York University Sermon                    October 1981

 

Music, Art, Science - and Being Human

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About 20 years ago I wrote a small book with the title THE CTREATIVE (sic) IMAGINATION.   It was about science for I was a teacher of science, but also about art, poetry, philosophy, religion; ondeed (sic) about all the activities I had worked in or adventured in and found exciting.   It was written primarily for my fellow-Quaker, but the BBC discovered it and asked me to rewrite it in thr (sic) form of four broadcasts.

 

I mention this only because the reason for the request was important.   The Director of Religious Broadcasting felt that it was an unusual approach to what in traditional Church alngauge is called the Incarnation.   He said that the Church in general had never really faced the reality of the Incarnation nor fully accepted its implications.

 

What does incarnation mean?  Simply being human; the truth about life being seen comprehensively in a fellow human being  The word incarnation has become a bit of religious jargon often used with pious overtones, and if I had put it into my title many of you might have been put off.

 

In restricted religious thinking, the idea presumed this: that God made a precise decision, at a particular time and place in history to show himself in human form, in the flesh.   He was imagined to do this as though he had never done anything like it before.   Thus the apppearance of Jesus was made almost a sort of magic.   Religion has always tended to lean towards magic and, as a distinguished Catholic psychiatrist once said to me, to become the institutionalization of magic.

 

This approach inevitably blurs the essential truth of the Incarnation as being fully human.   In some parts of the Church you see this plainly.  I once had a talk with a priest of the Ethiopian Church in Addis Ababa.  For him the Incarnation was definitely not a full reality but  a gesture, a wave of the hand  on the part of God,

 

Theology has always asserted that God is beyond our comprehension, too infinitely great for our small minds.  But what is the impression that the mass of believers has been given?  That the Church know about God and can speak authoritatively about the will of God, can interpret actions accordingly.  The result has been that people.  The result has been that people come to the human Jesus knowing what to look for and, as always in such an atmosphere, finding it.

 

This started the wrong way round.  It is not as it should happen, not as it actually happened when Jesus was encountered by his fellow men.  My plea was that we should go back to the beginning, to do as we have to do in all other creative work, achieve as far as possible the “innocent eye” and let the imagination play freshly upon the material before us.

 

In fact we know little directly about God and much of what has been said about him is nonsense.  We need to start from the other end, the human end.  If the Incarnation was an intention, then surely this was its purpose.  We need to start from the human end, - and what do we see? A man who startled his fellow Jews out of their complacency and their certainties, who seem to threaten the whole structure on which they had built their society and their own conduct.  As H. G. Wells put it, he shook the powerful out of the snug burrows they had made for themselves[.]  He showed in his every action that the good life was more than obedience was more than obedience to the law, that we are taken far beyond these by the demands of love and compassion.  In the matter of effort he offered a strange paradox: that the Kingdom of Heaven is yet to be achieved, but that it is already among us.  It is a paradox in which we have to live today.

 

In their culture the Jews were the most profoundly religious people in history;  and Jesus was deeply rooted in that culture.  Yet to the Jews he was unexpected, unrecognised  a profound shock.  He broke through pious and cherished conventions; he did not offer autorative establishment pronouncements, but instead disturbing insights.  He did not do people’s thinking for them, but provoked them into doing their own for themselves.  Instead of giving tidy answers to questions, he offered enigmas, paradoxes, and parables.

 

In short, he was not a religious pedagogue, not a teacher[.]  He was a creative genius who could offer a new vision and a new life - even if it seemed, as it did to many, like a movement into confusions, a light that was too dazzling.

 

Let’s look a little further as to what it means to say that he was a creative genius.  Some time ago Neam Chomsky, thinking about the creativity of the scientist, wrote this:    “We need humility.  We don’t know a damn thing about human creativity, about intuition and about nearly everything else of that sort.”

 

Psychologically that is probably true.   But can’t we at least say what a genius does for us?  Would you accept this: that he is one who opens a door, a door that you didn’t even know was there?  That he is one who takes you into the unpredictable and leaves you wondering that you never guessed that it was possible?

