Iconoclasm and the Christian traditions

I put this in because it might be worth re-reading over the next couple of days. I was writing in reply to someone in a forum struggling with his music, perhaps in a similar way to me (?) . . . 
I am guessing you are in the protestant wing of the church which seems to have two strands to it: there IS an iconoclastic tradition in the protestant church which winds its way through Calvin and the Puritans (in UK of course it was Cromwell and co who put an end to the great Elizabethan artistic flourishing) but Luther is always absolutely clear about this, and it was Luther's theology which sparked off the amazing torrent of perfect music in Germany after the Reformation. I think its not too simplistic to say: 'no Luther: no Bach'.
I spent many years teaching music in a Lutheran country and their view of music is so entirely different to ours (which is more a sort of impatient tolerance or a vaguely sympathetic scepticism)that I was quite blown away, and profoundly inspired. It lead, when I think of it, to an artistic revival of my own. They placed music, quite instinctively, very close to the sacred. This view is shared by the abbot of a monastery that I visited many times. For him there is no rift and he struggled to understand when I tried to explain my own dilemma. His view is also shared by Rowan Williams the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, who has written extensively and very beautifully on the subject. There is an excellent criticism here of the wonderful book by Williams called
'Grace And Necessity. The Catholic church is almost as divided on the issue as the protestant one but, because of the more rigorous control, it tends to result in a gentle swing between the two poles from pope to pope. John-Paul II, for example, despite being a playwright himself, put out a rule which forbade the performance of secular music in churches (the Polish tradition is surprisingly puritanical)whilst the German Benedict, soaked in his own country's Lutheran tradition, often invites musicians into the Vatican to perform and has a view much closer to my abbot's, although there is always a niggling worry I have whenever I hear him speak about music (or about anything for that matter).
Rowan Williams actually cites the Catholic philosopher Maritain, who follows the Thomist view (Williams is definitely a Thomist) which is instinctively for me the 'right' one even when intellectually I feel barriers. Do read the article above, and if you can find a copy of William's book I can recommend it. It is breathtaking stuff for any Christian struggling with his art although Williams is something of an intellectual in the way he puts things.
I should point out that, from what I can see, the Catholic Church in America has soaked up far more of the Polish iconoclasm than it has the German Lutheranism and that the American Christian artist is therefore likely to be at a distinct disadvantage culturally. In America, as in Britain, art has been mostly 'hi-jacked' by the secularists, and it is a difficult and stifling place for the Christian artist to be. It is important for Christian artists to find each other so that they can breathe and talk together and throw off shackles that can trap and kill us without us even being aware of them.
I just want to close by pointing out the important connection between the view we take as Christians over the last supper and the eucharist in all this: the Real Presence versus the memorial. I struggle to put this into words not being a philosopher but Maritain puts such emphasis on the idea of 'art being more than it is' - which is a concept which doesnt really seem to mean that much until you put it up against the bread and wine at the Anglican communion service or the Catholic mass and realise how this bread and wine is 'becoming more than it is' in a miraculous way. This is an experience that you might understand from what happens to you when you listen to music rather less than from your understanding of the eucharist which may well be more memorial than mass I dont know. This awareness of the 'divine presence' in the bread and wine when all the priest has done is say a few half-considered words does link dramatically with what the artist is trying to do when he daubs a canvas with paint or splatters manuscript paper with crotchets and quavers and it links back for me into the gospel where Jesus surely teaches again and again that God is not just imminent but overflowing; irrepressible in his desire to reach out to us. . . . .my point being that music or an artistic experience of any sort, just like the eucharist, is ultimately a matter of faith and trust . . .
mmmm I have a feeling that I am writing this more for me than for you, but no harm in that I guess!

PS at the risk of overkill, it was occurring to me as I previewed this that iconoclasm is perhaps more of a central issue in the world today than is first apparent, because it is such an important aspect of the 'battle' between Islam and Christianity. The Jews also have always been iconoclastic,(until they became soaked in the Lutheran German tradition: hence Mendelssohn and Mahler) and it did occur to me that Cromwell's puritan tolerance of the Jews (he invited them back to England) was based partly on the increased importance which the puritans placed upon the Old Testament 'way of thinking' which is highly iconoclastic: art being allied almost entirely with idolatry. (graven images etc.)
When we visit our churches in Britain we still see this around us: niches which had contained statues of the saints and apostles now empty and battered by Cromwell's soldiers . . . .
I am presently reading a book about the early church and the problem between east and west down through the centuries has grumbled on mostly around the fundamental difference in view between the iconoclastic east and the art-loving west . . . . . down until the present day I suppose . . .how this is directly relevant to us I am not quite sure!

monday: another lost day
today I had to start all over again.
but I knew who my enemy was

the current of time sweeps us apart.
the battle is to stay together

I said 'hidden one' and there you were.

about giving and receiving:
a child comes to his mother to receive,
but as he does so he gives, even without knowing.
the giving is the receiving and the receiving is the giving.
it is perhaps more essentially about 'being present to':
which only happens with trust.
and so trust is the key.

