Public Service Announcement: Moral Requirement

Part 1

Part 2

See the Operation Rescue documentary here.

Abstract:

A small group of young black men is surrounded by a large group of young white men who have indicated that they wish to do significant harm to the former. 

The small group of black men are fortunate in that they are well-fed, strongly-built, and accustomed to frequent persecution. These attributes would be a great consolation to these young men if their opponents were not also well-endowed and of greater number.

On the fringes of the conflict stands a small group of not unable white men who happen to be of the anti-racism persuasion. However, they linger in the corners and flit between shadows as the victims valiantly defend their dignity and valiantly fall, one by one. 

One would undoubtedly say that the anti-racism group had committed a moral failure by neglecting to provide assistance to their brothers in need. Nevertheless, their crime is not unforgivable, the encounter likely being non-lethal and the targeted group having some means of self-defense.

Let us now not break step, but turn directly to the picture of pro-life activism in the current decade. Of what does it consist that worthily addresses the daily perpetration of countless irreparable evils?

Imagine a large group of pregnant women sitting in the waiting room of an abortion mill. They have already been addressed, one by one, by a solitary man who has indicated that he wishes to murder their children. They are sitting here awaiting the hour of bloodshed.

The children, whose death is imminent, are unfortunate in that they are weak, small, and accustomed only to the soft beat of their mothers' hearts, the peaceful bower of the womb. These conditions are of no consolation in the face of sharp instruments created to inflict the greatest harm possible upon their tender and fragile bodies. 

Watching by the gate of the mill, quite near and totally aware of the violent upheaval of nature about to occur, stand a group of able-bodied adults who claim to oppose abortion, who enjoy declaring their fervor. They stand by as the frightened unborn dart from side to side of their sacred havens now violated and profaned, treated as a chamber of execution in the most heinous rape unimaginable. 

Their persons are torn to pieces as they die in newfound pain uncomprehended.

One could not say otherwise but that the "anti-abortion" group had been ought else but complicit in their inaction, in their political correctness of moral abdication. Can their crime be forgiven? The encounter they witnessed could not have been other than lethal, and they but spoke and prayed while blood gushed forth from innocence.

Where is the Horse and the Rider

or 'Why you see few art-related posts on my page'

"Where is the horse and the rider?

Where is the horn that was blowing?

They have passed like rain on the mountains,

Like wind in the meadow

The days have come down in the West

Behind the hills into shadow..."

Where is the love of beauty? Where is breathtaking art and poignant song, and where are those who will seek them, praise them, cherish them, and show us how to see?

Like the brief, ephemeral art of our generation, they have been abruptly hidden from sight. Rinsed as from the slate -- no tablet of wax bearing the imprint of centuries' wisdom. Rather, the clean slate of a frontier school that started clean one day and started clean again the next.

Just as we are minimalists in ownership, we are minimalists in understanding or in seeking, in knowing and in wishing to know. And so we receive what we desire, we reap what we sow, which is so close now to nothingness. Where is the love of beauty, the devout appraisal of art? It is as it is in our hearts. Do we expect the tiny race of the people of culture to shower us with the Gospel while we wonder whether we are Princess Belle in her green dress or blue, or which Buzzfeed quiz will show us our best virtues?

Can you hear the overwhelming silence of the artists? I can hear the sea ceasing to sing, ceasing to whelm us over with the peace that she has given the imagination and the further peace that the imagination has given her. Did we think the artists would not starve? But they have all starved -- starved from a destruction of beauty in the world, a destruction of real living, of the seemingly invincible subject. The world has died, and art imitates life as life imitates art. Have you seen the imitation of death? I know that I have.

"The everlasting violence of that double passion with which God hates and loves the world" has come upon the artists in their silence. And as much as they have loved her, adorned and graced her with their innumerable lavishments, they wish nothing now but for her destruction, her punishment, her fall from pride into desolation and suffering and noisome darkness and fear. Repentance.

The fuel of the artist is life -- life that breeds more life -- life teeming and bursting at the seams -- life burgeoning unstoppably and never ceasing to unfold into new and eternal glories. Is it any wonder that the artists are silent, or that the lesser imitate death until it takes them.

Here is the demand of beauty: life. What prodigies have we killed, or allowed to die? No more.

The death of society is at hand. Were we more bitter towards the slaughter of our friends, we would have burned the fortresses of darkness and salted the earth, leaving the festering fields of evil forever barren.

We wish to intervene against the Islamic State in the Middle East. This is a just impulse. But, in our haste to tender retribution, do we forget the thousands slaughtered daily at home. Are the lives of countless children less worthy than the preservation of political potency in names: in "Yezidi", in "Christian", in "Shi'ite". Do we wish to save lives? Is that our intent? Or do we wish to save particular lives for particular reasons? Are the unborn not our brothers and sisters, and do they not live next door. Do they not die next door.

Can you justify your willingness to stop the IS against your unwillingness to stop the Abortionist State? Is it easier to fight a tyrant thousands of miles away?

The lauds of the poet fall silent. The artist in anger and desperation hurls his brush. Is there beauty in the world.

Can you justify not -- at the very least -- standing in prayer before the clinic, adjuring those who would be murderers to abandon their course? Rationalize, I beg you. Rationalize. Rationalize a way to avoid preventing murder when power is in your hands. I have dispensed with the arguments. I have had them all. I have heard them all. There is not one left with integrity. The truth cries out like a stone. It will not move.

The poet falls silent. The artist's heart roils and burns, and a black anger rises.

If you would have the soldiers stopped who terrorize in the name of Islam, but you will not place yourself in danger for your brother who perishes at the hands of the mercenary next door, the only judgement left to you is that of coward and liar.

