Beauty of God V

This Beauty of God topic could really go on for a long time. There is so much more to share and so much more to summarize from the weekend that I spent in Colorado. However, I think that I will bring it to a close today with a personal musing about Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers and Tides.

Rivers and Tides is a documentary which follows Goldsworthy around as he creates his natural art. This is a film that may get some practical-producing type of people all worked up. One may hear this type of people yell, "get a life!" or "come on!?" or "I can't believe his wife lets him get away with this!"--if it were not for the healthy amount of money he makes doing what he does. My wife would generally fit this category of people. They are admittedly the people who actually get things done in life while their spouses sit around typing on blogs.

Goldsworthy essentially plays all day long in an effort to find meaning in nature. He plays in the mud, on the beach, in trees and in rivers. One moment from the film that has implanted its self into my memory is a time where he sets out early in the morning to build one of these egg or seed shaped rock formations for which he is well known. He uses a flat rock on the beach and attempts to finish before the tide comes in--it is a race against the clock. I was amazed as he slowly deliberates over each rock before setting it upon the others. My wife and I both were disappointed when the rocks shifted after a considerable amount of time and the structure fell over--four times. Each time the viewer could see the agony on Goldsworthy's face as he would look back at the quickly approaching tide and let out long sighs with his hands on his knees. He even contemplated giving up for the day. This was until, bent over on his hands and knees in front of yet another pile of stone, he realized out loud that each time he learned a little more about the rock with which he was working--and after all, that is what it is all about.

This is about the time that the practical people are befuddled by Goldsworthy and want to shake into him the idea that life is not about understanding how these beach rocks fit into an egg-shaped thing that will be swallowed up by the tide. I want to pause a moment to say that I have learned something substantial from this. I thought that this moment on the beach was about the egg-shaped thing, about the finished product, but it was about the rocks as well--even if the egg-shaped thing never came to be that day... I think that I have been in a rush much of my life to produce something...so much so that I haven't found meaning in the process regardless of the outcome.

There is a picture in this documentary of a man who seems to understand (maybe not in theological terms) that his life is a gift. Art is his nourishment and the land is its source. He gives himself to what nourishes him. One may look at his work process as impractical, as an overindulgence or as child's play (this impression wasn't far from even my own mind), but I now see it as an answer to the question of "why live." I, on the other hand, am pretty much out of touch with myself. I have not taken the time since I was a child to discover what it is that nourishes me--that makes me feel really alive.

In my own journey with life I have been told that being spiritual was how I would find nourishment. After all, it was said that mankind does not live on bread alone, but on the very words of God. And since much of our Christian practice maintains a definition of spiritual holiness as something other that what is human--something set apart and distinct--I have spent much of my life attempting to be something that I am not. I learned to see my childhood indulging as selfish. Doing what I wanted to do with my life was out of the question to many degrees--especially in an Evangelical ministry setting. To admit that Metallica's music did more for nourishing my life than did singing worship songs in church was an absurdity.

I failed to realize that I did not have to do something other than be what I was in order to do something spiritual. I was inherently spiritual. The things that captured me as a child were clues to what would nourish me as an adult--they are my own spiritual connection with God as I grow to acknowledge my life as a gift. It is partly in the process of this acknowledgement, rather than solely in the products of life, that I can say, 'Amen,' to Goldsworthy--that is what it is all about.

I could write for a long time about many of the things that I took away from this movie, but this discussion brings me full circle to answer some of the questions that I set out in my original Beauty of God post. I am satisfied with that.