Interior darkness: May 1999 and April 2019

Interior darkness is

what I remember most,

a soft darkness, mellowed

by centuries, a friendly

mystery to wrap myself in

as I walked through wood

and stone. Candles, lit

in supplication all over.

Lots of people, speaking

a babble of tongues, usually

looking up and pointing

to the darkness clustered 

on the ceiling.

The darkness remained,

though, until I turned

and saw the window,

a rose of glorious colors

even without direct sun.

I saw the rose again,

twenty years later

almost to the day, but

this time a view from

the outside, and the rose

backlit by yellow-orange

light. I thought again

of that older darkness,

now dispelled for a moment

at least, and I wished 

I could have had
the darkness back.

Photograph of Notre Dame du Paris Cathedral by Daniele D’Andreti via Unsplash. Used with permission.

John Berendt’s “The City of Falling Angels”

John Berendt, author of the bestselling Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (216 weeks on the New York Times Bestsellers List), arrived in Venice in the winter of 1996, only a couple of weeks after a fire had destroyed the La Fenice opera house. The building had previously burned twice, in 1774 and 1836, and had been rebuilt both times.

What Berendt recognized was the fire was a story, an intriguing story, and it just might be the prism through which to tell the larger story of Venice. And so he stayed on, rented a room, and began to talk with people.

The City of Falling Angels was first published in 2005, the year after the rebuilt opera house was opened. And the story Berendt tells, a story of Venice, is a fascinating one.

The opera house fire becomes a framework to write the story of Venice – its history, its politics, its maze of bureaucratic rules, its first families (how many doges do you have in your family line?), the expats who live and have lived there (especially Americans), the rivalries of the charitable organizations set up to save and restore city buildings, artwork, and icons. But it’s not only a story of rich people; Venice is also the story of artists and bakers, gondola drivers and electricians, and the crazy time that is Carnival.

City authorities initially investigated the fire as one of negligence, and there was plenty of ongoing negligence to go around before the fire – cans of solvents left open, blow torches left burning, improper ventilation. And then, in the way that really good stories do, the investigations focuses on arson.

John Berendt

With the story of the La Fenice fire comes the stories of a family of glassblowers, what happened to the papers of poet Ezra Pound, a wealthy American family that has lived in self-enforced exile since the late 19^th century, and the battle of Save Venice vs. Venetian Heritage (the rich can be just as petty as the rest us, and perhaps more so). It’s an entertaining mix of fact and myth, perception and reality.

Berendt, a native of New York State, received his B.A. degree in English from Harvard University. He’s worked in publishing, writing for television talk show hosts (David Frost and Dick Cavett), and worked at New York Magazine and Esquire. His story of murder in Savannah, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, was virtually an overnight sensation when it was published in 1994.

Top photograph: La Fenice Opera House in Venice, after its restoration from the fire. Image via Wikipedia.

The judgment of the eyes

The judgment of the eyes

is a fire, a consuming

fire, unquenchable,

burning what it surveys,

destroying what it encounters,

scorching with a terrible heat

cities,

earth,

hearts,

souls,

itself,

leaving ashes,

only ashes.

Photograph by Daniele Pellati via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Voices in the devastation

Voices rise and bubble amid

the devastation, singing

a ribald song on the streets

of Dresden, still burning.

Voices rise to the woods,

seeking refuge from the flames,

bubbling like popped blisters.

After the funerals, after

the death sentences, after

the trials and arrests come

the rejoicings, necessary

if not sufficient acts to atone,

if only partially, small twigs,

barely green, barely twigs.

He walked in the forest

of his heart, and found

he was lost, the path

vanishing like smoke

snaking to a dark sky, or

disguised by fallen leaves

blackened in silence.

Photograph: Autumn Fire by Mark Coldren via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Brennan Manning: Fire

I was a contra when it wasn’t cool.

From a cultural perspective, my transition from high school to college was jarring, dislocating – and often bewildering. It wasn’t because academics were harder; I actually found college to be overall easier than high school (except for chemistry!) in the academic department.

No, the disconnect was cultural. I had been born and raised in New Orleans, which was (and is still) a lot different than the rest of Louisiana. Despite the rather more, ah, freewheeling culture of my hometown, I found myself pitched headfirst into the college culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Yes, even in Louisiana.

And, weird clothes and hairstyles aside, the single greatest difference between high school and college was drugs.

Of the 24 of us freshmen in the wing of our dormitory, five of us were not into drugs: marijuana, speed, sometimes harder stuff. By accident, one of us five discovered that drugs were stashed throughout the wing – mostly closets in the rooms but sometimes other places. The uncool five got together one night and said, what do we do about this? If some legal authority suddenly did a raid, we would be scooped up with everyone else.

So we called a meeting of our wing, without the two counselors. We asked the other 19 to remove drugs from the premises. We didn’t lecture them on the evil of drugs; we didn’t make any veiled threats; we just asked them to remove it.

I have to say that I didn’t act out of my Christian faith and beliefs. Faith was three years in the future. I did it out of self-preservation and (to a lesser extent) concern for two of three of the people caught up in using drugs. They were spiraling downward and fast.

The real surprise was, the people using drugs agreed with us. And before the night was out, all the stuff was gone from the dorm. Drug use didn’t stop, of course, but not having drugs readily at hand did tend to decrease consumption.

It was my first real lesson in being a “contra” – standing against the prevailing and sometimes overwhelming culture. Three years later, when I did find faith, I discovered another “contra” – Jesus. Jesus was not about conformity. He was not about going with the prevailing wind. He was not about telling people what they wanted to hear. Nor was he about trying to be cool and hip.

He was something else. Something original. And he spoke a language I had not heard before.

“When preached purely,” Brennan Manning writes in The Furious Longing of God, “His Word exalts, frightens, shocks, and forces us to reassess our whole life. The gospel breaks our train of thought, shatters our comfortable piety, and cracks open our capsule truths. The flashing spirit of Jesus Christ breaks new paths everywhere.”

I’ve been caught up in “contra” situations numerous times in my life – school, work, church, the community. What I’ve learned is – right doesn’t always prevail. Not everyone says, “No, keeping illegal drugs here is wrong.” Sometimes The Big Lie wins. People say terrible things about you and what you hold dear. People do terrible things to you and what you hold dear.

But even when you feel like fresh road kill, you know something unbelievably shocking, something that is an integral part of the gospel message.

Those who do the wrong thing, who may hate you for what you say and do, also know God’s Word is right. They can’t help but know it, because each and every one of them is made in God’s image. Sometimes that makes it worse. But they know it.

The gospel message can be – often is – a fire in the soul, and a fire in the heart. And that’s what it was meant to be.

Led by Jason Stasyzsen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading The Furious Longing of God. Today’s discussion is on the chapter entitled “Fire.” To see more posts, please visit Sarah at Living Between theLines.