensations, and emotions in the encounter, why is it that St. John suggests that the heart is the springboard from which we may dive into God’s deeper waters? One of the distinct similarities between the processes of falling in love and the transcendence of self that happens in the process of contemplative prayer is the suspension of the discursive intellect, or ego.4 The experience of union, the opening the heart unto the holy, and the transcendental experience of nothingness and fullness are all closely related, and many mystics who have an experience of one sort of transcendental moment also experience transcendence in these other ways as well.5 Though the theological enterprise has been traditionally understood as “faith seeking understanding,” it is somewhat ironic that the process of discursive reflection, which is the foundation upon which theology is built, is itself transcended in the depths of the mystical experience. However, this does not mean that we despair and give up on theology. Since, at its best, theological language emerges out of a reflection upon faith experience, it has the potential to hint at the mystical ground that lies at the core of our communities and our faith. Written words and speech are (limited) ways through which the Church hands down through the ages its wisdom and witness to the ubiquitous and vibrant life of Christ. If the saints were not formed by the language and symbols of the tradition, it is probable that they never would have experienced the depth in their faith lives that their formation disposed them to reach.

However, these mystics also indicate that the encounter with God is ultimately beyond words, an insight which is consistent with early Christian theological traditions. The via negativa, which is emphasized by the Cappadocian Fathers, Hesychast writers, pseudo-Dionysius, and some selections of Augustine’s work, illustrates the importance of modesty, humility, and detachment in the theological enterprise. Though scholastic theology often veered away from these virtues, even its premier theologian, Thomas Aquinas, arguably came face to face with the limitations of theological formulas, “All that I have written seems to me like straw compared with what has now been revealed to me.”6 4 5

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If the discursive intellect is not fully suspended, the person is at least no longer identified with it.

The point here is an extremely subtle one, but St. John hints at it in his poem. The experience he has of a light burning in his heart is not quite the same experience that one would describe as being “lost in oblivion.” However, both can emerge within a similar state of consciousness that is highly creative, quiet, and non-discursive. John suggests a figurative way for how the two are linked. When touched by the “gentle hand,” John suddenly finds that all senses are suspended, and there is a shift into “oblivion.”

This sense of “oblivion” can be expressed as a sense of “profound union” or “nothingness” because the experience that he is speaking of is one where the traditional sense of “identity” is transcended. If John’s reference point is his ego, then “oblivion” is an appropriate term to express the sense of the moment, while if the point of reference is all of reality or God outside of himself, he can say that he is unified with all.

These points are very similar.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest, Doctor of the Church; available from http://www.smart.net/~tak/Patrons/ thomas2.html; Internet: accessed 30 January 2007.

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This theological backdrop and testimony of the mystics could be used to support a Hickian sort of mutuality model: If we now ask ourselves how it can be that the same ultimate divine Reality can be perceived in such different ways from within the different religions, yet all producing the same basic human transformation, the answer must involve both the infinity of the divine Reality, transcending all our conceptualizations, and the historical variety of the human cultures which form the lenses through which that Reality is variously perceived.7 While Knitter classifies the mutuality model and fulfillment model into two different categories, the classification may not be entirely warranted if we probe deeply into what exactly it is that could warrant such a separation. In Knitter’s presentation, the fundamental differences between the two is that fulfillment models tend to hold that Jesus Christ is the universal cause of salvation and that Christianity is the only system that contains the “fullness of Christ” by virtue of the gospel revelation.

While the Catholic Church maintains that God’s salvific hand For those who argue that Christ brings about the is certainly present and active in other religions, the “fullness of “fullness of salvation” only within the Church, God” is not achieved because alternative religious systems have they must be confronted with the issue that the Church has never been able to say what “salvation” not yet been completed with the gospel message.8 Logos Christology has served as the foundation for this definitively is, or how Christ brings it about. position. With reflection on the opening verses of the Gospel of John and retrieval of the concept of the logoi spermatikoi (seeds of the Word that creatively sustain the cosmos) from the Church Fathers, Karl Rahner situates his philosophy of the supernatural existential in the Christic presence that pervades nature. By virtue of contact with the logoi, “the non-Christian religions can be ‘a positive means of gaining the right relationship to God and thus for the attaining of salvation, a means which is therefore positively included in God’s plan.’”9 Documents such as Lumen Gentium, Nostra Aetate, and Unitatis Redintegratio affirm the inherent value that other religious systems have in God’s salvific plan, and while later encyclicals and CDF declarations would uphold this, these latter documents are not quite as flattering: (Christ) does not fail to make himself present in many ways, not only to individuals, but also to entire peoples through their spiritual riches, of which their religions are the main and essential expression even when they contain ‘gaps, insufficiencies and errors.’”10 7 8 9 10

John Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 94.

Paul Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002), chapter 4.

Ibid., 71.

John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio, 55; cf. 56 and Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi, 53. When the errors of other religions are highlighted, it can be instructive for the purposes of dialogue to recall that the Church herself is also a pilgrim who has her own share of deficiencies.

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With all of the theological treatises that proclaim Christ is only found in his fullness in the Church, isn’t it remarkable to note the comparatively scant degree of reflection on what exactly it is about Christ or the Church that constitutes this “completing” factor? For those who argue that Christ brings about the “fullness of salvation” only within the Church, they must be confronted with the issue that the Church has never been able to say what “salvation” definitively is, or how Christ brings it about. Indeed, salvation has been interpreted in a host of ways throughout Christian history: from the emphasis on theosis that the Church Fathers ascribe to the process, through movements in atonement theology in the Middle Ages, to more contemporary models that retrieve paradigms that interpret salvation through a sense of deepening of communion with God. Some theologians believe that the totality of salvation is administered in a single dose of grace, while Catholic positions tend to understand salvation as an ever deepening process that is never fully completed in the earthly journey. If salvation is understood as an ongoing process, then the proclamation of “fullness of salvation” remains a concept that is not fully attainable in a lifetime since human growth is never fully complete.

Since “salvation” is such a tricky concept to try to pin down, let alone making any claims about how the “fullness of salvation” comes to be effected, some would be more comfortable in dropping the language of salvation and simply assert that it is only through the Church that the “fullness of Christ” is revealed. However, can we find a single example in any contemporary Christian movement in which we can honestly assert that the “fullness of Christ” is revealed? If we return to the perspective of early theologians who emphasize that the fullness of God is beyond our language and experience, anyone who claims that the Church mediates an experience of the “fullness of Christ” could be seen as highly audacious if not altogether heretical. Such a statement certainly lacks the epistemological humility that the via negativa would prescribe.

The Church might claim that the fullness of Christ is revealed in the Eucharist. However, the whole notion of “revelation” implies that there is someone who can receive God’s message. If one argues that Christ is fully present in the Eucharist, but cannot actually be perceived in this fullness, then functionally, the “fullness of Christ” is reduced to a mere conceptual ideal that is not experienced by anyone. Therefore, in order not to mislead people, when the Church asserts that it is the only institution with the fullness of Christ, the Church should also proclaim that nobody actually experiences the fullness of Christ. Honesty and clarity on this point can also help to set the stage for effective dialogue among fellow pilgrims.

Though the debate over whether or not the Church contains the fullness of Christ is spiritually irrelevant,11 we must be aware of the potential dangers that come with accepting or denying the Church’s traditional conviction on the matter too quickly. Since Christians who read such statements do not consciously 11

One of the subtle differences between the mutual fulfillment model and Hick’s mutuality model is that Hick would outwardly reject the Church’s position on the point that Christ is the source of all wisdom and explicitly assert that the Church does not contain the fullness of Christ. With mutual fulfillment, one never needs to explicitly reject the assertion that the Church contains the fullness of Christ. Because such “fullness” is a theological principle that can only exist in the abstract, it is simply irrelevant for Christian practice. The burden to demonstrate how this fullness of Christ is manifested is on those who would suggest that Christ’s fullness is embodied and perceived in Christian practice.

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take the next step to realize that there is no perfect receptor of this divine fullness, the mere acceptance of such a position can lead some to become content with their participation in the Church and therefore the fullness of Christ on a conceptual level, without doing the important work of becoming better receptors to Christ’s life. Those who deny the claim too quickly might be hesitant to take up their personal engagement with Christ as the source of their fulfillment and fall into the same trap of their counterparts in failing to passionately open their hearts to the grace of Christ. The religious question that matters is not the state of Christ’s fullness, but rather how we as a people of faith are to come to know and embody Christ’s Spirit more fully.

This brings us back to the initial theological concept that gave rise to this entire analysis, the logoi spermatikoi. If it is true that these seeds of the Word are scattered throughout nature, humanity, and religious systems, then each encounter with the logoi has the potential for us to deepen our engagement with Christ.

How does this engagement and transformation functionally happen? For this issue, let us examine three transformative spiritual practices: (1) the practice of the presence of God, (2) Centering Prayer, and (3) reflection on insights from other religions.

The Practice of the Presence of God In reflections on the spiritual way of Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, Gerald May writes: At its core, the spiritual life is very simple. Jesus told his disciples they needed to become like little children to enter the reign of heaven (Mt 18:3). Moses told the people of Israel that the Word was not far from them, that it was already in their mouths and hearts (Dt 30:14). Life with God, then, does not require great theological sophistication; it is for everyone. Nor is our spiritual life restricted to hallowed places and mountaintop moments. It is the simple essence of living, moving, and having our being in God in every present moment, wherever we find ourselves, whatever we are doing (Acts 17:28.)

In a series of letters and short chapters in The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence provides tremen­­ dous insight for how to open one’s heart to the loving presence of God. In even the most mundane of activities, Brother Lawrence encounters the logoi as his heart is conformed more perfectly to Christ’s. He writes: It is only right that the heart, the first to beat with life and the part that controls the rest of the body, should be the first and the last to love and adore God, whether by beginning or by completing our spiritual and physical activities, and generally, in all life’s exercises. This is the reason we must take care to foster this awareness [of God]… [By] practicing the presence of God, the soul becomes so intimate with God that it spends practically all its life in continual acts of love, adoration, contrition, trust, thanksgiving, oblation, petition, and all the most excellent virtues. Sometimes

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Centering Prayer Another spiritual practice that is useful for engaging with the logoi is Centering Prayer. Since it is closely connected with the simplicity and spiritual disposition of Brother Lawrence, Centering Prayer may be regarded as an intensive inward practice of the presence of God. Thomas Keating, a Cistercian monk who has been instrumental in the promotion of Centering Prayer notes that it “brings us into the presence of God and thus fosters the contemplative attitudes of listening and receptivity.” 13 As we consent to God’s transformative work and begin to let go of all thoughts, the divine silence molds our hearts into greater conformation to Christ: We are assimilating the presence of Christ in Centering Prayer, regardless of what we feel and of what thoughts go by, as long as our intention is to identify with that presence…

God’s first language is silence… When we have moved as far as our human faculties can move us with the help of grace…. without doing anything, silence does everything in us.14

Insights from Other Religions15 Christian scripture and other theological developments have typically been given a privileged place for effecting the transmission of spiritual insight and encounter with God because they are a result of active reflection on the logoi. Since Christians believe that the spiritual insights of other traditions are rooted in these same logoi, their philosophies, theologies, and reflections can also be regarded as emerging from reflection on Christ. Thus, they also hold a place in the movement toward that deepening Christic union.

Because of the profound simplicity of the mystery of God’s presence and action in our lives, the process of spiritual growth and transformation is much less concerned about proper assent to theological treatises (though sometimes reflection on a theological point or Scripture passage can serve to liberate us from an inner blockage of Christ’s life within us,) and is more concerned with formation of a heart that is ready to commune with God and God’s people. The walk of faith and process of purification, therefore, is 12 13 14 15

Ibid., 41–43.

Thomas Keating, Intimacy With God (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1994), 11.

Ibid., 152–153.

The fundamental assumption in interreligious dialogue is that the one who engages in the conversation is already deeply formed by and has a commitment to one’s own tradition. When this base is present, dialogue can encourage the participants to discover dimensions and implications within their own traditions to which they were blind prior to the encounter. Leaders from different traditions (including the Dalai Lama) cite the importance of being nurtured by the symbols of one’s native faith tradition. If one lacks this deep formation and commitment in a particular community of faith, engagement with different traditions can sometimes lead to religious superficiality, and can potentially hinder progress in deepening in union with God.