 

Lately my thoughts about this have been refreshed by certain vivid experiences.  They brought home with sudden clarity the impact of genius on ordinary folk like myself and my friends.  I’ll quickly describe them because it will be a way of understanding what tremendous possibilities there are in being human.

 

Earlier this year my wife and I were staying with a musical friend in Hampstead.  She had been a member of my staff 35 years ago.  There is a lot of music making in her Hampstead house and I was there at a scratch performance of Schubert’s Trout Qunitet (sic).  I say scratch, because it was an impulsive get-together of five musicians, all very well qualified, to do something they had never done together before.

 

It was one of the most exciting musical experiences I have ever had.  It took t[w]ice as long as a finished performance.  These musicians could not say: We know what Schubert intended; it goes like this, same as we have always done it.  No, they had to approach it with humility but also imagination.  They had to make discoveries about the music and about each other; they had to accept criticism happily from each other, repeat passages or a whole movement because their perceptions were at first inadequate.  There is no perfect way of performing a piece of music; you always bring something of yourself to it, and in a group there has to be a sensitive recognition of this.

 

To be among these people in their venture was a privilege.  The excitement had me almost bouncing off my chair.  I must have listened to the Trout Quintet a hundred times before, but it was as though I was hearing it for the first time.

 

About a month later we were in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.  We had gone to Holland to refresh our experience of its great painters.  On a grey, overcast, drizzling morning we went into the Van Gogh building.  The colours in that museum were as brilliant as the sky outside was dull.

 

I wrote up these two experiences for a religious journal.  I argued that to have these moving experiences from an encounter with two immensely gifted human beings  should help us to discover how to approach the incarnate Jesus.  We do not start with general ideas of music or musical perfection and then use these to explain Schubert.  We start with the experience of the music itself.  The reality and depth of this makes any concept of perfection meaningless.  True genius and creativeness takes us beyond patterns of judgement, beyond theories, principles and ideals.

 

We need to remember how odd many people of genius have been: odd in their personal lives.  You will know about Van Gogh’s madness, of his cutting off the lobe of his ear, of his clumsy attempt to shoot himself and the lingering death that followed.  I thought of Dryden’s words in Absalom Achitophel:

                        Great wits are sure to madness near allied

                        And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

 

Ought we to wish away the oddities and occasional tragedy that accompany genius, or should we accept them in the strange complex of the unusual personality?  I felt that we had to accept, and never to detach the marvellous (sic) creation from the strange creator.  Beethoven and Newton came into my mind.

 

When I listen to the later works of Beethoven, I’m sometimes jerked into remembering that they were written when he was stone deaf.  Also that it has been said that his deafness was the result of tertiary syphilis, [the] end product of an infection inherited from his parents.  How strange it is that such triumph can come out of such deprivation.  That is what we call the work of redemption; it is always happening amid (sic) the evil and suffering in the world.

 

My mention of Newton provoked an interesting question from a correspondent.  She had enjoyed all that I had written, but asked: isn’t there a sense in which Jesus was different from all the rest? In science we have now got beyond Newton, but can we imagine that we can ever go beyond Jesus?

 

The answer to this must be an unequivocal: yes and no.  You can say that Einstein has gone beyond Newton only if you detach the men from their work.  This you must not do, for science is a personal activity.  It is carried out by human human (sic) beings and stamped with the nature of the human mind.  If you see Newton in relation to the culture and knowledge of his time, you will recognise that his figure will always tower over the history of science, as irreducible and stature as that of Shakespeare.  He was very odd, with a strange mixture of interests and contradictory inclinations.  But think what a leap of imagination he made, in a world still dominated by Aristotle.  In that wolrd (sic) you could only explain movement by a force continuously applied to an object.  How did he break away and imagine movement going on forever without a force continuously applied? How did he imagine the immaterial force of gravity acting across the vast dimensions of empty space; as Koestler puts it, pervading the whole universe like the Holy Ghost.  How did he imagine this at a time when even Kepler, who first correctly described the motion of the planets, had to imagine invisible spokes to keep the planets moving in their elliptical tracks?