Go out into the world. Go out. You have been sent out to bring the good news. The good news begins with the gospel of life. You must protect life, from conception to natural death. If you have not done this basic duty, this basic act for the ongoing creation of society, if you watch society crumble -- you too will fall with it.

Go out into the streets and pray, and beg God for mercy. I too will go with you. Come alive, and reject the systematic destruction of the human person. Overthrow the deathly edifice. This is our duty. It is undeniable. It is irrefutable. It is the supreme test of faith in our time -- the supreme evil, that which requires the most devout action in opposition.

If you wish to have good things, you must give, and you must first give life.

Where is the horse and the rider?

The beauty of the warrior lies in that which he defends.

Radicalize the Pro-Life Movement

Some of you who knew me during my college years may recount what seems to be a fierce dichotomy in my character. On the one hand, I have a profound, indeed religious appreciation for art, while on the other, I may become violently passionate with righteous furor when abortion is mentioned.

You might recall the days I spent in front of the new cafeteria, constantly accosting our fellow students: "Will you join us in peaceful protest at a Charlotte abortion clinic?" How many refusals. Stranger yet, how many assented and did not follow through? 100 signatures. Less than 20 protesters.

Others of you who read my blog may one day see a contemplative review of a film by Kieslowski. On another day, a declamation on our guilt as a society.

My heart is tender for beauty. It is of steel for violence.

Or some of my male peers may remember a controversial Facebook challenge to which they did not respond, the challenge that said we are black as hell if we do nothing to stop this horror.

Here we are amidst the horror.

In 8 years of being someway involved in the Pro-Life Movement, I have often asked the question: "Why do we allow this to continue when we have the power to stop it?" It is a simple question -- thus the significance of its persistence, the problem of its remaining unanswered.

I remember when we founded the pro-life apostolate, Crusaders for Life, at my parish church. One of the first events we organized was a training by the archdiocesan sidewalk counseling ministry. We were told of these mythological creatures (including priests) of the past who chained themselves to clinic doors, who -- unfortunately, we were told -- gave the movement a reputation of radicalism. We should never attempt any sort of rescue, for fear of reinstating this reputation.

Thus, for the last near-decade, I have stood, I have prayed, I have conversed kindly and calmly with the Watchers at the Gate.

But as I see the same structure that taught non-intervention (that is, an avoidance of physical protection for the unborn, an avoidance of peaceful civil disobedience) clothed in fine linen suits at their brunches with legislators, I wonder again: "Why do we allow this to continue when we have the power to stop it?" The man power. 300,000 strong at the so-called March for Life.

Even we in the pro-life movement have been a force for the dehumanization of the unborn. How? In refusing to acknowledge the gravity of murder -- the murder of even that first legally slaughtered child. What are we afraid of? asks Stephanie Gray in a LifeSite opinion piece. I would ask the same of her. Why do we stop at "speaking up"? Would you merely "speak up" to a Nazi official who wouldn't listen, especially if you could raise a free army of 300,000 to blast the gas chambers standing within the reach of your arm, to liberate those emaciated figures you observe as they stumble towards the ovens?

Is your reaction sufficient? Is this an adequate response to the evil you see at hand? If you fail at your appeal, will you turn your back as the murders continue, ready to chat it up another day? Did American soldiers ask the Nazi governors to stop the killings, or did they move in and stop them?

Well, America is worse off than Nazi Germany. We have achieved new heights in the field of human extermination. We cannot see it, and so even those who deem themselves "pro-life" allow themselves to relax for a day -- go shopping, play video games, have a beer with friends, scroll for hours on Facebook, vacation, have me-time. We have killed far more, and we protect our consciences from effect by expressing indignation at the Nazis and the Republicans [sic].

This piece seems too detached for my liking, and I am sick of being deprived of action. I am sick of the entire structure, but this does not excuse me from first concentrating on the evil which is first in the world: abortion. And I must do at all times what I can.

LISTEN! Open your ears! You have been at war, and you have let the enemy into your beds. The child of your mating is already aborted. Look at the impotence, 300,000 strong!

Remember the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. What was it for?

Remember the beheading of John the Baptist. What was it for?

Remember the Crucifixion of Christ. What was it for?

What is the definition of modern sacrifice? A weekend stroll round the telephone pole with a sign in your hands and a diaper in your pants? It is long past the time to act. The night has darkened on our souls. We have been 40 years a slave to the fear of humiliation, the fear of degradation, the fear of reprise, the fear of harm to our persons. We have let fear drive us to the rationalization that the very system that allows tyranny to reign and bloodshed to flourish would pander to our delicacies.

And fear, as is its wont, has affected our reason so severely that we value our own safety and livelihoods before the very lives of others.

But fear not, for "Actions done under stress of fear, unless of course it be so intense as to have dethroned reason, are accounted the legitimate progeny of the human will, or are, as the theologians say, simply voluntary, and therefore imputable." If we omit, then we commit. It is time to rise, lift up our mats, and walk.

There is no need for us to walk alone. We are all brothers. Let us spread the word, the word which is difficult, and which, because of this, seems all the more to be true. Speak, my friends, and act, and count not the cost upon yourselves. As Dr. King said, "the first question that the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’"A noble cause calls good men to act.

As always, I stand with Pope Francis on non-violence: "it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor. I underline the verb: stop. I do not say bomb, make war, I say stop by some means. With what means can they be stopped? These have to be evaluated. To stop the unjust aggressor is licit."

  

Over the Rainbow

Rainbows are gatherings often held in areas remote from the general hubbub, tucked away in the woods and fields where nature still enjoys its proper place upon the earth. People hike for miles to find the Rainbow settlement -- a city of tents. These voluntary gatherings may remain in a single place for many months.

