Mar. 31, 2010

Eugene Peterson is one of my favorite authors.  In the past number of years he has done more to create a hunger in me for “spiritual formation” than any other author.  He recently released his fifth (and final) book in his “Spiritual Theology” series entitled “Practice Resurrection”.  The book is a conversation in the book of Ephesians.  A conversation on church.

Today I was introduced to a new term - “Inscape”.  This termed was coined by a nineteenth-century Jesuit priest and poet by the name of Gerard Manley Hopkins.  The term “inscape” has something to do with the word “landscape” but differs significantly.  Landscape has to do with what we can see, and do see everyday.  As I write this post I am looking out of a window in my office at the beautiful landscape outside.  Very tall pine trees.  A baseball field of green grass and rich soil.  Beautiful trees of different varieties in their early bloom.  This is landscape.  Inscape is different.  Connected, but different.  Peterson says,

“Inscape is the intuitive sense that what we see is a living, organic form that strikes through the senses and into the mind with a feeling of novelty and discovery.  Inscape is what something uniquely is, that which holds together whatever you are looking at or listening to, gives it distinction - proportions, shades of light, tints of color, shapes, relationships, sounds”.

The key to understanding the above quote is to see the line “form that strikes through the senses and into the mind with a feeling of novelty and discovery” in bold print.  Have you ever seen something that you see everyday as though you’ve seen it for the first time?  Maybe seen something “in” it and felt like you “discovered” it?  The literary hero, G.K. Chesteron, wrote this in his book Orthodoxy:

“The grass seemed signaling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood.  The sun would make me see him if he rose a thousand times.  The recurrences of the universe rose to the maddening rhythm of an incantation, and I began to see an idea”.

Since reading this, I have often times seen things in nature that I have not seen before.  That is not really true, of course. I saw the wind, and I saw tall grasses before.  But Chesterton was able to “see through the senses...with a feeling of novelty and discovery”.  This, inscape, is the job of the artist.  Peterson says,

“Artists make us insiders to the complexity and beauty of what we deal with every day but so often miss.  They bring to our attention what is right before our eyes within reach of our touch, help us hear sounds and combinations of sounds that our noise-deafened ears have never heard...the artist helps us see what we have always seen but never seen, hear what we hear daily but don’t hear, feel what we have touched a hundred times but never been touched by...”.

Two summers ago my wife and I were leading worship at a camp.  My daughter Soleil and I got up early one morning and before breakfast sat down on a park by the lake.  It was a beautiful warm summer morning and the sun was shining bright.  I was enjoying Soleil’s presence as we just sat and looked at the lake in silence.  She broke the silence by saying, “Dad, are those fairies dancing on the water?”.  “What?”, I asked.  “Are those fairies dancing on the water”.  She was dead serious.  I looked for a minute and finally realized what she was seeing.  The sun was shining on the moving water.  Because the water was moving, you would see a glimmer of light which would disappear quickly.  She had a way of describing what she saw that opened my eyes to what I saw. 

In October of last year my family and I moved to South Atlanta from Toronto.  Before leaving, I played a gig with some of Canada’s best.  I was in way over my head.  Sean Meredith-Jones on guitar, Andrew Stewart on bass, and Larnell Lewis on drums.  Monster’s.  It was an honor to play with them, but just as great to hang with them.  At dinner I was asking the guys about their backgrounds and what they were up to now aside from gigging.  Andrew began to tell me that he not only plays bass, but creates basses.  You can check out some pictures of his stunning basses here.  They not only look beautiful, but sound beautiful.  This too is inscape.  What many of us see as tree or a piece of wood, Andrew see’s as a way to give voice to music.  Here is a part of a beautiful poem by Hopkins:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow sung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves - goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

Rodney Clapp, in his book “Tortured Wonders” writes in response to this poem (and scriptures such as Psalm 148, Isaiah 55:12, and Romans 8:18-24),

“As Hopkins intimates, “each mortal thing” praises God by being itself...So may humanity either loosen and and free the tongue of creation...or fill and stop creation’s throat with death”.

He further says,

“This responsibility is a priestly responsibility...In this sense human beings are the priests of creation...mediators between God and creation”.

As we see in the scriptures mentioned above, creation praises God.  We can’t hear it, but it doesn’t mean that it is not happening.  Maybe it is possible to “free the tongue of creation” as Clapp says.  Clapp mentions Karl Barth, who reflecting on Revelation 5:8 pens this:

“Surely the playing of musical instruments is a...human attempt to articulate before God this sound of a cosmos which is otherwise dumb.  Surely the perfect musician is one who, particularly stirred by the angels, is best able to hear not merely the voice of his own heart but what all creation is trying to say, and can then in great humility and with great objectivity cause it to be heard by God and other men”.

Clapp beautifully continues Barth’s thought:

“So instrument builders and musicians are, at their best, premier exemplars of priestly stewardship.  Taking up wood and steel, they can fashion them into a guitar or violin, releasing from wood and steel as song with which they were already pregnant but could not otherwise have sung”.

I love this.  I remember Andrew warming up before sound check playing “As The Dear” on the bass that he made.  My mind went to that moment after first reading the above. 

I have a good friend named Dave Bonfa who lives in Montreal.  Dave is a great singer, song writer, guitarist and worship leader.  After serving at his church for seven years, the people in his church decided to publicly honor him by giving him a gift.  This past Sunday, they surprised him by presenting him with a guitar.  It wasn’t bought online from guitar center.  This guitar was handmade by Pierre Erizias, the bassist who serves with Dave at his church.  Pierre worked for many months creating the “bonfacaster”.  He has a gift for taking pieces of wood creating beautiful guitars (bass guitars until now).  Inscape.  He not only gives voice to wood and metal, but in one sense, gives a new and unique (custom) voice to Dave.  Dave doesn’t keep this voice for himself but shares it with his congregation.  They don’t just listen, but they add their voices and offer it all back to God.  This is a beautiful and humbling thought for me.

Inscape happens often and in many ways.  It is a gift.  It is received.

“Whoever has ears, let them hear”.  Matthew 11:15