An Interview with Jonathan Pageau (2)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal (Unpublished)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/02/28
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: A couple things come to mind; I know for George Coyne from the Vatican Observatory, the astrophysicist. He was noting a similar point: You were noting at the start of that response that the texts that comprise the Bible were written prior to the major scientific revolutions. So, it should not be taken as a scientific text and also you note the concert aspect of some modern Christian worship. I note the same that the individuals with the tattoos and the rock star appeal of some of them as well as the presentation of the music at the start, e.g., the skinny guy, Adam’s apple, cool looking shirt, playing guitar and singing; this is a common theme, which, probably, amounted to trying to attract people on a surface level – which just given the surface appeal of it would be for younger generations of people. And so, people in a sense they lost part of that deeper tradition in the attempt to curb some of the loss of members in some of the more mainline or liberal denominations of the Christian faith.
Jonathan Pageau: Yes, but in the end, it’s a really deep misunderstanding of what Christianity is because they have this idea that Christianity is basically like believe in Jesus, and then you’ll go to heaven. So, what they think is that no matter what we do, it doesn’t matter as long as we get people to believe in Jesus, then they’ll be safe. They’ll go to heaven. It’s someone not eating in terms of structure for existence [Laughing]; whereas, the idea that Christianity creates a frame into which a society can live creates a church, a communion of people. The word “Church” means gathering, so the idea that Christianity provides is the gathering. It’s the possibility for disparate things; things that are not connected to become connected and be able to function as a whole. And so, if you make your church service into an entertainment and just to be an entertaining thing, then you are really missing the deeper aspect of what Christianity provides; which is that frame, that cohesion of people. And you can see it like even in the way that they do it; they have the coffee tables and people sit with their coffee and they watch the concert, and so you really get the sense of an entertainment. There isn’t the notion that is communion, right? Communion in the sense of coming together to become one. There’s like a traditional understanding of Christianity, which they would look around and see society becoming individualistic and fragmenting and that the bonds which unite communities is slipping apart and they would say that was inevitable. That’s when you lose communion and when you lose the structure which binds people together, then, obviously, what’s going to happen is that fragmentation is going to increase. To me the mega church, Evangelical church is feeding into that… I mean it’s not bad, I’d rather people go to an Evangelical church service than stay at home and stream porn all day. Obviously, I prefer that, but I still think that it’s lacking in terms of its higher possibility, let’s say.
Jacobsen: And when you’re doing icon carvings, what are you trying to convey in the artistic productions?
Pageau: Well, there are several things. The thing that I really like about the icon carving is… one of the problems with contemporary art is that it’s not connected to real life. Art has been disconnected to participation in an existence like in the world, an art was not an object. There’s no such thing as an art object. The art was the skill that the artisan had. So, we still say that like the art of doing something, the art of making cheese, or the art of that, and so there was no such thing as making an art object. You made a chair, you made a portrait, and you made something, which then participated in life. Today, one of the problems of contemporary art is that it’s disconnected. It floats around in its own sphere. it isn’t participative in society, except for, maybe, creating prestige for people who own those art pieces. Whereas, let’s say, if you make liturgical art you make art for churches and if you make icons for people, those objects will then go straight into the life of the people who are ordering it. So, they’re not only going to be objects for decorations, but they’ll be objects which will participate in their prayer life and their meditative life. If you make something for church, it will participate in the liturgy, so it becomes an object which increases this capacity for cohesion in communion that I was talking about. So, that’s on the lower side, on the more grounded side. And then on the higher side what happens in an icon is that it has a language, it’s almost like algebra. So, certain images come to manifest certain things, and then you can create language of signs which come together and speak of the patterns like the divine patterns we would say; and so the structure of reality and the reality of… especially, of course, the mystery of the possibility of the incarnation, which is the notion that the divine and the human can be completely united into one person. What I’m trying to convey is, in a way, it’s also not personal because to make an icon is to enter into a traditional language, so I’m not trying to express my own ideas, or my own feelings, or my own impressions. I’m actually like someone who makes a chair; I’m trying to make an object, which will serve the purpose to which it’s made. And so, I enter into a traditional language. I accept the rules of that language, so that I can create something, which will connect to people on that side. So, it’s kind of like all those things together that we try to put into an icon.
