To Those Who Are Being Saved

Inside the museum, infinity goes up on trial

Voices echo, "this is what salvation must be like after a while."

But Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues,

You can tell by the way she smiles.

-Bob Dylan, Visions of Johanna

Sometimes I think we ought to entirely retreat into poetry, song and story for all of our meaning.  I get so worn out trying to confront the mysteries of creation and love and loving creation using mere prose.  Songs and poems let you live with an image, they force you to interpret for yourself.  For instance, reasonable people could certainly disagree about what Dylan was talking about in the above lyric, given that the context of it is a song about being haunted by the memory of a past love affair, I suspect it probably had something to do with that theme, but yet the idea of putting infinity up on trial can go so much further than that.

In a museum you walk through collections of art, some are very old, some are very new, and with each work you are given the authority and the responsibility to judge whether or not you like it.  You may interpret the work of the artist however you like, and man that can be dangerous.  Sometimes I see people walking around museums with those little talking handset things that have pre-recorded explanations of things.  I got one of those in the Cathedral in Burgos and I listened to all of about three entries before I just shut the thing off and decided to go it on my own.  I get that there is a lot of expert opinion on art, I get that there are probably "more correct" ways to interpret the work, but sometimes that just sucks all the joy and wonder out of it.

Sometimes knowing too much about what the artist intended is not a good thing.  For instance, I don't want to know exactly what Mona Lisa was smiling about.  Some of the best pictures of my kids were these pictures taken of them by a photographer who had a remote control noise maker that would make flatulent sounds at the press of a button.  It got spontaneous smiles and giggles out of three and four year olds and it produced some wonderful pictures.  Mona Lisa may have been smiling like that because DaVinci was making googly eyes at her, or because she was thinking some deep and winsome thoughts about the nature being immortalized, or she may not have even been an actual person and she was made up in DaVinci's head, or maybe she really did have the highway blues (whatever that means), the fact of the matter is: we just don't know, and that adds to the appeal of the work.

By virtue of my line of work, I say a lot of words, and I write some too.  Sometimes people hear things that I didn't think I said, or they interpret my writing in a way that is somewhat different than what I meant.  The more creative and poetic I get, the more this happens.  Often (in fact the majority of times) this is a serendipitous interpretation, they heard something that spoke to their heart, they felt the Holy Spirit moving.  I am humbled when this occurs because I know I have been at the center of something really wonderful.  But I have also had moments where my words have been twisted to something rather less than wonderful, and all I have is the internal knowledge that I didn't mean them that way.  And of course, sometimes I say things that are just plain wrong.

So when it comes to putting infinity on trial, I find that sometimes less is more, because by the above scheme, I've got a 2/3 chance of doing more harm than good.  I may improve my chances by being faithful to the work of exegesis and rooting what I do in prayer and devotion, but it still shakes out in favor of being misunderstood.  So I don't feel particularly okay making promises about what "salvation must be like."  See, in my head and heart I don't really much care, all I really need to know is that it's salvation, being saved, being pulled up out of the pit, being welcomed into the oneness of God.  Honestly, I'll be a bit surprised if heaven is actually streets paved with Gold and giant mansions for all the really good people.

That actually seems like too much of a destination oriented idea to my way of thinking.  I think that we've got work to do in the time that has been given us.  Salvation seems like more of a journey than a destination, and I really haven't known anyone who was absolutely ready to meet their Creator (I have known some people who were okay with dying, mostly because they were just tired of suffering.

Yes, I know about "Jesus Paid It All" and such.  Yes, I believe that too.  But I think we are making a mistake if with think that we can or should have salvation all sown up and figured out.  It would be like looking at the Mona Lisa and knowing exactly what she's smiling about.  It would be like walking through a museum and being forced to know only the "right" interpretation of all that beauty.  It would be putting infinity on trial, and in the process the world would a be a less interesting and less beautiful place.  Your salvation and the salvation of the world are God's masterpiece.  It is not your job to judge the artist, see the work for what it is, your interpretation might change a bit from time to time, but it is more likely that the work will change you more.