The Garden and the Walk

If you went to High School in the Houston area, and you were in band, you might recall there were a few kids who left, and you never saw them again. No, not the stoners. I mean the kids who went to HSPVA, the Houston School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

Think about the division in that title. Two kinds of arts, visual and performing.

When I was young, I liked reading the philosopher Mortimer Adler. I remember that he wrote about a Good Life. He said the good life was not like a painting or a sculpture, which you could finish and walk around it look at it and handle it, which exists apart from the artist. Rather, the good life was more like a song or dance, which has no existence apart from the performance, but is experienced live and once it is done it is remembered (and anticipated again, I might add).

I was reading some Jacques Ellul the other day, and he made an observation about the Sabbath. Not the usual kind of observation about man's rest, but an observation about God's rest. He mused that human history has been unfolding in the seventh day, after God called his creation Good and is resting. That, in itself, is an interesting topic for another time. But Ellul's comments turned my thoughts to the different aspects of God's creation.

He created for Adam and Eve a garden. But in addition to that He apparently created for them a walk in the cool of the evening. Creation was both a visual and performance piece, both a garden and a walk. The walk must have been at least as significant as all the stars and animals. God not only appointed for us a great place with all its furnishings, but also appointed a continuing conversation with us. We became estranged from both aspects of His providence, the visual and the performing, the static and the dynamic.

We stepped off of Eden's dance floor, but first we missed our steps in the Dance. We stepped out of Eden's concert hall, but first we lost the tempo and key of the Song.

Maybe this is a little bit of what it means when Jesus tells the woman at the well.

"Believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem (the visual, the static, the stage). You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth (the performing, the dynamic, the dance), for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth."