Of Darkness and Dawn

I am an absolute and total physical coward.  Seriously.  I had a blood test before my wedding, and then one about six months after, and at the second one the lab technician remembered me and how close I had come to fainting the first time.

So, naturally, I write a lot of war movies, I've read everything I can find about Saint Isaac Jogues, and one of my favorite scenes on film is the climax of The Last King of Scotland.  (For those who don't get that reference, and feel inclined to check it out, you have been warned.)

I am deeply ashamed of my cowardice.  And that's why I am so fascinated with violence on film.  Because I agree with Flannery O'Connor that violence wakes us up, returns us to reality, and because I believe that we show who we truly are by how we handle suffering.

I don't get courage.  I don't get how people can handle pain.  So I feel drawn to every example of pain I can find, in the hope that by seeing it and writing it, I may learn it to some small degree how to cope with it.

Which brings me to The Dark Knight Rises.  It seems to me that Christopher Nolan's violence is so hard to watch precisely because it is personal.  The midpoint, the anticipated fight scene between the Batman and Bane, is not the big, exciting showdown of a comic book movie.  It's not "cool."  It is messy and dark and brutal.  And the Nolan brothers' genius is in putting Selina Kyle into that scene as an observer.  As she realizes that she is watching Bane break, not the Batman, but Bruce Wayne - that maddening man with whom she has danced, and flirted, and dueled - she also realizes that she has hurt - maybe killed - not a symbol, but a person.  And she realizes who that person really is.

The Dark Knight trilogy is, ultimately, about pain, and most of its grace is grace refused.  It is Harvey Dent, after all, who promises us that the dawn is coming.  For the Christian, that is the ultimate truth, but it is equally true that no one of us is guaranteed that dawn.  We have the terrible power to flip the coin.

In fact, one can argue that the entire creation of the Batman is grace refused.  In an interview published with the screenplay for Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan said of Bruce Wayne: "There is this hollow quality to him.  He's damaged goods…. Christian manages to make him funny and charming, and there is a good sense of humor there, but you never forget what happened to him as a child.  It hangs in everything he does.  There's a burnt-out quality, in moral terms."  Contrast Bruce's refusal to move on  - from his parents, from Rachel - with the future Alfred wants for him.  Even though he channels his anger to do good, Alfred suggests that it would be healthier if he just let it go: "I never wanted you to come back to Gotham.  I knew there was nothing here for you but pain and tragedy."

Darkness is the absence of light.  These are films that make us feel that absence very keenly.  And when the dawn peeks through - when a man wraps a coat around a little boy to tell him the world hasn't ended - we want it that much more intensely.

On Beauty and Batman

In his inimitable style, Bad Catholic in an interview explains why the modern world will be saved by beauty:

Q: Another favorite topic of yours is Beauty. Fyodor Dostoyevsky once said that “beauty will save the world.” Why is beauty so important and how can we harness its power?

It’s very simple, actually. There are three Transcendentals, three infinite goals that man naturally strives for. He strives for Goodness (that which he should obey), Truth (that which he should believe), and Beauty (that which he should admire.)

To the Christian worldview, these three Transcendentals, in their perfection, are God Himself. God is goodness, truth and beauty. (This, by the way, implies that goodness=truth=beauty (Keats was right!) but I digress.)

In their imperfect form—that is, in all man’s pitiful attempts to be Good, to know Truth, and to reach Beauty—God is pointed to. They are each images of God. Now our culture got rid of the Good with the introduction of moral relativism—it has been limited to the self, to the I Am The Arbiter of My Own Morality. It got rid of Truth with the public school system—my truth is not your truth, and I promise that statement is true. So we’re left with Beauty as the our last hope to avoid damning ourselves to a delightfully vague and relative Hell.  (Emph. mine.)