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chiefly concerned with improving our receptivity to the grace of Christ. However, because Christ’s grace is mediated through our limited historical and cultural situations, we do not appreciate Christ’s presence in its fullness. As we emphasize some aspects of God’s nature, other dimensions of God are obscured, and sometimes even forgotten altogether by communities of Christians at given times. Since Christ’s grace is also mediated through the lenses of other faiths that have been shaped by different cultural dynamics and issues, other faith traditions come to insights about God’s life in ways in which Christians would otherwise remain blind, and vice versa. In order to deepen our practice of Christianity and come to an even fuller picture of who Christ is, we should be attentive to the ways that Christ reveals himself in and through other traditions.

In order to bring the discussion out of the theoretical realm, let us examine several concrete examples that illustrate this point. Over the past several centuries, some of the early prayer practices associated with Christian mysticism had been virtually lost within Western Christianity.16 As the globalization of the past century began to bring more contact between Western and Eastern religions, figures such as Thomas Keating were inspired by the contemplative dimensions of the East. The dialogue led to a resurgence of interest in the contemplative dimension of Christianity, and encouraged Western Christians to retrieve early contemplative traditions. Keating’s book, Intimacy With God, would not likely have been written without the wisdom that he assimilated from Eastern gurus, Zen roshis, and teachers of transcendental meditation.

In order to demonstrate the potential that other religious traditions can have in deepening an encounter with the risen Christ for Christians, it is instructive to examine the basics of mindfulness practice: Aware that life is available only in the present moment and that it is possible to live happily in the here and now, we are committed to training ourselves to live deeply each moment of daily life. We will try not to lose ourselves in dispersion or be carried away by regrets about the past, worries about the future, or craving, anger, or jealousy in the present. We will practice mindful breathing to come back to what is happening in the present moment. We are determined to learn the art of mindful living by touching the wondrous, refreshing, and healing elements that are inside and around us, and by nourishing seeds of joy, peace, love, and understanding in ourselves, thus facilitating the work of transformation and healing. 17 When a friend of mine began the process of Centering Prayer, he found it to be incredibly difficult, arid, and rather pointless. However, after incorporating some of these Buddhist mindfulness practices in daily life, a deeper 16 17

Lecture offered by Thomas Keating at the Pacific School of Religion on December 3, 2006.

Tich Nhat Hanh, Essential Writings, ed. Robert Ellsberg (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001), 153–154.

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assimilation of the spirituality that Brother Lawrence describes (a subtle sense of dwelling with God in all things) began to develop. With mindful attention invested into activities such as walking, eating, and breathing, he found that the scattered quality of his mind began to subside. Upon returning to Centering Prayer, a more profound sense of silence and deeper encounter with Christ through scripture began to emerge. As growth in Centering Prayer continued to develop, it revolutionized the way he came to experience liturgy, Ignatian contemplation, and lectio divina. The height of Christian worship, the Eucharist, became an incredibly profound experience of communion for him in a way that he was simply not open to before the integration of mindfulness practice.

The insights and potential for Christian growth is not limited to the spiritual practices of other traditions; their philosophies can also serve as useful tools in deepening our communion with Christ if used in the proper way. For example, through reflection on the Buddhist concept of impermanence, my friend was able to let go of some of his attachments that stood in the way of recognizing the glory of Christ in the present moment. Thus, even though the Buddhist doctrine is not consistent with traditional Christian theology, it can still be valuable for leading to a deeper communion with Christ. Some themes within Christianity can serve to inspire and enrich other faith traditions in a This is the foundational insight upon which similar way. This is the foundational insight upon which the mutual the mutual fulfillment model is based. As we fulfillment model is based. As we practice dialogue and deepen in our practice dialogue and deepen in our own prayer, own prayer, we realize that we complete each other. Our Christian we realize that we complete each other. pilgrimage toward fuller salvation is richer because of the Wisdom that other faiths shine upon us, just as the journeys of many non-Christians (and former non-Christians) have been irrevocably transformed by beholding how Jesus conforms Christians so intimately to himself in prayer, and the prayerful service that emerges as Christians recognize this same holy presence among the most vulnerable in our world. While the conciliar documents recognize Christianity’s role in fulfilling other religions, they also (more implicitly) recognize the fulfillment that other religions and cultures exert upon Christianity: (The Church) fosters and takes to itself, insofar as they are good, the ability, riches and customs in which the genius of each people expresses itself… In virtue of this catholicity each individual part contributes through its special gifts to the good of the other parts and of the whole Church.18 Thus, mutual fulfillment, as opposed to one-way fulfillment is a more accurate understanding of how the Church’s tradition has actually been formed, even in the realm of faith and morals. The Church owes a debt of gratitude to the many religious and cultural traditions that have helped her become who she is today. For example, the Church’s practice of slave holding had roots that reach all the way back to apostolic times and can even be found in her own sacred scripture.19 The Society of Friends challenged this practice, largely because it did not cohere with its central doctrine of the Inner Light that abides in all people. The light of Christ that was shining forth through the Society of Friends and its doctrine effectively called the Church to change its ways and become more conformed to the image of Christ that she strives to embody.

18 19

Lumen Gentium, 13, available from http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/ documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html; Internet: accessed 30 January 2007.

See Paul’s letter to Philemon.

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Like iron sharpens iron, the religions and cultures of the world conform each other ever more closely to Christ (by virtue of the light of Christ that abides in each of them) through dialogue.

Knowledge and Faith In order to truly transform the heart, theological assertions operate principally not as statements of “knowledge,” but as statements of “faith.” An unfortunate tendency in Christianity is that too often, people have conflated the two, and as a result, contemporary Christians experience spiritual starvation in epic proportions. If theological statements are taken merely as something to be assented to, or as points to be committed to memory in a way that a third grader might memorize a list of US presidents, they cannot serve their deeper function of transforming the heart into the likeness of Christ and deepening one’s communion with God and the community. Precepts that do not fulfill these functions likely fall short of actually promoting God’s Truth, no matter how sensible they may appear to be on the surface. Instead, theological statements must be deeply integrated, ruminated over, and permitted to touch one’s soul. The conviction of faith that emerges from this process leads to a full response and commitment of the Christian. For example, when one deeply integrates the statement of faith that “Jesus Christ is my everlasting Lord and savior,” the life response that it evokes and the communion with God that this conviction facilitates bring a far deeper expression of Truth into the world than a simple acceptance of this point as a statement of knowledge.

Even though the Buddhist concept of impermanence and the Christian concept of the everlasting dimension of Jesus Christ oppose each other on an intellectual level, they are deep manifestations of Truth and potentially open the way for the religious practitioner to enter more deeply into communion with Christ. Thus, they fundamentally lead to an expression of this profound religious Truth in a way that no superficial agreement between them in a merely intellectual sense could facilitate.

Does this mean that all religious language is devoid of any connection with a broader reality that is outside one’s self? No. If religious language had no basis in a broader reality then one could say “God is love” just as easily as one could say “God is hate.” However, this is not the case. The word, “love,” is affiliated with the experience of the deepest religious Truth that is experienced in communion with Christ, while the sense of “hate” is not a characteristic of the God who is encountered, and can actually serve as a barrier to this Truth in our specific cultural context. However, if our culture changes and “love” comes to take on a different meaning then it has now, then it is not necessarily the case that “love” will always serve as a suitable religious description of God. Though the function of “truth” in the religious sense is far deeper than “truth” in the traditional Western philosophical paradigm, this does not mean that religious points are necessarily inconsistent with Western logic if other data is taken into account. If God’s primary desire is the transcendence of self that leads to communion with God and all people, then God would presumably provide the means for people of various backgrounds to engage with God’s life. Since each culture has its own distinct blocks to this unitive communion,20 it is only sensible that the divine impulse would inspire a variety of philosophical systems to 20

Because of the bulkiness of constant reference to “transcendence” in the sense that I explained it in the first two pages, I shall use the term “communion” to encompass the deep spiritual experience that is experienced

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overcome each culture’s specific challenges. If the logical conclusions of some philosophical systems are assessed without taking into account the tangible effect that they have in facilitating openness to that holy communion, then Western logicians may fail to discern the purposeful logic embedded in the broader divine design.

Some contemporary theologians often claim that the religious language and doctrine of the Church are often ineffective in communicating God’s presence. Some have lodged complaints that doctrines such as the hypostatic union and trinity that developed in the early councils are not easily understood by contemporary Christian audiences. Because they are steeped in Greek philosophical categories, some have recommended that they be jettisoned. Despite the problems with the language, we must also recognize that they have served in transmitting the deepest truths of the Christian faith, and continue to serve as inspirational springboards into communion with God. It is possible that many objections arise when people relate with such doctrines primarily as “statements of knowledge,” The argument that “Christian identity” is at stake which can spur their discursive intellects to analyze the precise can only be made if one believes that the bedrock mechanics of how God is both human and divine, one and many, of Christian identity lies in statements about etc. rather than relating with them primarily as “statements of Christ that can be accepted or refuted rather than faith,” which can stimulate an inner realization that God and in the sacramental life of the Church and the humanity truly are united in one’s very heart. However, if these communion of heart with Christ in prayer. doctrines ultimately prove to be incomprehensible or fail to touch the hearts of a specific community, theologians should be actively encouraged to find aspects of the culture or other religious systems that can be more effective in leading people to deeper communion with Christ.

Many of the questions and criticisms of the mutuality model may be asked and applied to mutual fulfillment. Knitter highlights one such critique, “They so dilute and deform Christian identity that it becomes difficult to see how they are really carrying out a Christian dialogue with other traditions.”21 If the dialogue is undertaken by contemplative Christians, such as monks like Thomas Keating, many mutual fulfillment theologians are steeped in the tradition of the Church and have a spirituality that is deeply rooted in the person of Jesus Christ. While Centering Prayer often leads us to a connection with God that is beyond words and images, according to Keating, “the focus of Centering Prayer is Christological. The attraction of grace may have many different forms and aspects, but in the context of the Christian life it is focused on Jesus Christ.”22 To draw on the wisdom of a friend’s journey, she was invited to ask Jesus, “Why is it that I am following you?” As she sat down for prayer and opened her heart to the question, she was seized with a deep presence that suggested that her joy, life, love, and very identity are all bound up in the person of Jesus.

Following anything or anyone else is not even an option, for she and Jesus are too deeply united. Perhaps it is because of this security in their identity in Christ, mutual fulfillment theologians find themselves open to appreciating the diverse ways that Christ can communicate himself in and through various traditions without feeling threatened. The argument that “Christian identity” is at stake can only be made if one

21 22

through the mystical traditions of various faiths with the acknowledgment that there is a degree of diversity within the practices.

Paul Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions, 211.

Thomas Keating, Intimacy with God, 152.

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believes that the bedrock of Christian identity lies in statements about Christ that can be accepted or refuted rather than in the sacramental life of the Church and the communion of heart with Christ in prayer.23 Another potential critique of this position could be levied by Mark Heim: “The first challenge [in interreligious dialogue] is to be faithful to the ‘one and only’ dimension of their faith. This is not just a claim handed down from the past, but a fundamental feature of the believer’s experience and confession.”24 However, for many Christians who are deeply rooted in Christ’s life, the “one and only” dimension of Christ is far from a “fundamental feature” of their experience.

The final critique to this mutual fulfillment model could come from an analysis of what it means to be a missionary church. If Christ is already present and active in the lives of other peoples and traditions by virtue of the logoi spermatikoi, why is it necessary to preach the gospel? Far from being an unsolvable quandary, the mutual fulfillment model’s conviction on mission serves as a call to Christian renewal and radical engagement throughout the world. However, its approach to evangelization is substantially different from traditional calls to mission. The primary focus of traditional Christian missionary activity has been the preaching of a particular philosophy rather than the encouragement for potential converts to truly encounter Christ, open themselves to be more fully conformed to his image, and to share in his life. However, the It is time to appreciate the wisdom of vast majority of Christians, including many who are engaged in evangelism, the saints and mystics of our tradition, often have no idea of the depths of life that Christ has prepared, and are often and to open ourselves more radically to hungry for a deeper connection with a vibrant spirituality. The renewal must the depths of our inner and social lives start within Christianity itself. It is time to appreciate the wisdom of the saints where Christ dwells. and mystics of our tradition, and to open ourselves more radically to the depths of our inner and social lives where Christ dwells. Catechesis should become more dynamic by introducing methods of prayer (such as Ignatian contemplation and Centering Prayer), provide a chance to be immersed in silence for an extended period of time (eight days is a good amount of time to allow the silence to sink in and bear fruit), and integrate reflective service among marginalized communities in order to help facilitate this growth.