One website, www.welcomehome.org, describes the "Rainbow Family" as follows:

• Some say we're the largest non-organization of non-members in the world. We have no leaders, and no organization. To be honest, the Rainbow Family means different things to different people. I think it's safe to say we're into intentional community building, non-violence, and alternative lifestyles. We also believe that Peace and Love are a great thing, and there isn't enough of that in this world. Many of our traditions are based on Native American traditions, and we have a strong orientation to take care of the the Earth. We gather in the National Forests yearly to pray for peace on this planet.

Rainbows are indeed nebulous. There are no formal laws, but the community often organizes itself according to unwritten values of "love, peace, non-violence, environmentalism, non-consumerism and non-commercialism, volunteerism, respect for others, consensus process, and Diversity" (http://www.rainbowtribe.net/).

The images you see above were taken from photographer Benoit Paille's Behance profile (https://www.behance.net/gallery/Rainbow-Gathering-%282010-2011%29/1193675). Observing the physical constitution, the open posture, the clear and healthy eyes, the soft light of these figures who stand at home amidst the wild calls to mind another race. A race foreign to us.

If you recall, in Aronofsky's Noah, how the simple life, the stewardship of the land above all else preoccupies the line of Seth -- then you cannot help notice the similarity here, even that of dress. Note the earthen tones, the grainy texture and spartan design. The pouches at the belt.

 

There is something impure in the Rainbow gatherings: look at the drug use, the pagan practices, the rejection altogether of beneficial technologies, etc. Yes. We say this. In our conservative towers we point over the heads of the lowly. And our towers crumble.

Is such a lifestyle not preferable in every way to the indescribable indignities of capitalism? Infused with the heights of the Western spirit, could we not become the ordo contemplativus of St. Bonaventure?

Such a radical return to the first and proper vocation of man may be required, and certainly even now is intensely needed amidst wholesale cultural degradation of the meaning and dignity of the human person. If, at the Rainbow gatherings, "we often say 'We are one.'", then perhaps this is a place we all should be (Paille).

Why do we have the desires we do? Why is it necessary to sacrifice the person for his betterment? Why suffer the deadening effects of the corporate desk job for health insurance, for a nice car? We are slaves to a system we ourselves have created, a system that literally values material gain over the fulfillment of truly human needs, truly human desires. We lay ourselves down as fertilizer for a machine, and when we are gone -- dead from laboring in its service -- it too will die. We have created a new meaning of ephemerality.

But rainbows will endure. And in these communities that bear their name, human beings come together in harmony, attempt to see each other, to see the person in each other: "We experience all these differences and confrontations, and experiment in matters of conflict management. We learn to talk, look, understand, to become more tolerant." (Paille).

Paille says that "All ideologies and beliefs coexist in harmony." and yet "decisions are not made through a majority vote, but truly through a common consensus. It can take days." What seems to be some sick offshoot of liberalism is rather a reconciliation of all beliefs into the most universal -- and this is seen as so important that "It can take days." The entire human family, from every conviction, is welcome. And every conviction may have its say until only one is agreed upon. Why do Church councils take so long?

We see in Rainbow gatherings a practical model for human life that seeks post-lapsarian remediation, that values the posture of the human community in reference to the spiritual world above all else, and that does not stoop to violence even in preventing it: "If someone becomes dangerous, violent, it can happen, people will make a sina shanti (a peace circle), where men will peacefully surround the individual by holding hands." (Paille).

I may yet see a Rainbow.

All photographic images are the property of Benoit Paille. Please check out his beautiful work:

http://benoitp.prosite.com/

https://www.behance.net/Benoitp

II. Trois Couleurs: Rouge

Valentine, played by Irene Jacob, is beautiful, vivacious, passionate, assertive. We want to sympathize with her. Her personality is sweetened by a certain scent of innocence that causes us to desire identification with her, to simultaneously fall in love with her.

Indeed, her supreme beauty is central to this part of Kieslowski's trilogy.

A very important moment arrives, however, in the studio where she is photographed as a model. We see her sitting there, artificial wind blowing her wet hair about her face. And at the word from the photographer -- "triste" -- her beauty is transformed by an unutterable sorrow.

Although Valentine has suffered -- her brother a heroin addict, her mother an unforgiven adulteress -- we are given the sense that she has called forth this emotion from outside -- it is borrowed, learned, used for theatrics, but perhaps without completely genuine content.

And in rushes forcefully another theme of the film: external, supernatural movements that intimately interact with the willed movements of the film's characters. An overarching wellspring of meaning and purpose -- a silent smiling whisper in which Valentine, Auguste, and the old judge participate without creating.

We humans can name sorrow, joy, fear, but we cannot know them in their full intensity at any given moment. We can, however, experience little hints of that memory of humanity, what some call the historical memory or collective memory. In my mind, this refers to God, who after all is one of us in a way none of us can be. He is more human than we are, and he is the origin of every sense. Because of this, I think, we have access to feelings that are not our own, access to at least an awareness of the depth of human feeling, desire -- due to our necessary and constant connection with him: complete dependence, our drawing of life from him. We draw everything from him.

Such a beauty illustrated in this film. The old judge reflects upon his life, his decline in sourness and cynicism grown from an experience of betrayal. And who grants him knowledge of this?

As a voyeur, he seeks knowledge to which he has no right. But none of it grants him any insight into his own condition. It is precisely through knowledge gratis that he is able to understand himself, and to love once more.

The beauty and love of the hint. God is a life-hack. I beseech you to give yourself to these films. God love you.

Irene Jacob on Rouge and Kieslowski:

I Am Suspect

For all who decry the modern state.

We sell ourselves as subversive, incisive, even revolutionary, the new intelligentsia. And there is yet a grain of truth.

When we take to the blog interface, we know we have something to argue, something to condemn, some flag to hoist in triumph. We pound and eviscerate the dreadful, outrageous falsehoods of contemporary culture, raging to get to a point. We clash and bang and make a scene. But what is left after all of our brilliant syllogisms have been arrayed upon the Thyestean table for us and our friends to feast upon.

