Not beautiful?

 

It’s quite a leap from Pope Benedict to Jordan Peterson. But maybe not, since both have been given to pontificating;, although one did so by merit of his position, while the other, by individual conviction.

At hand is the recent Twitter remark by Peterson about model Yumi Nu’s cover photo in the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated. (I tried to include the photo here, but it may be copyrighted.) Jordan proclaimed the model “Not beautiful,” by some standard known to him, but presumably tapped in to the universal standard of what is beautiful.

 Like truth-veritas, beauty—bellitas—is a universal quality, a transcendent value, meaning that it stands above and beyond the particular manifestations of what is beautiful. Is this a mountain- top quality? I think we could use this metaphor, at least, to see what is at issue here.

After Peterson met with criticism over his now-infamous tweet, he doubled down, claiming that the SI cover was “a conscious attempt to manipulate and retool the notion of beauty, reliant on the idiot philosophy that such preferences are learned and properly changed by those who know better.” (Emphasis mine.)

The very use of the word “notion” here reveals the discrepancy in this, otherwise often wise, man’s reasoning. There are many notions of beauty. A notion is not universal, but very particular, centered in a culture or set of values that may not be shared by everyone.  In the case of beauty, there are myriad examples.  I will take some from my own recent experience.

 The music I chose to sing at mass this morning would be seen by some as too “folky,” not majestic enough to grace the Eucharistic celebration. (In fact, followers of Benedict might well hold this view.) I find it beautiful because it is melodic and voices words of Scripture in a memorable way. It doesn’t have to be Handel’s Messiah to be beautiful, in my view, although I love that too. I’m not trying to “retool” anyone’s idea of beauty here, but just to assert that this is what will lift the minds and hearts of the people I sing for. They would not work at a Russian Orthodox liturgy.

Recently a friend invited me to visit a display of the art of Leonardo da Vinci from the Sistine Chapel here in Denver. Now this art is universal, you might want to say. No. Beautiful, it is. Unparalleled, yes.  Masterful, undeniably. But what of the subjects from which he took his depiction of characters from the Bible and early times? Here is Leonardo’s “Creation of Eve.” Imagine Eve later on, clad in a bikini. She would bulge more from under its straps than did model Yami Nu.  Yet Da Vinci pictures her as the ideal of womanhood, God’s first female creation, at a size extra-large.

Would he have painted anything but a beautiful woman to grace the

Pope’s own chapel? Is this a “conscious attempt to manipulate and retool the notion of beauty,” as Peterson said of the swimsuit model?  Hardly! This was beauty as seen in the 16^th Century by a keen observer of the human form.

In others of his paintings, women are depicted as strong and muscular as well, but always much curvier than the typical Western model today.

What’s going on with Leonardo’s notion of beauty? In cultures where good nutrition is not a given, the poor tend to be thin as a result of their inadequate diet and life struggles; the well-to-do show their good health and comfort in their physique, well-padded. According to today’s BMI calculations, they would be considered obese. At that time, this was the cultural ideal.

In Iran, as in many other non-Western countries today, similar standards apply. Often the garb is designed to accommodate curves, as was that of earlier times.

Is this some “idiot philosophy” that asserts taste is different from universal standards of beauty? Is it idiotic to claim that tastes are, indeed, learned?

Again, from my own experience. I went to Iran as a Peace Corps volunteer in the mid-1960s—a person of taste, I thought. My family trusted my color suggestions for our home décor. I liked the typical subtlety popular in the West at the time—the beiges and grays with accent colors. When colors were to figure in, avocado, orange and turquoise were a popular trio.

In Iran, a country of vast deserts and lush river valleys, beige was not a favorite theme,  it turned out. A favorite Tehran restaurant, the Paprika, was decorated in red—like, red everywhere, accented by mirrors and sequins. Qashang was the word for beautiful in Farsi, and this décor was representative of Qashang.

 (I would add that the restaurant interior here is not that of the Paprika, but is similarly brightly colored.  Also, that in our global society, tastes have changed world-wide since the 1960s)

One of our favorite pastimes was to go rug shopping in the Bazaar, and we had to get used to the bright hues favored by the Iranians.  Seeing us, a merchant would haul out the “Western-taste” carpets, done in shades of grey and tan. Yes, they were appealing to me, but I began to try to see things through other eyes. I didn’t want to be typed as “Western,” as if that limited my standards of taste.

My roommate and I got tired of our dark little kitchen in the house we rented in the midsection of Tehran. The landlady gave us permission to paint the interior of the glass-door-ed cupboard, and we chose—you guessed it!—orange and turquoise. I will never forget the land-lady’s expression when she saw it. Maybe similar to mine when I first went to the  Paprika.

