I've been asked to share a little bit of what I've been learning over the last couple months, and though I wish I had time to write something that is not directly connected to classwork, it has become apparent that that will not happen!! The following is a couple excerpts from a paper I've been working on for The Christian Imagination with Loren Wilkenson which focuses on the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff, Dorothy Sayers, Annie Dillard, and Jeremy Begbie (I would highly recommend reading Jeremy Begbie - I plan to take a class from him this summer!) seen through my own personal and cultural background. So that is the context for the next few posts... For more interesting material you should go over to Paul's blog where he's posted a video of Noah singing along with Karsten!
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The church my Russlander great grandfather built is located forty kilometers northwest of Saskatoon. It is a simple whitewashed wooden structure with a green tin roof, sitting double-steepled atop a hill surrounded by rolling fields of canola. The interior is painted a muted light green and well-worn pews stained rich sepia by the long years line each side of the sanctuary. The floors are scuffed and rich as the pews while the gothic shaped windows draw the eye upwards to the unadorned vaulted ceiling. This was the center of communal life for this small Russlander community. It was here that milestones, both in life and death, were marked and seen as a testament of God’s grace at work in the world. This year the church that my great grandfather built is closing in order to move the congregation to the community center of the town nearby. The hope is that, by moving their place of worship nearer to town, the church can better serve the community and fulfill its missional role.
For the Anabaptist ‘peace’ is central to the understanding of the church’s role in the world. But there is a tenuous relationship between living as a peaceful presence in the world and the responsibility to speak into a world where violence reigns. My own denomination has been strongly influenced by the evangelical impulse. It was this impulse that led the leaders of my great grandfather’s church to transition from German to English services and eventually encouraged many congregants to move into urban centers and take up secular careers like my grandfather who became a public school principle. Anabaptist communities, like the Mennonites of central Saskatchewan, are no longer tied to the land as they once were, and as such the community commitment to traditions of craft, music, and community life have begun to wane. And though these demographic and cultural shifts are reflections of greater trends in Canadian society, I wonder if the Anabaptist commitment to peace will be unable to find physical form as these traditionally counter cultural communities become like everyone else.There is no denying that balancing relevant cultural and social engagement with the Anabaptist commitment to live as a ‘city on a hill’ is a difficult tension to maintain. And perhaps this tension between “against culture” and “in agreement with culture” needs to be laid aside for a more embodied and incarnational encounter. The question I want to ask is what does a peaceful aesthetic look like?
It seems appropriate, when trying to develop my own understanding of the arts founded in Anabaptist practice and culture, to begin with Wolterstorff. The very little that has been written on the arts from an Anabaptist perspective has focused primarily on the work of Wolterstorff for his strong affirmation of the materiality of art-making and responsibility of the artist as one who actively building shalom. This philosophy of arts finds its foundation in the creation narrative. The earth is humanity’s home and Adam (literally “earthling” in Hebrew) is charged with responsibility over Creation. His duty as a creature is to be creation’s “gardener”, to shape and order nature, for the purpose of supporting human flourishing. This vocation is understood as threefold: first to God, then to humanity, and finally to creation itself. Shalom can be understood as the harmonious condition of all three relationships. Material art objects are active expressions of this ‘shalom building’, and are not primarily a means of personal expression or what Wolterstorff labels as “objects of disinterested contemplation”.
No culture has existed without the arts, and certainly Anabaptist and Mennonite communities are no exception. There are several very positive affirmations one can make of this distinct cultural aesthetic. The aesthetic of the Mennonite tradition is one that is grounded in the created world. It shows an appreciation for functionality and the everyday, specifically of the traditional work of the household and the community. This creative work of the household is most often observed in the form of ‘craft’. From Wolterstorff’s perspective craft is worthy and admirable as a way in which humanity has answered the call to steward creation because it is so strongly tied to purpose and action and usually functions as a vehicle for enriching human life. Seerveld, another author from the Dutch Reformed tradition, takes the value of craft and the creative work of the household farther. He writes that living an aesthetically obedient life includes choosing hand made and home made objects mass produced objects of consumption. The simplicity of Mennonite furniture, the practices of gardening and canning, harmony in hymn singing, quilting and stitch work all are facets of a rich aesthetic tradition grounded in a respect for creation that does not often get the credit it deserves. Unfortunately, in the last fifty years true and thoughtful functionality have been consistently laid aside for convenience and productivity. Seerveld strongly labels this value of productivity and convenience over an aesthetic that values creation “Baal Worship”. One only needs to consider the bland anesthetic cityscape of midwestern suburbia, which is more suitable to a lifestyle of consumption than to wholistic human living, to understand what Seerveld is describing.
From what Seerveld and Wolterstorff write, interaction with ‘space’ and ‘land’ are good indicators as to whether or not we are fully embodying our human vocation. A box store or strip mall is an example of space shaped by consumerism, whereas space which demonstrates a “dynamic wholeness” is at peace with human life and the created world. “Dynamic wholeness” does not necessarily mean opulence or extravagance. Though my great grandfather’s church is primarily an example of restraint and minimalism, this does not make it less obedient in an aesthetic sense. The aesthetics of restraint, subtlety, and symmetry are all appropriate in their own context, especially when considering how minimalism is in aesthetic agreement with the prairie landscape. A simple well-built church may be a more aesthetically obedient choice than an ornate Cathedral, dependant of course on the environmental and cultural circumstances. This being said, minimalism and simplicity should not be confused with aesthetic poverty exemplified in the box store inspired mega churches of suburbia.
Not only have our spaces for living working and worshipping become aesthetically malnourished, our society has become increasingly withdrawn from the creative process as a whole. We no longer live as creative and aesthetic people, rather we choose to consume product of mass-production and seldom engage in the creative making ourselves. Something profound is lost in such a radical transformation. We are no longer at peace with creation, our neighbor, our Creator, but live as detached people without a homeland. Our living spaces reflect this alienation. The suburbs (created to allow people of means to escape the violence of the city), where people are relegated to their own plots of land detached from the places they work and do business, ironically create an environment where violence can occur unchecked because there is no sense of relationship or community in the suburb. The absence of relationship cultivates violence.
Labels: aesthetics, consumerism, land, peace