We are more of the judge and less of the critic, more of the hangman than the priest.

We all agree it is easier to find a problem than to solve it. We even agree to solving it. We come to council, say "Aye, this can't go on", and go our ways to fill the world with justice. But sensationalism and vituperation usually take its place.

Marc Barnes writes of an ubiquitous internet humor that compromises the agency of our statements: "The Internet-writer gathers page-views by writing in the ironic, depersonalized spirit of anonymity that characterizes the online aesthetic, as if his work was simply burped up from the bowels of the Internet itself, bearing no relation to a subjective personality." This humor is harmful in many ways, one being that, while the outside truth or "fact" to which we refer may be valid, its manner of presentation is usually flippant, caustic, provocative, rude -- funny only to those who agree with us. We say, "Oh my gosh, look how stupid this is", and go about our day as if everyone has now reached a consensus from our ability to strip someone naked and leave them there in shame. Moreover, we assume that we offer up an absolute, that for a challenge to arise would be ignorant and insulting -- "What do you MEAN you don't agree? Are you stupid?"

While such antics may be cloaked in the trappings of the most witty and popular social commentary, and while the presentation may involve excellent turns of phrase, incomparably precise diction, infallible logic, the result remains the same: a great and terrible fallacy has only been disproved (occasionally, one adds a final line to the effect of "don't be like this").

But what are these social ills? What is the object of our fast-flying fingers over cacophonous plastic keys a million miles away from the source of our righteous glee? Do we lurch in our seats, sighing, wishing we could be present to make an end of such evil, to see it resolved? Is it not caused by humanity? Are we not responsible?

Are we gods that walk with heedless adamant heels through the stinking crowds of sniveling mortals? We are as bad as that, and not so smart and edgy as we believe. Intelligence lies in winning the opponent to love and truth. The purpose of argument is its opposite.

But the parts we often play fall short of beneficent:

• Toward our opponents -- the surgeon who removes a leg to cure an abscess. 
• Toward our friends -- the parent who so desperately desires the love of her child that she gives him cake when he requires meat.

Our unfortunate instinct drives us to crave shock and awe for savoring, horror for indulgence, absurdity for mocking, and indignation for pleasure in pride. As the mitigators of instinct, it is nothing short of shameful for us to inspire these feelings in our readers for the sake of a few more page-views. This is a sort of prostitution, where we forsake the dignity of our subjects for fickle fame or an extra buck. God knows the various exigencies that may drive one into desperation, but if we are to be genuine lovers of mankind, our word must mirror reality. And reality is not so near as we pointedly surmise in verbose denigrations of our opposition.

The reality of love is a far more difficult endeavor and a far deeper intellectual matter. To leave the flock for the lost one is to place oneself open to attack, critique by one's friends, humiliation and floundering, shame, depression, and the low esteem of all. You may find that you are wrong.

But the jewel of it is a heart won by trial -- and not "won" to our cause, but to a greater.

When we are challenged aggressively with stimulating fervor from another social force, do we not wish to respond in kind, to challenge in return with hard and fast impenetrable rebuttal? And what is gained? One may exercise and solidify his own suppositions, but have either traded any wisdom. Do we not dash ourselves to pieces against a wall?

Moreover, when we do engage debate on Facebook or in infamous comment sections, we often retreat to the blogosphere to save our pride. We present the refined oration to our friends for their praise. In doing so, we discriminate. We say that "only your opinion, your esteem is valuable to me, but as for you others, go back to the shadow". We, cowards, enhance our reputation in the dusty archives of presupposed assent, and Truth gets bored with us, until it decides to leave our intolerable company.

Subtlety, then, and not a subtlety of cleverness, an underhandedness, but a subtlety in truth that becomes an ancillary virtue to love of one's enemies -- this is to be sought. I think of no better names than Mother Theresa (who would deny her?), Ghandi even -- success lies in truth, but truth is integral to the approach, not distinct from it. Words that attempt to express some eternal verity in incendiary or even mildly hurtful language can not.

The truth is absent from self-righteous declamation, from rabble-rousing, from flag-waving. And it is not the reserved quest of poetry to seek beauty. Beauty is for the world. If what we say is beautiful, and how we say it, then who can forget us? Against true beauty there is no defense, for it, too, is love.

Therefore let us speak as we believe. Enemies are friends, and if they are not, then we are the enemy. Let friends be enemies if they choose: let them make up their minds for themselves without the distraction of glitz and furor.

Let us go about our vocation as determined as the hermit, as fastidious as the theologian, as just as the critic -- let us make his reputation so.

The Fight and Flight of Street Art

In Poland. By Natalia Rak.

As a rule, respectable people are inclined to think of street art as vandalism, and in many cases they are right to do so. For the most part, they are thinking of graffiti in its depictions of gang signs, obscenities, or general absurd ugliness or mundanity: "The Dell," "Klue," "F*ck what they think," etc. We are apt to judge objects by their worst traits, as we do each other.

But, primarily suburbanites, we offer ourselves little exposure to the world. The graffiti we encounter is generated by those not so unlike ourselves as we like to think -- suburbanites, perhaps disgruntled teens or young adults who just need to shout and get out.

In the cities, the centers of business and the pretentious avant-garde, where the battle for the soul rages more fiercely and the opposing voices clash and shatter against one another, there is a presence that knows it cannot reach its audience with mere mediocrity or annoyance. It knows that it must put up a fight to be seen, to be felt, and to transform. Extraordinary and intrusive -- it can be no less.

In Lodz, Poland. By ETAM Cru.

Beyond the merely sexy and suggestive, beyond the mere representation of culture or its values as they stand, there are some artists who are weaving a new tale, telling a new story, teaching by gift, service.