Is it not “proper” to suggest a widening of the concept of beauty? Is this authoritarianism: that another notion of beauty be presented? We are, after all, a country of many cultures, some of which do not easily conform to the one Anglo standard—for whom different shapes and colors and styles are appreciated.

I would simply suggest that holding one notion of beauty up as the only one a civilized person could possibly embrace is not a mountain-top idea.  I am disappointed that a man of wisdom would not see this, but it does seem to happen in our polarized world, that what would normally be recognized is now shrouded in a partisan drape, not open to the large view.

 

 

 

Witnessing to the Truth in love: how this plays out in our lives

 

Humility and Conviction

 

In his Introduction to Caritas in Veritate, Love in Truth, Benedict XVI provides the essence of his letter in a nutshell:

To defend the truth,

to articulate it with humility and conviction, and

to bear witness to it in life

are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity.

 

How often in this polarized age have you sat with a group of people from the Other Side, listening to their easy generalizations and ideological hooks, and finally had to speak up? “I’m sorry, but Netanyahu will save Israel from destruction!” you blurt out, after your friends have voiced the opposite sentiment from every possible angle. You think about how former President Trump moved the capital to Jerusalem, and how he brought about some important alliances for Israel. And Netanyahu was on the same, pro-Israel, path.

Or maybe you were in a What’s App conversation with people who were trashing Lula in Brazil, and you have to jump in to correct this idea you hear developing—that Bolsenaro really won the election. So you jump in with a long discourse on Lula’s history in bringing justice to the workers, on how the Right Wing trumped up charges against him to remove him from power.

And there’s a big argument, because everyone has heard a lot about the issue from their own media and are quite sure they have the story straight, while God knows where the other side is coming from. You feel it’s important to speak the truth, and if people are your friends they should appreciate the fact that this is an act of love, that you are saving them from the darkness of ignorance and the throes of error.

Speak the truth in love, you think. Ephesians 4:15.

Or Love in Truth, says former Pope Benedict XIV.

I find his nutshell version of this concept, above, to be instructive for all of us. 

 

To articulate the truth with humility and conviction.

First, articulate the truth. It’s hard to articulate, to express clearly, what you haven’t already thought through. Hearing the story on PBS NewsHour doesn’t always provide an articulated understanding of the issue at hand—especially not if you were playing Words with Friends at the same time. Nor is it necessarily helpful to search out the issue at Breitbart or at Mother Jones, where you know you’ll get support in your viewpoint. If it’s Lula vs. Bolsenaro, Reuters would give you a basic understanding of the issue; or, if you want to go more in depth, a story from Americas Quarterly, a journal focused on affairs in the Americas, has a story on Lula that differs from some of the opinion reporting issuing from popular media outlets.

If it’s an issue of faith you need to defend, make sure you have support for your position. If it’s a contemporary faith issue, the Religion News Service or Catholic News Service have fairly good coverage. I like to consult Crux Now with John Allen for a Just-the-facts reporting on the subject.

 

Humility

I know how I feel about various contemporary issues. While I was not a Trump supporter, I liked some of the things he did—like, moving the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. I mean, if you read the Bible, isn’t that where it belongs? So I guess that’s a side I might have come down on in a discussion. But what do I really know? It’s just how I feel.

So recently we had a Christian family from Bethlehem, whose ancestors go back to the time of Christ, selling their hand-made olive wood articles at our church. I asked one of them how things are in Israel right now. “Not good,” he told me. They said the prejudice against Christians is worse than ever, and from both the Muslim and Jewish sides. He went on about the ongoing conflict over holy sights in Jerusalem.

“And how do you feel about the capital being moved to Jerusalem?” I asked.

“Terrible!” he replied. He said it does not help having the capital be in the center of all the disputes.

That made a lot of sense. I never would have known that had I not heard it from one who lives there.

Humility in articulating the truth mean that you recognize what you don’t know. Own up to having an opinion that might not be founded on the real situation. Our understanding of the truth is limited. We see through a glass darkly (I Cor. 13), which is the premise of this blog. We tend to be in our valley-bottom place looking up at one side of the truth, but not seeing its entirety. That is okay. Humility means we ask questions. We listen to others who may know more, or even just to get their take on an issue, even if they may not be completely right. 

 

With Conviction

This is what conviction is not: being loud, insulting, mean-spirited, mocking, ridiculing, boasting, bullying. These are usually signs of a lack of conviction, which we cover up in ourselves by making fun of our opposition.