It reminds me, rather of Barbara Nicolosi's lecture on "Haunting Moments" in film: those parts of a film that catch your breath away, that transcend the film itself, that become holy because they are true, and good, and beautiful.  She gives many examples - one of my favorite ones being from that delightful Danish film, Babette's Feast (watch here from about 1:38 on...but make sure you put on captions!)- but I might also add the "I pardon you" moment from Schindler's List, Samwise Gamgee's "There's good in this world, Mr. Frodo - and it's worth fighting for!" (or pretty much anything Sam), or a host of others.

So I'd like to talk quickly about two superhero movies which - I'm going to presume - everyone in America (or enough of everyone) has seen.  That is: Spiderman and The Dark Knight Rises.

WARNING!  SPOILERS!

I saw Spiderman first - although no where near its release date - since I was nervous about yet another superhero movie.  I find that too often these sorts of things just become an expensive and dull way to watch someone else play an Epic Video Game - but all of the summer fare this year (the wonderful Avengers very much included) has at least been thoughtful.

Back to Spiderman.  A friend of mine finally convinced me to see it, citing the excellent acting as sure bait to get me to the theatre.  Nor was she wrong.  The trailers inevitably give the Everything Is Action edit, but the film itself is less about the stunts (although those are many) and more about the relationships between Peter and the various people in his life.  Most luminous, for me, was the final haunting moment: when Peter, battered from his final fight with the monster he created, manages to remember to bring home the eggs that his Aunt had asked him to get.

It's a simple, small, silly human thing.  And it's true.  Every day we battle our work, our boredom, our feelings of being trapped or caught, of not loving as much as we could, of financial or family woes, or just plain being tired - we battle them, and we bring back the eggs.

A battered Spidy looks better to me than the pristine Batman.

However, in The Dark Knight Rises, I was hard pressed to find a moment of beauty.  In the wake of the terrible shooting in Colorado at the midnight premiere of the latest Dark Knight movie, I therefore found myself approaching the film (in a movie theatre!) with fear and trembling.  I went with my father, located all the exits as I entered, and planned on hitting the floor should a gunman come in.

As you may have deduced, my precautions were unwarranted, and I was subjected to no worse terror than having a total stranger sit a mere single seat away from me.  The nerve.

However, while I was watching the movie, I found myself perhaps more disturbed than if a merely physical assault had battered at me.  The third Batman movie centers around the villain Bane who is built up as someone having ideals very much like the extremists of the French Terror.  (One visual where Bane appears to be knitting something at a mock court was not lost on this lover of all thing French Revolutiony, Mme. Defarge!)

The violence in the film, however, verged on the pornographic.  I can't quite put my finger on why it felt so invasive - perhaps the spectre of the Colorado tragedy hung over my head - but I would put forth that the violence was worsened because the movie (and, I feel, the whole trilogy) lacked grace.

Sure, there was some attempt at light in the person of John Blake (later Robin) played by that excellent Nolan hat trick actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  However, John Blake's adulation of the Commissioner proved to be ill-founded; his attempts to save the children failed; and in the end he gave up on working through the system of the law.  Ergo, our one true hero in the film gives up on the mechanics of grace within the chronology of the film (if not the possibility of grace post-film).

Moreover, Batman himself is Ivanhoed - that is, out of the picture literally and figuratively - for the majority of the movie.  And those times he is crucified, as every good action hero should be, he comes across a somewhat unwilling victim, so that his "final act" feels more selfish than salvific.

Where does this leave the Avengers?  Somewhere inbetween.  I don't know that it's a beautiful movie (neither is Spiderman, for the record - he's just more beautiful to this author in comparison to his fellow summer fare), but as written by that Doge of Dialogue, Joss Whedon, it's at least light-hearted, and surprisingly less atheistic than his usual offerings.  It even, perhaps inadvertently, has a haunting moment, when an elderly German man refuses to bow to Loki, the Norse "puny god" of mischief.

Loki: In the end, you will always kneel.


Elderly German Man:  But not to you.

