The Wild Goodness of Gaudi

Once I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a large book sitting on a table. Its cover was a detail-photograph of a roof-corner. I was caught immediately, like love at first sight. A detail of a roof was all it took to make me a life-long fan of Antoni Gaudi i Cornet, the genius-artist-ascetic whose vision lies behind the last truly great building project of modern times, La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Sagrada, Gaudi's crowning work, and the last of this man who slowly became more and more determined to be only God's, is great because he saw a vision of the cult-center of Barcelona's true soul, that twin-love of their natural land and the Word who made it, and he submitted his great gifts to the truth that all truly great architecture--indeed, all great art--draws our souls back to their source, to each other, to the universal and common truths, to God. Indeed, Gaudi's work, as exemplified in La Sagrada, is a plastic (as in the sense of the 'plastic arts' such as architecture and sculpture) manifestation of the land and natural beauty that surrounds Barcelona, an ordered version of nature which is again moved, in concert, to its highest end, that of revealing the beauty, truth, and order of God. In other words, it is art imitating and re-ordering nature, and becoming itself a revelation of God. Gaudi's work helps human beings to see God poetically through nature, through art, again: to know, to receive in impressions upon the soul His fecundity, His wild goodness, His simple order within complexity, His extravagance of love.

Most importantly, La Sagrada brings nature again clearly under the ends to which she was originally created: as a Christian liturgy of sacrifice, love, fecundity, order, and beauty.

La Sagrada Familia, or just "Sagrada" as it is affectionately called, rises like the Montserrat mountains near Barcelona: not just figuratively 'rising' but rising, like the great dolmite-shaped, exposed bones of the mountain, the cathedral looks like the mountain; it is as if a section of the mountain was indeed moved by faith, echoing the promise of the Lord, and settled itself in the middle of Barcelona.

The inside of the cathedral is just as magnificent and seductive to the soul as is the view for the homecoming sailor watching for the glint of the ceramic-encrusted spires on a familiar, permanent mountain-shape. When one enters this mountain, one enters a forest of helicoid vaults and hyperboloid columns, shaped themselves along paraboloid lines with the vaults. It is a study in natural surfaces and planes, abstracted, yes, but distilling the essential shapes one finds in nature, distilling and ordering them.

Inside Sagrada, the mysterious watching and waiting, the escape from a work-a-day world that a natural forest provides, is experienced, but married to the Presence in the Tabernacle: the forest finds its end as mystery in the Mystery of the Eucharist; the liturgy of the trees, leaves changing color and with time falling and rising, the seasonal sound of the birds is re-ordered in the light falling through the stone, the liturgical vestments, the choir, the organ.

About the Church as an institution, and about art, Gaudi proclaimed, "The Church makes use of all the arts, both those involving space [architecture, sculpture, etc] and those involving time [poetry, music]; the liturgy offers us lessons in aesthetic refinement."

I believe Gaudi meant 'aesthetic refinement' in both senses of the adjective: both an appreciation or a recognition of beauty and an appreciation of the principles that underlie this beauty. 'Aesthetic refinement' can become impoverished when it is simply 'good taste' in terms of 'style' or an end in itself. At its highest levels, aesthetic refinement is a a soul able to see Beauty and the principles that underlie it: Truth, Order, Love. A true poet, a true soul, will recognize the highest level wherein Beauty is Truth is Love is Order. There, one has found also that these, in their oneness, are in fact not concepts, but a Person: Three Persons in One. Thus, the liturgy, an Art, is meant to form us in an appreciation of Beauty, Truth, Love, Order.

Gaudi saw this and incorporated it into his own art, and yet saw outside his own discipline deep connections in human nature and history contained in the liturgy: One is the dramatic action central to Christian life and liturgy and worship, the Holy Sacrifice. Gaudi saw that this had been foreshadowed in the ancient Greek tragedies, central to the religion and life of the Greeks. He said, "In the Mass there is a dialogue between the celebrant and choir, between priest and faithful; postures and movements are precise and correct; entreaties, blessings, and sermons pronounced...these are of the greatest plastic grandeur and beauty." For hundreds of years, probably millenia before the Incarnation, human beings have been doing the action of seeking, attempting to become again one with the Source, trying, in the words of Daniel O'Connor, "...to repair the relation between the acts of the past and eternity, to ensure that the present has the proper relation to eternity, and to prepare the future to have the proper relation to eternity, mystically taking it into ourselves." The drama of the Holy Sacrifice is the true expression of the culmination, the consummation of this drama, enacted over thousands of years; it is the expression of the Sacrifice of the Lamb in heaven, seen by St. John mystically in Revelations.

