The Numinous; the ethereal experience. The awe in beauty and the encounter with the unknowable… and its horrific murder at the hands of mans mirrors.

Worship; an act of reverence and adoration now given over to our reflections.

The encounter with the sacred, as Mircea Eliade understood it, is fundamentally an encounter with the numinous - - - that which inspires awe and reverence in response to an ineffable power. It is beauty so overwhelming that it horribly ‘unmakes’ us just as fervently as it ‘remakes’ us. An undeniable spiritual experience when face to face with the “Wholly Other”. One that stands as the antithesis to what dominates contemporary spirituality which is riddled with: a culture of inner self-affirmation, the tyranny of attempted autonomous identity, the worship of the ordained self and its self anointed kingship. In both progressive Christianity and contemporary art, we witness a profound inversion of the religious impulse.

What once should have been us reflecting divinity in the world, instead has become man casting off sacred purpose - - - seeping out mirror and seating himself at its foot. He now gazes transfixed by his own hollow image. The self has become both altar and deity, creator and creation, endlessly instating what should be received and affirming what should be sacrificed.

Where once stood the terrifying and beautiful otherness of man basking in the transcendental, now stands the lone soul and the mirror - - - echochambered - - - only able to receive the self-consuming fate of the Ouroboros.

A mirror offers only two roads. One: utter self annihilation through hyper-focused criticism. Two: over rationalization into a bastardized self anointed godhood [ these are also reflections of my previous writings on “tohu wa-bohu” - תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ as it informs; leviathan (the state or tyranny / an unruled masculine ethos) and behemoth (the chaos and the void/ an unruled feminine ethos)] This essay argues that the contemporary transcendentalism movement (particularly as it manifests in art and church) represents an unhealthy biblical idolatry of the self. Transcendentalism is understood as a philosophy that emphasizes individual intuition and the inherent goodness of both people and nature. This unfortunately positions human consciousness at the center of all things without any universal moral center. It becomes both creator and measure of all meaning; replacing the encounter with divine otherness in favor of a closed circuit. It substitutes sacrifice with self-discovery, receptivity with personal subjective assertion. This transitions being out of its ordained position (which reflects the Divine and requires of itself a relational witness); in favor of endless cyclical tailspin of self-exploration.

Against this cultural vice, a rebirth of the sublime is not optional but necessary - - - without the reintegration of experiences that shatter the idol of self, we face spiritual starvation. [”tohu wa-bohu” - תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ]. Beauty [as a synonym for truth] is not solely generated from within but received from without; it should be the sin broken self reaching for the divine, not the self reaching for its own paltry depths.

Mysticism Is dead and we have killed it

“Religion” [as understood as a relationship with the divine] begins in the body; begins in mans purpose as ACTIVE witness. Heidegger would recognize this as the “Being’s self-disclosure”.

Think of Being like the sun.

The sun doesn’t require anyone to shine. Its light reveals everything around us. We rarely look directly at the sun itself but we see everything by its light.

For Heidegger, “Being’s self-disclosure” works the same way. Being is what allows for meaning. A chair becomes a chair because its purpose or image is witnessed by the Being. Through the eyes of the witness acting as metaphorical sunlight that discloses that which is there. And It’s not that we discover Being. Rather, Being also “discloses itself” through everything that exists in an experiential manner.

This is a self awareness of the experience of experiencing; if I can be so convoluted to say so. It mimics our cultural focus on the objects the sun illuminates rather than the sun itself which is the revealer that allows anything to show up at all. Heidegger’s entire philosophy is essentially trying to get us to notice the “sun” again.

It’s interesting since in one sense Heidegger shows us that Being discloses itself, seems like it would contend the argument that we are not self sovereign, but its on closer examination (the very things he asks of us) we see that we don’t stand apart as sovereign observers but exist within an unveiling we didn’t initiate and cannot control. We are the place where the act Being becomes aware to itself, but we are not its source. This is precisely the structure of authentic religious experience: self-disclosure that comes from beyond the self.

But Modern Transcendentalism has inverted this. We’ve gone from Being the site of disclosure to imagining ourselves as the source of disclosure. The culture has confused Being “where Being becomes conscious” with Being “the creators of consciousness itself.” Culturally we seem taken by the philosophy more akin to René Descartes’ “Therefore I think I am” This is the catastrophe of modern transcendentalism with its move from witness participant within revelation, to the author of reality.

When we claim godhood over our own being we essentially build a bubble around the psyche, the world ends with what is self knowable and nothing beyond that exists. This tyrannical spirit causes a form of “main character syndrome” and in its isolation erases the sublime. The sublime requires something beyond the self, something that overwhelms, something we cannot master or create. But if I am god, and if I am the sole author of reality, then nothing can be permitted to overwhelm me. That would be a fallacy against my authority. Thus there must be no “outside“ from which the sacred can erupt; no vastness before which the self can be “rendered small.” Heidegger’s philosophy reveals that we’ve lost the capacity to receive. Being’s self-disclosure is precisely what we cannot control- - - it happens to us, through us, but is not orchestrated by us. The body encountering forces beyond control and the senses overwhelmed are the very sub-structure of Being’s self-disclosure. When the self becomes God, the ineffable has nowhere to appear. We’ve killed mysticism not by claiming the throne. Yet finding, in that empty seat, only our own reflection exists to look to.