Jacobsen: And you noted two interesting ideas; one was the liturgy of life. I believe that was the phrase, and the other one was the language, but language in a broad sense about the way in which one is placed by a particular set of rules to understand an aspect of the world or, if an entire worldview, then the whole world. And when you’re talking about the liturgy of life, my sense of this one, please correct me if I’m wrong here; my sense of this is that it’s taking the rituals that are suggested practices plus the interpretive language of those practices to bring about certain either individual experiences or, I guess, was the ecclesia that the community sensibility of worshiping together about something greater than oneself or the community as a whole.
Pageau: I think you understood it. The question is how do you create a community, that’s a big question, right? Because the world is made out of an innumerable number of facts and an innumerable number of details as much as everything, like every object you can think of, every person you can think of, or every group of people you can think of. It is a plethora of multiple aspects. So, the question is, “How do you come together? How do you create unity out of this multiplicity?” And the only way to do it, is to appeal to something which transcends the multiplicity of the group, there’s no other way, like there has to be a characteristic which transcends, which is above the multiplicity or which can be found in all of the multiplicity and then can act as the principle which unites those things together. So, you have to find something to make the communion possible. And so, for example, like a country, the United States or Canada, that’s not a thing. That’s not a thing. Canada is not a thing in the world; Canada is an identity into which a certain amount of millions of people are able to co-exist together as a community or as a communion. So, the question is how high that can go. Also ,what is the most profound capacity to create unity? Then the Christian answer would be ‘it’s in the highest thing’, it’s in the infinite. And so, to appeal to the infinite and to the possibility of the infinite being mysteriously present in the world, that’s how you create the highest form of communion. It is a way to understand how the reality is possible, like how it is possible for things to have identities or to have unitive capacity. I don’t know if that make sense to you.
Jacobsen: Yeah, I have heard from some theologians and pastors and preachers the notion that you can see the works of God within their particular tradition, so in other words this is just transferring tradition or something like that. The notion that you can see God when people come together and you can see the absence of God when people go apart. So, when there are more communions of people, then you can see God and when there is a lack of that coming together, in other words, are coming apart; then there is a lack of God.
Pageau: Yeah. But I think that to understand it, it’s better to not use God as the example because people have such bad ideas about God that when you say that some people’s minds just switch right off. They just feel superstition. It’s like their mind switches off, but if you see it in smaller ways, then you can see it happening on a larger scale. And so to use, for example, the example of a country is a good idea. You can see Canada when people are united, right? If there were three or four civil wars in Canada, Canada would cease to be present. Does that make sense?
Jacobsen: Yes.
Pageau: And so, it happens at every level of reality where if I have a pen, the reality of pen is there as the constitutive elements of the pen are joined together. But if I take a hammer and I smash it into little bits, the pen is less and less present in whatever it is that’s in front of me. So, it’s just a constitutive of reality, so the question is how high can that go? Like how far can it go that you create the possibility of a unity amongst people, amongst things, among in time in space and all of those elements together? And that’s what the liturgy is for and so that’s why the way a church is made, a church is concentric in its structure. It has an altar which is the point of convergence of the church and the whole structure of the church is made in a convergent manner, so that it converges towards a point of origin. And then the same for the liturgy; the liturgy turns like… you have these most ancient rituals that exist, the idea of turning around something like turning around a pole. Well, that is a physical manifestation of what I’m talking about, it’s a physical manifestation of the need to converge around a common thing so that you exist as a community. We still have it today as a standing and saluting a flag, it’s the same thing. The flag becomes the sign for the unity of the people who are standing around it and looking at it at the same time but the question is how high can that go and that’s what the liturgy purports to be is the highest form of that capacity for communion, for things to come together and be united.
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