Ode to a Diver

The stereo begins to play as classic images appear on the screen. First Wally, the Beaver Cleaver waltz down the stairs to kiss their esteemed mother goodbye as the show begins. The audience’s attention draws up to a familiar sight as June bends to give each boy a hug goodbye: a strand of pearls, white and dazzling admist the grayscale landscape. The story goes that Barbara Billingsley wore these pearls to hide a hollow in her neck, hoping the audience would not notice the one imperfection in America’s perfect mother’s armor.

Pearls. The perfect stone in my opinion. From the first time I saw their frothy whiteness, their round allure captured this loyal prisoner. They represented all the good old days to me, the glamour of the Hollywood starlets combined with the sophistication of perfectly manicured women in bedazzled dresses and teased hair. For a while I even wanted a pearl instead of a diamond for an engagement ring, in love with what Jesus once called a rock of great value in his parables. 

These tiny gems are produced of chemicals and pressure with the soft shell of a living mollusk. Although rare perfect ones are found in the wild, many pearls do not all come with the milky white skin we think they own, but are cultured to be ascetically pleasing to the searching siren. They sit, waiting at the bottom of a deep pool, trapped in a hard shell, until some searching soul comes down and rescues them from captivity, selling them to grasping hands and bare necks. Then they sit perched like morning doves upon the body of the lucky soul who has snatched up the prize from its murky beginnings. 

Pearls. Jesus compared the kingdom of Heaven to a pearl on great price in Matthew 13, saying that if a man found one of great value he would sell everything he owned just to buy the one speck of beauty. I would propose making the analogy more personal. 

Would we not say that we once were trapped in a hard shell of rock, birthed in the rocky cave of our own misery? We remained captive to our sinful nature, not allowed to show any feeling or beauty within, suffocated by the pressure exerted upon our souls. 

Yet even in the murkiest of water, Christ left the heights, diving down into the abyss and rescued us from our heavy load. He tore us from our infested home, and cleaned our sordid souls until we too shone as white as light emitting from these precious stones. That diver took the plunge to rescue this one pearl, the one sinner who could not escape the shell she so careful wove. Yet now, after bought with no higher of price, this puny pearl can walk along with its owner through the crowds, finally able to allow the materpiece to shine forth, reflecting the now pure beauty within.

And such was I. 

Finding Prometheus in the Rocks

The lad struggled to achieve his footing as he pawed the rocky ledge beneath. He strained with all his force until his hands pulled and jerked upwards, bringing his body to safety atop the highest pinnacle. He breathed a jagged breath of fresh air and surveyed the unending terrain. He had tasted the nectar of the gods; he had defeated the mountain.

Coming from the hills and crags of West Virginia, mountains remain an intrinsic part of my existence. Everywhere one looks, green spreads of conifers and rolling hills of limestone stare back at us, the forest invaders. In the tranquil landscape surrounding my birthplace, war has not yet begun, but even now the haunting death wail of the forest echos faintly through the trees. Where once roads of dirt and holes danced with the mountains, twisting and frolicking up and down, interstates now enact a steady death march through the land. Tunnels bear witness to mortal wounds thrust upon the ancient wrinkled beasts of stone. Man’s conquest starts now.

From the earliest of memories, children have a liking for conquest. They must subdue the monkey bars, dominate the slide, and ride the dog like a veteran charger. Unfathomable numbers of bruises and bumps bear witness to child’s play as little ones attempt to climb hills, scale trees, and vault across creeks. Every object larger then themselves retains a mystery one must solve by thrusting it under the reign of spindly, under-developed limbs. Adults laugh or sigh, wondering whenever they will lose their sense of indomitable boldness, learning limitations and common sense.

Yet this courageous attitude does not diminish in most adults; rather it presents itself in other ways. From the dawn of creation, grown man has attempted to subdue the wilderness, to tame the west, to span the gorges and bring the heights under his authority. One only has to look at the numbers of hikers’ attempts to scale Mount Everest to know that intrinsically, man has always possessed a distaste for things outside his experience: physically, emotionally, or spiritually speaking. The existence of nations speaks for itself, as the Bible records man’s futile attempt to rival mountains at Babel to claim rule of the heavens.

From ancient civilization until now, ziggurats to sky scrapers, man’s competition with mountains has lasted for centuries, yet never has a treaty ever surfaced. For try as they might, the mountains remain strong and proud, ancient warriors refusing to bow down, even before the conquering warlord’s axe. We as humans however, complain about these noble beasts. We try to explode them, break them, chop them in two, but never see the beauty and use within these noble pillars to protect, shield and empower. 

We complain about the mountains in our lives too, asking God why time and time again they must rear their monstrous heads in our lives, destroying our dreams of conquering the latest checkpoint on our corporate ladder of success. We battle them, defame them, and try to choke their last breath, but never once do we wonder why they still tower over our paltry forms.

Will we ever see the beauty in the mountains? Will we ever appreciate the endurance and character they build within our lives? Unless we learn to flow with the mountains, walking along the sometimes steep and treacherous path God has delineated, will we ever fully know His purpose for our lives? For these mountains, just like those faithful friends to my own birthplace who have shielded our valley from enemies, tornadoes and storms, can act like a buffer to the enemy in our own lives, testing us and preparing us for worse storms; providing boundaries God uses to keep our lives in harmonious peace and giving us vision to see the Prometheus within the most dismal, rocky of circumstances. 