Gaudi also, as a deep Christian, understood that the Church's spiritual order takes precedence over any of the arts She employs. He related the story of an artist who asked that some especially beautifully-wrought Tabernacles be left uncovered so that they could be seen by the faithful. The Church denied this request, and the Tabernacles were left covered: the mystery is greater than the art, the soul greater than the liturgy or the vestments or even the church surrounding it. He knew that an re-ordering or relationship with eternity is a gift from God, a grace, and no human art, dramatic action, or logic can effect that. It is the Incarnation, Sacrifice, and Resurrection of Christ; it is the action of the Holy Spirit, the creation of God. In fine, we can only as artists and poets, imitate it, serve it, dispose others to receive it by first receiving it ourselves.

Gaudi was one of those rare Renaissance-like artists, like Da Vinci, able to produce poetry with logic as a tool; he was a myth-maker, a true poetry-creator, who understood in his sub-creation, 'where the Leviathan lies' or 'how the pelican feeds her young,' and yet also visualized, always, the wholeness of the thing. He did not let the details or the skeleton of the thing distract him or stop there as in many modern art pieces, but rather saw the revelation in it towards a final wholeness, a final revelation, which can only be seen by poetic wisdom. Gaudi said, "Sagacity is superior to science. The word comes from sapere which means to savour [to taste]; it refers to the fact. Wisdom is wealth, it is a treasure; science provides us with certainty about what we examine; it is required to keep counterfeit coins out of the treasure."

What is poetic wisdom? Daniel O'Connor, in his book The Crown and Completion of Sanctity on the writings of Luisa Piccaretta, speaks about poetic wisdom; though about her revelations, it is, I believe, analogically applicable to the work of Gaudi:

 G.K. Chesterton shared great insight when he said, “The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”

Expect to feel overwhelmed if you take the approach of a logician; striving to master these revelations the same way you study the material in a textbook before the final exam of an important class. There are seemingly endless analogies, modes, explanations, applications, and so on. How they all fit together will not be readily apparent...I merely wish to encourage reading them with the approach of the poet, saying to yourself as you approach them, I will not worry about trying to memorize this or trying to categorize it according to how I already understand...I will simply read this for the same reason I listen to a beautiful symphony; to be spiritually built up by the impressions it leaves upon my soul rather than to methodically analyze it, writing down the succession of notes...

Trying to understand Gaudi's work only through logic does overwhelm, as is trying to understand God primarily through formulas, true though they might be. To understand the science and logic behind a flower, or a work of art, can either add to the wholeness and beauty within our understanding, or totally destroy it. It depends on which truth--the scientific or the poetic--is held as closer to the level of truth where Truth, Beauty, and Goodness become one.

The scientific method, or logical steps are important, but lower on the hierarchy of the soul than the poetic, as love is higher than knowledge: "If I have all knowledge, and have not love, I am nothing." Yet Gaudi said, "[The] procedure of trial and error is required by limited human intelligence. The bases of reason are the rule of three, mathematical proportion, syllogism." He used this sense of 'trial and error,' logical analysis, and a knowledge of mathematical principles to create the natural beauty of his structures: "Paraboloids, hyperboloids, and helicoids cause the incidence of light to vary constantly; they have a wealth of nuances of their own which does away with the need for decorating and modeling." Scientific knowledge and logic are thus, for human beings, essential knowledge that allows us to build towards truth, like the knowledge of structures, measures, and weights allows for a great building to rise; yet this knowledge is clearly not enough to create beauty that speaks of that higher Beauty: "Work grows out of cooperation, and this can only be based on love; that is why those who have the seed of hatred within them must be set apart," Gaudi said.

