Culture: Oppressive or Rich?

We had some discussion about church singing and music at our last meeting, with the consensus of some that songs often were either insipid (uninspiring) or downright heretical. I happened across the following that is somewhat material to the discussion:

Glenn Hughes, in Transcendence and History, discusses our modern reluctance to embrace and explore transcendence (meaning the Mystery that enfolds the present, day to day existence we all lead), and concludes that maybe things aren't so dire in that "We enjoy a vast historical legacy of symbols, myths, rituals, and visions that protect the truths of transcendence and encourage dedication to universal human dignity, a legacy that is increasingly accessible in its global variety." (p. 217) He calls for a "realistic and humble openness toward the historical past" that "may foster appreciation of our wealth of historical symbols that testify to a loving readiness to follow unrestricted questioning as far as the inward revelation of transcendent truth -- the revelation in the light of which we can recognize our essential solidarity with every participant in the drama of universal humanity."

Hughes then offers a quote from a letter expressing this "choice of attitude," written by the Russian poet Vyacheslav Ivanov to his friend, the historian M. O. Gershenzon, in 1920 (with the Russion revolution in its early stages):

"The state of mind that now torments you, your exasperated intolerance of the cultural heritage you feel weighing upon you, stems essentially from the fact that you experience culture, not as a living repertory of gifts, but as a subtle mechanism of multiple compulsions. And this is not surprising, culture having indeed sought to become a system of compulsions. For my part I see it as a ladder of Eros, a hierarchy of acts of veneration. So many are the things and persons I am moved to venerate, beginning with man and his tools and his labors and his insulted dignity and ending with the lowliest bit of mineral, that I find it sweet to go down in this sea -- naufragar mi e dolce in questo mare --, to drown in God." (from V.I. Inanov and M.O. Gerzhenzon, Correspondence across a Room, 7.

My point is that our position is a question of attitude, and that we can "see the good" even though we see limitations too. We just profile the good, and leave the limitations (perhaps temporarily) in the background. I heard a talk by a physical therapist recently. She said that she saw in her practice so many different types of "bodies" -- ugly and hairy and fat and bony -- that she became depressed and had to change her way of looking in order to continue her work with ardor: She had to start seeing the beauty in the middle of the hairiness, fatness, boneiness, etc. When she started practicing this -- essentially changing her "attitude" -- she opened herself for joy to enter again into her practice.

I suggest that we need to do this with liturgy as well, indeed with all things (and persons) in this world "in between" the God who made us and the mud of the world he made.