Longing And The Spirit Life

Fresh Pair of Eyes

'Cause I want to be seen
With a fresh pair of eyes
The single white tree
In a black hood of disguise

I want, I want to be seen
With a fresh pair of eyes
The single, the single white tree
In a black hood of disguise

I miss God, I miss God
I miss God, I miss God

-Brooke Waggoner

Longing is one of the visceral affects induced by Wim Wenders’ film Pina. Pina Bausch’s choreography beautifully, and at times with forceful asperity, depicts the body reaching for what lies beyond. Leaving the theater one cannot help but address our hollowness set beside such hallow-ness.

I miss God, I miss God
I miss God, I miss God

The songstress, Brooke Waggoner, also elicits yearning. Longing comes from diagnosing what we miss. Like the Psalmist, we need to voice our apprehensions acknowledging God all the while. To be spiritual means to live and work in the realm of the Spirit—God’s own presence in the world. Through Jesus we are given the Spirit in order to grasp God’s holiness and righteousness. This happen in spite of how we live in the mire of our own muck. When we receive mercy, we know God is near.

The Spirit gives us “a fresh pair of eyes” to enable true relationship with the triune God, with others, and with the physical world. Steven Guthrie relates how “Apart from God’s Spirit, we sink further away from our humanity.” (Guthrie, Creator Spirit, p.36) According to Guthrie this is why the Spirit allows us to see God through artists like Pina Bausch who is able to trace and recover genuine human movement. God’s Spirit does not de-humanize, instead it reorders and transforms our human desires so that we may see Him. In fact, it is because of Jesus’ humanness the Spirit can reveal what has been missed under sin’s "black hood of disguise."

The Spirit life, therefore, is a life dependent on our triune God. Our work must be handed over to Christ’s renewing love that reconciles all things. Cultural renewal comes out of Spiritual restoration. Perhaps Ms. Waggoner also comes to this realization when she croons in her song Wonder-Dummied how “I tried my best alone but it got me nowhere and I can’t do it on my own.” True longing erupts in God’s accepting presence for we finally sense our own inadequacies, “Oh to be of the purest of pure in his arms,” Ms. Waggoner aches:

But I’ve never felt this feel so heavy
And I’ve never felt this feel so low
Yeah it is a wake inside my whole soul
But you are my strength I won’t stand alone

The Christian artist works in the medium of painful longing for we are given the Spirit who directs us ahead to what should be, what can be, what will be. This is why Colin Gunton understands the Spirit’s action as eschatological. The Spirit works to perfect “the particulars by relating them to their source and destiny.” (Gunton, The One, The Three, And The Many, p. 212). Let us not be overwhelmed by the heaviness of longing, but relate it back to its source and destiny for ultimately it is God we seek.

Please join us at InterArts Fellowship on April 16^th when Brooke Waggoner, along with William Edgar, will help us to further examine the Spirit Life.

--Maria