“What did you go out to see?”
Reflections on Art and Faith in the Desert
Many years ago, while on a weekend retreat at the Abbey, I found myself wandering down a dusty path leading to one of the less-visited corners of the monastic property. Being in a pensive frame of mind, I was absently scanning the random pebbles and stones on the ground before me when something oddly regular and artificial caught my eye. Stooping down, I picked up a perfectly circular metal ring, about eight inches in diameter, made of what seemed like very stiff wire, heavily rusted from years of exposure.
I say it was perfectly circular, but actually it was not quite perfect, for the circumference was broken by a gap of about an eighth of an inch. At first I was disappointed, even irritated. I wanted my find to be whole and perfect. That this thing was almost but not quite what it “should” have been seemed to me to sum up all the disappointments and failed promises of life. (I said I was in a pensive frame of mind.) But then I remembered something I had read in a book about symbols. While the circle is usually interpreted as an emblem of eternity and divine perfection, it has, as all symbols do, negative connotations as well, namely, the idea of being locked inside the self and closed off from the outside world, or being trapped in endless cycles of humdrum existence and repeated sins. But the gap in the broken circle allows communication between the inner and outer realms, and represents the shattering act of Christ’s resurrection and the grace of the forgiveness of sins, which destroys “the futile way of life” and breaks the shackles of sin and death.
Many people come to the Abbey looking for meaning. On my walk I had found it quite literally lying at my feet. That rusted piece of metal was probably a piston ring for some long-ago disintegrated motor, cast off and forgotten, but for me it was something beautiful, a work of art, a symbol I could actually hold in my hands. I took it home as if it were a rare treasure and hung it on the wall of my studio for inspiration; I even had thoughts of incorporating it into one of my own artworks (though that piece never materialized).
The larger lesson I took from this incident was that life is profoundly and inescapably meaningful, as long as we keep our eyes open. Meaning can appear in unexpected places and in seemingly-insignificant forms, but it can be found everywhere we look, in every thing that surrounds us in life, in art and nature. Of course, like God himself, meaning cannot be seen, not directly. But then, that is not entirely true — meaning can be seen, if we recognize that beauty is just the visual form of truth, incarnated in matter. When we see a beautiful thing, we are seeing an aspect of the divine Beauty, which is the splendor of Truth shining on the eyes of the soul. Our earthly eyes, all too easily beguiled by the delights of art and nature, are actually designed to lead us from these visible things in an ascending path up the royal “Way of Beauty,” the Via Pulchritudis (as a recent Church document termed it), to the invisible God who is the Author of all their meaning and truth and beauty.
St. Andrew’s Abbey, set in the midst of great natural beauty, is well-known as a haven for the arts. Father Maur’s ceramics, Father Werner’s pastels, the exhibits and arts and crafts displays that were so integral to the Fall Festival, the conferences on literature, music, film, and dance, and so on inspired, and inspire, countless visitors and retreatants. Individual works of art are scattered all around the Abbey too, though in keeping with the monastic atmosphere, most are relatively quiet and unobtrusive, and almost blend in with their surroundings: the rough-hewn Stations of the Cross, the Needle’s Eye, the Madonna and Child statue, and the open-armed Jesus. More noticeable perhaps are the large Crucifix on the outside of the chapel, and within, the tabernacle, the stained glass windows, and the old carved Crucifix, to say nothing of the various pictures and sculptures in the common areas.
Every work of art is a visible sign of something invisible, and all these artistic objects are there to remind us that the Abbey is a holy place. We may walk around the grounds admiring the trees and plants and the desert environment, but the monks want to ensure that as we do we will come across reminders of where it all comes from and what it is all for. These little epiphanies and artificial theophanies, devised and planted by the hands of artists, are meaningful in themselves as works of art, but as sacred art they give an explicitly supernatural meaning to the natural spaces around them and direct the prayerful visitor through them off toward the hidden things of God.
Nature is God’s art, of course, so it too is charged with meaning, and meeting it in its stark desert guise is an essential part of the Valyermo experience. For many, in fact, finding God in Nature, in a glorious sunset, in a glittering night sky, in a delicate flower, is much easier than finding Him in art. Whether it is from educational neglect, the excesses of Modern and Postmodern art, or the distractions of electronic media, appreciation of art in its less showy traditional forms has suffered much in recent times. There is indifference, ignorance, and even hostility to art in some quarters, even in the Church, to the point that Art and Nature are sometimes set up to be implacable enemies, like Mordor and the Shire. And just like them, the one is obviously evil and the other obviously good. Natural is “real,” artificial is “fake.”
As we know, words and meanings shift over time. I tell my students a well-known (but probably apocryphal) story about St. Paul’s Cathedral in London: After the original edifice was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, architect Christopher Wren was employed to design the replacement. Upon its completion years later, Queen Anne toured the cathedral and remarked to Wren that she found his work “amusing, artificial, and awful.” Though her review sounds insulting today, at the time it was high praise: she meant it was thought-provoking, artfully done, and awe-inspiring; calling it “natural” would have branded it crude and unrefined.