Many in the Church, especially the present pope, have emphasized the need for the re-Christianization of the West. In order to achieve this objective, there has been a move to argue for the “reasonableness” of the Christian faith. Because the West is highly rational in its perspective, the pope is correct in his assessment that if Christianity can be acknowledged as a “rational” choice, then it would likely prompt a move toward conversion. However, there is a plethora of theological statements within the tradition that are not only obscure to contemporary audiences, but are sometimes blatantly illogical. Even some implications of the hypostatic union, one of the most fundamental tenets of the Church, fail the test of reason and rationality.25 Contemporary 23 24 25

Again, this is the problem of relating with theology primarily as a source of knowledge as opposed to a source of inspiration and integration of the person of Christ.

Mark Heim, The Depth of the Riches; A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001), 1.

The conviction that the person of Christ can be omniscient according to his divine nature and ignorant according to his human nature at the same time is a substantial logical conundrum. Similar issues arise with other doctrines such as Trinity.

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audiences also come to view the God of Christianity as a sort of tribal-god due to some churches’ exclusivist claims about the salvific merit of Christ, and find Christianity to be inconsistent with its claim about a God of universal love. An atheistic worldview is understandably more tenable for many. However, if Christians were to band together with other religious leaders in preaching our shared connection with a deeper Reality (one which is far deeper than the relatively shallow life and consumerism that Western culture offers) that we encounter through prayer, meditation, community, service, etc., Christianity could merit another look from Western audiences on the following appeal to reason. Since many of these traditions developed independently of each other in a variety of cultural contexts and all touch this deeper transcendent dimension of life, how is the degree of incredible convergence that happens among the mystical traditions to be explained? The secular attitude of the West is an anomaly that is not only unreasonable (given the fact that it fails to accommodate the wisdom of saints and sages from these various backgrounds), but Mutual fulfillment, then, not only provides a framework for is also missing out on the key dimension of life that dialogue, but is a profound spiritual practice. It is a call to, in so many are longing for: meaning, deep connection, the words of Brother Lawrence, “the practice of the presence and transcendence. When introduced to the depth of of God,” or as St. Ignatius would put it, “find God in all life that Christian mystics and saints have experienced, things.” Above all, it is a call for Christians to join hands with prayer techniques that facilitate openness to the graces of religious partners around the world to proclaim the holy depths prayer, and the fact that the Christian symbols resonate that lie in our communities and in the soul of each person as with Western culture, Christianity offers a compelling we deepen our engagement with Christ through each other. option for Western seekers to develop in their religious life and commitment in communion with Christ.

The second evangelical point of emphasis should highlight the difference between theological statements with those of scientific points. This can help Westerners not only overcome the sentiment that Christianity is ultimately inconsistent in some of its doctrine, but can also encourage them to move more deeply in appropriating the doctrine and the person of Christ into their identities. As their hearts are conformed to Christ’s, they will find themselves better prepared to commune with Christ as opposed to if they simply learned the doctrine as they would assimilate a mathematical proof.

Given that the mutual fulfillment model asserts that the major religious systems provide vehicles through which the divine may be experienced, is it subject to Heim’s critique of postmodern pluralism?

[They] rush to affirm all religions as versions of the same generic truth, transcendence and human goodness, despite the uncomfortable suspicion that such abstraction betrays a benign contempt for the concrete aims and practice of the religions as they actually exist.26 No. Though religious systems offer different paths, they are far from equal. Matthew’s gospel is clear on this point with its treatment of false prophets and religious expressions, “You will know them by their fruits.”27 St. Paul would concur and suggest that there is a correlation between the qualities of fruits

26 27

Mark Heim, The Depth of the Riches, 1.

Matthew 7:16.

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produced by one’s life with the degree to which one lives in the Spirit.28 He comes to the epitome of the Christian goal when his union with Christ becomes so deep that he declares, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”29 Union with God and love of neighbor are integrally linked,30 and serve as the highest goals of the Christian vocation and spiritual expression. There is an incredible feed-forward loop that happens with religious experience and quality of heart. As the self is transcended, the heart finds new liberation and capacity for going out of itself. And as one begins to love more deeply, the capacity for a depth of religious experience is heightened. Religious systems that serve to promote these ends can be judged to be more effective than those that do not. As the Sufi mystic Hafiz declares: Once a man came to me and spoke for hours about “His great visions of God” he felt he was having.

He asked me for confirmation, saying, “Are these wondrous dreams true?” …

I would say that they were if they make you become More human, More kind to every creature and plant That you know.31 Nazism serves as an extreme example of a substitute religion that failed to achieve the proper religious ends. Though it sometimes uses a fair amount of “mystical” language, claiming that the inner dimension of its system is beyond all words, the outward expressions of this system are the opposite of what proper liberative and life-giving religious ends should entail.32 However, all of the major religions have the potential to promote ends that are not consistent with the deepest goal of authentic religious striving. Christian crusaders, Zen kamikaze pilots, and Muslim suicide bombers all serve as examples where religions are employed for something other than the pursuit of the deepest goal.

28 29 30

31 32

Galatians 5:22–23: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Galatians 2:20.

Because there is no one who exists outside the heart of God, union with God and love of neighbor are one in the same movement. 1 John 4:20 declares, “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”

Hafiz, The Gift; Poems by Hafiz, the Great Sufi Master, trans. Daniel Ladinsky (New York: Penguin Compass, 1999), 223.

Karla Poewe, New Religions and the Nazis (New York: Routledge, 2006), ch. 5.

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While Heim implies that each religion has its own unique religious end, this is simply not the case. The religious ends of practitioners even within the same religion can have very different understandings of their ultimate goals. For example, it is possible that a particular Catholic community may share more in common with some Buddhist groups than with other Catholic ones. Unity of religion does not ensure unity of teleological end. Though they may be of the same creed, the religious end in the mind of a medieval crusader, which may be characterized as an other-worldly heavenly paradise, is likely far different from the religious end of Thomas Merton (a Cistercian monk), which would be more attuned to contemplative union with God and all humankind. As a monk, Merton felt such an affinity for the contemplative dimension of some Asian traditions that he even asserts, “[Tich Nhat Hanh] is more than my brother… because he and I see things in exactly the same way.”33 These are extreme examples, but demonstrate that even within a denomination as particular as contemporary Catholic Christianity, which includes liberationists, charismatics, contemplatives, and other movements, there are multiple understandings of religious ends.

At the root of so much of the social violence, inequality, and inner turmoil among our people is the fact that so many feel separated and alienated from the transcendent source of divine life. The healing ministry of the Church that is rooted in its contemplative prayer and social teaching traditions has so much to offer in restoring the faith and hope of an aching world. Our witness to the transformative love of Christ will be taken more seriously when we are prepared to be touched by the Holy wherever it seizes us. Mutual fulfillment, then, not only provides a framework for dialogue, but is a profound spiritual practice. It is a call to, in the words of Brother Lawrence, “the practice of the presence of God,” or as St. Ignatius would put it, “find God in all things.” Above all, it is a call for Christians to join hands with religious partners around the world to proclaim the holy depths that lie in our communities and in the soul of each person as we deepen our engagement with Christ through each other.

33

Food for Thought… Christianity and Buddhism; available from http://www.flinders.edu.au/religiouscentre/ religious_groups/Buddhist/talks/foodForThought.php ; Internet: accessed 30 January 2007. tt t

Brent Anderson is finishing up his M.Div. degree at JSTB and is interested in researching structures and programs that can help facilitate Christian contemplative renewal and outreach.

Popular Art as Scripture: The Theological Failure of Secular Vision in American Beauty

By David A. Sylvester

“You want to see the most beautiful thing I’ve ever filmed?” Ricky asks Jane in the film American Beauty 1

(1999). Jane, a classmate and next-door neighbor, isn’t sure what to make of Ricky. Only a year older than her, he is strange yet attractive and seems wise beyond his years. She has just walked home with him and is standing in his father’s study. He is showing her a Nazi dinner plate of the Third Reich that his ex-Marine Corps father keeps in a case with an assortment of guns. She seems in shock. He puts the plate away. “You’re scared of me,” Ricky says. “No, I’m not,” Jane insists3. “You want to see the most beautiful thing I’ve ever filmed?” Upstairs, in his bedroom, they sit side by side before a large video screen. Ricky does not put on a video of a setting sun, or a still lake, or vistas of mountains or beautiful women or men or children at play. Instead he shows an ordinary white bag swirling in gusts of wind before a brick wall. In a mesmerizing and dreamlike voice, Ricky intones: 2

It was one of those days, when it’s a minute away from snowing. There was this electricity in the air. You can almost hear it, right? And this bag was just… Dancing with me… Like a little kid begging me to play with it… for fifteen minutes! That’s the day I realized there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there’s no reason to be afraid — ever. Video is a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me to remember, I need to remember.

Ricky’s voice is strained, full of emotion, and he can hardly get the words out: “Sometimes there…so much…. beauty…in the world…. I feel like I can’t take it… and my heart… is just going to…. cave in.”

Jane looks over at Ricky, her eyes softening, takes his hand and kisses him. Her heart opens and their love becomes the doorway to a new life. From this moment of love and beauty, Jane turns from 1 2 3

Wes Bentley, American Beauty.

American Beauty, DVD, directed by Sam Mendes (1999; Universal City, CA: Dreamworks Video, 2000).

Thora Birch, American Beauty.

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the world of conventionality and egocentricity toward a new reality. A theologian would recognize Jane’s experience as the first step of conversion — a reorientation of the whole self toward the spiritual world of transcendental reality, a world of transformation and beauty.

However, professional critics in secular culture are not theologians and largely misunderstood what was happening in the movie. Even though American Beauty received rave reviews when it came out in 1999, the reviewers praised its most meretricious aspects, those that portray the carnal passions, and ignored its real spiritual depths. The reviewers were blind to the invaluable spiritual aspect of the film, and it is an aspect that the film’s creators seemed unaware of as well. This led to what I believe is a contrived ending to rescue it from its own dead end. Nevertheless, we can see this by examining American Beauty not as a work of art like a secular critic would, but as a work of Scripture as a theologian would.

In his literary analysis of the Hebrew Scriptures, Robert Alter explores how “the religious vision of the Bible is given depth and subtlety precisely by being conveyed through the most sophisticated resources of prose fiction.”4 However, we can also reverse the process and find depth and subtlety in the secular vision of popular art through the most sophisticated resources of theological discernment. When we do this with American Beauty, we find that far from constricting our point of view or imposing a rigid set of pre-conceived doctrines onto a work of art, the effort to interpret a work of secular art as Scripture deepens our understanding of the work of art immeasurably. We see more clearly the film’s beauty and despair. We also see more clearly the struggles and tragedy of secular culture itself.

Theology and Aesthetics Before we examine the film, we should take a moment to reflect on how to consider secular art as theology.

After all, a secular artist may stand outside a historical faith tradition and might be more immersed in the processes and deceptions of the ephemeral world of appearances, not to mention commerce and popularity.

The work may be psychologically or philosophically interesting, but if a secular artist lacks “faith seeking understanding,”5 is he or she engaging in theology or only attempting to communicate what theologian Avery Dulles calls “blind impulses?” Dulles writes: “Theology is by its very nature a disciplined reflection on faith, one that attempts to distinguish methodically between truth and illusion and to ground its

4 5

Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative. (Basic Books, 1981) pg. 22. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anselm/

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affirmations on principles rather than on blind impulses.”6 He would also argue that theology is not just an individualistic vision but the effort of the members of a faith-community to understand and deepen their shared experiences of faith and of God. “A theologian who departs from the Church and seeks to work without the support of fellow believers has forfeited a necessary resource for the theological enterprise.”7 He continues: “Those theologians who treat faith simply as a transcendental experience of God, taking place in the inwardness of the human spirit, tend to minimize the historical element in the Christian religion and to overlook the crucial role of mediation through the living community The transcendental quality of an experience of faith.”8 In other words, Dulles might warn that secular art cannot that seems “insane” to the world of the senses properly serve as theology, at least not in the way theology is normally is exactly the starting point for theology practiced. Nevertheless, we can turn to another style of theological analysis, what Alejandro Garcia-Rivera calls “theological aesthetics,” which seeks its truth not from exegesis of written passages but from the images themselves. This is an aesthetic that “recognizes in the experience of the truly beautiful a religious dimension.”9 Certainly, American Beauty is filled with lush images of colors, flowers, clothes, sex and nudity — and their sensory impact is heightened by the haunting melodies of composer Thomas Newman and the cinematography of Conrad Hall. These words cannot possibly convey the haunting feeling of the plastic bag dancing in the wind, Angela’s evocative sensuality, or the shimmering pool of blood on the kitchen table. The beauty of images themselves conveys a theological vision that script alone cannot mediate.

