the New Pantagruel

Medium-Beige Brick

by Kay Darling

n second grade I was invited to and attended what was called the Five Day Club. Each of the five days was spent on one aspect of the gospel: one concept per day with Bible verses and a color for each concept and day. The first day was spent on sin and the color for that was black. Day two was red for the blood of Christ, shed for our sins. White was the third day; the color of our souls after being washed by the blood of Christ. The fourth day was about the abundant life in Christ after our conversion. Its color was green. Finally on the fifth day the color was gold, for the streets of heaven. This is where we would go after death because we accepted Christ as our personal savior. I don’t remember being impressed with the idea that I had to have a particular experience with a specific pattern in order to be saved. In fact, to my childish mind, I assumed that having been told about it, no more was needed. I don’t remember the Bible verses that accompanied each day and concept. What I remember are the colors and what they symbolized. At the end of the five days we were given a pencil with five bands of color and Bible verses on it. I had that pencil through high school.

“Suburban Landscape no. 3”
(oil on canvas) by Kay Darling

As an adult, reconciling my faith with my desire to be an artist was a constant work. But within my church and among those who were my peers, it was unsatisfactory work. There was a constant, if not very great, pressure to justify what I was doing. Art did not bring about political or social change. Art did not feed the hungry, find homes for the homeless. Art was for the elite few who could afford it. Art was not as important as The Word of God. Images were a distraction from the worship of God at best, idolatry and paganism at worst. I learned about some Christian symbols in the mainstream Protestant church I belonged to, and it was not regarded as suspect as in some of the evangelicals groups I had belonged to. But art was still in a distant auxiliary role. Art could be decoration and could serve as illustration, but it was always subservient to the Word and certainly never used in prayer or worship.

It was when I encountered the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions that new possibilities for the role of art in faith became known to me. Sacred art was considered appropriate in the worship of God. This was possible because of the Incarnation. By virtue of the Second Person of the Trinity becoming man — a physical, material being — all of the created, material world was transformed. In Christ all things were made new, the old had passed away. God used the physical world to procure our salvation and continues to use the physical world as a means of His grace. Icons and sacred art were not just illustrations or decoration but a means by which we encounter God’s grace. Honor and veneration were given to the Creator of the visible world the sacred image depicts. The invisible has become visible and tangible. Sacred art also expressed eternal truths of the faith. In the Orthodox and Catholic traditions, gazing on icons is akin to listening to the word of God.

Creative activity in humans was the result of being created in the image of God, not a suspect activity that will distract us from the true worship of God. Artistic endeavors were not seen as in direct conflict with the gospel demands for works of mercy and justice, but as part of a whole. Here was an understanding of art that saw it as integrated into the worship of God — as necessary even. Here was an understanding of art that saw it as a natural part of the Christian life.

These wonderful ideas met with reality after I converted to the Roman Catholic Church and started attending a suburban parish. Not even as a Protestant had I seen so much medium-beige brick and small slivers for windows (so much for God-as-light symbolism). I thought I was in a yurt. Parish after parish was like this. There was little if any art, with maybe one tasteful statue of Mary or the patron saint of the parish. From what I have read, and heard from other Catholics, my experience of American Catholic churches is not an isolated one.

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