San Francisco is a city of spectacular buildings - walking around this heavenly city, you see works that literally take your breath away. One of the more recent ones that I loved was the de Young Museum - I could spend a whole day around that spectacular creation, without ever entering it.
Just before you enter it, you are immersed in a work by Andy Goldsworthy, one of the trickster genius artist of our time (along people like Banksy or Guerrilla Girls). Goldsworthy's work is called FAULTLINE - here is a picture:
It is easy to miss this work of art, to step over it or even think it is the result of some mistake or natural disaster. In a SFgate piece when the museum opened, Goldsworthy described his thoughts in working on this piece:
"I wanted a crack that had a certain energy and movement to it, in
contrast to the straight edges of the pavers,'' Goldsworthy said. "I found
that by hitting it from behind with a hammer, it imparted energy and
unpredictability to the line.'' It's a balance of chance and control. "I'm
very demanding of what I want, but the stone's very demanding, too. That's
what creates the tautness and tension of the line. ... I'm enjoying the
delicacy, the precision of this, the line. They're qualities you don't often
associate with stone.''
I was reminded of this brilliant use of the environment to forge an artistic expression yesterday as i read the cover article in the NYT Sunday magazine: The Evangelical Crackup by DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK. The cover from the magazine reminds us all of the power of a visual story:
From my POV, this is a milestone piece, capturing the shifting in the political & churchianity plates over the last several years. The piece has unleashed a torrent of comments among bloggers - ranging from predictions of a death rattle to protestations of the continuing relevancy of values voters to the GOP machine. A few quotes from Kirkpatrick's reporting that grabbed me:
Scot McKnight, an evangelical theologian at North Park University in
Chicago, said, “It is the biggest change in the evangelical movement at
the end of the 20th century, a new kind of Christian social conscience.”
“We have just pounded the drum again and again that, for churches to
reach their full redemptive potential, they have to do more than hold
services — they have to try to transform their communities,” Bill Hybels said.
“If there is racial injustice in your community, you have to speak to
that. If there is educational injustice, you have to do something
there. If the poor are being neglected by the government or being
oppressed in some way, then you have to stand up for the poor.”
In
the past, Hybels has scrupulously avoided criticizing conservative
Christian political figures like Falwell or Dobson. But in my talk with
him, he argued that the leaders of the conservative Christian political
movement had lost touch with their base. “The Indians are saying to the
chiefs, ‘We are interested in more than your two or three issues,’ ”
Hybels said. “We are interested in the poor, in racial reconciliation,
in global poverty and AIDS, in the plight of women in the developing
world.”
I consider myself lucky to have shared some figurative teepees with the "indians" that Bill Hybels talks about, some steel-like followers of Jesus who have taken the shape of hammer these last few years. People like Brian McLaren, Joan Chittister, Shane Claiborne, Richard Rohr, Alexia Kelley , Ched Myers, Noel Castellanos, Cheryl J. Sanders, Jim Wallis, Obery Hendricks, Ron Sider - as well as ministries like Sojourners/Call to Renewal. I have watched them do this at great costs to themselves and their work - watching the Orwellian wordsmiths hurls insults like "liberal" or "girly man", often questioning someone's faith or deeming their ministries ineffective or "unchristian". The debt of gratitude I owe to these folks & the work of God that they - we - have been a part of is enormous.
It is encouraging to watch the monolith that is the American evangelical experiment crack up, to watch a carefully constructed modern entity begin to unravel. Just like dinosaurs rail violently as they view their own extinction, I suspect these cracks will be covered up, painted over, even denied by the building who place so much identity in the artifice they've created. Later in the SFgate piece, Goldsworthy comments:
"Although obviously it's not going to fall apart, wash away or melt in a
way a lot of my works do, it still does talk about the same things --
transience, movement, change. It's a crack. It's an indication of what may
happen, and what will happen eventually, in the very long term.''
transience, movement, change - words that give my heart hope in the face of the mess that we find ourselves in. I have a glimmer of hope, let in by the crack, of "what may
happen, and what will happen eventually, in the very long term".
A new kind of Christian social conscience ? We can certainly hope !
Recent Comments