A Spiritual View of Art
OUT OF THE WASTELAND
Several summers ago I was in the Arizona desert. It was not the time of year to be there, temperatures rising every day to over 105F, sometimes over 110.
The National Endowment for the Humanities, the chief funding agency of the U.S. government for advanced studies in the humanities, had decided to hold an institute there on the ancient Greek poet Homer. The bureaucrats decided that discussing the Iliad and the Odyssey in the desert in the summer would be what they called in their announcement an “epic experience.” It was, and in a way that was unexpected.
Surprisingly, the people who live in the desert seemed to have a heightened aesthetic sense — not just the intellectuals and artists, but ordinary people, working people. I wondered why this was.
The beauty of the desert itself was not sufficient to account for it. Where I live in California is at least as beautiful — San Francisco Bay, California coastline, redwood forests, lovely valleys. But this beauty does not seem to produce the same effect on the people who live there, at least to the same degree.
You May Also Enjoy
I hated myself for helping the ape. I hated the pleasure his development gave me, like I was a god lifting this furry mute from stupidity.
Daily we hear of intemperate students demanding this or that “right” drawn from a grab-bag of potential claims on others’ behavior.
We Christians have let the world forget the suffering of fellow Christians and the suffering of aborted children.