Back to my old stomping grounds, art in the city, and enemas in the park. . .

Long day today, but it was the good kind of long day. Helped out with the kids in church this morning, which was a fun experience once I got over my uncomfort around children. I like kids, but I never really know what to DO around them. But kids are so much better than adults and "grown ups" because kids will always accept you for who you are, so you can always be goofy :)

Service was good today. Pastor Bob's message about John 16:16-24 was really good to hear, about how we weep now but our sorrow will turn into joy. Really what I needed to hear in a life that sometimes gets really tough.

After church, Erin and I took Hannah to Wayne State. We were both alumni of that prestigous institution, so we thought we'd show her the ropes. . . actually, Erin was more help than I was because she actually got off campus once in awhile while my route was usually from the parking structure, to Manoogian, to the student center and back to the parking structure.

After that, we went to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), where I soaked up my requisite culture for the month :) Although I don't claim to have any knowledge or overt appreciation for art, I really enjoy going there. It's so amazing to look at those beautiful works which have survived for hundreds of years and tell us so much more about life than we could get from textbooks. I have more to say on it a bit later, so we'll just move on for now . . .

After that, we decided to head to Belle Isle for a bit, which is a big park in the middle of the Detroit River. It had been decades since I'd gone, so I had forgotten how nice the land is with all the old buildings and fountains and gardens around it. Unfortunately, the place where we picked to have our impromptu picnic contained a used enema kit and an old maxipad, so we decided to move elsewhere. . . where we were surrounded by goose poop. So, we decided to head to a garden nearby, where we wouldn't be in the midst of things that either went into or came out of the human body. But it was a nice picnic. Afterward, Erin came back to my place and we had dinner and watched the DVD of Brandon's Florida vacation.

Okay, so here's my comment on art. I realized that when we were looking at the different galleries today, that the predominent theme in so much ancient art, especially renaissance and middle ages, is the life and death of Christ. In fact, the vast majority of the art from that period focuses on Christ. The church was obviously such a predominent feature of life in that age. I wonder how it affected the people back then. Brent Curtis and John Eldredge, in their wonderful book The Sacred Romance, caught onto that. And their themes really say more than I could say on the subject:

Once upon a time, the western world had a story. Imagine you lived in the High Middle Ages. Your world was permeated with Christian imagery. You marked the days by the sound of church bells and the weeks and months according to the liturgical calendar. You lived in "anno domini," the year of our Lord. It wasn't football season, it was Advent. Your role models were the saints, whose feaast days were regular reminders of a drama greater than yourself. The architecture of the cathedral, the music, literature, and sculpture all gave you a vision of transcendence, reminding you of the central elements of that great story. Even the everyday language reflected the Christian understanding of life's story, expressions like "God be with you," "upon my soul," and "by Christ's blood." Birth and death, love and loss--all of your personal experiences would be shaped and interpreted by that larger story.

But you don't live in the Middle Ages, you live int he Postmodern Era. For hundreds of years, our culture has been losing its story. The Enlightenment dismissed the idea that there is an Author but tried to hang on to the idea that we could still have a larger story, life could still make sense, and everything was heading in a good direction. Western culture rejected the mystery and transcendence of the Middle Ages and placed its confidence in pragmatism and progress, the pillars of the Modern Era, the Age of Reason. But once we had rid ourselves of the Author, it didn't take long to lose the larger story. In the Postmodern Era, all we have left is our small stories. It's not pentecost, it's time for spring training. Our role models are movie stars, and the biggest taste of transcendence is the opening of the ski season. Our best expressions are on the level of "have a nice day." The only reminder we have of a story beyond our own is the evening news, an arbitrary collection of scenes and images without any bigger picture into which they fit. The central belief of our times is that there is no story, nothing hangs together, all we have are bits and pieces the random days of our lives. Tragedy still brings us to tears and heroism still lifts our hearts, but there is no context for any of it. Life is just a sequence of images and emotions without rhyme or reason.

I wonder if this is why we have so many people who are depressed, lost and anxious today. Why people are taking so much longer to grow up and become mature. Why we feel so much despair and frustration. We're trying to figure out where we belong. But without a bigger story, we can't ever find something big enough to hold all this desire and angst in our lives. Christianity poses the answer to those questions, but our world is quick to shoot it down. I could write about that forever, but I think now's the time to take a break because I'm a bit tired.

So, as usual, the weekend just zipped by and tomorrow I'll wake up and head to work again, knowing that it will probably be a good day but that near the end of the week I'll start to go nuts!! Nothing big planned this week, although Erin persuaded me to head to Wisconsin next weekend to visit her and Christina at camp, so I think I'm going to look into some hotels in the area and do just that :) Other than that, it's a pretty boring week, which is fine. I'll get some writing and reading done and just wait until the weekend.

Okay, that's about it. Catch you all on the flip-side, dudemeisters!

C-Dubbs