In the Barren Sands of Loneliness, Isolation & Despair
It is wrong to think of the goal of art as only portraying the beautiful to the eye, for that may lead to superficiality, banality, and untruth. For there are many things that are beautiful, yes, but there are for humans, for those created in the image and likeness of God, also more difficult issues – great things of pain, injuring and debilitating, and the attendant life-draining and crushing loneliness of isolation and despair.
The difficult and painful are absolute givens of our shared human life, and artists, writers, and filmmakers cannot and should not dismiss or cover over the painful from view. For the pains and hurts and soul-scarring events of life, both experienced and observed, are companions to the truly beautiful, and because of their abiding living nature within the soul, they are for many the substance and, at times, the engines, of profound understanding and creativity.
No artist, writer, or filmmaker can solve and take away the innate brokenness of human life. However, an understanding mind and a compassionate heart can shed a gentle light upon the lives of others. With understanding, healing at times can begin – healing for the object of our art, and healing for those we reach with our art, words, and images. And some of those we reach, may be those who may have never seen, or learned of, or heard of the hurts and pains, and fears and terrors of others, or who perhaps in their past, when the opportunity opened before them to behold a true vista of the human condition, may have decided at that time, to just pass along on the other side of the road.
Now, even if with the best efforts of our life and art, if we can only illustrate just a faint glimmer of the brilliant light of compassion and truth, then we have within ourselves, at last, also allowed others to touch us, and our own brokenness begins to heal in that same light. We have all heard that no man is an island, but I think it is deeper and more profound than that. For in truth, it is that no soul lives just unto itself.
In facing and exploring these hard issues with one’s mind and soul, the artist grows and deepens, sometimes becoming aware painfully of the how and of the why we ourselves have learned and changed in the process of our own creativity. Then also, along the path of our art, we begin to understand how truly limited at times were our best efforts to understand, and explain, and share, and touch and bless others. And in time, we realize that our stumbling was not an inefficiency of the brush stroke, or an ill-chosen word or misplaced comma, or an ill-considered camera angle, but all were a deficiency of the soul, our soul.
Now these deep and private griefs and sorrows are also what spur us on again and again to pick up the pencil, to make another film, or bring the paintbrush again upon the canvass, because we know it is for this we have been deeply gifted and that this is our life. We know also that to turn away from or deny our understanding and vision is to deny who we ourselves are becoming and to limit severely our service and love towards our neighbor, which in a sense may be the world. For a passage from the Jewish Talmud states, “Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”
When art is created in any genre with honesty, compassion, and understanding, it is created with intent, power, and hope, and as a witness to the truth. Then, with compassion and truth, our art may be able to enter the barren sands of the loneliness of others, to help lift them from their isolation and despair. To offer hope. Truly a godly, gentle, life-affirming enterprise.
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Your words so beautifully capture the truth – “When art is created in any genre with honesty, compassion and understanding, it is created with intent, power, and hope, and as a witness to the truth.” This truth is powerfully demonstrated in compilations of photographs such as “Top100 of the Most Influential Photos of all Time” and “30 of the Most Powerful Images Ever.” Many of these photographs (and so many more) reveal conditions or events that are heartrending. They stir the heart to compassion (“to suffer together”). Art helps us to see the beauty and horrors of this world. They are a call to action, to live out the Beatitudes. I am struck by your quote from the Jewish Talmud, as I was recently reading this quote on a website for the White Helmets: “He who save a life shall be as if he had given life to all mankind.” Quran 5:32