Beloved son-type human.
I always enjoy reading the comments on our posts. One comment on my last email particularly caught my eye. A reader who identifies himself as "Zzmdf" was reacting to my statement that horror movies and X are essentially good things that can be corrupted. He wrote in part, “Is a pack of loose leaf paper good? A blank canvas? It seems to me that media are morally neutral; what is placed upon them makes the endeavor good and worthy or ugly and demeaning.”
Naturally, I respect the point Zzmdf is making. I even agree with it in its context. But that is not my context.
From my perspective, of course paper and blank canvas are good. What would you write or paint on without them? The very idea of them is beautiful. The human mind that conceived that idea is an adjunct of God’s creation, that part of God’s creation that continues the work God began.
We have written so fervently of the world’s corruption that we may have lost sight of the fact that what has been corrupted is exceedingly lovely. If it were not, the corruption wouldn’t matter. In some sense, it would not even be possible.
I don’t want to burst into a chorus of Everything is Beautiful in its Own Way. As long as there are such things as mosquitoes and childhood diseases, God has some explaining to do. But surely the explanation will involve the beauty of the entire design. Now we only espy that design through a glass darkly. But it fades even farther from view when we forget the amazing loveliness of such things as blank paper and canvas, already right there before us.
Such forgetfulness is the opposite of our goal. The seeing of creation’s beauty in the midst of its corruption is the very purpose of the Christian spiritual exercise we’re discussing. And at the center of that exercise — the bull’s eye of the goal — is the beauty of ourselves, the creatures God loves and asks us to love.
In my last letter, I mentioned Edwyn Bevan’s book Symbolism and Belief — one of C. S. Lewis’s favorites. Bevan discusses how we strive to comprehend a God beyond our comprehension by comparing his experience to ours. We talk about the love of God or the justice of God or the wrath of God, but what we’re really saying is that our experience of love and wrath and justice have their perfect prototypes in him. Which means there is a purified version of love and justice and even wrath to which we might aspire, not through will but through practices like charity, forgiveness, and sacramental activity.
The darkness that threatens our perspective when we contemplate how our corruption is attracted to the world’s corruption should not — must not — be allowed to obscure our desire, our effort, our mission to clear that obstacle away so that, even here and now, our beauty might be free to embrace creation’s.
Yer ever-loving,
Dad
As I understand God and His will, all of His creation has purpose, meaning, and life in its usefulness. Our spiritual rebirth into true humanity comes into being through our turning away from that which corrupts and separates—our everyday inclinations to and justifications for selfishness—and manifests in virtue—our useful actions, useful to Him and to others. That is why we ultimately feel true peace and fulfillment in a life centered in service to others and to God. Usefulness is the crux of His will, and thus it is our connection to Him, our oneness with His plan. Thus is paper a beautiful instrument of His creation when used for good—its true purpose—and becomes malign when misused/abused for evil—the corruption of its purpose. Of His purpose.
When I think back to my earliest memories, I remember perceiving that I was *from* somewhere, that I was brought from some peace into a material world.
When I remember that feeling, the whole of life seems like a plus.