IMAGINE THAT

IMAGINE THAT!

© Rev. Dr. Gary Blaine

August 17, 2008

University Congregational Church

Reading: “To Make Meaning” by Judith Rock

“Part of our standard equipment as human beings is the need to make meaning. This need is not an extra, not a luxury, add-on only a few can afford.

If we’re not able to make positive meaning out of our lives, if we’re too wounded or angry to do that, we still make: we make destruction for ourselves and others.

The raw material for all out making is the rich, fermenting, sometimes messiness called being human. Think of the mess you see in any working visual human. The artist doesn’t clean up the mess before she starts making art. He doesn’t tidy it away by making art. The artist paws through, picks through, revels in sometimes apparently useless hopeless stuff, because it’s her material – the flesh and blood and bone of her art. In the same way we use, revel in, pick through, paw through, the rich, smelly, sometimes old and crusted, sometimes new and unopened, sometimes apparently useless hopeless stuff of our lives to make meaning.”[1]

The famous photographer, Yousuf Karsh, remembers photographing the Spanish cellist, Pablo Casals, with his back to the camera. Karsh said, “I was so moved on listening to him play Bach that I could not for some moments attend to photography. I have never posed anyone else facing away from the camera. It just seemed right.

“Years later when the photograph was on exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, I was told that every day an elderly gentleman would come and stand for many minutes in front of it. Full of curiosity, a curator finally inquired gingerly, ‘Sir, why do you come here and stand in front of this picture?’

With a withering glance the gentleman admonished, ‘Hush, young man. Can’t you see I am listening to the music?’”[2]

At first glance this story might seem little more than the anecdote of an elderly eccentric. But I assure you that it points to one of the most important aspects of the human mind, the imagination. We do not often think about the imagination even though we use it constantly. When we talk about it we generally refer to children, writers, poets, and artists. Do you remember some of our famous Congregationalist artists such as Walt Disney, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Milton, and Isaac Watts? Think about the great love of the arts in this very congregation, comprised of so much talent. We have poets, painters, actors, instrumentalists, dancers, vocalists, sculptors, writers, photographers, potters, and fabric artists to name only a few.

One of the observations made by Hartford Seminary about our congregational survey was that we seemed to be a niche congregation for middle and older adults who are seeking an educated and intellectual center for our religious expression. I think that is only partly true. I think we are also a niche congregation for religion and the arts. To be honest with you, I find that a much more attractive image or brand that invites a broad spectrum of reason and imagination. Ralph Waldo Emerson declared that without the arts the human being is but a “poor, naked, shivering creature.”

We sometimes forget that imagination is the precursor of the rational process. An object outside the mind is sensed by touch, sight, smell, taste, or sound. What we sense creates an image in our mind. The same is true for experience. The beating by a parent or the soft caresses of a lover create an image in our mind. Our sense of the object or our experience creates an image in our mind. These are memories that are not limited to a picture image. There are moments when I smell my grandfather’s pipe tobacco, or taste the sorghum syrup on my grandmother’s pancakes. Sense and experience serve as memory data.

Eventually memory and data emerge as symbols in our mind. What are words but the symbols of memory that we use to recreate or describe experiences? It is the imagination that attempts to put the experience into some expression. It is the imagination that connects memories to words in the effort to create meaning. While we are creating that memory we are giving interpretation to our experiences.

If we think that a “rational” person is one who only lives by verifiable data we have not understood the role that imagination has played in the process of reasoning. Imagination is necessary to bring together the sense data and experience and put them in some kind of order by which we understand, interpret, and use the data to shape and reshape life. The mind seeks to make order out of the millions of sense data that shapes and reshapes our lives. Imagination also allows us to reorder the information that the mind receives and give it new meaning and possibilities. Let me offer a couple of stories to illustrate my point.

Two ministers were fishing on a river. High above the river ran a highway with a bridge that crossed the river. As the ministers were fishing cars would whiz down the highway. Soon there would be the sound of squealing brakes, a moment of silence pierced by human screams, followed by a splashing thud. After ten or twelve cars went off the highway, one minister turned to the other and said, “Maybe we should change the sign.”

“Oh, How’s that?” asked his partner.

“Well maybe our sign should read, ‘The Bridge is Out,’ instead of ‘The End is Near.’”

The empirical data of this story had not changed. The fact that the bridge had collapsed into the river was not altered. How the ministers interpreted the facts and the word symbols they used to relate the facts made all the difference in the story. The idea of changing the sign and its symbols represented an act of imagination that totally shifted the interpretation of facts to the drivers up above.

Consider the kindergarten teacher who asked the class if anyone knew the meaning of the word “infinity.”

“I do!” shouted a little boy waving his hand in the air.

“Well,” said the teacher, “What does ‘infinity’ mean?”

“Infinity is a box of Wheaties,” said the little boy proudly.

The class laughed. The teacher frowned and scolded the little boy for being a smart aleck. But a teacher’s aide who had witnessed this exchange went to the boy during recess and asked him why he thought infinity was a box of Wheaties. The little boy told her he had eaten Wheaties for breakfast. On the box of Wheaties was a baseball player who was holding a box of Wheaties with a baseball player holding a box of Wheaties, ad infinitum. The boy had correctly interpreted the meaning of infinity from the sense data on the box of Wheaties. He simply used a word image and symbol that did not relate to the teacher’s experience or symbol system.

By all means, let us approach the religious quest with critical thought. And let us approach religious issues with provocative imagination. Imagination allows us to cast and recast the issues that human beings confront in multiple ways. Imagination has greater freedom than empirical data to explore and express the mystery of life. Imagination is free to play with experience in a variety of ways that empirical data cannot. I will also bet you that scientists will tell you that imagination is crucial to the scientific method, from hypothesis to proof conclusion.

