I enjoy the writings of author (and Catholic priest/lecturer/professor) Ron Rohlheiser. I was feeling quite conflicted the other dayafter reading about various people in the entertainment industry. Thankfully his most recent article reassured me (excerpted below.)

Without naming names, there are people (or more specifically, certain young women)  who have such talents, intelligence, great personal style, and yet at times they resort to such crudeness and vulgarity when expressing themselves publicly about various topics. In large part, this is why I eschew Hollyweird and related industires in their entirety. And yet, I love pop culture so much, often its hard to look away.

Although I am strong in my faith and worship, I am far from what anyone would dub a "Church lady." I embrace an eclectic variety of subcultures, styles, aesthetics and points-of-view. What is difficult for me, is that a certain crowd looks at me suspiciously because I am a Christian; others don't feel I am Christian enough.  I do know that I personally never judge someone in a condemning way (except in snarky light-hearted comments, of course!) Rather, if someone's  "edgyness" is too much for me, I just move on. I am grateful to Ron for articulating some of these ideas here - you can read more at http://www.ronrolheiser.com

Of Artists, Freedom, Reticence, and Sanctity

2008-02-24

Nobel Prize winning novelist, Doris Lessing, once suggested that George Eliot could have been a better writer if she hadn't been so moral. That highlights a painful and interesting paradox. Sometimes depth and sensitivity are in tension with creativity and freedom.

When I was child, our Catholic catechism told us that after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit "their minds were darkened." But that isn't exactly what scripture says. It tells us rather that "their eyes were opened." Lessing's comment highlights what is at stake here...

Artists are often characterized by their freedom, their willingness to push edges, break taboos, and feel themselves free from the psychological and moral restraints that hold the rest of us. But that is only half of the picture. In another area, aesthetics, where their sensitivities are the most keen, they are anything but free. In their own way, artists are also very uptight. For example, a true artist is incapable of defacing a beautiful artefact and feels hurt when someone else, in callousness, destroys something beautiful. A real artist would be congenitally incapable of drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa, even while someone less sensitive could do this casually, thoughtlessly, and perhaps even as joke. Sensitivity can make you uptight in a healthy way, just as lack of it can make you free in an unhealthy way...

...There is a moral artist and a saint inside each of us too and, whether we are awake to that or not, sometimes it can make us feel wonderfully free and sometimes it can make us feel like we are the most uptight persons in the whole world.