In this moment of endless gods, the Arts and Church must center on a rebirth of the sublime.

Eliade’s account of the sacred emphasizes the potential power for this character of disruption and transformation. The numinous [power beyond human understanding] does not comfort; it unsettles. It is the dramatic, irrevocable, explosive dismantling of our self-understanding. Essentially it would be the perfect pin to burst the bubble of self authority.

… the feeling of terror before the sacred, before the awe-inspiring mystery (mysterium tremendum), the majesty (majestas) that emanates an overwhelming superiority of power; he finds religious fear before the fascinating mystery (mysterium fascinans) in which perfect fullness of being flowers.” [ Eliade on Otto ]

The archetype of the prophet is the perfect example of how humanity should conduct their encounters with the sublime. As a prophet, He/she can be understood as one “highly attuned to the reality of God in the world“ or as one “very open to receive.” However, In the end the prophet’s authority derives not from self insight but from encounter with external reality.

Habakkuk illustrates this perfectly: the prophet does not construct meaning but receives (even unwelcomed reception).

Habakkuk 2:1

“I will take my stand at my watchpost

and station myself on the tower,

and look out to see what he will say to me,

and what I will answer concerning my complaint.”

This distinction between reception and construction becomes crucial when we consider the mystical tradition’s careful safeguards against self-deception….

To be Continued…

The most damning thing about much of contemporary Christian art is not that it is poorly made but instead that in many ways it feels fundamentally dishonest.1

In our desperation to make faith palatable [or maybe even to escape the world as it is] we have created an artistic tradition that does not reflect the Scriptures it claims to honor. Sadly, due to this bland behavior we have rendered ourselves irrelevant to a world drowning in suffering.

To begin we must address the sin of sanitization.

Consider even the narrative of Scripture; raw, bloody, tragic, redemptive. The a story that does not shy away from depicting the depravity of man. It puts on display a reality of humanity that includes betrayal, dismemberment2, infanticide34, and divine judgment. Many have called one of the bloodiest books ever written, and yet it stands as a pinical of hope - - - a source of comfort like no other.

Many of the works of art I see glorified by my brothers and sisters are not only an aesthetic failure but seem instead a theological one. We forget that when we take away christian arts capacity to disturb, we implicitly claim that reality itself must be edited to glorify to God. Yet the Bible [the very word of God] never flinches from depicting the world as it is: brutal, overwhelming, and full of both unimaginable transcendence and outright horror. Judges 19-21 does not present the Levite’s concubine’s death as a teaching moment with a tidy moral, but it presents it as an atrocity that reveals the depths of human wickedness when “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”5 To sanitize such narratives is to lie about the nature of sin and the immeasurable cost of redemption. In fact it ends up making the redemptive act purposeless and thus no longer beautiful.

What a grave sin to make meaningless that which is most significant for the sake of palatability.

Closely related is our addiction to sentimentality.

We see a pervasive theme in the Christian arts - - - of art designed not to illuminate but to comfort. And I understand it in a certain sense. It is a fractle of how we expirence God and feels like “the Good way to show is his love”. But then Christian culture at times has become a purveyor of cheap grace, offering a creative kiss on the forehead to humans I think are more in needed of surgery. Then we sit dumbfounded wondering why it doesn’t reach them.

True art, as Flannery O’Connor makes note, must function prophetically: it cuts away dead flesh, holds up a mirror to our darkness, and amputates what cannot be saved.6 I am reminded of the prophet Nathan, who did not offer David a sentimental ballad about God’s love; but as the chapter titles implies “Nathan Rebukes David”7 through a story. In the story King David comes to hate the character man, not realizing in the allegory - - - that man- - - is David himself. In an oh so human way King David condemns himself out of his own mouth without realizing it. That is art functioning as it should. It is not as escape but it is an encounter with truth that transforms.

Sentimentality, by contrast, is a refusal to do the hard work of actual feeling which is why it feels dishonest to many. It states at us that HERE LIES THE EMOTIONAL PAY OFF. It is a lecture at; not a conversation requiring us to actually face or participate in anything. Im sure we can all remember a time that we were in conversation with someone who just talked at us. How did you experience that?

It is almost not so far fetched to say that such work insults both God and audience. Consider David: adulterer, murderer, AND man after God’s own heart.8 The tension in that description is not even a problem to be resolved but the very thing that makes David’s story true and makes our own redemptions seem possible. He is not redeemed because he was good all along; he is redeemed because God’s grace is more powerful than human evil. Simplistic Christian art cannot handle this paradox, so it flattens David into either a villain who gets saved or a hero who made a mistake. Both versions lie.

