Just a few days ago, travelling along Portsmouth Drive, I was startled to come across some $40,000 worth of petrified human dentition. Four very large molars, chiselled out of Oamaru stone, now hog what used to be a very attractive view down the harbour. And we paid for them.
Now why did we do that? Well, we did that because we believe in art, indeed we believe in public art. When I say we, I do not, of course, include myself, or anyone else that I know, for that matter. If a partial in Oamaru stone @ $10,000 per fake tooth is art, then, I'm afraid, this particular emperor has no teeth. And someone should bite those who thought otherwise - and did so at our expense.
Alas, this is not an isolated example - far from it. How about the thousands of dollars in prize money which went to the "artist" who simply told the judges to take a waste paper basket and throw its contents on to the floor of the art gallery. Not to mention other prize exhibits in the nation's collections such as the image at Te Papa of Our Blessed Lady inside a condom. As it happens, there is a cathedral city in France called Condom, which no doubt has its own vierge noire called Notre Dame de Condom, but that is hardly the same thing, as you will no doubt agree.
Some years ago the Australian critic and historian Robert Hughes fronted a television series on modern art. One of the more memorable scenes showed him climbing a long flight of stairs to a very large room at the top of a New York apartment block. In the room was a remarkable work of art - a very large amount of earth from somebody's back garden which had been lugged up all those stairs and deposited (fairly evenly) on the floor to a depth of some two or three feet. And that was it. That was the Work of Art.
Along with the famous (and very expensive) line of bricks on the floor of the Tate Modern in London, and Damian Hirst's pickled sheep and calves, it is all rather bewildering - or do I mean infuriating? What on earth do these "artists" think they are doing? Well let me tell you what they are doing. They are preaching. Art is about meaning, don't you know, it's about The Author's Message. It's supposed to tell you something, to disturb your complacency, to challenge and to provoke.
But if we look a little more deeply, I think we find that it's all smoke and mirrors. Many artists now strike these attitudes precisely because they have nothing worth saying. Throwing waste paper on the floor is just an empty gesture made no better by the portentious suggestion that it is expressing (a) the emptiness of life, or (b) the artist's brave freedom from conventional conceptions about art, or (c) the artist's well-founded suspicion that the luvvies of the art world will be silly enough to let him get away with highway robbery - and then thank him for it!
But perhaps he and his colleagues might not have invaded the pulpit if those already in it knew what to say and how to say it.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
God's First Love
God willing, in August I shall be in Bayreuth at a performance of Die Meistersinger. And it won't be the first time that I have graced the Festspielhaus with my presence. Some ten years ago I was there for The Ring, Tristan, and Parsifal, all due to the influence and kindness of my friend Martin who makes a living on the operatic stage, and will be doing so at Bayreuth again this year.
Bayreuth is a very attractive town, especially in summer, and Wagner's custom-built theatre is most impressive - despite the hard seats and the complete lack of air conditioning at what is after all the hottest time of the year. But I have to confess that there is something just a little bit unnerving about it all. And you know why, don't you? The Wagners - Wieland and Wolfgang and their mother Winifred (nee Williams) - had a dear friend and devoted supporter who did his very best to destroy the world. And they loved him for it, especially the former Miss Williams of Bognor Regis.
When I was last in Bayreuth walking about the place (including the Festspielhaus) with Martin, I couldn't help seeing little notices here and there signed by Wolfgang (now just off to Valhalla himself) and sitting in the theatre itself I was always aware of the ghosts of his late mother and her special friend hovering somewhere in the Circle behind me. And when the conductors named Barenboim and Levine were in the orchestral pit I couldn't help thinking of those millions of other ghosts who had had surnames not unlike theirs.
All of which has not been helped by a television documentary which I saw a few days ago about the contribution of medical science to the war effort of the Third Reich. All those SS doctors were the frontline troops in the only war which really mattered - the protection and improvement of the breeding stock. Even Charles Darwin's son asserted that something should be done to make sure the gene pool was not polluted by the Untermenschen.
The special friend of the former Miss Williams (sometime of Bognor Regis) was just the one to deal with the problem. And deal with it he did. Even when the tide was going badly against Germany as the war drew to a close, the transports full of Untermenschen kept rolling towards the death camps, soaking up the men and resources which were desperately needed for the defence of the Reich itself. But it was the enemy within which really mattered most it seems, not the Allied armies advancing over the Rhine on one side and into East Prussia on the other.