 

So - holding together the scientist and his science - we can see that we shall never get beyond Newton.  And when we think of the extraordinary imaginative quality of Einstein’s work, we can see that we will never get beyond Einstein.

 

However, our understanding of the universe will go beyond both.  Here there is an unexpected link with Jesus.  Think of him in his own environment 2000 years ago , of the way he responded to encounters, dealt with critical situations, talked necessarily in the language of his time.  Must we not say of him, as we do of Newton, that we shall never go beyond him; his stature will never diminish.   For all time he is a supreme example of how to act imaginatively and creatively in human situations, breaking through the bonds of convention and tradition.

 

We have to admit that there is a sense in which we have to go beyond Jesus.  It is closely parallel to the way in which we go beyond Newton.  Newton could not imagine relativity because he did not live in 1905.  Jesus cannot answer the practical questions of the present day for the same reason.  But just as there is a living link between Newton and Einstein, so there is a living link between Jesus and any of us who care to acknowledge his genius.

 

How can I illustrate this?  There are people who say that Jesus was a male chauvinist, a sexist.  Such critics are incapable of thinking historically.

 

[The sense of the above paragraph is repeated and expanded in the following paragraph but there is no attempt to delete the previous paragraph.  It has therefore been left in the transcription]

How can I illustrate this?  There are people who say that Jesus is irrelevant because he accepted a male dominated society, he was a male chauvinist, a sexist.  Such critics are incapable of thinking historically.  Do they expect Jesus to have talked as though he were speaking in 1981 to readers of the women’s page in the Guardian?  Because he was fully human he had to act and speak in relation to his actual environment.  See how revolutionary he was in that!

 

Rosemary Hartill effectively deals with this matter in one of her “Thoughts for the Day” before the BBC News.  I’ll give you most of her points, though perhaps mixed up with some of my own.  You cannot understand the Attitude of Jesus if you do not know how women were thought of and treated in his community.  Careful study is required.

 

Take the incident of the woman with an issue of blood.  In nearly all primitive communities men have been frightened of the physiology of women[.] [A]nd in some the most shocking indignities have been inflicted on women during menstruation.  The jews were not as bad as some others, but nevertheless during menstruation a woman was untouchable by a man and the man not to be touched by the woman.  A woman approached Jesus who had been bleeding continuously for 12 years.  She touched only his cloak, and then fell trembling to the ground at the thought of what she had dared.  Jesus should have shuddered away from her.  Instead he trated her with compassion; told her: Youre going to be better now; go in peace.

 

He should at once have once have (sic) gone away for ritual cleansing.  He didn’t; he got on straight away with the next job, to reassure some parents who mistakenly thought their child was dead.

 

There’s the occasion when he approached the Samaritan woman at the well and asked her for a drink.  He knew she was promiscuous, but he engaged her in conversation at a deeper level than most other conversations recorded in the gospels.  And she understood him.  The disciples were shocked when the[y] came upon them; they could not understand such irregular conduct.

 

What about the story of Martha and Mary.  Some people think it implied that Jesus did not think housework important.  That was not so.  Women were not expected to talk about theology, and such important matters, with men.  Their job was in the kitchen.  But what Jesus was saying was this: Mary wants to talk with me about the things that deeply matter; don’t try to drag her away at such a moment.

 

(Rose) (sic)There are other incidents that equally indicate that Jesus accepted women in true equality, while his fellow Jews refused to do so.   Further there is plenty of evidence that women understood him better than did the men.   He had reason to become very impatient with the disciples over their dimwittedness, but never did this hppen with women.   As far as his chosing only men as disciples, Rosemary Hartill pointed out that Jesus was a realist.  The wandering life he offered his men was dangerous enough.  How would a woman have fared?

