Somebody Touched Me

The first piece of classical music I owned was Mozart's nineteenth and twentieth piano concertos. I was unprepared for the beauty, the beauty I found in repetition.

I am not sure why but my record player for some reason would start over each time the side ended. I say this because I was so amazed with the 19th concerto that I listened to it for months, nothing else, over and over and over again. Listened to it until the grooves of the album wore out. My family will tell you this is not an exaggeration or an isolated event. I tend to play a song for a day or two now that I have the repeat button.

The 19th piano concerto to me was life and happiness and joy. As a teenager emerging from a family tragedy, this piece of music sounded like hope, like recovery and restoration of a world now shorn of innocence. 

              Once the needle just skimmed ahead, the grooves worn smooth, I turned the record over.  I will never forget that day.  I was excited to hear more, to hear what came next.  It had been months with the 19th.  How much more would the 20th piano concerto be? I was curious.  In my excitement I was unprepared for the sadness. I was stunned.

              Gone were the light and uninhibited sounds. In their place was a brooding, dark sense of forlorn.  I remember sitting down and weeping.  I had no idea why or how, but it was clear something in Mozart, some wonderful, was lost. 

              My sense was correct.  Between the 19^th and 20^th piano concertos Mozart lost his father.  He was grieving.  The 20^th feels a lot like how grief sweeps you up and throws you around like a strong wave reaching the shore.  It picks you up, drags you for a time, pushes you down.  For me the 19^th was an escape, a happy place amidst sadness.  When I turned the record over, there was no escape, no freedom.  And yet, there was beauty.  It's Mozart.  I played the 20^th concerto until its grooves wore out as well.

              There are different theories about the power of art or beauty or song to heal.  There are different notions and arguments regarding from where the therapeutic power arises.  Not sure why or how, but there is a fair amount of consensus that it does.  People may not be certain why or how a song or a painting or a statue has the power to heal, but there is a trust that we are somehow changed for the better.  We feel better in beauty.  Fragments of us are gathered into a whole again.  Somehow singing the blues can lift you out of the blues. 

              One theory is that great art frees us from the grip of dread.  Symmetry, order, balance, harmony: it is as if the confusion of fear and worry is overcome by the sound and image and relation made right.  Despite our chaos the world is made right even if it is for just a moment.

              There is an idea that art invites memory.  We know that people lost in the agony of dementia can yet sing childhood songs.  Somehow the disease cannot erode these. Beauty in song is stronger.

              A common theory holding many adherents is the idea of "right brain".  Art, especially art you make, can provide freedom and strength once the side of the brain where creativity is found is unleashed.  The theory recognizes how much of life is lived in tasks and logic and working as fast as we can.  We spend so much time living in a frenetic pace, we often exhaust ourselves with such habits, that stepping into the slow, contemplative pondering of art and poetry, entering what is beautiful, can feel like a relief.  Healing.  You feel better.  Happier. 

              Although he didn't make the cut as worthy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle status, Botticelli was one of the greats.  Sandro Botticelli was a Florentine painter and contemporary of Michelangelo and Donatello.  You may not know his name, but you have seen his two most famous paintings.  The Birth of Venus is considered by the really smart people to be beauty itself.  This painting as well as the other masterpiece, Primavera, hang in the Uffizi just a short distance from where they were painted. 

              Primavera, or Spring, is on your cover.  It is not the whole painting as I was not sure how much confusion I wanted to create or make this a distraction.  Like most great art, a small copy, printed on a bulletin cover is not as powerful as standing before the original.  I will confess that I am ever skeptical as I approach the room in the Uffizi Museum where Botticelli’s paintings hang.  I am not convinced.  Maybe it won't strike me, hit me, heal me as it did the last time.  And then, it does.  Beauty heals me. 

              Why?  I don't know why.  My own theory, idea, is that each of these masterpieces are like a mirror image of the soul set free; this is what the interior of the heart is supposed to be. This is you and me. Standing before the Primavera it is as if I can see what it looks like to be born anew, to begin again, to find spring. 

              In the last part of Botticelli’s life, he was converted or fell under the sway of Savonarola, the militant preacher who destroyed art and harangued the people of Florence with fear and dread and doom and gloom.  He was a terrible man.  The second painting on your bulletin cover is Botticelli as well.  You don't need to be a well-trained art critic to see the change, the shift.  Beauty and ornament have been replaced with severity, austerity.  The joy is now all too pious to be true.

