Abstraction, Expression, and "Ownership"

Today was the last day of a 7-week long course in Drama for our core members. Since 3 weeks before I arrived, 5 of our core members have been going once weekly to practice and perform drama. As today was their final session, the whole class put on a big show for us. The story that they performed, was a Maori folk tale. At least, I think it was. The narration was sort of all over the place, but it was enough for us, as an audience, to get the general idea.

It was a beautiful performance, but, because it was difficult to know what, exactly, was happening, the whole show came off as a kind of abstract representationalist party. From my perspective, it was beautiful. Pricelessly so, considering that no two drama performances are ever quite the same. Trish wore a top hat and had a sledge hammer for some reason. Peter waved around a pirate flag and ran in a circle. Some folks wore masks, others had on capes and boas. The characters of the drama were cold and then in a storm of some kind and the whole ordeal finished with a human volcano. In the background, a whole cadre of musicians (including Arahata's own Kim Turner) made sounds on drums, cymbals, tambourines and other instruments. In different circumstances, I think I might have paid money to see this show, but the offering was so community-oriented that I think that, in this case, a cover charge would have been offensive. An abstract art/drama show with an offensive cover charge, very avant-garde.

If people who have intellectual disabilities can put on a wildly abstract dramatic performance capable of capturing the imagination, then that either says alot about the intellectually disabled or not so much about abstract art. Personally, I think it's both. On the one hand, people with disabilities are more capable than many people realize. In our own house, we have learned how best to treat our core members like adults. If we treat them like children, then they're always going to feel like children. If core members feel like children, then they act like children. And if that happens, then they become dependent upon L'arche as patients instead of living in L'arche as equal community members. There's something about being a loving person that simply isn't dependent upon our "abilities." In one way, I think that those are the sorts of feelings which abstract artists attempt to build up. For someone like Jackson Pollock, the enemy was form. For L'arche, the enemy is ability. Even though Pollock's work is not truly "formless," it attempts to go there. Likewise, L'arche is not without a need for abilities of many kinds, but that's just not the point. Naturally, our core members are essential for bringing the Kingdom of God to its fruition in this process. They are why we are here, after all; getting beyond the usual "form" of our contemporary society.

On another level, how much ability does it require to do abstract things, really? Why is it that we always celebrate the "cutting edge" in culture, art, and (for me) theology? What's the appeal? Why is there the need to always go for the "next, big thing" or the next "movement"? How hard is it really to get a big idea by plopping a bunch of dots onto a blank canvas? In my opinion, not that difficult. It only takes a small amount of imagination, really. We've all heard the story about the 2-year-old girl who sold her "abstract"paintings for thousands of dollars. Likewise, it's not a genius idea to live in community with the disabled. It doesn't take that much more work than normal living. Plus, assistants get paid. Talk about a sweet gig. Point being this: maybe grandiose ideals aren't all that they're cracked up to be.

I've been living with the idea for my entire life that ideologies are prescriptive. That is, that ideologies tell us how to be in the world and that they attend to some vision of it, some telos. Exercising prescriptive ideals, however, is as foolhardy as attempting to name Other. You can't do it, because you just don't know. Even if the ideal in question proves to be "correct", who can see the future without doing violence to it? Indeed, the notion that we can change the world, that we own in such a way, is nothing but violent. Saying that ideology acts back upon us as people divorces our ideals from us. It causes us to name our values as outside constructs, as if we were naming the Others who shape us by their presence.

Instead of this model, I will not attempt to view my ideals as deep aspects of my self. Indeed, they are as valuable to my person as my very genes. Without them, "I" would be someone or something else, almost entirely. Without my ideals and values, I certainly would not be here and I certainly wouldn't be blogging about it to you. I am going to own my ideals. My thoughts on God, the world, and everything else are just as mutable as my physical body and probably much more so. I should regard them as such, for if my values had not been wounded by the presence of the Other, then I would not BE--HERE--NOW. As my body is a Gift, so to are the thoughts of my head. I do not own them any more than I own my genetic code. Yet, even without this sense of "ownership," my arms and legs still belong to me, and I should feel very bad if someone were to lop them off. Before I left, Dr. Dan Deffenbaugh, instructed me on the difference between a "possession" and a "belonging." A possession is something which is owned. That is, a person has rights over it. By contrast, a belonging, is something which encompasses a certain amount of a person's being. You may have possessions in your house, but your home is a place to which you belong. It's where a part of you is now and will always be. Belongings are those things which, literally, course through your synapses.

My ideas are not possessions. I do not own them. They cannot be bought or sold without also slicing some aspect of my Self. As parts of my Self then, they are not divorced from my Being. My values and ideals do not command me, they are expressions of me, of all the gifts that make me who I am. As my body, they are weak in places; they are mutable and fallible; they have sins and limits of all kinds bound up with them. Therefore, when I write theology or philosophy in the future, do not expect from me statements on "reform." Do not expect that I will often say what "ought" to be, for the "ought" can easily be a kind of violence and our morals (our "confidence") can become a sword.

Instead, I hope to go forward in a way of gentleness; a way of hospitality. I can do nothing except to tell you who I am, to confess my Self to you in the hope that I will encounter your Other. You may expect that this confession will be emotional, perhaps even confrontational. I hope however that, whatever I may do after L'arche, I would always attends to Gifts instead of goals.