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Walking on Water, published in 1980, explores the connection between serving spirit and creating art in any form, honoring creativity as a divine gift. This is a book I return to again and again for nourishment. A friend of mine at a denominational college reported sadly that one of his students came to complain to him about a visiting professor. This professor was having the students read some twentieth century fiction, and the student was upset both at the language of this fiction, and the amount of what she considered to be immoral sex. My friend, knowing the visiting professor to be a person of both intelligence and integrity, urged the student to go and talk with him about these concerns. "Oh, I couldn't do that," the student said. "He isn't a Christian." "He" is a Roman Catholic. If we fall into Satan's trap of assuming that other people are not Christians because they do not belong to our own particular brand of Christianity, no wonder we become incapable of understanding the works of art produced by so-called non-Christians, whether they be atheists, Jews, Buddhists, or anything else outside a frame of reference we have made into a closed rather than an open door. If I cannot see evidence of incarnation in a painting of a bridge in the rain by Hokusai, a book by Chaim Potok or Isaac Bashevis Singer, in music by Bloch or Bernstein, then I will miss its significance in an Annunciation by Franciabigio, the final chorus of the St. Matthew Passion, the words of a sermon by John Donne. One of the most profoundly moving moments at [a spiritual conference] came for me when Jesse, a student from Zimbabwe, told me, "I am a good Seventh Day Adventist, but you have shown me God." Jesse will continue to be a good Seventh Day Adventist as he returns to Africa to his family; I will struggle with my own way of belief; neither of us felt the need or desire to change the other's Christian frame of reference. For that moment, at least, all our doors and windows were wide open; we were not carefully shutting out God's purifying light, in order to feel safe and secure; we were bathed in the same light that burned and yet did not consume the bush. We walked barefoot on holy ground. |