Man will be saved by beauty - although beauty comes in many forms.  It comes not only in the roses, but in the thorns.  It comes not only in the risen Christ, but in the ravaged Christ upon the cross.  Beauty is in the wrinkles, and the jokes that aren't funny, and the woman who gets up at five with her children, and with the man who goes to a job he hates for a family he loves.

The job of the artist, then, is to hold a mirror up to nature - to show man his beauty by showing man His scars.

Are You Playwright Enough?

There's an exciting NaNoWriMo-like challenge starting tomorrow for all playwrights:

31 Plays in 31 Days is the challenge for playwrights to produce a play a day (one page minimum) during the month of August.

I'm terribly excited by the idea.  I've known a few other playwrights who've managed to do a play a day for a year...trying to make a month is about enough for me!

Today's the last day to sign up officially (I think) so make sure you send your info in!

Click

Em, you've got me thinking about moments.  Because that, to me, is the key to your last post: at every moment.  We don't live our lives in sweeping arcs or themes - we live them right here and now, one choice at a time.  And we never know if this choice will be our last.

(Everyone feeling cheerful now?  Good.)

It's enormously tempting to think in arcs and themes.  That's why there's all that allegory in the world.  It's also why my characters often talk too much.

When I like a movie, I tend to think, "Well, that was a satisfying elucidation of the necessary relationship between love and sacrifice."  Or words to that effect.  But when I love a movie, it's because I was grabbed by "the part where…"  The moment.  (For any Joss Whedon fans out there, I have two words: "My turn.")  And I want to do that for somebody else.

Fortunately, I married a photographer.  He doesn't have pages of dialogue to get the effect he wants.  He has the snap of a shutter.  And, just as important, he has the chance to edit.  To crop.  To put it in black and white.  To frame.  But he's still working with just one moment.

Watching him do that is endlessly fascinating.  It brings into focus (heh, heh) the central question that I should be asking as a screenwriter: What am I looking at right now?

He makes me see.

So let's learn from each other.  What does your particular art do best?  What does it capture, and how?

What Exactly IS Catholic Art?

My senior year of college, I attended a Gregorian Chant concert in a Church near my alma mater, Franciscan University of Steubenville.    I was, at that time, just on the verge of graduation, about to earn my "utterly useless" degree in English Literature and Drama, with absolutely no job prospects or plans.  (Not unlike at present, really.  Well, perhaps a little less unplanned at that time.)

The single question I was asked the most, by my dear drama professor, by the President of the College, and even more by complete strangers was: "What was I going to do after school?"

I always admitted that I had no idea.  I'd find out. (1)

Consequently, I was in no mood when a older woman whom I'd never met turned to me after the concert and, finding I was about to graduate, asked the dreaded question.  Groaning inwardly, I smiled and said that I was going to become an author.

"Oh!" said she.  "A Catholic author?"

"No," I said, my perturbation beginning to show through, "an author.  Mostly fantasy novels, I should think."

She furrowed her well-meaning brow as though I had responded in Swahili.

"Ye-e-es," she said, "but a Catholic fantasy author, right?  I mean, you all go to Franciscan University, don't you?  So, you're going to write Catholic novels, right?"

"No," I said with, I'm afraid, very little restraint.  "I have absolutely no intention of writing 'Catholic novels,' whatever those are.  I am a Catholic, yes, and I will write novels.  But they will be fantasy novels, not Catholic novels.  I would hate to write a Catholic novel!"

At that point, thank God, someone rescued us and said that the car had arrived.

However, as rude as I became (and I apologize after the event for my 20-year-old fanaticism), that well-meaning woman's words have remained with me and nettled me ever since.

Several years later, while promoting my (admittedly) Catholic fantasy novel, Niamh and the Hermit - brought to you by God: Making His Followers Eat Their Words Since Time Immemorial - I attended a Catholic author's panel at Boskone.  There, one of the panelists was a priest and scientist at the Vatican Observatory.  In the midst of much opening tom foolery among the panelists and general bonhomie from the conventioners who had all come to the panel directly after Mass, the rather obvious question was put forward:

What makes a Catholic author a Catholic author?

The question was bounced around among the panelists, all of whom quickly agreed to that good priest's assessment:

"Basically, I think," said he - leaning forward into the microphone, with something of a glint of mischief and smugness and wisdom that put one in mind of Gandalf - "the difference between the Catholic novelist and any other novelist is that we all believe that each of our souls is, at every moment, on the edge.  Hence, the hero is always in danger of damnation...and the villain always in danger of salvation.  And isn't that the very essence of drama?"

His assessment (in which he is not alone) struck a chord in me.  As an author, I have found it to be true; as a director, particularly of the great Shakespeare's works, I find it doubly true.  As someone who once was that pretentious 20 year old graduate, I wish I had known those words then so that I could answer that woman, "Yes, of course! I'm a Catholic artist!"  As someone who's also read far too many bad "Christian/Catholic novels" (since I once ran the now-static Christian Guide to Fantasy), I wish more Catholic authors knew this.

Because what I was reacting to - and what many of my fellow Catholic artists have justly criticized is the idea that "Catholic art" is overtly Catholic.  It's the old friction between Lewis' Narnian allegories and Tolkein's Middle Earth. Only, Lewis' allegory is elegant, like Piers Ploughman. Too many modern "Catholic/Christian" artists' work is simply unwatchable/unreadable. It feels like fervent folks writing large with chalk and fortune-cookie Bible quotes. However, truly Catholic work is poetic, is sublime, is written in blood and clouds and mud and dust and the grace of every fallen sparrow. Take a look at Dostoyevsky again, my friends!

It's the reason why, if ever I got to meet that lovely, well-meaning woman again, I should say to her that all my novels and plays have been Catholic, and that I am a Catholic artist who sometimes writes fantasy and sometimes writes in iambic pentameter.

But what I'd clarify is that while, for example, Niamh is an overtly Catholic novel (in that the citizens of that world are simply Catholic, rather like Romeo and Juliet), my Letters of Love & Deception, is more covertly Catholic - since it's Regency a la Jane Austen, and therefore an Anglican world.  Yet marriage is defended in it; something that Catholics and Anglicans and just plain folk could use a dose of.

Similarly, although with the exception of my current play-in-progress, Becket (2), (OK, and obviously The Passion Play and probably Bearskin) I'd say that all my plays are more covertly Catholic.  They all affirm marriage, and the right relation of men to women; they all promote responsibility as the happiest and most satisfying of endings; they all point out the goodness of children; and they all have heroes in danger of damnation and villains in danger of salvation.



So there's one way authors (and playwrights and screenwriters and every sort of story tellers) might classify what they mean by being a Catholic artist.  But the question remains...what about fine artists?  What about musicians?  What about actors?  Game designers?  Architects? 

What is the particularly Catholic charism that infuses our arts?

Sound off in the comments below - and please feel free to leave links to your works and blogs so that we can know about the exciting work you're doing!  Also, don't forget to like us on Facebook and join in the conversation there!

FREEDOM!

Following up on the previous post on Freedom from the CAS event, I thought this homily by Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia was apropos.  As artists and citizens of the world, let us cultivate our crafts so that we can be truly "free" to live as we are called.

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Archbishop Charles Chaput is one of the most respected pro-life voices within the Catholic Church and he has proved that once again with a homily to close the Fortnight for Freedom event that has the Catholic community abuzz on the Internet.

Below is the full text of the address from the Archbishop of Philadelphia, given at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.:


Paul Claudel, the French poet and diplomat of the last century, once described the Christian as “a man who knows what he is doing and where he is going in a world [that] no longer [knows] the difference between good and evil, yes and no. He is like a god standing out in a crowd of invalids . . . He alone has liberty in a world of slaves.”

Like most of the great writers of his time, Claudel was a mix of gold and clay, flaws and genius. He had a deep and brilliant Catholic faith, and when he wrote that a man “who no longer believes in God, no longer believes in anything,” he was simply reporting what he saw all around him. He spoke from a lifetime that witnessed two world wars and the rise of atheist ideologies that murdered tens of millions of innocent people using the vocabulary of science. He knew exactly where forgetting God can lead.

