What if you and I could set aside all the church bullshit for a little while? I'm serious. Just for the purpose of a good conversation we would forget all the huge buildings and the tortured, organizational labyrinth that supports them, the marketing sound bites, the appalling TV shows, the whole Christian subculture that is such a mystery to the outside world, the creepy “I love Jesus so much” language, the stunning hypocrisy, all of it. What if we could just forget all of that for a time?
I know we can't really set all that aside because McLuhan was right. The Church is our medium and this medium is now our message. Most definitely our message. The only message we know anymore. There's no escaping that. But you and I are friends, and we can do whatever we want when we've had a couple of beers and are talking about crazy things that should be but are not and perhaps never will be.
You see the battered, black New Testament sticking out the back pocket of my jeans, and you ask to look at it. You bend the leather back and forth, noticing how loose and worn it is. The gold letters are long gone from the cover and the pages have pulled away from the spine.
“Wow, you really read this thing, don't you?”
“Yep.”
“So you think it's a good thing to read? I mean, there's good stuff in here, right?”
“Absolutely, but it takes some work. It's not easy reading. I wouldn't recommend doing it alone. Not in the beginning anyway.”
“Well, just could you maybe tell me what the deal is with Christianity? What's it all about? Is it just learning everything that's in the Bible, like an academic exercise or something? Cause that's kind of unsatisfying to think about, you know? Actually, I'm sorta interested in why Christianity exists in the first place. Is there something fundamental you guys are saying about reality? I know this is kind of impossible, but could you sum it up for me or something?”
I take back my Bible and look at it. I put my thumb on the edge of the pages, bend the cover, and flip quickly through it. The whole New Testament rests in my mind, ordered, progressing, some parts working against others and toward creative tension, the stories of HIM, the first stories of us, our first God words, our first problems, finding grace, finding faith, trying to live well, the shocking end.
But these stories cannot be told quickly, and there is something further back that you want to know, something beneath and behind this book.
I lift the Bible to my nose and smell the pages for some odd reason that even I do not understand. I close my eyes and try to think about how I want to say whatever it is that I'm going to say. There's so much, my whole life, this journey, primitive impulses, archetype, desire. One word jumps into my mind - poetry. I decide to run with that idea. I have only a vague sense of what I'm going to say, and I know that I'll be working a lot of it out even as I speak.
“You know I like to write a little bit.”
“Uh, yeah. I HAVE been reading Real Live Preacher.”
“Oh yeah, that was stupid. Okay, whatever. Anyway, when I write an essay I have to finish it. I could keep going over it and over it, but finally I have to put it online or send it to an editor or something. That's always a little hard, but that's the way it is. You have to finish it and move on.”
“Yeah?”
“Poetry is different, I think. I wonder if poems are ever really done. It's like Whitman with “Leaves of Grass,” you know? Sometimes I think of starting a poem that I would never even consider finishing. I'd just keep working with it until I died. And over the years it would change because I would change. I would work it until it was like the smoothest music that ever caressed your ears. Just the sound of it would be incredible, and maybe the sound of it would be all you'd need. And I'd never be able to send it to any editor because it would never be finished.”
“See, I think Christianity is like a human poem, written over thousands of years by people who have a sense that there is something more important for us than just waking up every day and going about our business. I'm one of those people, I'm afraid. I know that makes me seem a little foolish to you, but maybe you have room in your life for one goofy friend, huh?”
“Lord! Just go on with what you were gonna say, for Chrisake!”
“Okay, for Christ's sake I will.”
“Yeah yeah, you're funny. Whatever.”
“Anyway, so what we feel or sense - or whatever you want to call it - is so far down inside that it's unthinkable to let go of that feeling, that need, that urge to keep looking upwards and outwards. It's like Someone is trying to break through and give us hints along the way, but the hints are all we have, powerful and compelling though they may be.”
“I would say that if Christianity is poetry, then the Bible is our syntax, meter, and rhyme. The Bible contains the rules, but sometimes we are free verse poets, pushing on the boundaries, edges, and gray areas. We stretch this grammar to the very breaking point at times, led by the Spirit. We are engaging the Creator morally, putting theological meat on our bones. And the poem we are creating is our very lives, filled with the hints we've received along the way and the stories of our search for God.”
“The story behind our poem is the one that was given to us out of the mists of the past and between the pages of this book. It is a story about the goodness of the world and the searing reality of the evil that tears at the fabric of creation. Setting things right is unimaginably expensive and impossible for anyone but the ONE who stands behind it all.”
“Our poem, I would say, is an ongoing and never-ending attempt to put all that we feel and have learned into words that anyone can hear, the rich and the poor, the brilliant and the simple-minded, people of today and people of tomorrow. And it's only poetry, you see, that speaks across so many barriers. Only poetry can do this."
"So we read this book over and over, struggling with it, trying to understand the sense and the structure of what is beyond us. And sometimes we do get a sense of what lies beyond, a whiff of Him, a feel for Her, a love of It. And when you begin to get It, you see things in a new way and begin to live boldly in this world like crazy people and like brave people and like silly people, even like old and very young people.”
“But that's just the way I see it, so take that with a grain of salt. Everyone gets to be involved in this poem, which makes things very messy, I know. There is no escaping the big mess that we call Church, but somehow a stunning grace exists that helps us to know that even our mess is an important part of this poem.”
“I guess this wonderfully “human” poem will never be finished. There is an editor, I think, but he/she/it apparently has no firm deadline and a lot of patience. We keep getting our manuscripts back with a lot of red marks, but also a smiley face and these words:”
Keep at it. I like where we are going with this.
rlp
About Marshall McLuhan
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass
