All the leaves of the New Testament are rustling…
May 14th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Is a Christian selfish to hope for glory? CS Lewis argues that it can’t be. When we really understand the reality of eternity, we will feel its weight in everything about this life.
“At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in. “ [p43]
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”
“This does not mean we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously – no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner – no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.” [p46]
Quotations from “The Weight of Glory” by C.S. Lewis, in “The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses” (1949).
“Mudpies and Sandcastles” (2011)
April 27th, 2011 § 4 Comments
"Mudpies & Sandcastles" (2011) by Gareth Leaney
CS Lewis once wrote:
“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
It’s an image which has stuck with me since I read it, and which I’ve wanted to try to paint for a while. After revisiting the image in conversations at New Word Alive the other week, I finally got around to putting this together.
The Weight of Glory
April 21st, 2011 § Leave a Comment
At New Word Alive last week, we were thinking about faith and how our future hope helps us to keep going as Christians in the present. As I talked it over each day with a bunch of lads, we started thinking about how this actually works. How does our hope for the future help us in suffering and in the struggle against sin.
This passage from “The Weight of Glory” by CS Lewis kept coming to mind:
if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
I’ve wanted to represent this idea in a painting for a while, but thinking about this last week has finally spurred me on to actually do it. Look out for “Mudpie Sandcastles” – I’ll post a photo up here when it’s finished. But for now, read the quote from Lewis again. Are you half-hearted? Are your too strong or too weak?
The whole of the essay is worth a read: The Weight of Glory (pdf)
If Art is a conversation, who’s to blame when I don’t understand?
January 26th, 2011 § 4 Comments
Following on from my last post suggesting that art should be a conversation, a colleague of mine asked a helpful question: If art is about conversation and communication, who’s fault is it when I can’t understand what the artist is saying?
Communication always involves two parties – the speaker and the listener. As such, you won’t be surprised to hear that I think it’s probably both. Sometimes I think artists are deliberately obscure because it makes what they’re producing seem more significant than it is. But as the recipient of a piece of art (to use Lewis’s terminology), you can’t do much about the piece of art you’re looking at. So is there anything you can do?
Are you bothered about the artist? Do you care who the artist is, and are you bothered about what they want to say? At the very least, this means seeing them as a real human being with something to see about the world and their place in it. But it might also mean finding out about the artist: What’s their background? What have they done before? What matters to them?
Have you made an effort to speak the language? If art is a conversation, then every artist is contributing in their own language – a language of colour, symbols and metaphors which put across their view of the world. Have you tried to get inside the language the artist is using? You don’t need to be an expert. Ask yourself how the colours make you feel. What do the elements in the painting remind you of?
What were you expecting? You may be expecting the artist to communicate through their work, but they might not be making a statement of fact or opinion. They might be trying to create an impression. Or are they asking you a question? Or forcing you to ask a question yourself? Think about how you’d communicate face-to-face – there’s more to a conversation than just stating facts.
Do you like it? This is often the first question with which we approach a piece of work, “do I like it.” And I think it’s a valid question. But it shouldn’t be the first question, because it’s about what we want to see, not what we’re actually seeing. And when you do ask the question, you should always know why you like or dislike a piece. Because then you’re starting to respond…