True art, true poetry, whether it is found in the action of the drama, the words of the writer, or the plastic representation of the architect or sculptor, or the aesthetic sermon of the liturgy, and which we are all called through wonder to sub-create or to be formed by, allows Beauty, Truth, Love, Order to enter within us. The experience of true poetry and art is the far cry, clear and luminous, of the Lover who seeks us; the creation of it is our response, our submission of ourselves to Him; we become formed into our true selves either through receiving or giving true art, the art which has its source and end in God.

Baking and Boasting

I love The Great British Bake Off.

Weird, because I can't bake, and I can't even eat the stuff they make on the show, mouth-watering as it is; you see, I can't have dairy, any grains, or nuts. So baking, unless it is some alternative that smells kind of good and then, kind of, suspiciously, like chickpeas, is pretty much out. So am I living vicariously, or torturing myself? Are my thighs safe from the delectables because they are electronic signals and colored pixels and in the past? No, because as a result of watching I always get tea in a pot with a nice china cup and eat the chickpea crap anyway; I fall to temptation in the way that I can. With chickpeas, I always get a stomachache, too. No one except a fallen-archangel type can look at petit-fours and choux-buns for an hour without going for the fridge.

Really, it has nothing to do with the delectables. But I am living vicariously, in another way.

The Great British Bake-Off is about the best amateur baker, and about a craft. There is no million-pound prize, as far as I know, or book deal, unless accidental after the fact. There is no twenty-something sex pot pandering brand names; the hosts are two delightful thirty or forty-something women who are--gasp--intelligent, funny, compassionate, and not particularly stunning visually. There is a simple tent and there are friendships forged, and emotional melt-downs which get mopped up with the help of others, even fellow competitors. There are bakers who will say, "I'd rather Ian and I both do medium-well than for him to totally fail. He can use my oven, too" (when opening the oven means the final product will potentially deflate-- "gasp"). There are nicknames developed affectionately over time, and a judge who is in her 80s and respected for her knowledge and person pairing up with yes--Paul Hollywood, a master-baker who isn't afraid to just be a man; there are humble back stories, and apparently, real sorrow and sensitivity when a baker must leave the show. There is sometimes plain honesty softened by well-chosen words and an ultimate atmosphere that says, even to the less-than-best, "you are one of us." The winning is not the main attraction: it is the community forged around a love of a craft. There are normal people excited about the art, and there is a level of relational art--the art of courtesy--that we Americans only dream about.

I was recently reading about the show, and was interested to find that Paul Hollywood and Co. had tried a Great American Bake-Off: it didn't work, because American viewers said, "It seems really phony." What was being referred to seems to have been the balance between camaraderie and competition; could Americans simply not believe in something more about the art, and ultimately, the community, than the baking king taking over the cake mountain?

I am only part American. I am really a third-culture person, which means I live in something of a cultural limbo, a place between cultures. My parents' home culture is American, but I am partly Afghan, partly Greek, and yet not these either. My pre-school and kindergarten was British, and first and second grade Greek, and so it goes.The result of this is that I have a hybrid inside-outside view of American culture, which means I'm not really inside it. This gives me a unique view, a kind of bird's eye view, which may mean I don't see some things correctly, but others I see quite clearly.

American competition is one thing I see clearly. My feelings about the typical American community are like the feelings one has about a knife-edge: you can see it cuts really well and you can really do some good work together, but it must be handled carefully, and there's never anything close to a womb-like feeling of belonging or unconditional acceptance and support. We belong in the sense of how we relate to the best, or the most innovative, or the bravest, or the strongest, or to someone who stands out in some way or another. Independence seems to be the catch-word. The community is often a spring-board for fancy moves, not an end in itself.

Maybe I sound jaded or cynical.

But ask yourself: whom does your typical American community value most highly? The person who innovates really good solutions or makes a lot of money, or the person who seeks no credit, is unknown, but brings people together, who serves? The young or the old?

If I am right, and you are American, you chose the individual innovator, the entrepreneur, and the young; it is not like this everywhere in the world. There are cultures in the world who value much more highly wisdom of experience and the collaborator, the follower; there are cultures who see a different end of community than material or political or athletic success. Do these cultures have their own problems? Yes. I know Greece a little, having loved it, and I see with sadness that the high value on communal living, just being, and on family can turn into nepotism and disarray. In Canada, and Australia, two places I've lived briefly, students in class will not answer questions because of the 'tall poppy syndrome' (everyone wants to cut down an inordinately tall poppy so the focus is on the nice grouping). But what about a culture that values winning, independence, more than anything else?