We Americans live in a different country, on a different continent, in a different century. And yet, in speaking of liberty, Claudel leads us to the reason we come together in worship this afternoon.

Most of us know today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew. What we should, or should not, render unto Caesar shapes much of our daily discourse as citizens. But I want to focus on the other and more important point Jesus makes in today’s Gospel reading: the things we should render unto God.

When the Pharisees and Herodians try to trap Jesus, he responds by asking for a coin. Examining it he says, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” When his enemies say “Caesar’s,” he tells them to render it to Caesar. In other words, that which bears the image of Caesar belongs to Caesar.

The key word in Christ’s answer is “image,” or in the Greek, eikon. Our modern meaning of “image” is weaker than the original Greek meaning. We tend to think of an image as something symbolic, like a painting or sketch. The Greek understanding includes that sense but goes further. In the New Testament, the “image” of something shares in the nature of the thing itself.

This has consequences for our own lives because we’re made in the image of God. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the same word, eikon, is used in Genesis when describing the creation. “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” says God (Gen 1:26). The implication is clear. To be made in the image of God is more than a pious slogan. It’s a statement of fact. Every one of us shares — in a limited but real way — in the nature of God himself. When we follow Jesus Christ, we grow in conformity to that image.
Once we understand this, the impact of Christ’s response to his enemies becomes clear. Jesus isn’t being clever. He’s not offering a political commentary. He’s making a claim on every human being. He’s saying, “render unto Caesar those things that bear Caesar’s image, but more importantly, render unto God that which bears God’s image” — in other words, you and me. All of us.

And that raises some unsettling questions: What do you and I, and all of us, really render to God in our personal lives? If we claim to be disciples, then what does that actually mean in the way we speak and act?
Thinking about the relationship of Caesar and God, religious faith and secular authority, is important. It helps us sort through our different duties as Christians and citizens. But on a deeper level, Caesar is a creature of this world, and Christ’s message is uncompromising: We should give Caesar nothing of ourselves. Obviously we’re in the world. That means we have obligations of charity and justice to the people with whom we share it. Patriotism is a virtue. Love of country is an honorable thing. As Chesterton once said, if we build a wall between ourselves and the world, it makes little difference whether we describe ourselves as locked in or locked out.

But God made us for more than the world. Our real home isn’t here. The point of today’s Gospel passage is not how we might calculate a fair division of goods between Caesar and God. In reality, it all belongs to God and nothing – at least nothing permanent and important – belongs to Caesar. Why? Because just as the coin bears the stamp of Caesar’s image, we bear the stamp of God’s image in baptism. We belong to God, and only to God.

In today’s second reading, St. Paul tells us, “Indeed religion” — the RSV version says “godliness” – “with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it.” True freedom knows no attachments other than Jesus Christ. It has no love of riches or the appetites they try to satisfy. True freedom can walk away from anything — wealth, honor, fame, pleasure. Even power. It fears neither the state, nor death itself.

Who is the most free person at anything? It’s the person who masters her art. A pianist is most free who — having mastered her instrument according to the rules that govern it and the rules of music, and having disciplined and honed her skills — can now play anything she wants.

The same holds true for our lives. We’re free only to the extent that we unburden ourselves of our own willfulness and practice the art of living according to God’s plan. When we do this, when we choose to live according to God’s intention for us, we are then — and only then — truly free.

This is the freedom of the sons and daughters of God. It’s the freedom of Miguel Pro, Mother Teresa, Maximillian Kolbe, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and all the other holy women and men who have gone before us to do the right thing, the heroic thing, in the face of suffering and adversity.

This is the kind of freedom that can transform the world. And it should animate all of our talk about liberty – religious or otherwise.

I say this for two reasons. Here’s the first reason. Real freedom isn’t something Caesar can give or take away. He can interfere with it; but when he does, he steals from his own legitimacy.

