Iridescent

"You and Tobias are hopping around in the sprinkler.  The sprinkler is a magnificent invention because it exposes raindrops to sunshine.  That does occur in nature, but it is rare.  When I was in seminary I used to go sometimes to watch the Baptists down at the river.  It was something to see the preacher lifting the one who was being baptized up out of the water and the water pouring off the garments and the hair.  It did look like a birth or a resurrection.  For us the water just heightens the touch of the pastor's hand on the sweet bones of the head, sort of like making an electrical connection.  I've always loved to baptize people,  though I have sometimes wished there were more shimmer and splash involved in the way we go about it. Well, but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sane people ought to do when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water."

---Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004)

Sunlit raindrops (and hummingbirds and opal rings) embody the fancy and wonder we attribute to childhood. Baptism, of course, is a renewal of the human spirit--the process of beginning again.  I love the gentleness of this passage.  But most of all, I appreciate its seriousness in praising the sprinkler for its production of rainbows rather than for its hydration of plants. 

It's A Match

     Leo had led Salzman to the only clear place in the room, a table near a window that overlooked the lamp-lit city.  He seated himself at the matchmaker's side but facing him, attempting by an act of will to suppress the unpleasant tickle in his throat.  Salzman eagerly unstrapped his portfolio and removed a loose rubber band from a thin packet of much-handled cards.....When Leo's eyes fell upon the cards, he counted six spread out in Salzman's hand.
     "So few?" he asked in disappointment.
     "You wouldn't believe me how much cards I got in my office," Salzman replied.  "The drawers are already filled to the top, so I keep them now in a barrel, but is every girl good for a new rabbi?" 

     ---Bernard Malamud, "The Magic Barrel" in The Magic Barrel (1958)

In the title story of Bernard Malamud's National Book Award winning collection, a rabbinical student, Leo Finkle, secures the services of a "commercial cupid"--the marriage broker, Pinye Salzman.   Salzman cleverly limits his options, initially presenting him with the potential match of "Sophie P." a twenty-four year old widow; "Ruth K." a nineteen year old beauty with a lame foot; and "Lily H." a woman he insists is only twenty-nine (Leo's brief meeting with her confirms that but she is at least thirty-five and "aging rapidly"). Rattled by his date with Lily, who believes him to be a true man of God,  Leo gives up on the notion of an arranged marriage. At this point, Salzman offers his a packet of photographs of clients, which Leo leaves unopened for many months. Finally, in a miserable state, he examines the images, and falls in love with one very familiar image.  Rushing to Salzman, he asks him to arrange a meeting with this woman.  Salzman protests, insisting that this image was left in the packet only by accident.  Pressing him, Leo learns that this is a photo of Salzman's daughter--a woman of a very questionable past who is now "dead" to her father.  Suspecting that Salzman had been scheming to arrange this match all along, Leo nonetheless falls for the woman, seeing in her weary yet compelling face, his own salvation.  

This is a story of immigrant culture but also and more importantly of the nature of love. I am most drawn to the image of the "magic" barrel--referred to only as a barrel in the text, and one that exists only in the imagination.  The contrast of the  limitless possibilities of the barrel--the thing we think we want--and the slender options that Salzman strategically presents is the locus of fascination for me. The perfect match (people, objects, situations) always resides in the future of the distance---it is always unidentifiable, or inaccessible, or unobtainable.  Salzman cleverly creates a match that presents as the match--someone who suggests to Leo what love means: "he examined the face and found it good: good for Leo Finkle.  Only such a one could understand him and help him seek whatever he was seeking.  She might, perhaps, love him."

Silence/Stillness

"Tu m'as séduit, O Seigneur, et moi,
Je me suis laissé séduire."  


[You have seduced me O Lord,  
and I am seduced."]

