In Defense of Worshipping Idols

Transcription

1 In Defense of Worshipping Idols Elizabeth Arnold August 17, 2014 If you take a long look around our place of worship, what do you see? [pause] A smooth wood pulpit, a tasteful yet streamlined chalice, some candles. Perhaps a vase of flowers. A couple of beautiful, simple, quilts displayed as wall hangings. White walls, beige carpet and blue chairs. Windows to gaze out on the blooming spring (if not shuttered against the morning light) [long pause] And that s about it. The descriptors modern or even Spartan spring to mind. For the most part, our church, like many Unitarian Universalist congregations, has little in the way of iconography to even tell you that you re in a church. Now, every Unitarian Universalist church is a unique structure with its own history and architectural features. To paraphrase Mark Bellitini on Our Worship from The Unitarian Universalist Pocket Guide, we meet in homes, modern buildings, New England meetinghouses, Gothic chapels with stained glass windows, or outdoor settings. Through my travels to Unitarian Universalist churches throughout the Southeast and Northeast, I would argue that the DOMINANT aesthetic of the typical Unitarian Universalist worship space

2 is: 70s recreation-room carpeting, all-purpose workhorse furniture, fluorescent lights, beige walls and crafts-oriented art. Sound familiar? The denomination in general distances itself from a lot of visual stimulation in the physical place of worship. Our sanctuaries tend to resemble Quaker meetinghouses, with sparse décor and plain, simple adornment. And this tendency stems directly from our religious tradition. It is a way for Unitarian Universalist churches to offer a blank canvas upon which each individual can project their own spiritual experience. Rejecting religious iconography is a nod to our protestant Christian heritage. An object is an actual, physical thing. A drawing, the object, might be pen on paper. The symbol is the meaning of the object, so if the drawing is OF Jesus, then the picture of Jesus is the symbol. An icon is a picture or image (when we use the term in Western art we typically mean of Jesus or one of the saints) used to help one in their prayer and worship. So if we put that symbol of Jesus in a church and focus on it while we pray the rosary, it becomes an icon. And an idol is a figure or image that is directly worshipped. Idolatry is a word meaning figure worship. The Biblical admonition against idols has to do with rejecting polytheism and the worship of animals or people. It has also been interpreted by some religious traditions as a prohibition on the use of any images in worship or even the depiction of Jesus or God. There have been

3 arguments and fights over idolatry and iconolatry from the time the Hebrew Bible was written. What kinds of images should be allowed, where they should appear and what one should be allowed to do with them is a point of contention in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faith traditions. Our New England spiritual forbearers found the iconography of the Catholic Church corrupt and excessive--they thought these symbols were a substitute for a true, personal revelation of Christ. We retain their suspicion of symbols in our places of worship as a testament to the importance of individual transcendent experience. That is a laudable goal. But there are less noble reasons our congregations lack symbols. Sometimes members of the Unitarian Universalist faith come fleeing a spiritually conflicted past with a different religious denomination; rejecting the look of those worship spaces is a way of distancing ourselves from those beliefs. (For example, I have always found the Catholic crucifix to be a particularly morbid and disturbing symbol and am haunted by the models that bleed blood through a fountain-type mechanism.) At worst, our sanctuaries are devoid of objects of powerful symbology SIMPLY because we can t agree on anything to visually represent our faith... so we put up nothing at all.

4 There are also those among us, and in our culture at large, who feel as if there are real environmental and spiritual dangers of objects. We now define an illness compulsive hoarding to describe people who are unable to distinguish between the relative value of objects and collect things (often trash or animals some believe it may be a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) Some of the voices being raised against a culture of stuff worry about the environmental impact of consumerism, and call on us to reduce, reuse, recycle. These desires to keep it simple, to live more with less and to live sustainably are also reasons why our churches often have very little visual character. Again, these are noble aims. But these feelings of antipathy towards objects also have a strong root in the protestant faith. Spring Cleaning becomes shorthand for spiritual cleansing. Giving away stuff becomes a fig leaf for turning over a new leaf. We talk of clutter as emotionally disruptive and cleaning house as renewing. We cleans our souls of past consumer sins. Or perhaps just cleansing us of our guilt of having so much while others have so little. These combined philosophies our protestant roots of anti-idolatry combined with

5 our conflicted ideas about THINGS---result in the bleak worship spaces I described earlier. Here s a question I d like us to consider: In the Unitarian Universalist tradition, we welcome revelation from many sources... not only religious texts but from personal experience, meditation, music, nature, and so on. Why not objects? What about those individuals who may have a spiritual experience through objects? This notion isn t as outrageous as it may sound at first. Experts in the field of education have pioneered research over the last half-century explaining how we learn. They have identified many different learning styles, or multiple intelligences. There are auditory learners, for whom the traditional worship sermon is perfect. There are people who like to talk through a problem. And there are visual learners who do great with PowerPoint presentations, and like to take notes. Some individuals have a high emotional intelligence quotient, while others excel at spatial-visual intelligence. There are kinesthetic learners like me, who learn by doing and get angry when you try to explain a card game to them (it s better to just play a hand). We listen better when we have something to do with our hands. [gesture hands]