Such beautiful, complex works of art on the building walls are the artists' heart on a plate. One does not destroy such things unless through guilt, self-hatred, agony -- and such marks (such cuts on the face of Our Lady of Częstochowa, for instance) are the sign of a war on beauty, a war on the self.

But why is the "vandalism" of graffiti necessary? It is not "necessary," per se, but imminent, just as the destruction of countries, cities, lives is imminent in any war. Modernity made its war on the person long ago, and street art fights back with love. The world tears out her hair, and he crowns her head with flowers to assuage the loss. Street art now is a true revolt. It is the mother who, suffering, says no to the child.

It is true that many artists today, more than ever, are isolated within their world. The selective social media that effectively operates our daily lives makes sure of this. But the artist does not want to be seen by other artists only. Even more than this, he must not be seen by other artists only. The artist is for the world. Like Christ, he draws when there is nothing left to say, even if he must draw in the sand, or on a concrete slab.

One of Andre Amador's Playa Paintings

The hardened law is what must be broken, taught, and with such non-aggression as a flower in its gun barrel, a sad human face on its corporate morgue.

The world was made of and for color, light, play, and passion deep as the blue of the deepest sea. And to combat it with handcuffs or paint-overs is to bend the natural law and to hasten one's own death. The cities need "illicit" art because they have become dungeons. And even art that hangs limp on gallery walls can suffer the glare of the evaluative modern mind. Churn, spit, rotate -- that is our definition of sophistication. And when the museum-infected red square #24 plays in service of that mind, laying out a sea of blood to be filled with the self's own manufactured ideals of libertinism and commerce ... it too has gone to the gallows and hung itself.

Lodz, Poland. The site of a wondrous artistic phenomenon. Murals of gigantic proportions appear in panoply upon the broadsided buildings throughout the city, with subjects ranging from the grotesque to the pastoral -- all done with skill. And, strangely enough, embraced unreservedly.

by Aryz

From the Huffington Post: "The public/private partnership and the addition of the artwork has attracted business and investment, and of course urban exploring tourists who can follow a map to see the works within a couple of hours. As a model for employing the talents of street artists to create public art in service of the re-invigoration of a city, this one appears to be very successful at respecting the work while adding value to a neighborhood, district, city, and community." (Full article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jaime-rojo-steven-harrington/large-murals-transform-lodz_b_3428241.html)

The immediate subject of all art is life, regardless of what is portrayed. It is a commentary and a question, an appeal and a message. It should always inspire the sort of activity mentioned in the above article. Unfortunately, it often encounters a different response:

In Greenpoint, NY. By Banksy.

Thanks be to God, the same intelligent minds whose art is destroyed in the service of an arbitrary and disjointed sense of order know just how to respond. When small arms fail, send a missile.

In London, England

by Banksy

As Banksy says, "Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better-looking place."

I am certainly not promoting unrestrained hooliganism, nor am I condemning the justified burial of offensive material -- unless it offends for the right reason. One retains one's right to his property if he is a good steward of it. For instance, the Lodz venture might be considered good stewardship: if you find yourself in possession of a great ugly gray block of concrete, it is a good decision to fill it with something beautiful. 

However, if you place your animal in insufferable conditions ... or you do the same to humanity by denying its better voices, you have lost your rights. You are a failure as a steward to the earth, and what is government but an appointed steward to act for the best interests of humanity. At this point, someone else must assume the throne. And authority is not given the steward to deny the return of the king.

In "The Duty of Society to the Artist," E.M. Forster provides a helpful illustration of the conversation between an artist who wishes to paint a mural and a city official. The city official is very happy to pay the artist, but wants to know exactly what the artist shall paint (for it must, of course, thinks the official, be of service, of usefulness, to the state). The artist does not know what he shall paint. He needs to begin. He needs to create, experiment. He is not an engineer or a chemist. He is an artist, and the artist makes out of love, not out of mere design. His creations do not have a purpose, per se, but a meaning. They are not schemes, but the story of life itself, manifesting the reflective nature of man toward himself and the cosmos. They are appeals to the deepest and truest sensibilities of human nature, and thus allow the elusive Real to be actualized as the imagination takes hold and seeks to make itself like unto beauty.

But the city official shakes his head. He does not understand, nor does he care. He is a vandal, unknowing.

We can do with no more vandals. Plenty of vandals have made our love run cold, placed it under fire of scientism's laser beams. I say let the love pour out upon the city streets. Let the snowy-capped mountains be moved to the weirdly Mordor-esque towers of New York and Chicago. Let Banksy be Banksy. His money's where his mouth is and he can bank with mine anytime (with some -- or many --reservations, of course). 

At least let the artists go back to the streets without timidity. Art is to be seen, remarked upon, rejected if need be. But it must be seen. 

Go out and make fishers of men. Go out and be praised and shamed, for is this not your calling, the very essence of your work? Its public nature, its communal nature? Go out and paint the stars back into the sky. Go and replant trees in the most unjungled of concrete jungles; remain to water the feeble saplings. Go out and paint icons of the kings of men, and dare the world to mutilate its very face. Go out and dare. Go out and make fishers of men.

Bydgoszcz, Poland. Mural by Pener and Sepe.

The Savage

I recently shared midday meals and time with strangers during a training course near the Gulf coast in Texas that I attended for work. As the training involved a supposedly "universal" incident management program, there were individuals present from both government agencies and private industry.

On the second day, I shared lunch with one man, a trainer in operations with the army. He was stationed in the area. And soon I realized that neither of us were sitting at that table for any particular reason.

He had been in California, Louisiana, Kansas, New York. I had been in Louisiana, North Carolina -- these for birth and family, education and joy. To Texas came I for sustenance, which in this State (i.e. the U.S.A.), must come from money.

