How to write theology

On Beauty

Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

         Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

         When old age shall this generation waste,

                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
Ode to a Grecian Urn, John Keats

I enjoy a very particular form of leisure these days, which is that of having older children. For years I deferred my own serious work because my children were young. It is true that there was a good dose of self-sacrifice in that decision, but the truth is that there was some procrastination lodged in there as well. When I had very young children at home, I knew the daily work of tending them was valuable enough to avoid the inevitable for a bit longer. Now that they are older, I must write.

I have found that I will do anything to avoid serious writing, including writing. I write smaller pieces and pitch magazines and write on my sub stack in order to avoid the real writing that I know I need to be doing but that feels so heavy, so above my skill, so can-I-or-can’t-I that I will undertake anything, including more writing, in order to avoid it. For years I have developed a list of excuses regarding why I cannot simply write yet- I am interrupted too often, I cannot concentrate when the house is a mess, the children are too needy, I am too sad, none of it matters, no one will read it, teaching is more important, people are more important, this cabinet simply must be organized before I begin. 

The root of my procrastination is, I think, the most simple and obvious obstacle any person might face. It is fear. It took me several years to name it as fear, as I fancied myself a fearless person. The particular breed of fear I know in regard to my writing is not the same as the fear that might keep you from speaking your mind or taking on a difficult athletic endeavor or jumping out of a plane. This fear is cunning. She looks like the most sophisticated, beautiful version of yourself- she is smoking one of those long cigarettes with the tendrils of smoke wafting above her hair- and she says very little. It’s more a gesture, a smirk, a casual shrug. “It won’t be any good”, is what she means.

I am a woman now solidly in middle age, past those years when “promising” is enough to grant you entry. The casual disdain of my rotten muse became too much. But I couldn’t figure out how to banish her. I made an office outside of my home. I hired a house cleaner. All of my kids were in school full time. But all it would take was one casual smirk from the muse and the whole day would go sideways. I longed for the toil of early motherhood, so I could at least retreat into meaning once more.

I am a bit afraid to tell you how I have gained some traction over this terrible muse, out of concern that the trick will no longer work. But it turns out it was quite a simple fix. It was this- I bought a painting.

I have never bought a painting before. But I had one of those birthdays- those milestone birthdays- and wanted to commemorate it in some way. I am not a jewelry person, being someone whose hands are constantly in the dirt or in dishwater, and who tends to lose things anyway. But one day I visited an artist friend at her studio and saw a painting and knew I needed to have it. Let me tell you a bit about it.

The first thing you notice is the scale. The painting itself is nearly four feet tall. It is a still-life rendering of a bouquet of flowers, set in a blue and white chinoiserie vase. The flowers are a pale yellow and a dark purple and I could identify them immediately- tree peony, verbena, phlox, pansy. It was an early spring bouquet, the same I grew in my own garden. It was so beautiful.

Flowers are one of the traditional subjects for still life paintings, and this was a most traditional still life in its composition. The form has a long history, popularized by the Dutch painters of the 1600s. What an excellent example of the form portrays is not simply its subject, but something about the character of what is depicted. By utilizing light and displaying the objects just so, the viewer gains access into a slice of time. The arch of the light will change as the afternoon shadows move and cast a different light on the table. The subjects themselves are so temporary- fruit and flowers, both common subjects of still life paintings, will rot and mold and wilt in a day’s time. Even more so, the fish that is sometimes depicted- it will begin to smell! Flowers last a few day’s at most once picked. The anticipation of their bloom lasts so much longer than the bud itself. It is here today and then gone. But when it blooms it is exquisite. A still life is time in color. Unlike every other part of life, we might keep that moment as it is. 

The skill of the still-life painter requires capturing that moment in time when the anticipated bud comes into bloom. She waits and then deliberates over just the right light and angle and selection and then takes a giant risk by committing the whole thing to a canvas. When it is done well, we can have forever what otherwise would be gone in a day.

Something shifted in me when I saw that painting. That nasty critic in my head was set back on her feet. The painting before me was good because it was beautiful. That was its sole reason to exist. And it was enough!

I bought the painting. It cost much more than anything I have ever owned. It sits in my home as a reminder that beauty is its own reason, and that beauty is enough.

I trained as a theologian and I write theology. I often clarify that to say that I am a systematic theologian, though I work in a constructive vein. Truthfully these descriptions mean little. Though we could settle on some criteria for systematic versus constructive theology, what distinguishes them in addition to sources is a self-appointed style. Systematic theologians work within a settled set of doctrines that are refined and moved around like the alphabet blocks young children use. In much the same way, significant shifts in meaning can be accomplished by such rearranging. But there is often more attention to the resulting meaning than to the aesthetic results. Theologians who work in this vein care primarily about meaning, and so theological writing is prized for what it asserts. Less attention is paid to beauty. We theologians tend to pick apart arguments based on what they imply or suggest, or based on how they are constructed and who they are relying on. To write theology is to prepare yourself for your own vivisection.

Training as a theologian is much like training as a musician. What we are taught is a series of scales, increasing in difficulty. We are called upon to reproduce them exactly in order to demonstrate our skill. The discipline often sounds like the replication of these scales, over and over, with little if any variety- and indeed variety is often to be avoided! Occasionally a very fancy practitioner will throw in an arpeggio. Otherwise it begins to sound the same.

There are other ways. Classically trained musicians might undertake other forms of music that move beyond the scale and beyond the very beautiful classical forms. They might learn to play jazz. They might improvise and move from a 1-4-5-1 progression and create something new and dynamic within these forms. In doing so they do not invalidate the classical forms- they must work from them- nor do they argue against the assertions therein. But they do push ahead and pursue beauty more than repetition. I think theology can do this, too. I hope it can.

But it can only do this if it holds beauty alongside truth. The Platonic transcendentals would certainly affirm this. But this is not a philosophical argument, merely a personal observation. What I can say is this- when I began to work from beauty, the mocking muse shut up. Beauty silenced her. She may not like the work or value the thing that is made, but she could not argue with it. My job, conceived as an artist and not a writer, became one of observation, suggestion, and depiction. It’s criteria shifted toward beauty. This freed me. I no longer dreaded my own autopsy. For beyond the rote method of argument and analysis, theology can be beautiful. It often is, in fact- “did not our hearts burn within us”? Theology might gesture to that burning heart. It can fan it into flame. If it succceds, we might all warm ourselves from its heat.  But beauty cannot abide with fear. It must make its own claim on the world, critics be damned. It must insist on its value. All we must do is look.