So, when Christians create art that is so simplistic, the world rightly dismisses us as naive or delusional since in a not so subtle way- - - we are. We become the ones who insist everything is fine while world sees the house that burns around us. As the culture cries out for art that grapples with racism, trauma, nihilism, injustice, and despair, we offer them one dimensional 9 paintings and worship songs that reduce the infinite God to a simplistic boyfriend like character. We have become unreliable witnesses to the downtrodden because our art does not reflect reality, and if it does not reflect an aspect of reality, it cannot be reaching for anything resembling truth.

I believe much of the world would agree that art like this feels like propaganda when its primary purpose is to persuade rather than to reveal. Propaganda simplifies while art complicates. Propaganda provides statements to persuade you but art reveals truths, asks questions and invites conversation it may not have answers to. That said, I am also, well aware of Art’s purpose in what Psalm 19 describes as to reveal the glory of God and invite a person to encounter the numinous10. The heavens proclaim. The firmament does not moralize; it shows forth that which is. I can understand that much of the sentimental arts are then, a product of missing context. The christian artists is ALREADY aware of the dark and so paints the light. Perhaps the artist even sees themself as the foil to their work, as the context however we are left then stranded unless informed otherwise. We can not engage with the work unless we are in the inner circle.

If we want to combat this than Christian art must recover this awe11- - -not the manufactured emotion of a worship service designed to produce feelings on cue from people in the loop, but the terrible, world-shattering recognition that we are small creatures before an infinite Creator. We must know we stand before the the essence of the numinous, as depraved sinners at the feet of a holy Judge and yet ALSO beloved children before a Father who gave His Son to die on our behalf.

Until we are willing to create art that humbles and breaks us, that refuses easy answers and comfortable lies, Christian art will remain a niche only for the already-convinced. The world will continue to look elsewhere for beauty, truth, and meaning- - - - and they will be right to do so.

This is why the spirit of the sublime is particularly attractive to me. It feels like the precipice of horror and alure - - - 2 the beautiful and the ugly. It is the tension point, the moment of catalyst and where the scales of the mind tip based on the lenses a soul wares to color their life.

….

It has been pressed upon me in some of my most recent conversations, the curiousness of my coupling a painting and poetry. My insistence that they are as one work but - evolve separately. I was asked how that came to be - the pair of poetry and painting. If I am being fully honest I don’t know... I just knew neither one was complete until the other was beside it. Robbert Veen [a philosopher, theologian, and friend] referred to them in conversation briefly as twins. That echoed through by brain for a while after we talked but upon further consideration I think they are instead a marriage.

Robert A. Veen most recently wrote an article exploring the dialectical opposition within Heidegger’s view on art and Levinas’. Within that was a consideration of how Levinas’ thoughts on art seemed to speak to my need for the abstract work to be beside the ‘word’. [read Veen’s thoughts on the matter here]. And I think I agree. What pushes my thoughts to consider the works as a marriage may seem a tad reductive but I do think present a subtly yerning within my own soul. I do not see them as twins, or limbs of each other or even extensions of the exact same thought. Even how they evolve begets that.

Some times a painting sits for years without a poem and one day as im writing a poem my eyes or thoughts will drift to the un married painting seated in the corner, then with a semi - surprised “oh!” it will settle upon me that they are for each other.

Other times poems build and build in my unpublished anthology [all tagged with my now ironically considered titled note ‘Un-Attached’ to indicate they do not have a painting yet] when suddenly a brushstroke will fall and the poem with float up from the depths of my brain and I will smile warmly as the seem to sing together - as they give each other purpose in their oneness.

And sometimes [though most rarely] as I paint or as a write the other will begin its formation simultaneously. Words will direct the brush strokes and color will breath rhythm into the words. They are of one flesh from the start.

This is why I think they are Married - bound intimately and with a profound service to each other but also individuals. Can they be present and explored as separate objects but they are most intimately known by each other. This perhaps resonates in a small part with the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, the concept of “the Look” (or “le regard”) emphasizes that our sense of self is not something inherent, but rather something we gain through the gaze and recognition of others.

Or maybe its as simple as one is the body and the other is voice. It seems an ever present desire for my works to dialogue with the viewer. Perhaps the painting would give the viewer a face to look at, a person to desire to know and the poem would be the voice for the conversion I wish them to have... or begin to have. That act of coming to know another guided by word given substance by art and then left to the viewer to explore farther.

I do not yet know in full but think I am beginning to understand.
Even the above is but a scattered, un-orchestrated stream of consciousness mussing on the tip of the iceberg.

Origins: Hymns of The Ocean Verdure
Oils | Gauche | Bombay Noir Ink | Aryclic | Behr Enamel on Canvas
16” x 20”
2024