Here’s the second reason. The purpose of religious liberty is to create the context for true freedom. Religious liberty is a foundational right. It’s necessary for a good society. But it can never be sufficient for human happiness. It’s not an end in itself. In the end, we defend religious liberty in order to live the deeper freedom that is discipleship in Jesus Christ. What good is religious freedom, consecrated in the law, if we don’t then use that freedom to seek God with our whole mind and soul and strength?

Today, July 4, we celebrate the birth of a novus ordo seclorum – a “new order of the ages,” the American Era. God has blessed our nation with resources, power, beauty and the rule of law. We have so much to be grateful for. But these are gifts. They can be misused. They can be lost. In coming years, we’ll face more and more serious challenges to religious liberty in our country. This is why the Fortnight for Freedom has been so very important.

And yet, the political and legal effort to defend religious liberty – as vital as it is – belongs to a much greater struggle to master and convert our own hearts, and to live for God completely, without alibis or self-delusion. The only question that finally matters is this one: Will we live wholeheartedly for Jesus Christ? If so, then we can be a source of freedom for the world. If not, nothing else will do.

God’s words in today’s first reading are a caution we ignore at our own expense. “Son of man,” God says to Ezekiel and to all of us, “I have appointed you as a sentinel. If I say to the wicked, ‘you will surely die’ – and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them . . . I will hold you responsible for their blood.”
Here’s what that means for each of us: We live in a time that calls for sentinels and public witness. Every Christian in every era faces the same task. But you and I are responsible for this moment. Today. Now. We need to “speak out,” not only for religious liberty and the ideals of the nation we love, but for the sacredness of life and the dignity of the human person – in other words, for the truth of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God.

We need to be witnesses of that truth not only in word, but also in deed. In the end, we’re missionaries of Jesus Christ, or we’re nothing at all. And we can’t share with others what we don’t live faithfully and joyfully ourselves.

When we leave this Mass today, we need to render unto Caesar those things that bear his image. But we need to render ourselves unto God — generously, zealously, holding nothing back. To the extent we let God transform us into his own image, we will – by the example of our lives – fulfill our duty as citizens of the United States, but much more importantly, as disciples of Jesus Christ.


http://www.lifenews.com/2012/07/05/archbishop-chaput-closes-fortnight-for-freedom-with-amazing-homily/

Catholic Artists Society - Meditation on Freedom

Friends,

The Catholic Artists Society, an organization started by a Catholic actor in NYC, seeks to encourage the ongoing artistic and spiritual development of artists and media professionals, so that their work may more perfectly reflect God’s glory, enriching and ennobling men and women, our society and our culture

At last Thursday's evening of recollection, Father Isaac Spinharney, CFR led a meditation on "Freedom", which is now available in audio version on their website.

Here is a short summary of Father's remarks on Freedom...

In keeping with the Fortnight for Freedom declared by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Father Isaac's meditation before the Blessed Sacrament centered on the nature of true freedom, starting with the scripture passage from Galatians 5:1 "For Freedom Christ has set us free. So stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery."

Posing the question, "Freedom...what does it mean?", Father Isaac discussed the relationship between religious freedom and interior freedom, drawing on the experience of Israel in the Book of Judges.

"How free are we?" Father suggested that a good barometer of our interior freedom can be found in St. Paul's list of the fruits of the Holy Spirit from Galatians 5: "Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-Control...Long-suffering and Modesty." We are free to the degree that these gifts and virtues are present in our lives.

Father then turned to an in-depth reflection on two principle keys to entering into the freedom and happiness for which we have been created, and for which Christ has prepared for us: authentic repentance, and forgiveness.

Finally, Father related these thoughts to the work and spiritual life of the Artist, who needs to cultivate a great deal of interior freedom in order to be open to inspiration, to create, and to particpate as a co-creator with God, the author and Creator of all things.

To keep updated on future events, and to receive mailings, check out the CAS here.

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