How extraordinary that is, and yet somehow part of a terrible pattern, and one with which the Church is inextricably involved. Here is Luther in full cry about God's chosen people: "Venomous beasts, vipers, disgusting scum, canders, devils incarnate. Their private houses must be destroyed and devastated, they should be lodged in stables. Let the magistrates burn their synagogues and let whatever escapes be covered with sand and mud. Let them be forced to work, and if this avails nothing, we will be compelled to expel them like dogs in order not to expose ourselves to incurring divine wrath and eternal damnation from the Jews and their lies."
And Luther most certainly wasn't the only one. John Chrysostom was just as bad, and he was joined by Ephraim the Syrian, Augustine, Cyprian, and Cyril of Alexandria among many others, from the patristic period onwards. For a more up to date example you have only to consider the response of the Slovakian archbishop Karol Kmetko to a Jewish plea for assistance in March 1942: "You shall not merely be deported. You shall be killed. And this will be your punishment for killing our saviour."
There is a most remarkable film called God on Trial which stars (if that is the right word) Sir Anthony Sher. The film is based on what appears to be a true account of something which happened in Auschwitz: the Rabbis in residence decided to try God for the crime of breaking his covenant with his chosen people.
During the course of the trial all the expected charges were laid, but nevertheless (in the film at least) the judges were about to acquit The Accused when a very distinguished Rabbi, who had so far said nothing, began to speak. He pointed out how God had bereaved the innocent mothers of Egypt, commanded the Israelites to slaughter the helpless Amalekites, and generally shown himself to be anything but kind and just. And why, he asked, is this so? Because, he said, "God is not good, he is not good - he is just strong." And now he had chosen a new people, and entered into a new covenant - with the very Germans who were hell-bent on exterminating the members of the old one.
At this point in the proceedings, Dr Mengele arrives to choose some more victims for the crematoria. One of these is a young man who has had little or no time for the faith of his fathers. Weeping in desperation, he throws himself at the Rabbi's feet crying, "What do we do now?" "Now," the Rabbi says, "now we pray." Holding their hands over their heads in the absence of skullcaps and shawls, they begin chanting, "You have been our refuge from age to age."
Even stripped naked in the gas chamber, they still hold their hands over their heads as they sing to the God who has not saved them, but in whom (somehow) they still hope and believe.
I find it fascinating that the Jews, more perhaps than any other people, have been the ones to carry the cross of Christ for the last two thousand years or so. And Christianity itself has been the hard and cruel cross which they have carried. I must confess that I do not see the divine (let alone ethical) imperative of zionism, but it does seem to me that the history of God's chosen people in the last two millenia makes presents a most profound mystery to do with suffering and faith of which the adherents of Christianity are hardly aware.
Richard Wagner himself was an appalling antisemite, especially in print, which is one of the reasons that Hitler was so devoted to the family, which in turn helps to explain why, after the war, only Winifred Wagner (late of Bognor Regis) was one of the very few still prepared to sing his praises. I'm afraid I did a little bit of singing myself at Bayreuth. Only the music of Wagner himself is ever permitted to be heard in the Festspielhaus. But I showed them. When no-one was looking I sat in the conductor's seat in the orchestral pit and sang a few bars of Mozart. And the roof stayed where it was.
Bayreuth is a very attractive town, especially in summer, and Wagner's custom-built theatre is most impressive - despite the hard seats and the complete lack of air conditioning at what is after all the hottest time of the year. But I have to confess that there is something just a little bit unnerving about it all. And you know why, don't you? The Wagners - Wieland and Wolfgang and their mother Winifred (nee Williams) - had a dear friend and devoted supporter who did his very best to destroy the world. And they loved him for it, especially the former Miss Williams of Bognor Regis.
When I was last in Bayreuth walking about the place (including the Festspielhaus) with Martin, I couldn't help seeing little notices here and there signed by Wolfgang (now just off to Valhalla himself) and sitting in the theatre itself I was always aware of the ghosts of his late mother and her special friend hovering somewhere in the Circle behind me. And when the conductors named Barenboim and Levine were in the orchestral pit I couldn't help thinking of those millions of other ghosts who had had surnames not unlike theirs.
All of which has not been helped by a television documentary which I saw a few days ago about the contribution of medical science to the war effort of the Third Reich. All those SS doctors were the frontline troops in the only war which really mattered - the protection and improvement of the breeding stock. Even Charles Darwin's son asserted that something should be done to make sure the gene pool was not polluted by the Untermenschen.
