I have a new hero. He is a janitor at Dortmund’s Museum Ostwall, and he’s in big trouble for accidentally cleaning up a puddle that turned out to be an essential part of a 1.1 million dollar work of art. This piece…

…is now ruined.

And I’m roflin. I am instantly reminded of C.S. Lewis’ incredible essay, on Good Works and Good Work, in which he stated – with wonderful appropriateness to the current situation:

But [...] I doubt whether we have a duty to “appreciate” the ambitious. This attitude to art is fatal to good work. Many modern novels, poems, and pictures, which we are brow-beaten into “appreciating” are not good work because they are not work at all. They are mere puddles of spilled sensibility or reflection. When an artist is in the strict sense working, he of course takes into account the existing taste, interests, and capacity of his audience. These, no less than the language, the marble, or the paint, are part of his raw material; to be used, tamed, sublimated, not ignored or nor defied. Haughty indifference to them is not genius nor integrity; it is laziness and incompetence. You have not learned your job. Hence, real honest-to-God work, so far as the arts are concerned, now appears chiefly in low-brow art; in the film, the detective story, the children’s story. These are often sound structures; seasoned wood, accurately dovetailed, the stresses all calculated; skill and labor successfully used to do what is intended. Do not misunderstand. The high-brow productions may, of course, reveal a finer sensibility and profounder thought. But a puddle is not a work, whatever rich wines or oils or medicines have gone into it.

Speaking frankly, C.S. Lewis is the man. He is the man because he understands that art is not the mere conveyance of self for the mere enjoyment of self. It is a gift to mankind. It is a symbol. It is a part of a triadic relationship between artist, art and viewer, not a dyadic relationship between art and artist, that the viewer – with luck – is let in on. This is a truth we must, must, must bear in mind when considering the art of the Church, whether it be our architecture, Stations of the Cross, crucifixes, tabernacles, or monstrances. Is it good work? Is man lifted up by it? Or are our creations mere artistic riddles one may or may not solve?

Take this, for instance:

Now the Traddy might get up in arms that the thing is blasphemous, but he’d miss the point. The point is that the very existence of any argument over the piece’s meaning, beauty, and appropriateness means that it has failed as a piece of work, no matter what it has achieved as a piece of art. No matter how potentially awesome it is, for the simple fact that it does not take into account the “existing tastes, interests and capacity” of the faithful, the work has failed.

It all comes down to a certain humility in creation. I, writing this post, could begin to spin and weave in my favorite Renaissance poetry so as to create within my words some artistic flair. (Actually, I couldn’t, but you get my meaning.) I might wring out of this writing some semblance of art. But that is not the point. The point is to convey.

And it is in that simplicity and humility of art that beauty is found. For one of the three principle parts of beauty is claritas, clarity or conveyance. If your work is unbelievably gorgeous but does not convey, it has failed in art’s great end; to be beautiful. And don’t be afraid to see this same principle applied in areas that aren’t considered artistic creation. In our relationships, our prayer lives, our families and our jobs, always we should consider the question; “Are we doing good work? Or are we mere spilled puddles, ambitiously seeking some end other than goodness, truth and beauty?” It’s worth mulling over.

So let us continue converting the entire world by way of beauty.

“Christ prophesied the whole of Gothic architecture in that hour when nervous and respectable people (such people as now object to barrel organs) objected to the shouting of the gutter-snipes of Jerusalem. He said, “If these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” Under the impulse of His spirit arose like a clamorous chorus the facades of the mediaeval cathedrals, thronged with shouting faces and open mouths. The prophecy has fulfilled itself: the very stones cry out.”
G. K. C.

We lost something important when our Western culture ‘outgrew’ its infatuation with obscenely large cathedrals, ornate basilicas, dark stone chapels, stretching towers and lonely crypts. We lost something important – a unique human experience – when we began our relationship with the plaster-church over the ‘old-school’ church.

We lost our awareness of the power of Place, specifically, its power to shut us up. Have you ever seen a group of tourists walk into a basilica? Let’s call them Americans, post-Christian agnostics – their names are Deborah, Stella and Mike – who respect the great artistic achievements of the Old Church without respect for the Old Church. They walk in through the creaking, wooden side-door; they are talking about their diet plans, and the relative evils of cholesterol. Through the door now, (they smell the incense), into the foyer, (they feel the cool of the stone ease away the heat of the day from their skin), and past the first arch. Wait for it, wait for it…now. Their words die on their lips. Mouths open loosely, and necks crane instinctively upwards. Their group loosens, they begin to wander away from each other, Deborah towards the candles, Stella towards Our Lady of Sorrows, Mike towards the altar, each waltzing in small circles as they try to take everything in. How many times I’ve seen this, and how many more times I’ve performed this little unconscious ritual; this silent transformation; this unrequested dance.

The beauty of a basilica is that men do not visit it, it visits men. The beauty of it, yes, but also the rudeness of that dark, stone temple, for it is a hand clamped over the modern mouth, a sturdy grasp guiding one through side-chapels. It demands that you – Mike – center yourself. Here are the pews on either side, the symmetrical side-chapels, everything mirrored and proportional, even the interlacing tessellations of granite that spread out from a single star on the floor. Stand on the star. Then look straight ahead. There are two things that everything else seems to reflect from. Two things in this building that form and beauty and structure emanate from. One is you, in the center of the church, having wandered their almost by by necessity, by the strange force of the symmetry all around you. The other is the tabernacle. Of the two, choose now whom you will serve.

Every cathedral makes this bold, arrogant challenge to the visiting man. The sheer size, scope and intricacy of these temples speaks of the total, radical commitment men gave to God; to build Him a dwelling place, even if they were not to see it complete; to serve him. These living stones are their pronounced fiat; their yes; their choice. What is yours? For when you leave, the tabernacle will remain. The Body of Christ will stay – the red candle still burn – and the basilica will circle and reflect around it, like ripples in a pool, emanating from the drop of some inexplicable and sublime stone.

What does a plaster-church say? “I will not be here long.” What does a cathedral say? “You cannot deny me. For I’ve outlasted your forefathers, and I’ll outlast you.” The cathedral speaks of the endurance of Catholicism. This is not to deny the beauty of a simple church, of the awesome fact that the universal quality of Catholicism means that we can celebrate mass in our living rooms, our shelters, canoes and battle-fields. This is simply to lament that the age of the Cathedral is done, the age where one was silenced, for perhaps the briefest of moments in a life filled with noise, and brought to worship. Oh, perhaps the tourists would never acknowledge that they perform an act of worship, walking into a basilica. But what else are we to call it, when we all shut up, slow ourselves and walk small-stepped in awe, reduced to whispers and peace? The Catholic Church holds that worship is not something we do. No, worship is a gift we receive. I hold that the cathedrals, basilicas and lasting chapels of the Church are awesome conveyors of that gift, rudely thrusting worship into the hearts of all who enter them.

But perhaps there is one place left where one can experience this bit of humanity. I speak, of course, of the library, where my writings are written. It would not be unwise for the seeking, modern man, to stand in some old, dusky library, close his eyes amidst the books that surround him, and think of how such a little peace would be magnified, if he were surrounded by saints, angels, pilgrims, prayers, cool stone and holy incense. A man in a library - if he is a man at all – is humbled by the mass of human knowledge, wisdom and understanding that surrounds him. A man in a cathedral is humbled because he, as a member of the human race, has performed the incredible and audacious act of surrounding the unsurroundable God with stone.