              I would not put this second painting on the cover of the bulletin if it weren't for the irony. There is a great contradiction between the two paintings in terms of style, but there is also a greater contradiction in healing.  The Primavera is healing.  If you spend time with this painting, it can lift your spirit, restore your heart, illumine your darkness.  It can heal you.  The second painting does not have this power, but it is about healing.  The miracles of Zenobia is an accounting of healings.  The soon to be saint was healing people.  Botticelli painting his deeds as a witness to the power of God, the way the righteous piety of the church can heal.  The irony is this: in not trying to heal, Botticelli created healing images; in trying to heal he failed.

              This is a great irony, a mystery.  Somehow when we don't try, when it is not our intent to make things right, when it is not on purpose, we do great things.  Mozart wasn't trying to heal me or anybody for that matter when he composed the 19th and 20th piano concertos.  It was not as if he thought, if joy cannot heal, then let's try sadness.  No.  He composed music of beauty and the beauty, be it the uninhibited happiness or the grasp of grief, the music was healing. It made things better.

              One of the great mysteries of the gospels, something we can see if we walk slowly with Luke is this: Jesus doesn't try to heal people; he doesn't seek people out.  On a few rare occasions he heals without being asked, without people pleading with him.  The leper says, you can heal if you choose.  The leper pleads and Jesus complies.  It is a great mystery we can rush right past if don't stop and ponder, why would there be a choice?  Why does the leper need to tell Jesus he has a choice?  There is no sense of intent or plan or purpose before he is confronted by the leper.  It is as if healing was not his intent. He says, I do choose. 

              Like the healing quality of art with many theories, there are many theories as to why there was a pause, a need to ask.  Jesus seems indifferent to the leper.  Was Jesus indifferent to suffering? Did he not care? 

              Some scholars believe Jesus wasn't as callous or uncaring as he appears, he was just focused on the resurrection.  That was the real act of healing he came to provide.  All the rest were just extra.  Some scholars suggest Jesus didn't want to heal because the miracles detracted from his message.  In essence people would come to see a show not to hear the good news. Plausible.  Maybe.  But not very profound. 

              One possibility as to why Jesus didn't seek to heal people, didn't advertise as it were, one possibility is that real healing, freedom, is found within yourself.  If Jesus fixed your problems, they would just come back.  If he heals you, you may very well still need to heal yourself.  This seems closer to how Jesus lived.  It is your choice to follow; it is your faith that makes you well he tells many of those he heals.  Your faith has healed you, he says.  He can heal.  This is true.  But so can you.  And it might just be better if you find the power within.

              This will sound strange, and the first time I read this theory, it stopped me in my tracks.  It's a theory of Simone Weil about love.  Simone Weil believed it was only in not trying to heal others, not trying to fix them, being indifferent to their suffering, it is only then the healing begins.  Simone Weil believed this was true of God.

              This is so different from the images we carry of a loving God, the kind and gracious God who heals us, redeems us, lifts us.  The God who holds us and binds our wounds.  How can God not care about our suffering?  How can love be indifferent?

              Recently I saw the Mother's Day worksheet our grandson Henry composed for his mom.  Think Kindergarten, something you pull out of their backpack.  There were many factoids on the Mother’s Day worksheet about Laura: her age, 32; her favorite color, purple; her favorite food, pizza.  It turns out that Henry's mom is really good at snuggling and making Mac n Cheese.  All of this is rather run of the mill mundane observations of a six-year-old, but then there was zinger.  Henry was asked to list his mother's job.  Now Laura oversees large agricultural developmental initiatives in West Africa funded by USAID. she was just in Guinea for work. But according to Henry her job is "to love me."  Your mom's job: to love me. True.  That's good work if you can get it.

              Henry's drawing of his mom was not quite a Botticelli painting hanging in the Uffizi.  And even more, Henry wasn't trying to accomplish anything but the task; he wasn't hoping for extra Mac and Cheese.  And he was certainly not trying to influence me or help me.  But that line, that claim, was so true and right and good and beautiful it lifted me, touched me.

              Like Mozart, like Botticelli, that little worksheet illumined life with beauty.  It was not his intent.  But it is what he did.

              I am not sure why Simone Weil's theory seems so true, but it keeps nagging me.  There is something in the purity of pursuit; you love to love; you paint to paint; you sing to sing.  Jesus chooses what he chooses.  It is as if you are just doing your job.  What's your mom's job, Henry?  To love me. 

              Somehow, in ways we may never fully understand, beauty and goodness and truth reveal the same in us. We can see the soul as it is in the eyes of a six-year-old.  It's a work of tenderness made whole by faith.  Good work if you can get it.  Amen.