American Beauty is an excellent subject for theological aesthetics for another reason as well: script writer Alan Ball had a “transcendental experience of God” and the “inwardness of the human spirit” that Dulles mentions, and apparently outside any religious tradition. Ball actually saw a small plastic bag swirling in the wind and was moved enough to use it as the basis for Ricky’s intense reaction in that scene. In an interview posted on the movie website Reel.com, Ball said: But the plastic bag bit, I actually — and this is gonna sound completely insane — but I did have an encounter with a plastic bag. I was walking home, I was living in New York, and it was in front of the World Trade Center. It was deserted, pretty much the way Ricky described it.10 The transcendental quality of an experience that seems “insane” to the world of the senses is exactly the starting point for theology. Transcendental refers to a moment of contact in the visible world of the senses — 6 7 8 9 10

Avery Dulles, Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System, New expanded ed. (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1992), pg. 3.

Dulles, Craft of Theology, pgs. 8, 57.

Ibid.

Alejandro Garcia-Rivera, The Community of the Beautiful: A Theological Aesthetics, (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1999), pg 9 Interview with Hazel Ellis http://www.reel.com/reel.asp?node=features/interviews/ball

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seeing what appears to be a piece of trash blowing in the wind — that opened Ball to an invisible world of beauty far beyond the sensory experience. This was more than just an ordinary moment or a natural pleasure, since this transcendental moment contained the power to change lives. As Dulles rightly says, true experiences of God are communications from the Creator to the creature that transform the creature. Such revelatory signs must evoke what lies beyond the range of explicit statement; otherwise they could not be capable of radically reshaping the minds and lives of the recipients. As bearers of God’s self-communication, these signs both call for, and have the power to effect, conversion. Revelation is salvific because it introduces one to a world of meaning and value that unaided human effort could neither disclose nor attain.11 Conversion from a world gone flat and meaningless toward a world of meaning is exactly what American Beauty is all about.

Secular Art as Sacred and Carnal If its plot is simply recounted, without the music and images, American Beauty would seem to be an unpromising pile of clichés. In two parallel stories, it portrays the emptiness of two families, the Burnhams and the Fitts, living culturally conditioned and deadening lives, side by side in an anonymous tract of suburbia.

However, two of the characters — Lester Burnham, an ad salesman, and his daughter Jane — are touched by the experience of beauty and are brought to the threshold of new lives. Lester unhappily holds a job at a commercial trade publication where he admits he has worked “as a whore for the advertising industry.”12 At home, he is going through the motions of an empty marriage. At the outset of the movie, he speaks in a voice-over with the omniscience of someone looking back on his life and says: “In less than a year, I’ll be dead… In a way, I’m dead already.” He feels that he has “lost something.” He remembers nostalgically how he and his wife Carolyn used to be happy as a young couple, before Carolyn became “so joyless” and obsessed with the trappings of success as a manipulative real estate sales agent. But now he seems like “a gigantic loser” who begins his day by masturbating in the shower. “I’m not exactly sure what it is. I didn’t always feel this…. sedated,”13 he muses as he dozes in the backseat of the car as he is driven to work in the morning. Yet he predicts all is not lost: “But you know what? It’s never too late to get it back!” He “gets it back”, so to speak, when he awakens to the eroticized beauty that he projects onto his daughter’s high school friend Angela. The shock of sexual obsession draws him out of his coma. He seems to rediscover his personality and to speak and act with authenticity, even though this awakening shatters his false life at work and in his marriage.

Meanwhile, his teenage daughter Jane is alienated from her life in high school, yet doesn’t know why or what to do about her unhappiness. She resents her family’s bizarre mix of inattention and cruelty 11 12 13

Dulles, Craft of Theology, pg. 22.

Kevin Spacey, American Beauty.

Kevin Spacey, American Beauty.

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yet seems to want closer relationships. In a friendship with Angela, she has unconsciously adopted the conventional norms of her stale surroundings. It all changes when she meets the next door neighbor, Ricky.

By the norms of high school, Ricky seems weird. He is older than the other students, dresses “like a Bible salesman,”14 in the words of Angela, and spent time hospitalized for a violent outburst against another student. But he has the sweet, penetrating gaze that Garcia-Rivera might call wounded innocence. He experiences life with both his ordinary and spiritual senses, and has the kind of moments that Garcia-Rivera describes, “when these two senses become one and a wondrous reality delights the blessed man or woman who experiences this rare but not impossible union.”15 When he and Jane are walking home from school, he tells her how he once filmed the lifeless body of homeless woman who had frozen to death. He said it was “amazing….

When you see something like that, it’s like God is looking right back at you just for a second, and if you’re careful, you can look right back,”16 he says. “And what do you see?”17 Jane asks. “Beauty,” Ricky says.

The background of this story contains unhappiness, longing and transformation; there is the haunting shadow of pain and loss, a nostalgia for happier times that seems stolen as if by an invisible thief.

Twice, the camera show us a photo of Lester and his wife Carolyn as a young couple with Jane, still a little girl, laughing at an amusement park. Lester is clearly a man who has lost something precious, but what is it? If the film is a mystery story, it is not about the solution to the artificial “whodunit” of Lester’s ultimate death, but about the answer to this central question: Where did the happiness go and what kind of new life will allow each of the characters to “get it back?”

How Secular Reviewers Misunderstood the Film When it was released in 1999, American Beauty won rave reviews almost universally, but in my opinion, for all the wrong reasons. The few critical reviews saw it as a hackneyed “life in the suburbs” cliché. As Prof. David L. Smith points out in the Journal of Religion and Film, to those who are not moved by the transcendental, the movie is likely to appear flat and cartoon-like: Like films from The Graduate to Pleasantville, it sets its drama of emancipation in suburbia, rehearsing the message that life tends to go stale within the confines of a picket-fence, consumerist, career-driven version of the American dream. Its particular characters and story-line are drawn in broad, even ‘cartoonish’ strokes: man quits dead-end job in disgust, loosens up, and finds new life in adolescent fantasy; careerobsessed woman comes to a bad end; boy and girl, drawn together by hatred of their respective families, make plans to take off for the city. This tale of liberation through 14 15 16 17

Mena Suvari, American Beauty.

Alejandro R. Garcia-Rivera, A Wounded Innocence: Sketches for a Theology of Art, (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 2003), pg. 9.

Wes Bentley, American Beauty.

Thora Birch, American Beauty.

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In other words, if you strip the movie of its meaning conveyed by the aesthetics, images and feeling-tone, then it becomes…well, meaningless. Yet most of the mainstream reviewers did exactly this. As the table shows, the secular reviewers might call the film “dazzling,” “astonishing,” and “a triumph” but they saw only its surface. For instance, Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times writes: “American Beauty is a comedy because we laugh at the absurdity of the hero’s problems. And a tragedy because we can identify with his failure — not the specific details, but the general outline. The movie is …the secular reviewers might call the about a man who fears growing older, losing the hope of true love and film “dazzling,” “astonishing,” and “a not being respected by those who know him best.”19 The movie is about triumph” but they saw only its surface. far more than what Ebert describes. In the eyes of Desson Howe at the Washington Post, Ricky is not a mystic who can see beauty beyond death but only “a dead ringer for the young Norman Bates, who makes videos of anything — and anyone — that interests him…”20 These reviewers gave the movie positive acclaim, but they failed to recognize some of the more powerful elements of the film. It seems as if they are among those “who have eyes but see not, who have ears but hear not.”21 As I read these reviews and compared it with my own experience of the film, I decided to examine how the professional movie critics reported on six key images from the movie. I chose 10 reviews posted at the movie review website, RottenTomatoes.com, which collects and posts dozens of local and national reviews.

Then I selected three images of transcendental reality that contain the movie’s theological vision — the whirling bag, Ricky’s observation of death, the “happy family” photo. For Why did the professional critics miss the comparison, I chose three images from the more blatant images of carnal larger story? Were they practicing a kind of passions — the references to Lester’s masturbation, the sexualization of unconscious censorship of the transcendental, his fantasy for Angela and references to smoking pot or dealing drugs. on the erroneous cultural assumption that In the 10 reviews, the three transcendental images are mentioned only only the experiences of the senses are real? three times, and carnal images were mentioned a total of 23 times! On the transcendental side, the powerful scene with the whirling bag is mentioned twice, once by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and once by Rolling Stone. As for the photo of the happy family, even though Lester picks it up twice and is holding it at the climatic end, it is mentioned only once — by The New York Observer. In comparison, every single review mentions the sexualized appearance of Angela, and more than half of them mention masturbation and drugs.22 18 19 20 21 22

David L. Smith, Journal of Religion and Film, “Beautiful Necessities: American Beauty and the Idea of Freedom,” vol. 6, #2. See http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/am.beauty.htm Roger Ebert, “American Beauty,” in Chicago Sun-Times, September 24, 1999.

Desson Howe, “American Beauty,” in Washington Post, September 24, 1999.

Jeremiah 5:21–22 O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes, but see not, who have ears, but hear not.

See Table for details

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In fact, the reviewers missed a crucial point regarding Angela’s sexualization. The filmmakers made clear efforts to show that Lester was experiencing a spiritual projection, not a genuine sexual attraction. He awakened to transcendental beauty, not to a relationship with the real human being of Angela. To show this unreal quality of Lester’s fantasy, director Sam Mendes created a dream-like, almost nightmarish quality for the scenes of lust by changing to rhythmic, hypnotic music, garish lighting, slow-motion movements of the characters and then the repeated rose petal motif, introduced at the start of the film when Carolyn was trimming an American Beauty rosebush. If beauty is not able to enter the soul through the upper doorway of the heart, as it does when Ricky shows Jane the plastic bag, it will burst in through the basement of the soul, as it does for Lester, through the lower faculties of lust and sexuality devoid of love.

When the reality of Angela as a sexual partner is close to being realized, Lester’s projection of her collapses as swiftly as it was created. At the moment of seduction, Lester recognizes that she is only a scared and inexperienced kid — and he instantly returns to reality and responds as a mature adult comforting a child. He wraps her in a blanket, and in the kitchen, prepares a comforting snack for her. Even though the projection has vanished, his interior awakening remains; something real has transformed him. When Angela asks how he is, Lester smiles and realizes that his life is wonderful: “I’m great,”23 he says in a moment of simplicity and tenderness.

American Beauty as Transformative: New Life Opens Why did the professional critics miss the larger story? Were they practicing a kind of unconscious censorship of the transcendental, on the erroneous cultural assumption that only the experiences of the senses are real? Perhaps they simply lacked the sensitivity of the theologian to a more basic human truth: the truly beautiful leads us into love and into new life, into the redemption possible only through the touch of the transcendental. This is the real source of the film’s dazzling and astonishing power. In the moment of the whirling bag, in Ricky’s appreciation for the beauty within death, in his ability to see the wounded man behind his father’s abusiveness, he shows us the real life behind appearances. This hidden reality serves as a backdrop for the film and as a kind of horizon of hope against which their ordinary lives are played out.

23

Kevin Spacey, American Beauty.