After lunch we sat in my car, waiting through the 2-hour period so irregular for us, perhaps not so for the others, who were public servants. Like me, one of his enjoyments is music in the Irish tradition. We both know of Julie Fowlis.

Yet as we sat and spoke of music -- and listened -- I could not dispel the feeling that neither of us were at all capable of interesting the other. Neither of us were at all capable of engagement, cordiality, connection.

"Yes, I know this artist you speak of. Do you know this one?" And a dry exchange ensues.

He had a humility and honesty about his eyes and speech, but perhaps the iciness of Statism or the gray sky or the cold unshakeable tool of capitalism that makes its will ever known to our fears came like a silent wave and shook our plastic & leather capsule til we were subdued and wanted escape -- not from the truth but from the reminder of the truth in a man's eyes, heart, tongue.

Here in Houston, we are all killers. On the roads, we are seldom hot and angry, just full metal coolness and murder. To every man a compensatory pick-up truck. But the object dissipates as we climb into our vehicles and the desire to inflict upon mad drivers the panic only comprehended as hatred overthrows the possibility of temporal despair. And we are all lost in the welling hell.

Once back to the plastic and leather capsule of our holes, we dive into the filtering shell that seems to be an outlet but really is a thief in saving us from saving harm.

And paradoxically, you should watch The Matrix and try with good will to see how we are hastening the loss of the human. And paradoxically I will write on, aware of the death clinging to my words unless you let them live.

I do not want the grace of doctrine. If my mind is free, but every act refutes its call to free my body, my mind is in chains.

I want not to be a slave. I do not want my fruit taken with assumed justice unless I see it's worth the price. And I cannot see it. And unlike God the United States of America merits no Mystery.

What is to become of us? What is to be done, my dear fellow slaves? Dare we raise our heads and cry to God the shame upon the heads of those who bend our noses to mirrors on the ground? Dare we cry shame upon our own heads as we bend them to the ground?

God save us and have mercy.

If I were not drawn with fear and harsh words saying I neglect responsibility, I would drop this sordid towel that mops the drops gushing from the staunched fountain. Death and love and freedom rather than ongoing.

God did not make these walls.

Will someone shoot you for saying "I am a man, and will forage for food. I am a woman, and will feed my child. I am a man, and will farm this land you leave wanton and fallow. I am a woman, and will tend this house you leave neglected"? Perhaps it is best to be shot.

Shots can not harm us as we walk through the fields, feeding a living act of God's love with grain on the Sabbath.

I would invite any and all to contemplate these shots and those rocks that come in through the window in Trois Couleurs: Rouge. See earlier post for viewing information.

Love in the Cold

"Many false prophets will arise, and many will be deceived by them; and the charity of most men will grow cold, as they see wickedness abound everywhere ..." (Mt. 24.11-12)

Having visited all who will with plenty of time to spend, Love turns her face to the lilies, for at least they will never turn their bright joyful heads away from her.

The cold doors of stone towers are invisible to her, their secrets forgotten. The walls of cities do not discriminate, and Love is lost in the tumult of passions good and ill.

So frequently do we strive for honor in the great effort of ecstasy, pushing outward against the senses that at once bind and make us onto more liberal frontiers -- seeking Truth, Goodness, Beauty. But what marble pillars. What frigid stones, though mountains, of thought.

Truth, Goodness, Beauty -- noble ideas to be pursued. But constantly we forget the force that drives us toward them. Too often we forget the cabman, the selfless rickshaw runner who silently bears us to and fro.

Goodness: why certainly it contains Love. But why "Goodness" and not Love? Does not Love contain Goodness? Justice, the favorite of Aristotle -- does not Love fulfill it, complete it, make it bear fruit?

And Love abounds more than these. It is Love in the artist that makes him sing bright colors onto barren sheets of white. Love culls melody from fiddle and flute. Love tears forth the tears of Whitacre's David: "Oh, Absalom!"

And Love quiets with a mothers soft forgiving arms the first sorrow of newfound sin.

At the end of Trois Couleurs: Bleu, Krzysztof Kieślowski depicts the lovemaking of the wayward, mournful beloved and he who loved and pursued her throughout her pain. Preisner's soundscore comes soaring through the scene with lyrics from 1 Corinthians 13.1: "I may speak with every tongue that men and angels use; yet, if I lack charity, I am no better than echoing bronze, or the clash of cymbals."

With the deadly egotism of savored sorrow, she had used him in her need. She had fled his warmth and honest generosity of soul for the tower of the dead. Felix culpa. In the coldness she found Love.

What simplicity.

How easy to let the power of the sea strip away the last timbers of our sorry rafts; how comforting to relax our grip.

How true and good to die.

How beautiful is art that crucifies its maker. The testament of his great love -- blindness for Monet, for Raphael. An early death for Rilke, Keats.

A desert for Teresa of Calcutta.

How many names would be added to the history books if we forsook the scales that make the dirt look like the sky, make our soiled feathers seem to fly with wings of bonded wax.

The mother stands there with a washcloth waiting and soft forgiving arms.

Goodness waits on Love.

The Declining Female Happiness

Satan tempting Eve, by John Martin

There is a social phenomenon sociologists and their kind call “the paradox of declining female happiness.” This phenomenon was first noted by two researchers at the Wharton School studying 35 years of data from the General Social Survey. What they found was that during the time that women had increased access to education, career opportunities, and the contraceptives that made careers possible, there was a steady decline in the level of happiness reported by women. Those researchers tried not to draw any conclusions, but I think it is reasonable to explore the correlations.

Before going any further, I think it appropriate to speak directly to you, female reader. There is no question that you can do many things that men do. You can be doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. There is, however, question that you can do all those things as men do them. I did not say “better than” or “worse than,” I said “as.” There is further question as to whether you should do those things, even though you can.