Andre Warnod told this story about Pablo Picasso. One day Picasso reminisced, “Do you remember that head of a bull I had in my last show? I’ll tell you how it was conceived. One day I noticed in a corner the handlebar and seat of a bicycle, lying in such a way as to look like a bull’s head. I picked them up and put them together so that nobody could possibly fail to realize that this seat and this handlebar from a bike were really a bull’s head. My metamorphosis was successful, and now I wish there could be another one, this time in reverse. Suppose that one day my head and bull was to be thrown on a junk heap. Maybe a little boy would come along and notice it and say to himself, ‘Now there’s something I could use as a handlebar for my bike.’ If that ever happens we will have brought off a double metamorphosis.”[3]

The psalmist declared, “O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, or discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing: O Lord, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror. My soul is struck with terror, while you, O Lord – how long?” (Psalm 6: 1-2) The old Negro sang, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows but Jesus.” Edvard Munch’s painting, The Scream, is probably the greatest presentation of existential horror in modern art. The psalmist would understand it in an instant.

The psalmist also declared, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:3-4) Indeed the photographs of the earth taken from the moon; or the nebula, stars, and planets photographed by the Hubble space craft offer not only the grandeur of the universe, but also the miniscule place of human beings in it. Where, indeed, is the speck of humanity in the imagination of God?

Sigmund Freud would argue that God is nothing more than a human projection of fear and hope, power and control, punishment and rebirth. But Fyodor Dostoevsky argued persuasively in novels such as The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, and The Idiot that with the death of God follow the death of humankind. Indeed humanity organizes against itself for its own destruction. Dostoevsky plumbed the depth of human freedom and will that Freud could never fathom.

Recall the Biblical story of Miriam dancing after the exodus, or King David dancing into the city of Jerusalem. But was there ever a sweeter dance on film than the jig danced by the farmer in the movie Babe? Or think of the passion of Jesus, languishing beneath the whip, the crown of thorns, and gasping for breath on the cross. Who could not weep at such a scene, just as I wept at the close of the Wichita Music Theatre’s production of Les Miserable? Was this not also a morality play fraught with human compassion and sacrifice, love and the death of dreams, betrayal and reconciliation, sin and redemption?

Judith Rock wrote the artist’s raw material is flesh, bone, and blood. Some of it is hopeless, messy, smelly, tired, and old. Some of the artist’s material is new and vibrant. Some of it is pregnant with possibility, thunderous with hope, and reckless with life. I submit to you that the real stuff of religious experience is the same material. Otherwise faith is sterile and irrelevant. Both art and religion require the imagination to make meaning out of the human experience.

When Leonardo da Vinci was painting “The Last Supper” he searched the streets of Rome for the perfect model for the image of Jesus. One day he found a young man who was not only handsome but also expressed a gentle compassion through is facial features. The young man agreed to sit for the Christ. The man’s name was Pietro Bandenelli. Da Vinci’s work on the painting took years to complete. Finally the time came for da Vinci to paint the image of Judas Iscariot. Again the artist searched the streets for a model. This time he found a man whose features were hardened and suspicious. His eyes furtively glanced about him, as he seemed almost paranoid or guilty of something. He agreed to sit for da Vinci. After several sessions the artist was finished with the model and paid him for his time. “By the way,” said Leonardo, “what is your name?”

The man replied, “Maestro, my name is Pietro Bandenelli. I once sat for Christ.”

What meaning we make of life requires deep imagination, especially when we look at the raw material that life sometimes gives us. I believe that when we make creative meaning it is both a work of art and a religious endeavor. When we make transformative meaning it is the faithful application of vision.

I think of Ludwig van Beethoven. Yes, that cranky, haughty, ill-humored, angry man. We know that Beethoven began to lose his hearing at the age of thirty. By the time he died in 1827 he was totally deaf. But even in the last decade of his life he continued to compose such masterworks as Two Sonatas for Piano and Cello, Piano Sonata in B Flat Major, String Quartet in E Flat Major, and, of course, the beloved Ninth Symphony. We all marvel at Beethoven’s triumph over painful adversity. His despair over his malady was so great that he even considered suicide. “But only Art,” he wrote, “held back; for, ah, it seemed unthinkable for me to leave the world forever before I produced all that I felt called upon to produce.”[4]

Yet few remember that Art worked on Beethoven’s soul from the time he was a little boy. His father was a drunk who often came home late at night and dragged Ludwig out of bed to make him play the piano for hours on end. After his mother’s death the situation got worse. The old man consumed so much alcohol there was not money left to feed his children. Young Ludwig went to his father’s employer and demanded that one half of his father’s salary would be given to him so the children could be fed. His employer agreed and then stated, “That will deplete the revenue from liquor excise.”[5]

Such circumstances have depleted many other souls to the point that they too fell victim to alcohol, or depression, and such rebellion that they destroyed their own lives and the lives around them. But Beethoven was driven by a deeper imagination for his life:

“O ye men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the cause of my seeming so. From early childhood my heart and mind was disposed to the gentle feeling of good will. I was ever eager to accomplish great deeds…”[6]

Imagination drove the young Beethoven, not only to the grandeur of his compositions, but also to the very idea that he could transform impossible circumstances into artistic greatness. Imagination propelled a young genius to become one of the greatest composers of Western culture. I believe that is a sacred movement every bit as important as the final outcome.

Finis

[1] Judith Rock, “Making Meaning, Love and a Mess,” The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies (2003), Vol. 15, #2, p. 6.

[2] Clifton Fadiman, editor; The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1985), p. 106.

[4] “Beethoven, The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Macropaedia, Vol. 14, p. 615; Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1986.