 

In the end, it was the women who dared to stand by him.  All but one of the men ran away.

 

So we can see that in the matter of the sexes, Jesus though he seemed to be working within the culture of the time, was in fact opening it up to the future.  He was introducing a movement of the human spirit that would in the long run prove more radical and permanent than the work of the suffragettes or the fashions of women’s lib.  The Church has moved painfully slowly, but the pace is increasing.

 

To return to the question: is there any respect in which Jesus stands out beyond the other men of genius to whom we are indebted?  So far, everything I have said about him has established a continuity with all that is in men and women.  I can only make a tentative answer to this question and theologians may think it inadequate..  But I must try to talk in a language that is acceptable to all, including those to whom theological language means nothing.

 

Where Jesus stands out is in his wholeness, in the all-embracing comprehensiveness of his challenge to our lives.  He did not paint pictures, he did not create music.  (He was, however, profoundly a poet)  His work of creation was among people, in community, in relationships.

 

The artist breaks through into new expression because he has a fresh vision of form and colour.  Correspon[din]gly Jesus had a fresh vision of what was possible in relationships between people, a new vision of a community that would not be restrictive but would open doors to endless opportunity, in intimate friendships, in group life, in politics.

 

This his approach was all-embracing, at least in its implied potential.   For everything we do of value, whether in the arts or the sciences or the innumerable crafts of mankind, is born out of relationships, nourished by relationships.

 

I’ve asked myself if the implication of this is is that Jesus was asking for complete integrity of personality, a wholeness an allround dependability.  This is not asked of the artist.  There can be a sharp cleavage between his work and his treatment of people.  He may paint wonderful pictures yet live a life lacking in integrity.  He may work his way ruthlessly through several wives in search of ever new experience, casting each aside like a worn garment when she has ceased to be stimulating.

 

This raises a worrying question.  If we demanded of the artist or musician complete integrity of character, would he still produce original and vibrant work?

 

It is at this point that I’m more than previously thinking out loud, rather than trying to come to firm conclusions.   I’m sure we have got to go beyond integrity to understand the significance of Jesus.   I’ve known several people of great integrity, but not all of them had passion and vision, not all of them could convey warmth or make the world light up.  When we think of integrity we often consciously or unconsciously judge by patterns or standards of conduct, of acceptable moralities.

 

Isn’t there something beyond this? - something that will enable us to take oddities, inconsistencies and contradictions in our stride?  Real love will hold two people together without either of them wanting to reform the other and make him more perfect.  “I love you, warts and all” is a most important statement of the nature of love.

 

Perhaps we can go further.   Can we understand Jesus if we don’t get the message of the first chapter of Genesis?

 

In that marvellous poetic myth, God is seen, not as a moraliser or a law-giver, but as a creator, almost surprising himself by the variety of things he produced.  God is seen not as a moraliser or a law-giver, but a creator, almost surprising himself by the variety of things he produced.  And he put a man and a woman in the middle of it, to see what they would make of it all.  He gave them the freedom to make a mess of it if they wanted to.  But he made them in his own image.  That was not an image of divine perfection.  That chapter definitely states that it was the impulse and the ability to create, to enjoy and use all that he provided.

 

My mind leaps from this to the nature of Jesus.   I see him as one who did not come to judge the world but who was ready to enter into every human situation to see what could be made of it, to knock down the walls of the ticky-tacky boxes in which people had shut themselves so that they could move out into the world and live life abundantly, being - in his words - born again.

 

I see him, like so many creators, as a man of intense passion, a passion perhaps too great for the body that had to carry it.  So her (sic) burst out with language that the mass of people could not understand, and could become very impatient with stupidity, even among his closest friends.

 

He was not seen by the Jews in general as a man of integrity but as a distinctly knobbly character, a man of contradiction.  As David Winter pointed out the other day in a broadcast, he substituted wine for water at a party and sat down with prostitutes and swindlers.  He didn’t bother to wash his hands when he ought to have done.