One of the possible reasons for the decline in female happiness seems to lie in what G.K. Chesterton describes as “modern torture.” No one denies that women have been wronged before, but as Chesterton says, “I doubt if they were ever tortured so much as they are tortured now by the absurd modern attempt to make them domestic empresses and competitive clerks at the same time.” A woman’s life was never easy, but at least she knew what she was to do with her life. She knew she was to be a wife, a mother, a cook, a teacher, a seamstress, a moral guide, a source of optimism for her pessimistic husband, a dose of realism for his irrational dreaming, and more. To paraphrase Chesterton, a woman was expected to be everything to a few people rather than one thing to many.

Even more, what others expected of her aligned with her natural tendencies. No little girl ever grew up dreaming of being a rich and powerful CEO; she grew up dreaming of her prince, with whom she would start a family. Now, however, little girls are told that they should not “settle” for marriage, a loving husband and father for their children, and a life of love and care for others; rather, they should become wealthy and successful. If she decides that a child might be nice along the way, she can simply go to the sperm store and inject it herself.

Our current situation is much like the story of the original sin. There is a great lie being spoken to insecure women and the timid and weak men stand aside, fearful that they might be hurt, or worse, offend someone. Instead of trying to be like God, in this case, woman is trying to be like man, because men have failed her and hurt her. We have lesbians because men failed to be loving and faithful men; we have gays because the men that were replaced by women decided to fill the void of femininity left by those women. What is to be done?

I greatly admire those women today who have the incredible strength to reject the lie that their work as wives and mothers is less than the work of female accountants, teachers, doctors, or lawyers. The work of the wife and mother is of infinitely more worth than any temporal work she may do. Her work as wife and mother is of divine and eternal importance. For that work to take place, she needs a man that stands for her, fights for her, and protects her from a diseased world. We not only need women to take the stand for themselves and reject the lie, but we need men who will take the stand for the women they love.

Flamme, Citron, Fear of Death

Flame and Citron (2008) (or Flammen og Citronen, if you prefer) is a film about 2 Danish Resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Europe.

In the main, they are sent on assassination missions, eliminating prominent Danish Nazi collaborators -- mostly military figures. When a female Nazi is involved, Flamme must clean up after Citronen's failure of emotional resolve. Hard times.

Viewing the film, few of us would even wince at the death of a Nazi colonel or SS officer. Most of us would sit still, applying a grim sense of justice to the scene, happy that an enemy to humanity had been neutralized.

We do not fault Flammen and Citronen. We do not fault Flammen for his anger, his frightful impetuousness, his coldness of execution, for he sacrifices his more human capacities for the sake of others, for the sake of those who suffer. Even for an uncertain future, he sacrifices sweetness and light for blood and death and danger.

We do not fault Citronen. His wife and child are poor and hungry, but we only reproach him a little. Indeed, his wife takes up with another man because Citronen is never home, always away in hiding or on the warpath. But he is noble enough to say, "Take care of my wife and child."

Why do they fight? Why kill? We all know. We have heard the stories, seen the dream-like horrors. We do not forget. We have hated the Nazis in our turn. We do not forget. We have seen the tortured, corpse-like human bodies shuffling in the cold. We have seen the corpses. We do not forget.

Those who survive hold on to the flame, the torch of indignation, of sorrow, of love, of despair, of newfound hope, of wisdom hard-won. We have heard them. We have listened attentively. We do not forget.


We forget.


There is a deeper horror that even as I write surfaces once more, insidious, in our minds.

And how do we meet this horror? With swift relentless unfailing justice toward a real and present monstrosity? Or with diplomacy and statecraft. Do we treat with hell?

We treat with hell.


We forget.


We have swallowed the lie that words can win the day. I believe they can. But someone must be listening.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was willing to be arrested, abused, killed for the cause of a better life for African Americans -- not for their lives en masse, but for equal rights as citizens. Not for clothing, not for food, not for water, not for shelter, not for life and breath -- for equal rights as citizens.

Our glorious generation has achieved a complacent sidewalk counselorship. Yes, we are those on the sidelines who watch and say a few words, impotently waving our signs, hiding behind a false piety that says "Prayer is all you need!" without proaction. We treat with hell.

We say that "We are the pro-life generation!" with cries and shouts and smiles and free concerts in Washington, D.C.. But we care only -- really -- for our own lives. We are pro-life in that regard. Our rationalizations are petty and false. We say that we act in this way in the name of "compassion" and "charity," that we are the "peaceful" demonstrators amongst the carnage.

When compassion means sloth, when charity equates to a failure of love in a failure to act for the prevention of murder (and thus the salvation of the would-be murderer), there is no peace. When the mills grind day after day as we plod -- we asses, we dumb chattel -- along the sideline begging our betters -- yes! for they are cold, and we are lukewarm -- to please obey natural and divine law, there can be no peace. There is no peace. There is no peace. There is no peace.

And to pretend to Culture in such a world?!

If the wars are not fought -- if we do not at least stand firm in peaceful civil disobedience: blocking entries, closing down buildings with whatever measures necessary -- then there will be nothing left when the self-loathing of the West has wreaked its havoc upon the last child in the womb (or out).

We fear death. We do not see it, and so we avoid its screeching call for justice. We avoid. We wimper.


There is no peace. There is no peace. Awaken.





Addendum: I do not advocate the murder of abortionists.

Fiction: "Kronos: A Fable"

Eyvind Earle, "Garden of Eden"

Written by Ross J. McKnight
Edited by Jonathan Torres


1.

2127. And the world is happy – all the world. Having returned to the woods, the fields, away from the deathly cities, and back to the earth, where loving plants grow and animals become less frightful. Back to the farms and to the peace of the country, in which all people find their natural home.