Conviction is the assurance that we have, in all humility, looked at an issue and have some certainty about it. It doesn’t mean that we know everything about it, or that we have no more to learn. But at this point we can say what we understand in love. This takes courage. Others may bridle and push back. It’s okay. Either they do not yet fully understand, or you don’t. You can assure them that this is what you understand without trying to make them agree.

 

Bear Witness

And this is the bearing witness part, that you summon up the courage of your convictions to put out there what you have already researched and learned to articulate and humbly accepted as undoubtedly inadequate in the grand scheme of things. You say what you are sure of, not what you are still just in the surmising stage on.

This is how we defend the truth.

Probably all of us would spend more time listening and less, speaking, if we operated according to this view of Love in Truth. Yes, love speaks the truth, but does so with humility, having made sure that it is truth we speak and that we articulate it so that it is understood.

 

For more on Caritas in Veritate, click here.

Sometimes the Center Means following the Stream

 Following the stream to its source, or to its destination.

I've always been in love with rivers. In Fifth Grade we studied U.S. geography, and I spent hours pouring over the physical map of the country, following rivers. If I had a canoe, I thought, could I cross the country with just that? Well, it would take some uphill paddling, but turns out you could make it if you started with the Mississippi, turned onto the Missouri, and then up the Platte to one of its sources high in the Rockies. Well, you get the picture. 

What about going downstream? I think of the children's' story "Scuffy the Tugboat," where the little boat starts in a bathtub, but finds his way into a stream and then a river, and finally ends up in the sea.

Either way, you come to know this river that you know otherwise just by crossing the bridge to the other side.  And this is also a way to understand something well, to avoid an extremist view (view from the end of a limb--but that's a different metaphor.)

This isn't just about political centrism.  It has to do with all aspects of life, where we do well to situate ourselves in a spot where we know what's going on and why.

Using the Example of the Jewish Fall Feasts and their relation to Christianity.

My current example has to do with the Jewish observance of Yom Kippur, which has fascinated me for many years. This is a feast first mentioned in the Book of Numbers in the Hebrew Scriptures, where Moses calls for a day of fasting and mortification on the 10th day of the 7th month--ten days after the celebration of the new year on the first day, which is now known as Rosh Hashanah.

I've wondered what happened to Yom Kippur in the strain of Judaism known as Christianity. Clearly, the early Christians did observe Jewish feasts, so why not this one.  I pictured this as a stream that suddenly disappears into the earth, although it has not gone away in Jewish observance, so it's a bit unfair to suggest that it has disappeared. Only in Christian tradition has this taken place.

It took some digging, but it turns out this stream actually continued in Christian practice, being known as the autumn fast. Even Paul refers to this--or Luke, actually, in his account of the turbulent voyage on the way to Rome. Later, Pope Leo the Great claims it to be from ancient times. In my childhood this tradition continued as the fall Ember Days. 

For those nostalgic for the glorious past, when the old liturgy reigned and Ember Days stood proud on the calendar four times a year--in Advent, Lent,  before Pentecost and in the fall, I will assure you that these were not exactly a great addition to our liturgical year. They were there, on the calendar, and we were required to abstain on a Wednesday along with the Friday--or maybe it was just fasting on the Wednesday and Saturday, along with Friday of those weeks. No one made much of an ado about it. In fact, the word "liturgy" was not used in ordinary circles, and you just went to mass. You knew the season changed when the vestments changed color, but that was about it. Worship was much more a question of whether you managed to be present during the three main parts of the mass, which meant you could squeak in by the offertory and leave after communion.  

However, what did start happening during those years was a renewal of the liturgy. Ember Days did not figure in, but a renewed emphasis on the three days of Triduum and the original liturgies of those sacred days was reintroduced. No Ember Days at Pentecost either, but in more recent years, a renewed Vigil of Pentecost. There were new, more authentic and meaningful liturgies of baptism, confirmation, reconciliation, the anointing of the sick, and of Christian funerals and weddings. 

It's as if the stream that had continued from the Jewish tradition had been amplified by new tributaries, giving new life to liturgy.

Now this does not mean that the current of the Ember Days needs to be left out. I am excited at the idea of reincorporating the fall fast and thanksgiving into our year, since it fits so well with the way our lives move into this new season. We have no Church observance to help us with this, even if we do add autumn colors to our environment and begin our new year of Christian education. It has all kinds of possibilities. A fast could mark the beginning of this new season, and thanksgiving, a fitting way to enter fall. 

Ember Days as an outlet for the stream begun in Numbers and continued with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur gives and example of how exploring the course of something from its source to its endings can expand our understanding of everything in-between. Discovering the endings can help us understand the center.