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It is the ordinary side of life that the Angela abhors — “There’s nothing worse than being ordinary,”24 she says; but the ordinary is what Ricky finds imbued with extraordinary beauty. Angela tries to live out the shallow version of beauty in American culture by aspiring to become a fashion model, training to display herself as a sex object. She cultivates the image of the “bad girl” who has slept around, but it is untrue. In her interactions with Ricky, she simply dismisses him as a weirdo. When Angela quizzes Ricky on why he is filming a dead pigeon on school grounds, and he tells her he finds the bird beautiful, Angela, the would-be “beautiful” fashion model, says in a voice that drips with sarcasm, “I think maybe you forgot your meds today, mental boy.” She then turns away to leave and snaps at Jane to follow her. However, Jane lingers and asks Ricky if he wants a ride. Angela reacts in horror at the prospect of “winding up in a dumpster hacked to pieces.” Nevertheless, Jane decides to walk with Ricky, a break with Angela that grows larger and larger until their relationship falls apart. While Angela was the dominant friend throughout the first half of the film, and Jane accepted her values and sought that type of beauty, Jane eventually changes her perspective and decides to leave home with Ricky at the end of the movie.

Jane also detaches from the values of her mother, which eventually culminates in violence. A tragic figure in her own right, Carolyn is desperately searching for success in real estate and its materialistic comforts, winding up in an affair with the rival “Real Estate King” who insists the appearance of success is important at all costs. Carolyn is horrified by what she sees as her husband´s irresponsibility and tries to teach Jane a kind of individualist self-reliance. When Jane resists the lesson, Carolyn slaps Jane in the face and spits out a line that captures her value system: “When I was your age, I lived in a duplex!”25 Ricky too attracts the violence of his father. In the next scene, Frank Fitts beats his son for invading his collection of Nazi plates. “You can’t just go around doing whatever you feel like,”26 Frank rages at his bloodied son. “You can’t! There are rules in life. You need structure, you need…” “Discipline,”27 Ricky finishes his sentence. Just as Frank is outraged by his son´s apparent lack of discipline, Carolyn also is horrified by her husband´s apparent irresponsibility and independence. “You won´t get away with this!,”28 she screams at him in the garage. “That´s…what…you…think!”29 Lester hisses to himself.

The Secular Dead-End: New Life Stalls In the end, does Lester really “get away with it?” Does he succeed in escaping the prison of his conditioned life and make a new life for himself, or is Carolyn right to accuse him of regressing and avoiding adult life?

Lester is smoking pot, lifting weights, drawing minimal pay from a fast-food chain where he can have “the least amount of responsibility possible,” and living on the grown-up version of Mommy and Daddy’s largesse, a corporate severance that he extracted by blackmail. At the movie’s close, he’s happy, he feels “great.”

24 25 26 27 28 29

Mena Suvari, American Beauty.

Annette Bening, American Beauty.

Chris Cooper, American Beauty.

Wes Bentley, American Beauty.

Annett Bening, American Beauty.

Kevin Spacey, American Beauty.

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But what’s next? The film’s critics have a field day: “So, under Angela’s spell, Lester transforms himself by jokey stages into a 42-year-old teenager, who spends many happy hours in the garage, working out with weights, smoking dope and listening to his Bob Dylan tapes. Through such exertions, he gains a teenager’s insight into the falsity of social conventions — an insight that he turns against his wife,” as Stuart Klawans wrote in The Nation.30 In fact, Klawans is right: this is redemption by reverting to adolescence.

At this crucial moment, the film stops dead, literally. In a contrived end, Ricky’s father shoots Lester in some kind of repressed-gay-gone-wild moment. It is intended to show that Lester’s new way of living for himself is threatening to the world of “rules” and “discipline,” but it is not convincing. The movie is stuck.

We can only speculate on what a genuine future would look like for Lester. Once the spiritual projection of beauty onto the young Angela falls away, where would his awakening lead? If he still feels such fondness for his former happiness with Carolyn, is the marriage really dead or just dormant? Could he try to reconnect with her as American Beauty provides no answers, only the a mature man and invite her into a real relationship? Or must he relief of the escape itself. It praises a freedom from leave her to avoid being dragged into her addiction of materialism? more than a freedom to. The reason the secular Working at a fast food restaurant is hardly a long-term solution for story stalls is because it doesn’t recognize the path Lester. What kind of work would he do that would take up serious that these “God-moments” open up. responsibility? What kind of service might he do for the benefit of others? He blamed the maligned Media Monthly magazine, but he was the one who stayed and worked for years “as a whore.” At the movie’s end, he is still far from a life of real creativity, productivity and service.

How about Carolyn? How did she become “so joyless?” Is she really going to find satisfaction in her dream of real estate success and in the empty affair with a real-estate “king”? In the final scene in the movie, she re-experiences her love for Lester when she sees his clothes in the closet and sobs, clutching them, as if she was trying to show him in death the love she wasn’t able to show him in life.

And Jane and Ricky? Where would their understanding of beauty lead them? Would they really simply remain “freaks” as Jane says, and live apart from life? Only Ricky seems to be living a life in touch with the transcendental. But he is oddly disconnected. With his spiritual awareness, how can he deal drugs with a clear conscience, impervious to the suffering of the addicts he sells to? Neither Jane nor he seems interested in studying in high school. Is it possible he could make movies, take his collection of videos and share his vision with a wider audience? Are Jane and Ricky really living life based on different values than those that led Lester and Carolyn astray or are they simply following the same values in a different way?

American Beauty provides no answers, only the relief of the escape itself. It praises a freedom from more than a freedom to. The reason the secular story stalls is because it doesn’t recognize the path that these “God-moments” open up. As Dulles predicts, secular artists are not very skillful at Scripture. They are like people discovering nuggets of gold in the forest and not seeing that the trail of nuggets is leading to the gold 30

Stuart Klawans, The Nation, Sept. 23, 1999.

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mine. Without the faith community and tradition to help guide their understanding, the transformative opening to a new life is not understood clearly enough to pursue.

The Christian Perspective At this point, a Christian theologian is tempted to jump up and say: “But we have an answer!” In fact, in 1997, Pope John Paul II shared the stage with folksinger Bob Dylan in Bologna, Italy. After listening to Dylan sing the refrain of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” John Paul stood and said: “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? I answer you: One! There is only one road for man and it is Christ, who said, ‘I am the way.’”31 One wonders how this message went over among the Dylan fans.

If we do this, however, we run the risk of imposing our own ideas on American Beauty by supplying the answers that the film fails to give. In this failure, then, we see what Dulles was talking about: the “blind impulse” or the “inwardness of the human spirit” may feel the reality of the transcendental and recognize it leads away from the imprisoning norms of the exterior world but soon loses its way. The unaided human instinct seems too weak to guide us to the depths of reality. And what would this path to deeper reality have been for the characters in American Beauty? Might it have required Lester and Carolyn, or Ricky and Jane to confront those stifling social structures in a more creative way, face the challenge of speaking the truth, and work to help relieve the suffering of those caught in the deadening process as they were? Would this perhaps involve some aspects of what Christ meant when he urged a disciple to “deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”?32 Instead, viewers of the film should recognize that in its failure too, the theological aesthetics of American Beauty captures the ultimate tragedy of American secular culture: the audience might awaken but secular vision leaves us in a spiritual cul-de-sac. We grow old without maturing, evade responsibility, and seek to remain dependent, yet tied to nostalgia for the happiness of the past and unable to know or hope for how to find it in the future. We wind up trapped in a perpetual adolescence — or we die. We might feel deep in our bones there is a third possibility of maturity and freedom, but we don’t see it. We’re like the blind and deaf, lost and groping for what we sense but cannot see or hear. The theology of American Beauty reveals that we know we’re stuck, we sense the presence of the infinite, and yet the writers of secular Scripture, the secular artists, can’t show us the way out.

31 32

http://www.thestar.com/Obituary/NtoS/article/108020 Gospel of Matthew 16: 24, RSV.

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Appendix: Summary Table of Reviews Visit David´s blog at http://davidasylvester.wordpress.com/ to read the excerpts of the reviews used for the information in the table and in the quotations.

Transcendental Images

Carnal Images

1. Bag in wind

2. Ricky & death

3. Happy family photo

1.Masturbation

2. Sexual desire for Angela

3.Smoking pot, drugs

1. Village Voice

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

2. Nation

N

N

N

Y

Y

Y

3. Atlanta J-C

Y

N

N

N

Y

Y

4. Chicago S-T

N

N

N

N

Y

N

5. SF Chron.

N

N

N

N

Y

Y

6. NYT

N

N

N

N

Y

N

7. Wash. Post

N

N

N

Y

Y

Y

8. Rolling Stone

Y

N

N

Y

Y

Y

9. NY Observer

N

N

Y

Y

Y

Y

10. LAT

N

N

N

Y

Y

N

TOTAL YES

2

0

1

6

10

7

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David A. Sylvester is a writer, teacher and social activist who plans/hopes to graduate this May with an MTS in theology. He is also in training as a spiritual director at SFTS (in the Diploma in the Art of Spiritual Direction program) with a particular interest in spiritual direction for social activists. His studies at JSTB have focused on the process of conversion, patristic spirituality and Biblical Languages.

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In a Slum in India, I Met a Man with a King’s Name

By Susan Haarman

Our group was staying at the Jesuit Theologate in Pune and we learned that some of the Jesuits were ministering to

a community of migrant workers. Eager to learn more, we invited ourselves along. The majority of the emmigrants were from Karnataka, a province in the south. They migrated with the work, building the tech company offices and new condos of a Globalized India. All were Dalits — the untouchables of the Hindu caste system.

On one side of the dusty street stood brand new apartments of polished white stone. On the other was the migrant community. There I met Ashoka, a stonemason named after the greatest Indian king of antiquity. He and his wife Selia welcomed us into their home and made us chai as we sat on their bed. We learned about their long journey from Karnataka to Mumbai to Pune, their struggle to keep the rent paid, food on the table, and the death of their two-year-old daughter to dysentery.

As the sun set, I watched the The Migrant Community in India. Photo by Susan Haarman shiny new apartment building begin to cast a long, dark shadow over the Dalit community that lay at its feet. I watched that shadow fall across the corrugated aluminum shacks that families called home — unventilated shacks that slept as many as six people and were roughly the size of a JSTB bathroom. I watched that sign of progress and industry cast its shadow over Ashoka’s shoulders as a stream of raw sewage snaked past us.

Beautiful as it is, I struggle with today’s reading from Sirach, especially when I think about Ashoka.

“Accept whatever befalls you, when sorrowful, be steadfast,” Sirach tells us. How do we as Christians look

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into the face of suffering and evil and reconcile it with a message to trust in the Hand of God at work in the world? Sirach asks, “Has anyone hoped in the LORD and been disappointed? Has anyone persevered in his commandments and been forsaken? Has anyone called upon him and been rebuffed?”

I’m sure John Endres would tell us that the questions that Ben Sirach asks are rhetorical. The answer, harkening back to the proclamation to Moses that Yahweh is faithful and merciful, should be a clear “no,” those who have hope in the Lord have not been disappointed. And yet, I feel myself swallowing those words as I say them. Could I honestly and with conviction I watched that sign of progress say that to Ashoka? Could I tell the Indian woman whose husband and mother-in- and industry cast its shadow law lit her on fire when she couldn’t pay more for her dowry that she should “remain over Ashoka’s shoulders as a undisturbed in time of adversity”? stream of raw sewage snaked After she lived through that hell, only to be covered in scar tissue from past us. third-degree burns and have her husband then leave her, is there any way that same woman could honestly believe that those who trust the Lord will not lose their reward?

These questions of what faith can say to suffering don’t come to us only from the Third World. As I stand here and preach to you on Mardi Gras three-and-a-half years after Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans still has not fully recovered. The murder rate in West Oakland is still on the rise.

Tomorrow Lent begins and we will find ourselves, like Jesus, on a collision course with the cross.

Maybe you’re like me and you find it hard to take consolation during these forty days in the desert when you think of a world — and heart — so mired in sin and so desperately in need of repentance and redemption.

In today’s gospel, we find Jesus for the second time trying to explain to his disciples what waits for him at the end of this long road. And for the second time, they don’t seem to understand at all. They respond to Jesus’ prediction of his own death by being too As the sun set, I watched afraid to ask for clarification and instead start to argue about their own status and the sky explode into the rich power. It is a line of thought so antithetical to the Message of Christ that even as reds and yellows that bathed Ashoka’s face in a golden glow. stupid as they are, they have the good sense not to admit to it when Jesus asks.

But despite Jesus’ predicting his own betrayal and suffering, even as he He stood there with his hands stares down the reality of the corruption and injustice that will bring about his brutal on his eight-year-old child’s death, Christ does not despair. He hears his closest friends obsessing about, of all shoulders and told us of how many blessings he had received. things, power and status, but he doesn’t give up on them.