it is the distance between us that grows - unless we press

yesterday, friday psalms: thorny forest.
today, saturday psalms: field of wheat.

confusion:
something akin to drowning;
a steady disorentiation, not for the first time:
'say yes and refuse to shy away
nothing to fear!'
only the shadows

this week I wrestle again with secularism.
reading maccabees again, I am struck by the way in which, although the jews fight the greeks with sword and rage, the book is written in a greek way: as though the greekness they were raging against had actually seeped in like water.
so it is with western secularism. we fight it in vain, and yet not to fight it is to succumb and thereby lose everything.
the book I am reading will influence my style today:
gift of rain, tan twan eng.
I am reminded that I could not have returned to my christian roots without long eastern detours.
there is a deep hole in western thinking which cannot otherwise be filled.
I am wondering why I could not read that book on zen by merton. something made me put it down after the fewest of pages.
although we need zen, we can never write about it in a western way without destroying its very essence. we need it to defeat our dangerous obsession with reason but there is something in the way in which we write which only reinforces what needs to be weakened.
the present crisis between theism and atheism is all based on western fallacies. the principles which underlie our way of thinking are so deeply-rooted that they cannot be weeded out without destroying almost everything.
our obsession with completeness. we look for it everywhere and find it nowhere, and, because we cannot find it, we invent it. circles and triangles and rectangles: all completed. like walls of a fortress. they keep us safe by keeping the real truth out, because the real truth, although we seek it quite honestly, is too dangerous to allow in. the real truth actually destroys any possibility of completeness. so we can have completeness or we can have truth but we cannot have both. by our obsession with completeness we make truth an enemy.
our desire to know everything is perhaps just greed in disguise.
am I writing nonsense? is this just 'clever' talk of the most useless kind or is it something important that needs to be said and remembered?
not enough is made of the western problem of dualism perhaps.
my own sense is that it is only the christian way that can free us from our innate dualism, and yet, of course, our greek way of seeing the world constantly reinforces that same dualism, and inevitably then through the added christian lens, which thus contradicts and potentially destroys the very essence of the christian way. (just like maccabees)
although I would not be able to explain it right now (if ever) I am dimly aware here that it is resurrection and eucharist that are the western man's only way out of death-filled dualism. and here of course I must throw up my hands and admit that I am fulfilling the western curse. (is that too strong a term?)
zen cannot be understood through straight western prose, however all-inclusive you try to make it . . . . it isnt a question of being all-inclusive or all-encompassing, or even of being intricately detailed in a salinger kind of way, although he does get close don't you think?
what am I getting at?
music as complete package: beethoven, sibelius, [or even mozart although in a much more instinctive way]. philosophy as complete package.
I have long accepted that philosophy is always set to fail.
why?
because it must always be the triangle, the circle, the rectangle: which ultimately keeps the philosopher safe inside and the dangerous truth that he is really seeking firmly on the outside. even in his moment of triumph his main hope is being extinguished.
more later I think

I wrote:
'behind the cross: light.'

perhaps what I meant was:
from behind the cross: you look at me.

today I was looking back into a deeper darkness.
but words like radiance and beauty mean so little: clanging like tin bells.

I would like to write more about what happened today, but how difficult when I understand it so little! this morning's improvising took me quite by surprise, shaking me into a despair I hadn't been aware of.
It wasn't today's despair, and it wasn't my despair either. Starting in the music (a lonely, lost clarinet wandering disconsolate amidst ruins, scrabbling for a theme) it spread back across my prayer also, but this led me somewhere I hadn't expected to go.
I drove up the mountain, and when I got home I was able to continue a little with that piece which has sat for months on the piano. It's become like the thinnest thread connecting me with my other music. . . . .
There is much more I would like to say: about peter rollins, the book I've been reading about st paul and the other one about the 'authentic voice of jesus', (by vermes, who spent years studying the dead sea scrolls) but I know this isn't the time.
tonight, I dreamed of creating a collage in which a page of the gospel is overlaid with corrections, stuck-on sentences and bits added with papers of different textures and ages. . . . this connects with what I feel about the 'authentic voice of jesus'.

I am ashamed of yesterday's post:
lulled into objectifying you.
fool.

of course,
truth is not something we 'know' or 'don't know',
it's something with which we have a relationship.
knowing this changes everything about us.
if it doesnt -
if we don't allow it to -
then we become slaves of our own two-dimensional image of the truth.

something I just heard on tv, from a play by peter brook.
'there are three truths:
my truth
your truth and . . . .
(player turns quizzically to audience)
the truth

the cross. . . . . . . .
seven turns of the key. . . . . .
my six

behind the cross: light

I said, I am yours and I must be yours.
many times.

today, great confusion first but then
you said, you come but do not stay.
why do you run?
stay!
so I stayed awhile and was amazed
but staying is hard.
why is that?