 

I wanted the reading before my talk for the sake of the last sentence.  This man is mad, he’s crazy, he’s raving.  Why bother to listen to him?  But what was the next sentence after that? Others said: These are not the words of a man possessed by a devil.  How could a devil open the eyes of the blind?  I like to think that they were speaking metaphorically, that they saw Jesus as releasing people from spiritual blindness of spirit.

 

Any of you troubled that I should present the good life as embracing the knobbly and the distorted, the contradictory? Would you prefer something that offers a tidier pattern?     Let me off you a parable.  A little over a week ago I was walking with my painting materials under my arm along a dusty road on the island of Crete.

 

The previous day I had been painting in a village,  indulging my love of geometry and perspective as I worked in the patterns of walls and roofs.  But here I was in an arid country, as hot and parched as the Kalahari.   I looked round for what I could do.  Along the side of the road were carob trees, the tree of the locust bean.  Those trees were incredibly distorted.   The wide squat trunks looked as thought (sic) they had grown up in agony, ribbed with twisting furrows all the way up.  The limbs moved out from the top  for a long way to the side, then coiled up like great pythons.  What could I make of such apparent ugliness.  But the soil from which they grew was a blazing Indian red, like the soil over most of Africa.  Whatever else it was, it was a picture of intensity.

 

I moved near to the largest and most distorted tree and set to work.  Two other twisted trees beyond it fell into the composition.  It was as though my hand had been taken hold of; the job was finished in half an hour.  I looked at what I had done.  My technique was necessarily only that of an amateur.  But the picture was full of vigour; it was dynamic and filled with movement.  I sought out next day another such tree.  Now better prepared I made a better job of it; took and (sic)hour over it.

 

What this suggests is that we are not only made for the tidy and the geometrical, but that rough and the knobbly are part of the basic material of the creative life; they challenge us to the greatest output of energy.  That applies to persons just as it applies to carob trees.  But this is not to suggest that my self-discipline in geometry and perspective was unnecessary.  When I looked at these paintings I could see that unconsciously this self training underlay my ability to deal with distortion.

 

Similarly, the ability of Jesus to enjoy the down-and-outs constructively, and to carry off his own unconventionality was based on a long-accepted discipline, even though this was not obvious to his critics.

 

Perhaps after all I should say just something that might perhaps be acceptable to both the humanist and the God-believer.  It is about what this incarnation interpretation might mean in my life and yours.   Some of you may have been listening to the series on the furth program conducted by my friend and fellow-Quaker Gerald Priestman.  You will have heard a great variety of experiences of God.  He admits to being vague about God, and so do I.   Some people seek religious evidence in extrasensory perception, telepathy, psychic and mystical experience.   This doesn’t touch me at all deeply.

 

The evidence (sic) of God comes to me through the incarnation, through the passion, energy and surprisingness of Jesus.   But it also comes to me through the faces of those I love, and who love me.  To reflect on the great variety and depth of friendships is to be aware that life is more than what it appears on the surface.   And not only does this awareness come through those we know.

 

I would refer again to Crete I was standing in a little village square, painting standing up.   A little peasant   woman came out of one of the houses, a stooping figure with a face lined with innumerable wrinkles.  She came with a chair for me to sit on.  When I demurred she insisted.    Parakalo, parakalo, parakalo she said.  Please please please!  I sat down and all the wrinkles in her face melted into a delighted smile as she saw me accept her kindness.

 

Then there was the owner of the village taverna where we ate in the evenings under a canopy of vines.  He was an artist in cooking, but also in painting.  He had a studio and gallery in Hersonissos where he painted during the day.  He had me to his studio to see his work, but he only came to see mine when I invited him.

 

He had a handsome face and figure and a beard like a character out of Homer’s Iliad, a god-like dignity and courtesy.  He never lost that courtesy even when dealing with the most vulgar of tourists.  He sat down for a moment with bright but gentle eyes with all of them to discuss the menu.

 

Archive reference PP/KCB 6/6/4  document 04