Instead in that moment he gives us a new vision — he shows us a new way. “He took and placed a child it their midst and putting his arms around it, he said to them ‘Whosoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me and whoever receives me, receives not me, but the one who sent me.’”

Now first century Palestinians didn’t see children as we do today — with a sort of mystical reverence for their sense of innocence and untapped potential. Children were almost non-persons — they had no status; they provided no work or food to a family and were of no practical use until they matured. Note that in our gospel readings Mark says Jesus took a child and placed his arms around “it.” An it. A thing, not a person.

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Jesus wasn’t saying accept the tender and innocent. Jesus was saying receive the ones you barely even consider human, those you would never touch — as you would receive me. And when you receive those you refuse to see, the Dalit among you, then you receive the One who sent me.

Jesus rips apart the disciples’ ideas of greatness and power by first demanding that they accept the non-persons if they wish to accept him. Even as Jesus saw the reality of his own suffering and death, he saw what could be — a way of being human that recognized and protected the total dignity in all.

Poverty doesn’t have to be the last word. Despair doesn’t have the last word. Death has never been, is not, and will never be the Last Word. For WE are a resurrection people. We are a people who fear the Lord, who hope for good things, for lasting joy and mercy.

We are a people who believe in a God who turns things upside-down. A God who builds a world where meek are strong, poor are rich, the blind see and the lame walk. In the world in which we believe, greatness is measured in how much you serve, not how much you own. In our world that welcomes those utterly without prestige or power, we welcome our Savior and Salvation.

In this dark night of economic downturns, systemic gender disparity, and global poverty, we are sincere of heart and steadfast, because joy does come with the morning. Cities rebuild. He RISES from the dead. Love wins.

And so brothers and sisters as we begin our time in the desert, as we spend the next forty days with our eyes fixed on the cross, I urge you to keep the words of Sirach close. Wait on God, with patience cling to him, forsake him not. In a world with no shortage of fear or violence, Hope is a revolutionary act.

In a slum in India, I met a man with a king’s name. His face lit up as he introduced me to his son, dressed in a spotless school uniform despite the dust; he bragged of how high his son’s marks were in all his classes. As the sun set, I watched the sky explode into the rich reds and yellows that bathed Ashoka’s face in a golden glow. He stood there with his hands on his eight-year-old child’s shoulders and told us of how many blessings he had received. Of how thankful he was. He told us of his hope. Amen, I said. I believe. tt t

Susan Haarman is a second year M.Div. student who describes herself as “from Louisville, KY, by way of Milwaukee, Houston, and West Virginia.”

The only thing she consumes more than fountain drinks is music and lists the Hold Steady as some of her favorite social theologians. Susan is currently training for a half ironman in New Orleans because endurance sports are now her idea of fun. She blames this change on grad school.

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Made in His Image Laboring in His Likeness

By Gina Carnazzo

Behold, I have become human.

If you should not want to join me in becoming God, you would do me wrong.

— Meister Eckhart (1260–1327)

This photo documentary was designed for a RASP 1108 (Photography/Spirit/Ecology) class project. I am

rather old-fashioned — I crochet and sew and enjoy crafts — so the idea of working hands developed out of my love for using my hands to create art. I photographed the working hands of family members, friends, and complete strangers. It was a beautiful experience. My subjects told me they became much more aware of how they used their hands as a result of our shared focus on them. I believe that focus is expressed by the hands themselves: they speak of the love of their task and of my appreciation for their beauty and skill.

— Gina Carnazzo All pictures in the photo essay taken by Gina Carnazzo, except the baptism image (page 34; top right); photo courtesy of the Sebastian Carnazzo Family

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Creators God waits to win back his own flowers as gifts from man’s hands. — Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916

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Teachers When the student is ready, the master appears. — Buddhist Proverb

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Sanctifiers Man is born broken.

He lives by mending.

The grace of God is glue. — Eugene O’Neill, The Great God Brown, 1926

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tt t

Gina Carnazzo is a first-year Master of Theological Studies student at JSTB focusing in Art & Religion. In between classes and studying, she enjoys exploring the beautiful parks and paths of Berkeley. She is looking forward to returning to her teaching career after graduation.

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Elegant, Happy Memories Moving in Sacred Space: A Phenomenological Investigation of Memory Work at the Poriziuncola, North Beach, CA.

By Joseph Goh Prologue: “Porziuncola chapel1 re-created in San Francisco.” This was my first encounter with the Porziuncola, located at 610 Vallejo Street, North Beach, San Francisco, adjacent to the National Shrine of St Francis of Assisi,2 and which was dedicated on September 27, 2008 by San Francisco Archbishop George H. Niederauer and Cardinal William Levada, the former Archbishop of San Francisco and the present Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith.3 I still vividly remember the excitement I felt when I read those words in the San Francisco Chronicle,4 since I had visited the original Porziuncola in Assisi in 2003 and 2007, and was intrigued by the meaning of this replica. A myriad of questions assailed my mind: What is the relationship between this replica of the Porziuncola at North Beach and the original one in Assisi? What role does memory play in this recreation project? Does the Porziuncola enable the processes of memory, community and solidarity? What are the spiritual and theological goals of the Porziuncola project? What needs does it fulfill? Are there transformative forces at work there? In what way does it make the past alive? In what way does it offer eschatological hope?

My reaction to the recreation in San Francisco was more than just a rational response. I found my heartbeat racing, my hands were cold and clammy, the hairs at the nape of my back stood to attention and I found 1 2 3 4

I am using the term “chapel” to designate the Porziuncola, which is itself situated within a slightly larger building, which encapsulates it. While there are variations of the term — “Porziuncola” or “Portiuncula” — my research paper will employ only the former spelling.

The National Shrine of St Francis was opened in February, 1998 in the midst of the closing of churches due to a shortage of priests and other correlated issues. Angela Alioto, interviewed by author, North Beach, California, November 12, 2008.

Dan Morris-Young, “ ‘Stone-for-Stone Porziuncola Reproduction to be dedicated,’ ” Catholic San Francisco, Vol. 10, No. 27, September 19, 2008, 1.

Jesse Hamlin, “Porziuncola Chapel re-created in San Francisco,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 3, 2008, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/02/DDDE12K4CL.DTL (accessed on September 3, 2008).

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myself chatting excitedly about my newly-discovered topic of interest. My entire body — my senses, my emotions and my intellect — was responding. I realized that the best way to answer my questions was to experience the place for myself. Furthermore, I was interested in discovering what memories lay beneath the façade of the replica. Admittedly, I harboured a secret hope that it would yield elegant, happy memories that would speak of the joys Beyond Francis, my visit to the Porziuncola was of hope and salvation. a journey to discover the hiddenness of God, The original chapel of the Porziuncola in Assisi, Italy is a whose active and living memory is all in all. very important shrine for members of the Franciscan movement, which began in the 13th century. The founder of this movement, St Francis of Assisi (1181–1226),5 was a breath of fresh air in 13th century Christendom through his vision of a Gospel-centred life. He remains a fascinating personage in contemporary times.6 The Porziuncola in Assisi is a place sacred to his memory.

Therefore, this paper is a phenomenological inquiry based on a pilgrimage I made in embracing the replica of the Porziuncola in North Beach with my senses and allowing it to speak to me from anthropological, mnemonic and theological perspectives. Beyond Francis, my visit to the Porziuncola was a journey to discover the hiddenness of God, whose active and living memory is all in all.7

Francis of Assisi and The Original Porziuncola The original chapel of the Porziuncola is located within the walls of the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli near the city of Assisi. It bears special significance for members of the global Franciscan movement, a spiritual enterprise founded by Francesco d’Assisi (Francis of Assisi). This mendicant friar believed in extreme poverty and called for a renewal from within a ridiculously corrupt Church in the 13th century, marked by a simple lifestyle focused on God, the Scriptures, kinship with all beings and a profound respect for all creation, which was demonstrated in his special love for the lepers.8 Francis lived for only 45 years,9 yet his radical vision and simple theology attracted a huge following in his lifetime. Author William J. Short suggests that “one possible beginning for Franciscan theology”10 is the goodness of God that is forcefully and eminently real, which translates into God’s generous and full self-expression that is expressed in creation. Today, members of the clergy and religious institutes, married and single people all over the world try to embody this vision of Francis in to their respective states of life.11 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

See Omer Englebert, “A Chronology of His Life,” in The Francis Book, ed. Roy M. Gasnick (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1980), 34–36.

The significance of Francis of Assisi and the Porziuncola will be clarified in the pages that follow.

1 Cor. 15: 28 NAB. Regis J. Armstrong, J. Wayne Hellmann, William J. Short, eds., “The Testament,” in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Vol. 1 (New York: New City Press, 1999–2002), 124.

Englebert, “A Chronology of His Life,” 34–36.

William J. Short, The Franciscans (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1989), 105.

Those who follow the spirituality of Francis are ordinarily called Franciscans and can be classified into three Orders or categories. The First Order comprises men, or friars, who constitute three main divisions: The Order of Friars Minor (OFM), The Order of Friars Minor Conventual (OFM Conv.) and the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin (OFM Cap.). The Second Order comprises enclosed nuns founded by Clare

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Francis possessed a great love for the places in his life that he perceived as privileged meeting points with his Creator, and he had a passion for rebuilding churches and chapels that had fallen into ruins. One such place was the Porziuncola: a dilapidated, ancient chapel believed to have dated back to the 10th century and which he had rebuilt. Due to the love of Francis for this place Franciscans and non-Franciscans have held the Porziuncola to be a symbolic point of memory and It is only when the human person accedes for his or connectivity with Francis and his approach to spirituality and her entire being to be in relationality to God that the theology throughout the centuries by keeping custody of the entire project of life takes on grace-filled meaning. chapel and pilgrimages.12 In my investigation of the presence of the replica of the Porziuncola at North Beach, I have detected a phenomenon present that theorist Pascale Bos describes as “adopting memory,” which he predicates as “a form of adopting of experiences, or of identifying with certain experiences, that facilitates the bridging of the gap between the experience of survivors and those who were not there.”13 Franciscans and non-Franciscans who have had no first-hand experience of the founder or the nascent movement have adopted memories that they have interiorized and appropriated by their connection with the original chapel in Assisi. There appears to be an effort to recreate this phenomenon at North Beach: to “capture the spirit” and cause similar anthropological, spiritual and theological effects, which will be reviewed during the course of this paper.

Encounter I commuted from Berkeley to North Beach the day after the dedication. I found myself outside the shrine of the Porziuncola at 11:00 am on Sunday, September 28, 2008. When I arrived at the place that had evoked such strong emotions in me, I found myself perspiring heavily and out of breath. It was a hot day. Gold and brown leaves were dancing whimsically in the wind around the shrine. There was something in the air…I

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of Assisi, the woman inspired by the spirit of Francis. The Third Order is made up of either lay men and women who adopt the Franciscan spirituality (SFO or Secular Francicans) and adapt it to their state of life, or religious congregations that were not contemporaneous to Francis but were founded much later based on his spirituality (TOR or Third Order Regular). In addition to this, there are also Franciscans of non-Catholic Christian traditions, e.g. the Anglican Franciscans. See William J. Short, The Franciscans (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1989).

“He knew that the kingdom of heaven was established in every corner of the earth and he believed that divine grace was given to God’s chosen ones in every place. Ye he knew from his own experience that the place of the Church of St Mary of the Portiuncula was especially full of grace and filled with the visits of heavenly spirits. So he often told his brothers: ‘See to it, my sons, that you never abandon this place. If you are driven out from one side, go back in from the other, for this is truly a holy place and the dwelling place of God.’ ” See Regis J. Armstrong, J. Wayne Hellmann, William J. Short, eds., “The Life of St Francis by Thomas of Celano: The First Book, Chapter IX” in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Vol. 1 (New York: New City Press, 1999–2002), 201 as well as Chapter VII, 275. See also the official Porziuncola website in Assisi at http://www.porziuncola.org/index.html (accessed on December 8, 2008).

Pascale Bos, “Adopted Memory: The Holocaust, Postmemory & Jewish Identity in America,” in MarieAude Baronian, Stephan Besser and Yolande Jansen, eds., Diaspora & Memory: Figures of Displacement in Contemporary Literature, Arts & Politics (New York: Rodopi, 2007), 100.

