Sometimes a song or a story or a poem will generate a powerful emotional response in me by putting into words something that is buried deep within, something I haven’t really given shape to myself yet. This is what art does. Why just the other day I was listening to someone explain how he had been left shaken by listening to a short story that somehow managed to encapsulate his own experience of childhood.
The thing is, I’m beginning to wonder if this is enough. I suspect that this moment of connection, powerful as it is, is only half the job. Can’t art move beyond just identifying with our problems, to actually providing a solution? Surely art can go beyond just dredging up pain. Can’t it also offer healing?
I suppose that naming the problem is the first step to healing, but I can’t help but feel that many people are content to be stirred up, and never take those next steps towards wholeness.
As we collectively march down the highway of individualism (irony intended), I get the impression that we lionise this idea of identification. In short, it’s enough to form groups of like-minded, like-souled people who share our hurts. We don’t necessarily want to get better. We don’t want to change. We want to be around people who cry with us, nod and say, “Me too!” We think that’s enough. We think that sharing war stories is as good as community gets.
I’ve pondered this obsession with ‘being understood’ for a while now. In The Second Listening Book I wrote a silly thing called ‘Narrow Road’ which was about this very subject – how we seek advice from people who have made our mistakes rather than from people who had the wisdom to avoid making our mistakes.
The ultimate destination of this thinking for the Christian is that the Cross primarily becomes the place where God identifies with human suffering, rather than the place where God deals with sin and provides the conclusion to the drama of our condition. It’s absolutely true and beautiful that, in Christ, God shares our sufferings, but that would never be enough for God and we should never settle for that ourselves. God’s agenda is not for us to be understood but for us to be healed.
George Herbert’s poem ‘Easter’ includes the following stanza:
Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.
I think it was a stroke of genius by old George here, to paint an image of the Cross as the inspiration for all musical instruments offered up in worship. And it has always captivated me, this idea that the Cross is the foundation of truly powerful works of art. It makes sense. The Cross is the place where our hurts are unearthed and brought to the surface, but only so that we can be made whole again. I would like art to strive for the same goal: not just the stirring of the soul, but the healing of it.