The special friend of the former Miss Williams (sometime of Bognor Regis) was just the one to deal with the problem. And deal with it he did. Even when the tide was going badly against Germany as the war drew to a close, the transports full of Untermenschen kept rolling towards the death camps, soaking up the men and resources which were desperately needed for the defence of the Reich itself. But it was the enemy within which really mattered most it seems, not the Allied armies advancing over the Rhine on one side and into East Prussia on the other.
How extraordinary that is, and yet somehow part of a terrible pattern, and one with which the Church is inextricably involved. Here is Luther in full cry about God's chosen people: "Venomous beasts, vipers, disgusting scum, canders, devils incarnate. Their private houses must be destroyed and devastated, they should be lodged in stables. Let the magistrates burn their synagogues and let whatever escapes be covered with sand and mud. Let them be forced to work, and if this avails nothing, we will be compelled to expel them like dogs in order not to expose ourselves to incurring divine wrath and eternal damnation from the Jews and their lies."
And Luther most certainly wasn't the only one. John Chrysostom was just as bad, and he was joined by Ephraim the Syrian, Augustine, Cyprian, and Cyril of Alexandria among many others, from the patristic period onwards. For a more up to date example you have only to consider the response of the Slovakian archbishop Karol Kmetko to a Jewish plea for assistance in March 1942: "You shall not merely be deported. You shall be killed. And this will be your punishment for killing our saviour."
There is a most remarkable film called God on Trial which stars (if that is the right word) Sir Anthony Sher. The film is based on what appears to be a true account of something which happened in Auschwitz: the Rabbis in residence decided to try God for the crime of breaking his covenant with his chosen people.
During the course of the trial all the expected charges were laid, but nevertheless (in the film at least) the judges were about to acquit The Accused when a very distinguished Rabbi, who had so far said nothing, began to speak. He pointed out how God had bereaved the innocent mothers of Egypt, commanded the Israelites to slaughter the helpless Amalekites, and generally shown himself to be anything but kind and just. And why, he asked, is this so? Because, he said, "God is not good, he is not good - he is just strong." And now he had chosen a new people, and entered into a new covenant - with the very Germans who were hell-bent on exterminating the members of the old one.
At this point in the proceedings, Dr Mengele arrives to choose some more victims for the crematoria. One of these is a young man who has had little or no time for the faith of his fathers. Weeping in desperation, he throws himself at the Rabbi's feet crying, "What do we do now?" "Now," the Rabbi says, "now we pray." Holding their hands over their heads in the absence of skullcaps and shawls, they begin chanting, "You have been our refuge from age to age."
Even stripped naked in the gas chamber, they still hold their hands over their heads as they sing to the God who has not saved them, but in whom (somehow) they still hope and believe.
I find it fascinating that the Jews, more perhaps than any other people, have been the ones to carry the cross of Christ for the last two thousand years or so. And Christianity itself has been the hard and cruel cross which they have carried. I must confess that I do not see the divine (let alone ethical) imperative of zionism, but it does seem to me that the history of God's chosen people in the last two millenia makes presents a most profound mystery to do with suffering and faith of which the adherents of Christianity are hardly aware.
Richard Wagner himself was an appalling antisemite, especially in print, which is one of the reasons that Hitler was so devoted to the family, which in turn helps to explain why, after the war, only Winifred Wagner (late of Bognor Regis) was one of the very few still prepared to sing his praises. I'm afraid I did a little bit of singing myself at Bayreuth. Only the music of Wagner himself is ever permitted to be heard in the Festspielhaus. But I showed them. When no-one was looking I sat in the conductor's seat in the orchestral pit and sang a few bars of Mozart. And the roof stayed where it was.
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Off the Wall
A little while ago I attended a Eucharist at which Bishop Richard Randerson was the preacher, whose beliefs (or lack of them) inspired me a couple of years ago to send an article enshrining my fair, balanced and entirely admirable opinion of the said beliefs (or lack of them) to Anglican Taonga in the hope that they would print it. They didn't. Well, they made a mistake, didn't they? But I am the forgiving type, and anyway, why should you be deprived in consequence? So here follows the article:-
It seems that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men have at last managed to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, since clearly he is alive and well in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland he told Alice firmly, "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less," an approach demonstrated in the article, A Randerson Sampler in the [then] latest edition of Anglican Taonga, in which Bishop Richard Randerson’s use of the word God shows that to him it means little more than a beautiful feeling, since to suggest that God is a person or a supernatural being, he says, “goes too far.”