The ages-long face-off between the artificial and natural realms follows inevitably from our being thinking, acting minds set free in the heart of God’s creation: anything we do there is artificial by definition. It is reflected in two different approaches to life and art: realism and idealism. Realists honor Nature as the best possible model for artistic inspiration and imitation, one which the artist may reverently and haltingly approach but never quite reach, whereas idealists, perhaps inspired by the idea of the immaculate Paradise, judge the world as it is now to be full of flaws and shortcomings in need of fixing. Fixing them and showing the world as it should be is a job for human artistry. Realism is the “default” philosophy for many people, but lest you think you have nothing of the idealist in you, recall the last time you brushed your hair or put on makeup and nice clothes or “composed” a photograph and smiled when you had your picture taken. More generally idealists are inclined to look past surface appearances and focus on the essential core, the meaning behind the matter. That explains the “unrealistic” style of icons, for example, as well as the innocent faces and harmonious compositions of the Renaissance. A realist might counter that this is indeed unrealistically remote from real life. Besides, art itself depends on Nature for its material existence and inspiration, since every work of art is made from rearranged bits of preexisting matter: art is, as the saying goes, “the mirror of nature.”
Fortunately, we do not have to choose between these two factions, as there is truth in both ways of thinking. Nature and ideas together inspire art, and I would add that art itself inspires art. So the Abbey and what it stands for, its natural setting, and the works of art it hosts — all these are inspirations for artists to make more art.
I have been honored several times to have my artwork exhibited in the Fall Festival Art Gallery, and I know that my aesthetic vision has been enriched by my visits to the Abbey, starting back in the ’80s. Coming from the murk of L.A., the panoramic views and the sharp clarity of the desert air and sky were nothing short of revelatory. This was the way the world “should” look. There was something honest in the way the light and shadows showed the shape of the landscape, something fascinating and strangely consoling in its arid simplicity. For artistic purposes, I was never drawn to pine-covered hills, babbling rivers and white-capped mountains; that sort of thing always struck me as a visual cliché. In the desert, it seemed that every obscuring distraction had been stripped away to expose the foundation of the world.
But copying the appearance of a landscape (or anything else) in paint was never my primary artistic goal. I think I always had an instinct for blending realism with idealism, a desire to beautify nature and use its forms and features to communicate meaning and not just make a pretty picture. Probably this comes from Catholic incarnational thinking and a sacramental approach to material things: creation has been sanctified by Christ, and everything is a symbol for a greater reality. So painted skies and landscapes easily become stand-ins for Heaven and Earth, or time and eternity. Representations of fire and water, simple geometric shapes and mathematical proportions, and actual materials like gold leaf and lead lend themselves to a wealth of symbolic possibilities. Their arrangement in triptychs and compartmentalized frames is a reflection of the interconnected design of creation and the hierarchy of relationships between Nature and Man and God.
Arranging things is what art and design are all about. For many years I have also been designing the periodical you are holding in your hands, the Valyermo Chronicle. Probably most people do not give graphic design a second thought (in fact, if you do, you are likely a designer yourself, or are looking at a very good or a very bad design), but I think even this humble art form is capable of meaningful expression. When I lay out an issue, for example, I try to match the design with the content and produce a workable union of form and meaning, or more simply, something pleasing and readable. No doubt in all these artistic endeavors I have failed far more often than I have succeeded, but my intention has been to bring some beauty and meaning into the world.
But no matter whether you are an artist, or simply enjoy looking at art, or prefer being out in nature itself, it is worth thinking about where you do find meaning, and what things or places awaken your awareness of God. You might also ask yourself if some kinds of art or some things or places are better suited to the task than others. As an artist, I might be expected to argue that art is the superior medium, and that best of all are the great masterworks of religious art. Certainly one advantage art has over Nature is its capacity to capture our attention. Nature is everywhere, but a framed picture hung on a wall or a sculpture set on a pedestal, by being deliberately set apart from all the other things around it, announces that it is something special. It invites us to pause and investigate why it was put there and what it is trying to say. To be sure, Nature invites those questions, too, and yes, everything is meaningful, at least in potentia. But a work of art is concentrated meaning. It may signify nothing more than the artist’s desire to make something (which already alludes to God’s own creativity and his sharing of himself with Creation), or it may openly express the deepest and highest aspirations of the human soul. On the other hand, there is a lot of artistic junk out there, and unattractive parts of Nature, too; we must choose wisely what we spend our time with.
Perhaps friends of the Abbey don’t need reminding about any of this. But it strikes me that the entire Abbey itself is a work of art, built up by the monks’ tireless labor to be perfectly attuned to and framed by its natural setting. Father Eleutherius’ garden, the duck pond, the orchards, the walkways that lead gently from the cluster of modest buildings to the outlying cactus-strewn hills and back again — all these are the works of human hands inspired by Benedictine hospitality and designed to create an oasis of peace and welcome. And at the heart of it all, conferring on it the greatest and deepest meaning possible, is the chapel and the living body of Christ.
There is a world full of natural wonders out there, and an well-nigh inexhaustible treasury of human art, but everything about them will be wasted if we don’t eventually follow them to God. The 1987 Georgian film Repentance ends with an old woman remarking, “What good is a road if it doesn’t lead to a church?” Something similar could be said about art and nature, and our lives.
Michael Schrauzer has been visiting the Abbey since the mid-1980s. He holds an MFA from Claremont Graduate School. His column, “Eyes to See,” appears in This Rock magazine. He writes and makes art and designs in Coronado, California. He can be contacted at mshroud@gmail.com.