Choosing to Feed the Beast Within

The artist labors over his prized piece of earthen clay. He first cuts away huge chunks, then adds in multiple seemingly trifling details as the smooth statue takes shape beneath his rough, hewn paws. Suddenly, the design lights up for the onlookers. It reveals an image of mother and child locked in warm embrace. The audience gasps and applauds, but suddenly the artist does something unexpected. He takes a knife and with slow, deliberate strokes teases a lolling tongue out of the mother's mouth and a curled mustache upon the child's. Some immature members of the audience giggle with the bizarre hilarity of it all as the artist thirstily drinks down their mirth, but others in the audience turn to neighbor and ask in shocked tones: "Why ruin the piece? That was a piece of good art!" 

The above mentioned example may seem rather improbable, for what artist would do this to his own work? Yet, I would like to compare this rather ridiculous example with my thoughts reflecting from an experience of last night past.

After supper, a choice of movies made I and the guys' viewing cut. Considering the terrible pain inflected upon their souls by my insistence to watch a classic like "Fiddler on the Roof" the night before, I agreed to watch the boy classic "Hot Rod" instead of my own choice. Yet as we embarked upon this crowd pleasing journey into the world of Rod and his absurd aspirations to achieve stardom as a stunt man, I realized I remained the only one not caught in laughter's trap. For I could find nothing funny in the slapstick and often crass humor associated with this tale of daredevil stunts, sexual innuendoes, homosexual winks, and dry humor brought on by guys who, by the own admissions, just like to party. 

Now before all the "Hot Rod" lovers in the room stand up and make a quick exit away from my rather harsh diagnosis...finish this page. In no way will I continue to bash "Hot Rod", nor condemn any of those who find humor in its ways. For me, however, as an artist I believe that America has lost the definition of art, and this one film provided an excellent example for my theory. What is my definition of art you may ask? I would have to agree with dictionary.com's assertion that art is the expression of what is "beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance" yet I would even take a step further by examining the last phrase. For in my opinion as not just an artist, but a Christian as well, art reflects the image of God within us as his sculpted creations. Our God is a creative God, and he has indued us with his likeness, giving us the gift of creating beauty through our imaginations in glory to His name. Therefore, I would have to argue that art has "more than ordinary significance", and that it is indeed an act of worship. This act of worship therefore, should show the world how we glorify our Savior and how we use His gifts He has placed within us. As 1 Corinthians puts it, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." (1 Corinthians 10: 31, NIV) Therefore we should put forth our best effort in appreciation for what we have received. The cheapening of art in film, meant only for penny laughs and nickel screams, devalues the very face of beauty God intended to grace art, His gift to man.


So where did this debasement of art begin? Where did America stumble so far from its early film roots such as "Ben Hur" or "The Ten Commandments" or even "Ivanhoe"? The key word remains desensitization. The facts remain that in the early days of film, everything was implied. Ladies would faint in a Western if someone flopped to the ground with a fake gun shot to the chest. Laughter began as the antics of Charlie Chapman and the Marx brothers lit up the screen. Yet over time, screenwriters suddenly realized the dynamics of their audience were changing with the social terrain. The era of the 60's and 70's brought wars and the counter cultural revolution. Free love and violence slowly seeped into the culture and then silently gilded into the world of the big screen as well. Fake gun shots turned to violent stabbing and brutal murders, occasional four letter words turned to more obscene expressions, and passionate love stories suddenly caught on fire and fled racing into other homes than their own, bringing a death to the thought of private intimacy. Suddenly, the beast inside man's sinful heart caught hunger, until baited with constant exposure it craved more and more fulfillment of its bestial needs. As a virus becomes immune to bacteria with constant usage, viewers took one to many views, leading to producers to invent more and more shocking scenes to receive the reaction they needed. 


Yet somewhere in between this slowly evolving landscape of new radical films and the modern age of media, something even more tragic has happened. In C.S. Lewis's classic tale "Prince Caspian", a certain character named Trumpkin replies to the attack of a former talking bear by stating that if you treat a man like an animal long enough, that's what he will turn into. These words have invaded our world as well. For I would like to present the theory that modern man has turned itself into an animal. They have fed their carnal and bestial nature in film by indulging in base emotion where love turns to lust, justice to vengeance, and intelligence to oaths. In order to fill this nature somewhere a moral light within their mind had to be extinguished and with it, I would state, fled the beauty of the art. For when talented writers have to resort to stupid animal-like antic and brutish portrayals of love and affection to communicate what used to be called a story, something has gone very wrong indeed. 


Art is beauty inspired by God's fingerprint on humanity, and when we sacrifice that beauty to satisfy the beast within us, when we render impotent the power of that art to convey a deeper meaning, when we trivialize the power of film to influence our culture and lives, we feed the monster that becomes savagery, and endanger the civility we have come to consider the American way, or what was once the American ideal. 


Psalms 101:3 (NIV) "I will not look with approval on anything that is vile."