6 The truth is, most of us are a combination of several different learning styles, and have several strong areas of multiple intelligences upon which we can draw. Research on informal learning settings (like museums, churches, basically anyplace outside of the traditional classroom setting) shows that the more of your five senses you use when learning something new, the more you will remember. But, not only will you remember more, you will have a more satisfying, higherquality experience. One thing I have learned in almost a decade of museum work is that objects are laden with multiple meanings. If you learn how to read objects, they release those layers of meaning over time and intimacy with an object, and time to reflect and meditate upon an object. There is an author named John Shuh who came up with Fifty Ways to look at a Big Mac Box including how to describe it to an alien, feeling, tasting, smelling it, material used, shape, function, manufacturing process, the print lettering, numbers and the advertising graphics, the purpose of its size, the noise it makes... His point is, really, that objects have stories to tell us about themselves and the people who make them that they can reveal things about humanity and our relationships with one another our complex interdependent web that we talk about in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. There ARE those who can have a spiritually meaningful transformative experience through an intimate encounter with an object. The term for this in the museum field is a numinous experience. NUMEN, which means presence, is a Latin term for the idea of magical power residing within objects. A numinous experience is a deeply connective or transcendental experience with an object in its environment,

7 which could be a historic site, an exhibit, a home or a place of worship. The key characteristics of a numinous encounter with an object include a feeling of escape or time travel, an experience of deep authenticity and a feeling of close personal relationship with an object. Authenticity and relationship. [space] At its best and strongest, a numinous experience with an object provides one with deep engagement, empathy, and even awe or reverence. In addition, a numinous experience need not occur with only the prettiest, most expensive or rare objects. It depends not only on the object itself but the surroundings of the encounter the time, the place, the individual s emotional state. Therefore, a numinous experience can happen anytime, anyplace, to anyone. Kiersten Latham, an expert in Object Studies is pioneering research in this field, she actually believes that the numinous experience with an object is a basic, normal (but ignored and not fully understood) part of human psychology. As a curator, I spend a lot of lip service talking about the transformative power of the object. But in my years of museum work I never had a numinous experience. Sure, I was impressed, delighted and educated by the buildings and artifacts in my care but I never had this truly spiritually deep encounter. But, in reflecting on this sermon, I realize that I have, indeed, had a numinous experience with an object. My husband does business in China and when we had been dating about 6 months he went on his first business trip there. He offered to bring me a souvenir and I asked him to bring me a small statue of Quan-Yin. Some of you may remember that some time back, Jennifer Forker actually preached on Quan-Yin here. Quan-Yin is the bodhisattva of compassion and mercy in the Buddhist tradition, and is traditionally known as a protector, so it is believed that every house should have one. If you go to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art the big, seated wooden sculpture in front of the temple wall in the Chinese art gallery is Quan-Yin. Anyway, my husband did REALLY GOOD, finding a small, antique bronze Quan-

8 Yin. I was so impressed, and being a good guy, (and probably relieved that he knew something I would definitely like) he went out and got me another one. This Quan-Yin was newer, less rare, made of porcelain. We didn t know then that it is traditionally considered bad luck for a household to have more than one Quan-Yin under your roof. Immediately, the senior and more powerful Quan-Yin began to assert her dominance. Despite my placement of both Quan-Yins in a safe spot on the back wall of my dresser, I still managed to accidentally jostle and knock over Quan-Yin version 2.0, necessitating an Elmer s glue repair. Shortly after that, lightning struck. No, I mean lightning literally struck our house that back wall of the bedroom where my dresser sat, knocking poor Quan Yin version 2.0 to a splintery death on our hardwood floors. Quan-Yin the senior sat, smiling tranquilly, as if to say, let s see you try the Elmer s trick now! I was actually in bed when lighting struck and I will admit that I imagined a smug sort of look on the elder Quan Yin s face as she restored balance and harmony to our household. I won t lie I had goose bumps. I am not a superstitious person AT ALL...but objects can have transformative power especially spiritual objects. After all, when we think of worship, don t we think of an experience that incorporates many different elements? Worship services require people to sit, stand, even dance or bow in prayer, or just hold still in quiet meditation. These are kinesthetic aspects of worship designed to access the divine through the core-

9 POR-real. Music and sounds are used in worship the pipe organ and the choir, the chiming bell and the gospel shout, chants and recitations, drones and group prayer, readings and sermons. All these appeal to the auditory experience. What about the visual? Christian churches have their marble, their stained glass windows, their intricately carved lecterns, gilded altars and crucifixes. What about Hindu temple carvings, Islamic decorative, scrolling script, or even the Buddhist aesthetic of using objects of beauty as a focus for serene attention and meditation? What visual objects, symbols, icons or idols does a Unitarian Universalist church offer for the visual experience of the divine? Why have religious traditions historically incorporated all these different elements? Was it because they understood there were many different ways to experience worship? I will freely admit that the stained glass window, the carved altar, the robes and incense, the sculpture and marble considered symbols of hypocritical excess and restrictive tradition by many do in fact bring me closer to a spiritual experience. I miss the symbols and objects of the Catholic mass, if not the content. Reverend Thom recently preached on African American contributions to American religion and introduced us to the concept of Barakah, the idea that blessings or wisdom can reside in both people as well as inanimate objects. He encouraged us to think about what objects hold that concept of Barakah for us. He spoke of objects acquiring [...] a quality of holiness and power that can dwell within the material world. Are we, as Unitarian Universalists, making room for Barakah in our worship spaces? The underlying argument of those in the field of object knowledge is that learning how to read

10 an object object literacy helps people learn about themselves. In effect, to possess object literacy is to possess human literacy. To delve the mystery of the deep and abiding creative impulse of humanity, a distinctive human characteristic, is to ponder what it means to be human, and what divine inspiration might mean. By leaving objects out of our worship spaces, are we missing out on worship? Are we failing those who learn in this manner? By keeping our sanctuaries devoid of the opportunity to engage in careful, critical dialogues with worship objects, are we cutting off another path of spiritual experience to ourselves? I believe that we need to add objects to our religion s collection of ways to seek universal truth and wisdom and tools to discover personal revelation.