ruah arts group

“The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.” –Flannery O’Connor

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(Continuing on the Washington Arts Group Convocation Commentary….)

“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths; ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Jeremiah 6.16)

Frederica Mathewes-Green has the speaking voice of a broadway singer, or a voiceover actress with a contralto flair. She makes her living writing books, but public speaking is a close second, and for a good reason. She really talks the talk. And walks the talk, although I’m not exactly sure where she walks the talk to. Flair and style took flight from the first moment she spoke, but it was not so much a direct flight via certain points, as much as it was a balloon flight of uncertain direction.

She began the balloon flight by bringing attention to (St.) Andrei Rublev’s “Old Testament Trinity,” which is fitting since the Trinity was the inspiration for convocation theme. Mathewes-Green explained in her talk’s prologue that though she originally brought the Rublev icon as the talk’s centerpiece, but in the genesis of her speech, she really felt called in another direction. Thus, after a brief but lovely explanation of the history, significance and luminous attributes, she moved on to three points, coming to a rather beautiful and humble finish.

In the winding path of her points, I discerned a couple major themes.

First, she began by talking about the nature of culture and what it does (or doesn’t) mean to “challenge the culture.” She poked fun at six common foolish things we say to propose a Christian Re-Renaissance—things like, “We need a movie!” or “I’ll be cryptic [with my faith]” or “I’ll do imaginative works of pre-evangelization.” She shook a witty finger at everyone, and I had to laugh (and re-write my movie script).

Second came the real heart of her talk, the part of “seeking the ancient paths.” As a Catholic Christian, I gave silent (and probably a few not-so-silent) affirmations to her call to “return to the Fathers” (hat tip, R.R.Reno), but to do so in an authentic way. For all the richness of her very strong Orthodox faith, I felt she could have hit this point home a little harder in a room full of Chrisitians whose very existence was based on leaving those ancient paths. She is probably more delicate than me. In the end, she exhorted the largely Protestant audience to not only do things like read the Fathers, but to make an honest and exhaustive search into the past, and to keep the context in whatever they found, rather than cutting and pasting the ancient paths onto their own deconstructed driveway to who-knows-where. (Tony Jones, do you have ears to hear? More on Tony in a coming commentary…)

In the end, I liked the balloon flight-talk. I had to do a little post flight navigation through the typed speech, my notes and the talk on CD, but the seeds I picked up on the way were enough. In parting, here are a few of my favorite quotes:

“When churches try to get attention by offering something akin to what they enjoy on TV, entertainment and sentimental uplift, failure is likely because Hollywood just has better resources. And the mere act of trying to copy the mainstream world makes us look lame.”

“[In our televised culture] There is no death you could die that could not be followed by a commercial.”

“Instead of digging diamonds, let’s think of it as gathering flowers. You can come in with a big armful of flowers with the ancient church, and they look lovely. But they have no roots and they’re going to die.”

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