The change in climate over the last century has had the great effect of rendering vesture unnecessary. The days are warm though the wind blows cool at times. And the great labor is to keep fruit-bearing plants to their plots, for they outstretch in gangly fronds their slow-swelling stalks.

There are many such colonies as ours upon moundy green high grounds among the swaths of bog and wetland. The mountains of what was the Blue Ridge untouched except their mysterious fogs and mists now merge with the smoky evaporation steaming from the staid water below, in the mornings leaving bright greeny mounds glistening, an ancient land of reptiles with hot stones and earthy crevasses.

And in all of this the joys of love. My lover himself is in the woods today to harvest honey as I sit here writing the journal of this our new life. Years of utter waste and darkness behind. Who could have said with any hope we would be here in the perfection of bliss? And yet it is so.

Who knows what happiness will befall me next. I keep this record of my joys for recollection. Many days from now I will have flowered – spread colorful wings, known inexplicable ecstasies. I write now as from the heart of one initiate of pleasure, a mere acolyte of happiness, but destined to burst through the very bounds of sense.

2.

No need to count the days in any urgency. As if our lives constantly prepare for demanding events created to justify them. A tyranny. I live, and today is a life of flowers, blooms of this eternal spring. I awaken to the scent of a bright yellow bundle laid upon my lap. My lover is broader than I with dark curls on the chest, dark curls above the brow. He stands and bares healthy teeth. We embrace.

He walks me through the field outside our wall. The dew bites but briefly before sun restores comfort to the little toes. He takes me to the bee hives. Harmless creatures after the quietus, the purest most efficient natural adaptation in history: immortality and harmony.

We walk the natural bridge to watch the Falls. The crashing water steams up from far below, blessing the pores and refreshing the senses beyond possibility. Possibility is overthrown. A lilting call from the eastern bank and we disappear.

With the Perfection we all know instinctively the greatest pleasure available in any circumstance, and we nearly always act accordingly. My lover, for instance, bears the scent of sweet daylily and fresh lavender – his hair is fluid, thick, affirmative of the hand that strokes it. We recount the joys of each day. There is no pleasure mindful we together leave untouched.

I am still chased by dreams.

3.

I dreamed last night that I bathed alone at the Falls. My hair streamed behind as I surfaced and turned to the shore. There a solitary bloom hung over in the midnight darkness. I stretched out my hand to touch the stem and a shock of intoxicating agony transfixed it there. I awoke with tears.

4.

Again at the pool beneath the Falls. The water of such a temperature to quicken the mind, burst the heart. I dove deep into the center but could not reach the bottom. As I swam towards the surface, I thought I saw a wavering form retreat from the water's edge, but slow.

Wind rustled the cold dewy wild blooms, settled weighted resting stalks. The night was still, and memory left me; I knew not myself or why I sat there by a pool on a rock. I withheld the pride of some cause, but could not place it. An owl jeered.

I made the mild climb to the grassy clifftop and morning broke though dawn could not. A soft breeze tousled fern fronds and the fine hairs on my head; the birds called from their early waking as the sky turned the very color of dreams. Still shadow with a rising blue.

The figure reappeared. She lay down oddly shaped amid the river stones. She seemed soft and rounded in all parts. Her eyes half-closed, she released low sighs, musical moans from out the water babble. Brown hair splayed out upon the mottled pebbles as she loosed small cries, drawing legs up around her bulbous middle. She pressed her curved back against a low rounded boulder and in one bright moment a call that reverberated from tree boles on the stream-side to nighted cliffs through the little vale and surging into space – a small noisy creature appeared between her thighs glowing by the weakening moonlight.

She lifted the little one to her breast wiping free the blood and fluids. She gazed awhile at the sleeping form until she shook violently, her head falling back upon the rock.

Days passed. The water coursing livened and spoke. The coiling breezes played in her hair and the babe wailed. It's feeble shape slid fortunately toward her standing nipple, and it sucked forth life.

Weeks. Months. Years. The child grew. He lingered, at times moaned sweetly; he would, at times, sit quite still at her side, clasp her face between his little hands and seem to pray. He wet her cheeks with tears that wet his own, brushed back her flowing hair and was quiet in the loneliness of grief. She lay and breathed.

The sun rose one morning glowing; a vast wine-drenched sky hung over the vale. The water, catching the light, dyed blue rocky banks with a rosy hue. And for the first time the boy upraised his eyes to the cresting mass upon the horizon. He climbed the stone steps of the Falls and gazed out from a body that hung upon forgotten will.

Now I could see his eyes open upon worlds of hope, fear, despair, love. Torn by agony he yet did not turn his face from the wonder in the sky. The earth unrolled its rich tapestry before his feet, and with a cry that struck my heart to stone he sprang forward like a bucking antelope. I watched his flying form until another cry bewildered my ears, wrenched my gaze to the stream-side. There the terrified mother wrestled with stoney limbs to rise and cast about with racing breath and pained look.

Footprints in the wet earth. Pursuit. Without a thought running weeping seeing every trace with a longing that effaced her. Her form – wind blowing the grass unknowing going. The orb over all the earth let forth a new radiance of volatile swallowing fire – blood and wine from the sky.

Black figures recede into the gargantuan sun like crust of dross in a crucible and I wonder what pitiless curse plagues mother and child. The sun grows ever closer, the land vanishing, subsumed into its mass while the wind's searing torrent knocks me flat like streaming beach-grass – abandoned pawn on the sands. The cooked earth coughs up flares upon the wastes and I am wracked with pangs.

* * *

Upon my awakening, the eyes of the youngest Prefect a mile distant burst open. His heart flutters – he searches reasonless.

My lover looks at me. I nod. He smiles, caresses my ears, my hair, but in his eyes there is the sickest dread. He brings me with every effort to where I must forget myself in the extenuation of every sense.