Winning and independence are goods, but not the highest goods. When 'winning' boils over the proper boundaries, it can seep into places and communities where it simply does not belong. Even sports--everyone knows well the rabid, mouth-frothing coach who thinks it good to scream threats at players: but, you say, this is Little League. No matter! Win! Win! Teach them early that it's a tough world out there!!! Even if the world, actually, is not a baseball field. Truly.

"No. Baseball is life."

"You mean 'baseball can be a metaphor for life,' don't you--which, by the way, I don't agree with--"

"Huh?"

What about a medical community? Is it about being the star doctor?

What about an educational community? Should we make sure our teachers are up to scratch by having them compete with each other through peer and student evaluations?

Do either of these examples strike you as really problematic; do they strike you as having one value, winning, which very probably will undermine the true goal of the community?

The end of a medical community is health of the body of an actual person. What a far ways our mainstream, Western medical community has come from the receptive, personal, wholistic Hippocrates. Or is the end of medicine innovative science? Science is an important, essential, good element of a medical community, but not its 'final end.' When I say ' final end' I mean the primary, ultimate purpose. Like the north star on a voyage, this must always be kept in sight, or the ship, the community, will wander, get lost, and perhaps founder. The whole person must be taken into account, the soul and mind, but the medical community has a sub-end which it must keep an eye on primarily: the health of the body of the individual person who is part of a community. The medical community must also know, through seeing its own end within a Whole, a Tao, that its end is always subordinate to the end of the enfleshed soul.

For the educational community, the end is health of soul, a higher end than that of the medical community and an end it has in common with the Church; for when we educate a human being, we cannot parse him or her out into separate bits: education will, whether we intend it or not, form the entire person. What is 'health' of soul? Socrates calls it 'justice' and defines justice as a kind of harmony, akin to music. The parts of the soul must be balanced--the spirited part, the rational part, the spiritual part, even the part that is most connected to the body: the passions.

So if the end of education is the health of the person's soul, should teachers of different disciplines be competing with each other? What does it actually mean to be the best, or 'winning-est' teacher of a human soul?

It is very, very rare to have one teacher who can effectively teach all parts of the human being; we are deep, complex creatures, enfleshed souls who live in a world of myriad challenges and beauties. We must begin to travel towards balance, towards the simple Good through different skills, sciences, disciplines--it requires different methods and people to begin to create a unity of disparate parts. As a teacher myself, of twenty-odd years, now, I know very well that I cannot be all things to all students. Therefore, different teachers are needed for the same student, over many years.

Imagine teachers as a soccer team, or a chef's team, or a team of doctors and nurses in an operating room. What would happen if the goalie started competing with the defense, or the sous-chef with kitchen-help, or the doctors with the nurses or each other? The game would be lost, the food spoiled, the patient probably dead.

To me, 'community' is beyond a team, with a much higher end than 'winning' or 'survival', with the focus on communion for an end proper to the activity or essence. There is a reason why we don't root for the Seattle Seahawk Community.  Beyond the proximate end of the sports team which I would argue is not winning but rather practice in virtue, isn't 'winning' a branch of survival of the fittest, or just pure survival? It does have a good purpose, if subordinated to a higher end, like overcoming temptation for the sake of salvation or beating a terrible disease for the sake of health; but if ever an end in itself, 'winning' makes animals or demons of us all.

Teachers really should be helping each other, encouraging each other, not trying to be stars. And, if you put 'Christ-follower' into the mix, the emphasis we should see is teachers serving each other: "If you want to follow me, you must serve; become the least for the sake of others." It struck me today with force, this saying I've heard without hearing it for many years, from St. Paul: "May I never boast except in the cross of Christ."

I let these words sink in today. Never boasting, not even paying attention to winning, only to the cross of Christ. That is incredibly radical, and it is the beginning of a community not turned in upon itself, but upon not only serving without credit, but becoming the scapegoat, if necessary, to win salvation, through Christ, for others. Now that's a community.