'They Have Forgotten Who They Are'

Orwell's Picnic ~: What else is art good for?         [Reprint]
Excerpt:
                                                       

In Western societies, particularly in the post-colonial Anglo nations, we are suffering a terrible crisis of self-understanding. One of the things that struck me the hardest when I finally went back to England as an adult was that the English seemed to have forgotten how to be English. They have forgotten who they are. The older ones seemed to remember but appear to have learned to be ashamed of it. It was a very strange thing and I marked it at the time as a terrible evil. A society that doesn't have a self-understanding, doesn't have a sense of who and what it is, can't be one that will survive for long.

One of the things that art does, particularly painting, is to help define a cultural identity. For obvious reasons this is especially true of Italy. I'm still working my way around Vasari's Lives of Artists and it is clear that the world of painting for three of the most important centuries of art were utterly dominated by Italians (as we call them now).

But if we want to know who we are, how we think of things, how we see the world and what it means to us, painting is obviously the most direct and simple means. I think if the English were to revisit their artistic heritage, there would be great gains in re-establishing a solid national identity...

Truth and Identity (My addendum)

[The abbess at a well-known Benedictine monastery related that it is only in the crucible of suffering where God chooses to reveal to us who we are. In Torah therapy there are three basic relationships that are the foundations of our being in relating to God and the world around us:

---there are those with whom we work and interact with in our outer culture

---there are those closer to us: siblings and close friends

---the most important and defining relationship, however, are our parents

What I have discovered is that all of these and how we view ourselves must be incorporated in the truth that we live After the Fall. This is no trite statement of challenge. There are critical, deadly reasons the enemy through Bultmann and de Chardin's heresies tried to dismiss the Garden of Adam and Eve as myth. If it is myth then sin doesn't really exist. This results in the fundamental denial of our very being as that which is created by God. I guess I was just too stubborn to ever believe that idiocy which required way more 'faith'. Each of us is a created, unique daughter or son of Almighty God. The enemy hates that fact.

After the fall as descendants of Adam and Eve we bear the effects of that rebellion within ourselves as 'fallible' and subject to death. Adam and Eve were clothed by God from the beginning. From the beginning the enemy has challenged our 'world view'. Hilary White is right: We have forgotten who we are.

The modernism(s) thrown at us are just variations on the central drama in that Garden that always whisper the lie: 'God didn't REALLY say that...did He?'

After the Fall sin crouches at the door for each human being at every moment. We sin. That sin affects not only us but everyone. God as man died on the Cross to save us from sin. If we deny the true beginnings we deny reality within ourselves and in all that occurs in the world around us.

No matter who our earthly parents were they are embedded into our being which makes the rising misogyny and child/woman abuse an ungodly aspect of our world today. The family is the PRIMARY spiritual and human responsibility for each man and woman. Each man is called to be a spiritual leader and lover of his own family. He will be called to account for that which he does or does not do for his wife and his children. Did he love his wife as Christ loved the Church? Did he take the spiritual leadership of his sons and daughters leading them to God and reflecting that relationship in his daily life? Did she love her husband and her children? Did she build a nurturing home?

Although Carl Jung refuted Christianity he did point out one important spiritual concept in discerning a true shepherd in the Church. As the story goes a Christian leader was extolled to him as being unbelievably righteous and upstanding. No fault could be found in his leadership. The man was introduced to him. He asked to visit his home and meet his wife which was granted. In that visit Jung discovered the great sickness and evil in the man. Who in your world is forced to carryyour shadow, your anger, your guilt, your madness, your perversion of truth?

Many, many wives, and children, become the scapegoats of males who hate women, who refuse to grow up and take the spiritual leadership of their families, who blame their wives for the emptiness and miseries in their souls and in their children. The basic evil of men not growing up is that of leaving their family members unprotected against attacks against each family member's soul. Just because a man doesn't agree with that assignment, like it, or rebels against it doesn't mean that the destruction won't take place---for generations. Instead of 'building up', cherishing, loving and protecting their wives and children, I find in ALL the families around me the men of the families denigrating, mocking, hating and resenting any helping of others in the family, berating women, and in many ways neglecting their wives and children. In every home I have lived in I find lying, pornography and violence.

Women are anointed by God for tenderness, love, mercy and nurturing. They are pro-creators of life itself. Bd. John Paul II not only respected women but recognized women are gifted with great wisdom in love and mercy. That gift can be destroyed with denigration and abuse, especially sexual abuse. As women are forced into a more 'sex object', demeaning role in our culture, their gifts too are forced into the background. Great, great harm and wounding occurs in the family because of this. Eros is a fundamental God-created gift of love and in its proper, protective place engenders life itself and great creativity.

There is no answer for each of us until we deal with our own father and mother in wisdom, love, forgiveness and truth. There is a profound reason for The Holy Family. There is a reason Jesus Christ, God-Man respected, cherished, loved and honored Mary, His Mother. And Scripture states that God is the 'father' of all the 'families' of the earth. We don't belong to just one small, tiny group. We are 'members' of many generations that we will meet, hopefully, in Heaven.

'What else is art good for? It is the gift of creativity. It is a gift of God who is calling out to us in our woundedness. We cannot be healed or be a beacon of hope until the 'fundamentals' of Truth are established. I cannot walk away from reality to establish some illusory spin which will only collapse.

"If the foundations are destroyed what can the righteous do?" We must flee to the foot of the Cross.]