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could sense that there was an atmosphere of newness and joyousness surrounding the place, as though it was experiencing birth in some mystical way.

The area surrounding the shrine was abuzz with activity, noise and dust. The location of the Porziuncola is such that it is a point of convergence for three commuting streets — Vallejo Street, Grant Avenue and Columbus Avenue that cuts at a 45° angle from Beach Street to Washington Street. Cars wheezed by this intersection, churning out the latest R&B offerings interposed with fire engine sirens. Chinatown is located just two blocks away. There are numerous Italian brasseries, Vietnamese restaurants and scores of Chinese street vendors displaying fresh produce. People of diverse races, statures, directions and temperaments were walking by. Some glanced briefly and bemusedly at the structure; some were indifferent to the new construct with their attention focused on their animated, cell phone conversations; some halted and made comments; many others popped in to assuage their curiosity. It seemed to me that a vast majority of people had acknowledged this intrusion into a familiar territory.

I glanced at the entrance, which was preceded by three steps. Italian words inscribed on the steps read: “Vi voglio tutti in Paradiso” (“I want all of you in Paradise”). The Porziuncola chapel itself is a tiny construction within a larger construct — a building within a building. There is very little space for bodies to negotiate along the perimeter surrounding the chapel.

An interesting observation is that the term “Porziuncola” means “a little portion (of land).”14 I find the etymology of this word greatly significant for the notion of “place memory” as postulated by authors Bieler and Schottroff. It speaks of the provision of a place that acquires “meaning through human narratives that are attached to them,”15 where vulnerable memories are respected, protected, cherished and shared because it is in such a place that the human memories realize themselves in relation to God, deriving healing and salvation. It is only when the human person accedes for his or her entire being to be in relationality to God that the entire project of life takes on grace-filled meaning. Religious scholar, Mircea Eliade posits: 14 15

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12286a.htm (accessed on November 23, 2008).

Andrea Bieler and Luise Schottroff, The Eucharist: Bodies, Bread & Resurrection (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 187.

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“Religious man’s desire to live in the sacred is in fact equivalent to his desire to take up his abode in objective reality, not to let himself be paralyzed by the never-ceasing relativity of purely subjective experiences, to live in a real and effective world, and not in an illusion.”16 In borrowing these specific words of Eliade, I am simply attempting to demonstrate that the human person needs to be anchored amidst the transitory phases that are perceived all around and are often not just bewildering, but offer no deep insight into that which is encountered and remembered. The Porziuncola at North Beach evokes the original in Assisi in being a place that is demarcated for this anchorage, providing a privileged space of encounter between the human person and God, between memories and the Saviour/Redeemer of memories.

I entered the building that houses the Porziuncola chapel through heavy wooden doors to a foyer flanked by rows of votive candles, totalling 400 on both sides. Their sheer volume was enough to put me in a pensive mood as I tried to imagine the blood, sweat and toil behind every prayerful wish that the candles represented. Volunteers made haste to put their index fingers to their smiling lips, suggesting silence while beckoning us in welcomingly. The coolness of the place at 59°F was in stark contrast to the warmth of the Californian sun outside. While outside was a cacophony of hustling and bustling, inside there were gentle, reverential postures of people in silence — standing, kneeling, sitting, walking At that time, the doorway had with quiet footsteps. I watched them closely. struck me as bearing an uncanny I relished the sight of graceful postures and bodily gestures, engaged in resemblance to a womb. I had the prayerful dialogue, which provides a wonderful expanse for human-divine felt that I was entering an inner interaction. Marcia McFee offers the theory that because all living beings exist in sanctum, and the parallel that I rhythmic relationships, it is necessary to acknowledge the engagement of the body’s had drawn caught me by surprise, neurophysiological aspects, particularly in Christian rituals whereby one connects for what could be more sacred in with God and where “the body is literally ‘wired’ for experiences of God and ritual the body of a human being than is a privileged place, or strategy for this experience.”17 By their “action, postures and the enclosure of the womb? bodily attitudes,”18 human persons and God participate in ongoing, ontological and organic interaction and dialogue. These natural, prayerful, rhythmic actions involve aspects of what Carolyn Deitering refer to as “movement and stillness as opposites, polarities.”19 It is within these rhythmic polarities that one uncovers the immanent as well as the transcendent activities of God, creating a deeply personal, holistic tête-à-tête with God. As McFee affirms, “… we come to associate these rhythms with ‘the holy’ in our effort to sense connection with the mysterious.”20 Furthermore, McFee builds upon ethicist William Spohn by positing that “spiritual practices are ways in which the body mentors the soul.”21 It is not disembodied souls that are occupied in prayer — it is human bodies, sexual beings, pain16 17 18 19 20 21

Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York : Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1959), 28.

Marcia McFee, “Primal Patterns: Dynamics: Ritual Resonance, Polyrhythmic Strategies & the Formation of Christian Disciples” (dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, 2005), 55.

Carolyn Deitering, Actions, Gestures and Bodily Attitudes (Saratoga: Resource Publications, 1980), 25.

Ibid.

McFee, “Prinal Patterns,” 48.

Ibid., 50. See also William C. Spohn, Go and Do Likewise: Jesus and Ethics (New York: Continuum

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filled limbs and joints, living vessels of memories and experience. Through active, repetitive, prayerful rituals, human persons attempt to give voice, form and action to their own memories and experiences by actively engaging in such meaningful avenues.22 Finally I entered the chapel itself. As I walked through, the arched doorway jogged a particular memory of my initial visits to Assisi. At that time, the doorway had struck me as bearing an uncanny resemblance to a womb. I had felt that I was entering an inner sanctum, and the parallel that I had drawn caught me by surprise, for what could be more sacred in the body of a human being than the enclosure of the womb? The chapel had made me feel welcomed, almost as though it were embracing me, accepting me without question and without judgement.

The strong connotations of birth and its correlative, the womb, that I had perceived during my original visit to the Porziuncola in Assisi was very significant for Francis and subsequent Franciscan thought.

For him, the Incarnation and Nativity of Christ were events of phenomenal proportions for the human race and all of creation that ratified the inherent value and goodness of every human being and every living creature in a society grounded in a seemingly irrevocable suspicion of bodies and matter.23 Francis extolled the virgin womb that made the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Nativity possible: “…the Blessed Virgin is so honored, [sic], because she carried him in her most holy womb …”24 My trips to the Porziuncola in Assisi helped open up a meditative correlation between the Porziuncola and a womb that provides space for the inception of life and the gestation of offspring. Paul Bradshaw makes a poignant point in his work on anamnesis when he poses the question: “Who is it that is doing the remembering?” He suggests a mutual act of remembering — God remembers the Church and the Church remembers God.25 People remember God and God responds. God shelters, cradles, sustains and preserves the memories of the people just as God shields the growth of future hopes. The imagery of a womb is also reminiscent of God the Great Mother, whom van Wijk-Bos portrays “as a woman in labour,” who shares “in the pain of creation … vulnerable and powerful as a woman about to have a baby;”26 of the maternity of God where the children of God suckle at bosom of God for nourishment, where they are carried upon the hip, and dandled upon the knees, constantly being comforted with full attentiveness.27 The pain and vulnerability of memories are kept safe and cherished by God, as the promise of God in Isaiah reads, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that

22 23 24 25 26 27

Publishing Company, 2000).

See the subheading of “Vision” in this paper. The main proponent of this project, Angela Alioto, displayed some very personal prayer intentions left at the Porziuncola.

Ilia Delio, A Franciscan View of Creation: Learning to Live in a Sacramental World (New York: Franciscan Institute, St Bonaventure University, 2003), 7–8.

Regis J. Armstrong, J. Wayne Hellmann, William J. Short, eds., “A Letter to the Entire Order,” in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Vol. 1 (New York: New City Press, 1999–2002), 118.

Paul Bradshaw, “Anamnesis in Modern Eucharistic Debate,” in Memory & History in Christianity and Judaism (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 74–76.

Johanna W.H. van Wijk-Bos, Reimagining God: the Case for Spiritual Diversity (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 55.

Isaiah 66: 10–13 RSV.

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she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”28 Here, standing at this replica, the memory was vivid, renewing the same emotions I had felt then.29 I halted at the entrance and looked up at the fresco of the Pardon of Assisi.30 There were various Latin inscriptions on the main door: (1) “Hic locus sanctus est” (“This place is holy”); (2) “Petitionem tuam Francisce aomitto” (“Francis, I grant your petition”); and (3) “Haec est porta aeternae” (“This is the gate of eternity”) — palpable affirmations of the sacredness of space. My shoes made a soft thud on the hard marble floor, causing a slight resonance of echoes. As I knelt on one of the pre-dieus, my hands instinctively ran over these wooden kneelers and found their smoothness, conjuring images of millions of monks and nuns who had found God through such a gesture of kneeling. I touched the stonewall and found the rock bricks rough and textured. They are solid but porous and permeable, metaphorically allowing events and memories to enter and remain.

As I knelt, I found myself gazing upwards. My eyes fell on a portion of the ceiling over the altar.

It had been painted with details of a silver moon and sun as well as a multitude of stars against a dark background. The main altar piece is a reproduction of a painting known as the Altar Screen of Prete Ilario da Viterbo from the 14th century, depicting the Pardon of Assisi in five scenes.31 The reproductions of this ancient fresco exhibit fresh plaster — a unique hybrid of past and present. The floor of the chapel is made from white and red marble, with patterns of stars. The floor in the sanctuary has black and white marble, also covered with star motifs. I lingered a little in thought at the depiction of celestial beings both on the ceiling and the floor.

My thoughts travelled to Ephræm Chiffley’s comment on the phenomenon of cosmic alienation — the problem of the human person being in a state of disconnectedness from the rest of created reality through the very act of versus populum rather than ad orientem in ritual orientation.32 There is a correlation here with 28 29 30

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Isaiah 49: 15 RSV. Hogue postulates that “Many of the images our brains record, then, are automatically tagged with an emotional label …” David A. Hogue, Remembering the Future, Imagining the Past: Story, Ritual and the Human Brain (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2003), 36.

The Pardon of Assisi is based on a legend in which Francis of Assisi procured from Christ the grace that all those who entered the Porziuncola would be granted a plenary indulgence — the complete removal of temporal punishment due to forgiven sin. This privilege is extended to the replica of the Porziuncola at North Beach as well. (Morris Young, “‘Stone-for-Stone Porziuncola Reproduction to be dedicated’”). This rather archaic Roman Catholic practice has largely become obsolete in contemporary spirituality despite adherence in certain more conservative circles. Here, I posit a question: could a contemporary view in Catholicism consider indulgences and the Great Pardon as the expression of a bigger narrative of the allpervading, all-inclusive mercy of God? http://www.sacred-destinations.com/italy/assisi-santa-maria-degli-angeli.htm (accessed on November 18, 2008).

“From the perspective of anthropology, ritual orientation is of great significance. This orientation, not just of the priest and also of people, during the celebration of the liturgy enmeshes the worshipping community in the general frame of creation, through the symbolism of the rising sun … the revelation of God in Christ through the incarnation is thus ritually expressed in a spatio-temporal manner by the custom of east-facing.

The sun as the measurement of time (day/night) and space (directionality) is a primal symbol of God’s acts of creation and redemption.” Ephræm Chiffley, “Altar: Place of Sacrifice and Sacred Space in the Religious Building,” in International Colloquium on the Roman Catholic Liturgy, Altar and Sacrifice : the Proceedings

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theologian Elizabeth Johnson’s sense of the reinterpretation of symbols in her comment on purgatory, heaven and hell. She states: “In this critical culture, rigorous interpretive work is being done to deconstruct the naïve sense and retrieve them anew in forms that are both intellectually credible, bearing the community’s hope in a recognizable and engaging way, and ethically productive, capable of promoting just and mutual relations in the social order, between women and men, and among human beings and the earth.” 33 From a liturgical-ritualistic perspective, her words can act as a caveat that memory acts of God34 run the risk of becoming somewhat distorted.