---Into Great Silence (2005) Dir. Philip Gröning

Philip Gröning's documentary Into Great Silence offers the viewer  a rare glimpse into the lives of the monks of the Grand Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps.  These monks of the Carthusian order take a vow of silence, devoting themselves to prayer and meditation.  The film documents their religious rituals but also their daily work, which is an extension of their meditative and spirtual endeavors.  To capture what is remarkable about their devotion would have been nearly impossible within the conventions of the typical documentary film. This film offers no historical information on the monastery, no interviews with those who live there, no musical score. Instead, it presents a minimalist portrayal of its subjects and the spaces they occupy.  Close-ups on the monk's faces, on everyday objects, on shifting natural light, and on noises and sounds creates an immersive experience for the viewer, for whom familiar experiences are made strikingly unfamiliar, even wondrous.


I am drawn to the notion of seduction, featured within today's quote.  If seduction usually has a sexual connotation, here its meaning suggests the powerful draw of the monk's calling and the role that silence plays in catalyzing this kind of passion.  One of the most interesting aspects of the film is the insight if offers into the connection between silence and stillness (silence is translated as stillness within the textual portions of the film).   We might think of "noise" as the greatest descriptor for modern activity, commerce, sociability--the endless messages, conversations, information, exchanges, and traffic that mark both the temptation and the enervation of our own existence. Sound is linked to motion.  Because we are so distracted--so perpetually in motion-- the kind of seduction that the monks experience is not a possibility for us.  Their seduction might even make us a bit envious, if it were not so risky and so courageous.  The film gives us three hours in which to vicariously experience this kind of stillness. The monks want to be with God.  But to be with one's own self--without the protective armor of daily business and noise--might be frightening enough for the modern viewer.  Or maybe, on a good day, enlightening enough.

Facing It Part IV: Faith / Face

It was difficult to think of a title for today's installment of this series, "Facing It."  And so, at some point in the future, the title may be exchanged for something less dramatic.  Below are three quotes from Annie Dillard's  "Holy the Firm," an essay/story about a writer's quest to locate meaning in the tragic burning and disfigurement of a seven year old girl.  The narrator  conveys the extreme suffering of the child as well as her own agonizing quest to find an answer to a philosophical question: "What is God's relationship to the  substance and experiences of this world?"  If the question seems rather pedestrian, the sort of question on which people typically reflect (or worse, pontificate upon) in the aftermath of tragedy--the narrator's  insights prove less so.  She offers neither the voice of complete reassurance nor the voice of abjection.


The first quote links very closely to my two earlier entries, here and here, in which the role of the face is clearly a public one:

"How can people think that artists seek a name?  A name, like a face, is something you have when you're not alone."


And here is the second:

"You might as well be a nun.  You might as well be God's chaste bride, chased by plunderers to the high caves of solitude, to the hearthless rooms empty of voices, and of warm limbs hooking your heart to the world. Look how he loves you!  Are you bandaged now, or loose in a sterilized room?  Wait till they hand you a mirror, if you can hold one, and know what it means.  That skinlessness, that black shroud of flesh in strips on your skull, is your veil.  There are two kinds of nun, out of the cloister or in.  You can serve or you can sing, and wreck your heart in prayer, working the world's hard work.  Forget whistling: you have no lips for that, or for kissing the face of a man or a child.  Learn Latin, and it please my Lord, learn the foolish downward look called Custody of the Eyes." 

And finally, in a last segment, the narrator imaginatively assumes the sacrificial role for the young girl:

"Julie Norwich; I know.  Surgeons will fix your face.  This will all be a dream, an anecdote, something to tell your husband one night: I was burned.  Or if you're scarred, you're scarred.  People love the good not much less than the beautiful, and the happy as well, or even just the living, for the world of it all, and heart's home. You'll dress your own children, sticking their arms through the sleeves.  Mornings you'll whistle, full of the pleasure of days, and afternoons this or that, and nights cry love.  So live.  I'll be the nun for you.  I am now." 

--Annie Dillard, "Holy the Firm" (1977)