That Unexplained Mystery That Is Illogic
Monday, April 21, 2014
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| Martin Scorsese - photograph Alex Waterhouse-Hayward |
In many ways this Easter weekend has been a satisfying one. On Good Friday I witnessed an intimate performance of Mozart’s Requiem with my fried Graham Walker. On Easter Saturday my family came for dinner and I prepared this year’s first batch of my iced tea. Ale, my 46 year-old daughter from Lillooet requested I prepare a fondue. Hilary and her daughter Rebecca baked an over-the-top apple pie. On Easter Sunday we had a fine brunch at the Brock House Restaurant.
I was left wanting.
I know why. I think it is human nature to
seek the mystery and the unexplained. Why a jetliner can have disappeared for
over a month is not that kind of mystery. It has to be a mystery that transcends
that.
In this 21st century, except for
pockets of religious fundamentalism, our faith in a higher or superior being is
not first on our agenda, perhaps the mortgage or lowering our blood cholesterol
is.
This transcendental feeling can sometimes
happen (and it does to me) when I look at pictures in my National Geographic
that attempt to explain the immeasurable size of our known (and the others?) universe.
Then there is the tradition, the mystery,
the ceremony and the trappings of my Roman Catholic faith which came to me with
a sprinkle of water sometime after August 31, 1942.
From my grandmother
and from the Brothers of Holy Cross at St. Edward’s in Austin, Texas
that transcendence was given the depth of elaborate historical and philosophic
knowledge. From Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. I learned a kinder version of my
faith that was not steeped in the horrors (as he so well taught me) of the 30
Year’s War of the 17th century.
Faith in a religion defies logic. While I believe that at the best of times, we as a people can be logical, the aberrations of war and famine show me that there is a personal side of us that defies the logic of the one and the naught. It is that illogical side of us that pushes us to art. Nobody except for a man like Bruneleschi would or could have imagined a round dome to fit over the very square of the Duomo of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore.
No matter how many special effects or how
beautiful New Zealand
is, films on Tolkien novels cannot compare to medieval cathedrals, and Bach’s
St Matthew Passion. Fantasy at its best cannot instill in a child, teenager or
adult that sense of a mystery that has no logical explanation and that cannot
be explained by special effects.
I believe that my immediate family, not
having the so-called-useless trappings of religion, lives a life of stress and material
acquisition confusion that except for the hope of finally finding a house one
can afford to buy or the paying off of that mortgage, has no end game or
resolution.
And so I finally convinced Rosemary to
watch (only an hour and a half, we will finish it on Monday) to watch Martin
Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ.
For reasons of a busy fate of distraction I
had never seen this film even though my occasion to photograph Scorsese came
from the fact that his presence in Vancouver
was to promote that film.
It a film adaptation of the controversial
1953 novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis. I have not read that novel
but I have read José Saramago’s El
Evangelio Según Jesucristo and I found many startling parallels to the film.
After an hour and a bit more of the film I feel this Sunday, this Easter Sunday, a bit of piece and contentment that my world has not changed as much as I think it has and that I still have a sense of wonder for the unexplained mystery and illogic of a religion that I was born with that I cannot just discard.
Jesús
muere, muere, y ya va dejando la vida, cuando de pronto el cielo se abre de par
en par por encima de su cabeza, y Dios aparece vestido como estuvo en la barca,
y su voz resuena por todo la tierra diciendo, Tú eres mi Hijo muy amado, en ti
pongo toda mi complacencia. Entonces comprendió Jesús que vino traído al engaño
como se lleva al cordero al sacrificio, que su vida fue trazada desde el
principio de los principios para morir así, y, trayéndole la memoria del río de
sangre y de sufrimiento que de su lado nacerá e inundará toda la tierra, clamó
al cielo abierto donde Díos sonreía, Hombres, perdonadle, porque él no sabe lo
que hizo. Luego se fue muriendo en medio de un sueño, estaba en Nazaret y oía que
su padre le decía, encogiéndose de hombros y sonriendo también, Ni yo puedo hacerte
todas las preguntas, ni tú puedes darme todas las respuestas. Aún había en él un
rastro de vida cuando sintió que una esponja empapada en agua y vinagre le rozaba
los labios, y entonces, mirando hacia abajo, reparó en un hombre que se alejaba
con un cubo y una caña al hombre. Ya no llegó a ver, colocado en el suelo, en cuenco
negro sobre el que su sangre goteaba.
After an hour and a bit more of the film I feel this Sunday, this Easter Sunday, a bit of piece and contentment that my world has not changed as much as I think it has and that I still have a sense of wonder for the unexplained mystery and illogic of a religion that I was born with that I cannot just discard.
Last Paragraph,
El Evangelio Según Jesucristo – José Saramago.