Whatever that is, it certainly isn’t the Christian faith which Bishop Randerson promised to uphold and proclaim when he was ordained, and pretty words do not make it otherwise. He remarks that he “finds it very sad that other members of the church could really doubt the Christian integrity and commitment of someone else in the church,” and laments “the lack of respect for the conscientiously-held views of others.” I for one have every respect for his views, I just wish he would have some respect for them as well, rather than misrepresenting them as those of a believing Christian. Humpty Dumpty could hardly do it better.
Unfortunately none of this is too surprising. For years we have pandered to the local Zeitgeist terrified of seeming out of date or irrelevant. We are, after all, the Church of the chattering classes, and we like the latter to think well of us. We (the Pakeha bit, that is) are nice, well-educated, well-intentioned people with just that touch of bourgeois guilt to convince us that we really care. And care we do. There are few fashionable causes which we do not enthusiastically espouse. Take the greatest of them all, the very heart and centre of Anglicanism in this country – biculturalism. If you think I am exaggerating, just imagine what would have happened if Bishop Randerson had cast doubts on the Treaty of Waitangi instead of on the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Would his peers have been quite so understanding and supportive, do you think? I doubt it.
But even our enthusiasms are not all they should be, biculturalism itself being the principal example. You only have to look at our official logo, the Flax Cross, to see that it has no reference whatsoever to the British Isles, and thus to the Church of Alban, Bede, Patrick, Margaret of Scotland, Julian of Norwich, Thomas Cranmer, Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes, William Wilberforce and a host of others. Our sacred past has been chopped off at the knees, and in its place we have a chauvinist monoculturalism with the occasional patronising (and in the Maori case, somewhat unwilling) nod towards the immediate north. Inclusive language, ecological footprints, social justice, sustainable living, cultural safety, all these and more are what really matter – with Maori as the new Latin.
These are the cuckoos which have thrown transcendence, the sacred, the sense of holiness, and the glories of heaven out of the Anglican nest – and for what? A comfortable, politically correct agnosticism, mere unbelief masquerading as rich diversity, a lack of integrity parading as courageous honesty, and the denial of the creed presenting itself as the means by which the Church might survive – as if it would have any reason to.
Whatever happened to the astonishing glories of the Christian faith? Where is the God who loved his creation so much that he allowed his creatures to torture and slaughter him, and then showed that not even our wickedness could overcome his goodness? Whatever happened to the conviction that the whole purpose of human beings is that they are to be changed from glory into glory throughout eternity? How is it that everything from the virgin birth to the physical resurrection of our Lord has to be airbrushed out of the creed as merely mythological, simply because we no longer have any conception of the greatness, the wonder, and the sheer extraordinariness of God. Clearly it would all be so much better if God could just be nice and tidy and (in a word) manageable.
Our New Zealand Prayer Book is a perfect mirror of this, replete with phrases like “Teach us to care creatively for [the earth’s] resources,” or “Strengthen us as we share in making people whole,” and (my favourite) “that we may use your gifts responsibly,” all of which sound as though they were written by rather earnest schoolgirls from one of our better suburbs. Such texts go perfectly with most of the hymns and songs in Alleluia Aotearoa! with their high-minded, almost Victorian emphasis on self-improvement; but like them they too seem largely unreal. Lex orandi, lex credendi – as you pray, so you believe – thus it often seems that our prayers are little more than the expression of our good intentions, designed to reassure us that we still have something to offer.
From the first century to the present day it has been for the love of the Lord Jesus Christ and for the hope of heaven that the saints and martyrs have lived and died. Or were Perpetua and her companions thrown to the lions for ecology and cultural safety? If you are despairing and dying, will inclusive language and social justice see you right? When you are desperate to find a meaning and a purpose to life, will sustainable living and biculturalism provide the answer? I rather doubt it. But we are not despairing or desperate. We are just a little too pleased with ourselves for that, despite the fact that we have a certain adolescent anxiety about our identity which (along with the need for some rather unconvincing self-congratulation) has been part of our national make-up for as long as I can remember.
And so we have made the Good the enemy of the Best. We have put some of our nicest and most politically correct idols with their lovely feet of clay into the place of the Living God, without really facing up to what we have done. Perhaps that is because we have used words not as a means of telling the truth, but as a figleaf for our evasions.
Surely it’s about time that Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall for good.
It seems that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men have at last managed to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, since clearly he is alive and well in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland he told Alice firmly, "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less," an approach demonstrated in the article, A Randerson Sampler in the [then] latest edition of Anglican Taonga, in which Bishop Richard Randerson’s use of the word God shows that to him it means little more than a beautiful feeling, since to suggest that God is a person or a supernatural being, he says, “goes too far.”