Individualism did much to exalt the right of the individual to create meaning in his or her life and simultaneously downplayed a In the unceasing formation of its connection with environing circumstances. Simon Blackburn, in The identity through memories, human Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, contends, “Individualism is often charged beings admit that in unity with with dissociating the ‘free’ individual from the matrix of social relations the entire cosmic reality, they are and norms that in fact make agency, freedom and even self-consciousness intrinsically bound up with God. possible.”35 I pose the question of whether this stance has made its presence felt in liturgies and rituals that overemphasize anthropocentric roles in worship, which in its repetitiveness, exacerbates the neglect of the necessary role of other created beings and makes the memory of God in ritual lopsided and disjointed. It is imperative that liturgical art, architecture and rituals must invoke a sense of unity between rational minds, creation and God, or what Theodore Jennings would refer to as “coordination,” where liturgy must express “an interplay of symbols and actions drawn from dimensions of experiences as diverse as the psychological-emotive (sexuality, mortality), the domestic (hearth), the socioeconomic (authority and exchange), the natural (relation to animals, to agriculture, to seasons), and the celestial.”36 The depiction of the celestial beings on the ceiling and the floor provides the potential for such a unity, a daedal remedy for this alienation, providing an artistic backdrop with which to frame theological credence: with Christ and God, the created world are no longer in alienation. Human and non-human creation alike are calibrated in a common directional response to the Creator. In the unceasing formation of its identity through memories, human beings admit that in unity with the entire cosmic reality, they are intrinsically bound up with God. I was astonished by the strong architectural resemblance between this replica and the original one in Assisi. I had expected some similarities but was awed by how much of a compliment it paid to the

33 34 35 36

of the Third International Colloquium of Historical, Canonical, and Theological Studies of the Roman Liturgy, trans. and ed. CIEL UK (London : Saint Austin Press, 1998), 27–28.

Elizabeth Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets: A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints (New York: Continuum, 1998), 187.

“The Liturgy is certainly a repetitive ritual…and it is a remembrance of God’s gracious act towards the human family…” Dirk Lange, “Trauma Theory & Liturgy: A Disruption of Ritual,” Liturgical Ministry (Summer 2008), 1.

Simon Blackburn, “The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy”, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 191.

Theodore W. Jennings, Jr, “Liturgy,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987), 582.

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original. As I learned later, it is identical to the original Porziuncola in Assisi, right down to the shape, size and position of the bricks — except on two counts: (1) It is built on a 78 percent scale of the size of the original,37 and (2) the altar is differs from the original chapel in Assisi.

The altar and the sanctuary seem to constitute a sacred space within a sacred place. Traditional communion rails delineate the sanctuary from the rest of the chapel, yet elicit a sense of the sacred, inviting prayer and homage rather than distance and estrangement. On the floor of the sanctuary are two objects — an acrylic box for prayer intentions and a box for The gift of the stone presents itself akin to an invitation to monetary offerings. participate in a particular history, thus taking it out of its Approaching the altar, I detected the singularity and allowing those who come into contact with it sugary, vanilla smell of burnt candle wax that hung to mourn and to identify with their own tragedies and traumas. lightly and gently. The unmistakable smell of stale sweat, body odours and lingering colognes was also prominent. This was not a museum that experienced the rush of people who had come and gone. This was a place of prayer, a place of human persons, a place to deposit fears, memories, aspirations, and hopes.

This was a living repository indicating the abiding presence of those who had visited and indubitably left part of themselves.

Perched precariously on one side of the communion railing is the encased display of a stone — one of three pieces that were collected and preserved when the Porziuncola in Assisi experienced an earthquake in 1997.38 A gift from the Franciscans in Assisi, it bears a seal of authenticity and a lamp illuminates it. It is the only object that is from the original Porziuncola. Angela Alioto, the organizer of the construction, was overwhelmed by the gift of this stone that she referred to as the stone that Francis held and that saw him laugh, dance, sing, cry, frustrated, perform miracles and experience visions.39 The very act of receiving this stone from the Franciscans who had first-hand experience of the deaths of those fallen during the earthquake speaks of catharsis; a discharge of emotional tension and consequent rejuvenation after the tragic event, bearing unmistakable redeeming and therapeutic qualities. The stone may be interpreted as a symbol of transformation from trauma to new hope and inspiration, as its silent, salubrious witness. In this regard, Sam Durrant quotes Harris in saying that “to bear witness is to bridge the divide between the subject and object…This understanding of bearing witness as an act of mediation transforms suffering into a mode of redemption…”40 Furthermore, Lange propounds through trauma theory that the horror of the crucifixion of Christ was remembered and represented in the Didache in images of the sharing of bread and wine rather than the cross as an effective method of disrupting the memory of the event, thus rendering the 37 38 39 40

Morris Young, “ ‘Stone-for-Stone Porziuncola Reproduction to be dedicated.’”

“Letter from Four Ministers General of the Franciscans,” October 3, 1997, http://www.americancatholic. org/News/Earthquake/FourGen.asp (accessed on December 8, 2008).

Alioto, interviewed by author.

Sam Durrant, Postcolonial Narrative and the Work of Mourning : J.M. Coetzee, Wilson Harris, and Toni Morrison (Albany : State University of New York Press, 2004), 19.

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representational form of that memory a legitimate and effective force.41 The gift of the stone presents itself akin to an invitation to participate in a particular history, thus taking it out of its singularity and allowing those who come into contact with it to mourn and to identify with their own tragedies and traumas.

Vision The person behind the construction of the chapel is Angela Alioto, a San Franciscan lawyer and politician who is also a Roman Catholic and a Secular Franciscan of forty years, and who built this chapel with generous donations from 6 benefactors.42 In an interview with her at the Porziuncola on Wednesday, November 12, 2008, Alioto expressed in no uncertain terms the main motivation behind her endeavour: “There is nothing St Francis did that wasn’t because of his love of Jesus…the saint is…a mentor of how to reach a higher level of love that he had. San Francisco has over fifteen thousand homeless people; over five thousand people a day are fed sandwiches…we need the Porziuncola in San Francisco. We have a lot of sick people, we have a lot of homeless people, we have a lot of people in need of faith, any kind of faith in Our Lord, any kind; we are a city in desperate need…and we represent the city that has his name! This [project] was meant to be. This [place] is the core of [Francis’] life. The main thrust of my project is for people to learn about Our Lord through St Francis…of the…non-judgemental, down-to-earth, bottom line love for Jesus because he loves you…love Jesus with your heart, soul, mind and take care of your neighbour: the two major principles of our religion and…of most religions…. This is not a museum, this is not a trinket — this is a holy place, and it has to have the masses and the Sacrament on the altar43 just as the [original] Porziuncola does. People tell me all the time, ‘my children love it. [They] won’t go to church but they love coming here. There’s nothing like it! You’re in Umbria…you’re in Assisi! It’s happy, it’s Francesco…[People] haven’t been in a church for 20, 30, 40 years; they come in and pray all the time. You should read some of the [written prayer] intentions…(here, Alioto shows the author some handwritten prayer intentions ranging from praying for peace in the world to pleas for healing and conversions). I know [St Francis] is here…a lot of people talk about their childhood in Catholic schools because they haven’t been Catholic for so many years…coming in makes them feel like Catholic again…[Francis] hugs you as you come here. [A cathedral] is not as welcoming. In bad times, you want to be hugged. And that’s what this whole place does. The memories of the past ignite a hope for the future. It’s not just about the 41 42 43

See Lange, “Trauma Theory & Liturgy: A Disruption of Ritual,” 5–16.

Alioto, interviewed by author.

Ibid. A reference to the Eucharist. Alioto alluded to the fact that in the near future, the consecrated host will be reserved in the Porziuncola.

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This effort to use the replica as a base to provide sustenance to the homeless as well as an epicentre for Christian values recalls Bieler and Schottroff’s work on “body memory,” wherein “To remember means to be capable of forming meaningful narrative sequences. Remembering is an activity that takes place with a concern for the interpretation of the present by producing links to what is perceived as having happened in the past.”45 Here one recalls the various theological and humanitarian aspects of Francis of Assisi, and his association with the original Porziuncola as mentioned earlier in the paper. These powerful images and memories have found fresh interpretation and significance in this reconstruction at North Beach by being put to good use in a noble endeavour to aid those in material and spiritual need. In empathizing with the homeless and the needy as part of her own spirituality, Alioto also appears to manifest what Bieler and Schottroff term “anamnetic empathy.”46 These authors make a persuasive case that “Christ’s body, imagined as a body in pain and as the resurrected body, is related to our own body memories that hold pain and humiliation as well as desire and transcendent imagination.”47 It is in relation to this that I find the Porziuncola capable of emanating a power, which may be referred to as a two-fold sacramentality — revealing the presence of God both through and of itself as well as through and in the persons who come into contact with it. Bonaventure maintains that creation acts as both a book and a mirror which reflects God and permits God to radiate through, while Scotus asserts that creation is good in itself, that there is inherent value in the “hacceitas,” the “individuality of each thing,” thus rendering every created thing “charged with divine meaning.”48 Hence, sacramentality becomes participatory 44 45 46 47 48

Ibid.

Bieler and Schottroff, The Eucharist, 172.

Ibid, 167.

Ibid.

Delio, A Franciscan View of Creation, 37–38.

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rather than merely an objective reality. Bieler and Schottroff develop this thought distinctly when they refer to anamnesis as “being more than a mere distant recollection of an event,” but one which “has a relational and existential quality.” Moreover, “we are no longer distant listeners to a story, but involved participants. ”49 I felt a sense of reverence, hope, expectation, contiguity It is interesting to note from the interview with and aliveness at this place, which was so wondrously Angela Alioto that this modest replica seems to possess creating community and solidarity. The memories that the dynamism to evoke a vigour that surpasses other were evoked were teeming, elegant, happy memories. ecclesial structures. There is an interesting phenomenon occurring here where people who have been disassociated from their faith, and their churches find in the Porziuncola an avenue to tell their stories and for these stories to be heard through prayer intentions, prayers and faith sharing.

Here, the past is not forgotten. In narratives that are told and re-told, there is a discovery of new possibilities, of an eschatological optimism that releases long-buried memories and stories and allows them to resurface and be made-sense of, an openness to the future that grants reconciliation and transfiguration for a future that is lived meaningfully in the present. Essen says: “By re-presenting the past as present in story — or history — form historical narratives claim nothing less than that this present is the future of the past.” He expounds further: “The historical gaze at the past is not only a way of allowing us to make sense of contemporary life. Rather, it also aspires to show future perspectives for human action and consequently claims nothing less than that the past is overflowing with expectations.”50

Epilogue It was time for me to leave the Porziuncola. As I trudged away, I found myself concomitantly appreciating the richness of its history yet relishing the contemporaneity and inventiveness of the spiritual and theological activities taking place there.

My investigation led me to understand that what the There is an interesting phenomenon occurring here where replica at North Beach hopes to re-create, emulate people who have been disassociated from their faith, and perpetuate from its archetype is the sense of and their churches find in the Porziuncola an avenue to connectedness with the potent memory of Francis of tell their stories and for these stories to be heard through Assisi, who stands as a bastion of the living, divine prayer intentions, prayers and faith sharing. memory of God who bestows goodness, meaning, forgiveness, healing, hope, solidarity, connectedness and renewal. Essen undergirds Rüsen in painting history as “a process of construction,” whereby “historical thinking is a mental procedure in which the human past is made present or ‘re-presented.’”51 The memory of God as embodied in the historical 49 50 51

Bieler and Schottroff, ibid.

Georg Essen, “Can Yesterday Get Better?” in Discourse in Ritual Studies, ed. Hans Schilderman (Boston: Brill Academic Publishing, 2007), 278.

Essen, “Can Yesterday Get Better,” 277.

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New Wineskins

figure of Francis, which is in turn re-presented at the existing chapel of the Porziuncola in Assisi, is further re-presented in the replica at North Beach.

I felt confronted with something that was simultaneously old and new, that possessed an inextricable power to link the past with the present while offering a potent eschatological hope for the future. I felt a sense of reverence, hope, expectation, contiguity and aliveness at this place, which was so wondrously creating community and solidarity. The memories that were evoked were teeming, elegant, happy memories. Thus the Porziuncola at North Beach stands as a profound utterance of the salvific redemptive power of God.

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Joseph N. G. L. Goh hails from Sarawak, Malaysia and is finishing the first of two years in the STL program at JSTB. He hopes to utilize his interdisciplinary theological qualifications to teach and be involved in various forms of pastoral care.

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JESUIT SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AT BERKELEY 1735 Le Roy Avenue Berkeley, CA 94709