Rewind (Best Of, Vol. 1)

3 interviews thus far, 3 wonderful sets of insights--about Catholicism, but also about the construction of stories and the creation of art.

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Here are some of my favorite lines from each:

Paul Lisicky

It's a beautiful thing when an assembly is singing together, without fear, their breaths practically in sync. The experience is physical, it takes us out of ourselves; we're part of the larger body. Something extraordinary about interconnectedness is enacted rather than just instructed. At the same time, it's very intimate. We get to meet our own bodies again, as well as the bodies of the people to our right and our left.


It's funny--I didn't go to church for decades after having been so involved in liturgical music as a young person. As writing took over my imagination, art became my church, and that other world fell away, gently. The church doesn't often look so good from outside, when you're not in it. That's not exactly news to us. I couldn't help but think, well, the church of my childhood, the church interested in social justice and transformation of self and culture--well, that's just dead. I felt sad about it for a long time. It's been reassuring to learn that the story's more complicated than that, at least on the parish level. I think the parish is where grace is actually transacted, especially in the liturgy. There are good people out there, very quietly, very humbly, doing their part to change things.


I'm also interested in the relationship between irreverence and reverence in her [Flannery O'Connor's] stories. You can't have reverence without the other, you know?


All I know is that for the years I didn't go to mass, I felt a terrible pang whenever I walked by a church and heard singing coming from inside. It's home to me, even if I'm troubled by the conservative turn the (larger) church has taken in the last twenty-some years. The rhythm of the liturgy is really intrinsic to how I think, to how I make art. I miss it when I'm away from it for too long. It's exile.


That's what makes us cringe: when we hear people talking too easily, too certainly, about the divine. It's embarrassing. Empty, overworked phrases that are expected to stand in for the hard work of seeing, naming.


Rev. James Martin, SJ

Ignatian spirituality encourages believers to look for God not simply within the walls of the church, or in the pages of Scripture, but in their everyday lives. God can be found in the midst of relationships, work, nature, family, play, music--pretty much anything.


Other instances [of anti-Catholicism] are even more subtler, as when a journalist talks about a political figure as a “devout Catholic,” as if that's supposed to explain everything about his political beliefs.


Also, the Catholic Church is not fundamentalist when it comes to Scripture.


The church, I think, which often suffers from a certain joylessness, could certainly learn from their joie de vivre.


What would I say to someone who struggles with their faith? First of all, it's natural. Doubts are a natural and human part of the spiritual life. You can’t be human and not doubt. The saints struggled with it, and I would venture to say that perhaps even Jesus does in his final moments on the cross. (This is a reflection of his humanity.) So doubts are a given.


Jesus was very disturbing in his time. It's one of the reasons that he was crucified. And he is disturbing to us today. There's a terrible tendency to want to cordon off Jesus into a particular political sphere, and make it seem that Jesus is simply supporting what we believe politically. But Jesus is much bigger than any set political platform. For one thing, I think we've almost completely lost sight of the absolute requirement to care for the poor, which is clearly and repeatedly outlined in the Gospels.


Joe Bonomo

I think, that solemn space for reflection and, again, muttering, of finding the right words through trial and error, coming in prepared but also being open to digression and, ideally, for epiphany of a sort.


In another essay, “The God-Blurred World,” I write that attending church, and specifically being an altar boy for several years, really immersed me in the wonder of art, being in the presence of huge stained-glass narrative windows and sitting and worshiping under the intense images and story of the Stations of the Cross, leaving church moved, when I was, not only by mass but by the artful renderings all around me, and by the pleasures of storytelling, and by the art of metaphor, which in my young cynicism and rebellion I was already using to replace transubstantiation. Erotics of art.


I recommend that all Catholics listen to Highway to Hell very loud, and then go from there.


I always say that writing an essay is like building a house without knowing in advance how many rooms or floors you’ll put in. The house builds itself. I like what Edward Hoagland said about the essay, that it doesn’t boil down to a summary the way an article does. If I find that I’m starting an essay with a summary in mind, then I might be in trouble. It’s best to go in to the dark room, stub your toes on the furniture, let your eyes adjust.


And the essential tenets of Catholicism—I’m referring not to the engine of the church here, its very human and sometimes reprehensible machinations, official decisions, behavior—but the tenets of the faith—of sin, and forgiveness, and benevolent treatment of fellow humans, of compassion and, maybe above all, of humility—these are bedrocks upon which a writer can create, engage, and essay his or her self and place. That’s crucial stuff.


Attending church taught me a crucial thing for a kid to learn, that to be serious was OK, that it was OK to be contemplative, even if it at the time it was dull and you wanted to be somewhere else or doing something else. I carry inside me the high seriousness of mass, for which I’m grateful.


So I might say to the church, listen to Jesus’ teachings closely, be skeptical but always open, ignore agenda and love tradition but decry unfortunate, mean-spirited history, and act within a fully humane impulse consistently. Listen to differences and love and accept them. Or maybe just reflect on what O’Connor said: “Ideal Christianity doesn't exist, because anything the human being touches, even Christian truth, he deforms slightly in his own image.”