Whatever that is, it certainly isn’t the Christian faith which Bishop Randerson promised to uphold and proclaim when he was ordained, and pretty words do not make it otherwise. He remarks that he “finds it very sad that other members of the church could really doubt the Christian integrity and commitment of someone else in the church,” and laments “the lack of respect for the conscientiously-held views of others.” I for one have every respect for his views, I just wish he would have some respect for them as well, rather than misrepresenting them as those of a believing Christian. Humpty Dumpty could hardly do it better.
Unfortunately none of this is too surprising. For years we have pandered to the local Zeitgeist terrified of seeming out of date or irrelevant. We are, after all, the Church of the chattering classes, and we like the latter to think well of us. We (the Pakeha bit, that is) are nice, well-educated, well-intentioned people with just that touch of bourgeois guilt to convince us that we really care. And care we do. There are few fashionable causes which we do not enthusiastically espouse. Take the greatest of them all, the very heart and centre of Anglicanism in this country – biculturalism. If you think I am exaggerating, just imagine what would have happened if Bishop Randerson had cast doubts on the Treaty of Waitangi instead of on the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Would his peers have been quite so understanding and supportive, do you think? I doubt it.
But even our enthusiasms are not all they should be, biculturalism itself being the principal example. You only have to look at our official logo, the Flax Cross, to see that it has no reference whatsoever to the British Isles, and thus to the Church of Alban, Bede, Patrick, Margaret of Scotland, Julian of Norwich, Thomas Cranmer, Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes, William Wilberforce and a host of others. Our sacred past has been chopped off at the knees, and in its place we have a chauvinist monoculturalism with the occasional patronising (and in the Maori case, somewhat unwilling) nod towards the immediate north. Inclusive language, ecological footprints, social justice, sustainable living, cultural safety, all these and more are what really matter – with Maori as the new Latin.
These are the cuckoos which have thrown transcendence, the sacred, the sense of holiness, and the glories of heaven out of the Anglican nest – and for what? A comfortable, politically correct agnosticism, mere unbelief masquerading as rich diversity, a lack of integrity parading as courageous honesty, and the denial of the creed presenting itself as the means by which the Church might survive – as if it would have any reason to.
Whatever happened to the astonishing glories of the Christian faith? Where is the God who loved his creation so much that he allowed his creatures to torture and slaughter him, and then showed that not even our wickedness could overcome his goodness? Whatever happened to the conviction that the whole purpose of human beings is that they are to be changed from glory into glory throughout eternity? How is it that everything from the virgin birth to the physical resurrection of our Lord has to be airbrushed out of the creed as merely mythological, simply because we no longer have any conception of the greatness, the wonder, and the sheer extraordinariness of God. Clearly it would all be so much better if God could just be nice and tidy and (in a word) manageable.
Our New Zealand Prayer Book is a perfect mirror of this, replete with phrases like “Teach us to care creatively for [the earth’s] resources,” or “Strengthen us as we share in making people whole,” and (my favourite) “that we may use your gifts responsibly,” all of which sound as though they were written by rather earnest schoolgirls from one of our better suburbs. Such texts go perfectly with most of the hymns and songs in Alleluia Aotearoa! with their high-minded, almost Victorian emphasis on self-improvement; but like them they too seem largely unreal. Lex orandi, lex credendi – as you pray, so you believe – thus it often seems that our prayers are little more than the expression of our good intentions, designed to reassure us that we still have something to offer.
From the first century to the present day it has been for the love of the Lord Jesus Christ and for the hope of heaven that the saints and martyrs have lived and died. Or were Perpetua and her companions thrown to the lions for ecology and cultural safety? If you are despairing and dying, will inclusive language and social justice see you right? When you are desperate to find a meaning and a purpose to life, will sustainable living and biculturalism provide the answer? I rather doubt it. But we are not despairing or desperate. We are just a little too pleased with ourselves for that, despite the fact that we have a certain adolescent anxiety about our identity which (along with the need for some rather unconvincing self-congratulation) has been part of our national make-up for as long as I can remember.
And so we have made the Good the enemy of the Best. We have put some of our nicest and most politically correct idols with their lovely feet of clay into the place of the Living God, without really facing up to what we have done. Perhaps that is because we have used words not as a means of telling the truth, but as a figleaf for our evasions.
Surely it’s about time that Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall for good.
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