My
current computer screen saver is Giovanni Bellini’s Christ Blessing, as shown on my post of February 10th. I am returning to this picture because it holds my attention in a particular way. With our slow internet connection, there is always time
to contemplate it, even if contemplation is abruptly cut off by the arrival of emails
and other distractions emanating from the ‘real’ world. By contemplating, I
mean looking through the picture, rather than looking at it. To contemplate
this picture is to look through it to the Christ who is inviting the viewer
into relationship with him, and into a different way of seeing the world. Looking at the face of Christ makes me
wonder sometimes which world is the most real – his or the one I seem to
inhabit, as most of us do, via a computer.
Computers
and social network sites, as well as blogs, leave us in a kind of limbo when we
are not on them, which is why it is so difficult to turn them off. It is as if
we inhabit two worlds at once, in which we deal with what feel like different
realities. What kind of inhabiting is this? and what kind of reality am I contemplating
as I look at the face of Christ while waiting for the computer to get going? It
seems to be a liminal place. I am standing on a dividing line between two
worlds, two realities which interface with one another. In contemplating the
image of Christ blessing I sense it reaching in to the world being opened up
not only to me, but to millions of others, through the computer. When the
screen saver goes, an interruption occurs as the computer releases a different
real world into the mind space of its user.
But the image of Christ blessing is not so
quick to fade. My screen saver remains with me and serves as a reminder of that
other real world. The memory of Christ’s hand raised in benediction now
confronts the host of alienating images and stories which shape themselves
around not only my own consciousness, but also around everything which the
computer may have to offer, its potential for both good and evil. The computer is a re-incarnation
of that allegorical tree of knowledge portrayed in the book of Genesis. We need
to eat carefully of its fruit.
The
computer takes us to dark places and, potentially, to a general darkness, although
not always one which is specifically ‘religious’. It is important to differentiate
between general darkness, the darkness of ignorance and materialism, and that
which seems to pertain solely to religion, as many people understand it. Those
who distrust religion will often associate it with the kind of darkness which
comes with the preaching of hatred and murder. This particular darkness is encapsulated
in the image depicting the Arabic letter ‘nun’, for ‘Nazarene’, as it is used
to single out Christian homes for the intimidation or destruction of those who
live in them.
The
task which faces all of us, if the world is to survive the current tide of
religious violence, consists in bringing together these two images, the one of
Christ blessing, and the Arabic letter, and allowing them to confront one
another. It is challenging and, at times, frightening work. Firstly, because it
requires that we come to terms with the idea that the light, as we see it in the
Bellini painting, and as we sometimes sense it in the deeper reaches of our own
consciousness, has not been overcome by the sinister darkness associated with the
letter ‘nun’.
Secondly,
it obliges us to also look at our own inner darkness, those feelings of doubt,
fear and anger which surface from time to time and for which there is often no
obvious or immediate explanation. This process of confrontation begins with our
accepting and coming to terms with the light which we also carry within us. It is
the light of God’s presence, the working of his grace in our lives, to the
extent that we allow it. Allowing grace into our lives is a matter of making
ourselves available to God. It is what the writer Simone Weil called disponibilité.
Being
available to the work of light brings us to the outer limit of what we think of
as our ‘selves’. In so doing, it faces us with a particular kind of emptiness,
one where the ‘self’ that we understand we are, including all its dreams and
desires, loves and hates, has to be literally ‘forgotten’.[1] This is what Christ meant
when he talked about ‘dying’ to self. In the moment of forgetting, or dying, we
are invited to drop down into darkness, the darkness of not having answers, of
not knowing, and at the same time of trusting in the light which literally ‘lightens
the world’. This whole process of forgetting, dying and trusting leads to a new
kind of knowing and seeing.
There
is a connection to be made in the process of knowing and understanding on one level with
that of not knowing or understanding on a deeper and more significant level. We
are talking about the inhabiting of two worlds, or realities. At the deeper
level, we don’t need to know things in the same way. We don’t need to have made
sense of why the world is as it is, or to have come up with solutions. All that
is required is that we maintain a connection between the light, as we see it in
the holy face of Christ, and all that is chaotic, violent and dark in our
world.
On the
whole, this work of connecting is best done by individuals who are prepared to
be open to it for most of the day. They will find, in any case, that once they
have made themselves ‘available’, being open to the work of grace will become a
way of life, although it will not prevent them from carrying on with life as
they have always lived it, with regard to what they do for a living, their
marriage or relationships and all those in between times when they are not
doing or thinking anything in particular.
The
vital work of engaging with darkness, while remaining in the light, is a matter
of remaining connected at a deeper level with the light we see in the face of
Christ, who confronts and overcomes the darkness in the world around us.
[1]
I am
grateful to Maggie Ross for many of the ideas which inform this post,
especially that of ‘forgetting’. See her
recent book Silence: A User’s Guide,
(DLT)
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