Author: Stephen Holmgren

I have been an Episcopal priest for thirty eight years, having served in parishes and in academia. My interests include art and theology, liturgy and spirituality, and I love to go sailing whenever I can.

Why Beauty?

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For some time I have had a copy of Elaine Scarry’s insightful little book based on two lectures she gave at Yale. I am drawn to the images chosen by the cover designer, which align with my proclivity to find in nature beauty in both pattern and variation of form and color. Also appealing is the compact scope of the work in relation to the immensity of the topic, which is addressed in just over a hundred pages. No overly weighty tome here that might contradict a principle I recently quoted in relation to a Japanese garden – beauty not explained allows the viewer to remain in a state of wonder.

And yet, it is precisely wonder inspired by beauty – by the beauty manifest in beautiful things – that has over the course of my life caught my attention. Thoughtful reflection about such wonder has led me on a journey from absorption with beauty itself, toward grappling with questions like, “why beauty?,” and “what about the time and attention I am giving to it?”

Asking such questions led me to consider what goodness might be all about, especially in relation to beauty, an area of reflection I still cannot let go of. Pursuing these inquiries then suggested a possible third dimension in my consideration of seemingly interrelated ideas, in which I began to ask intentionally about truth. Religious conversion from the agnosticism of my art student days followed not long after. Yet, all this started with sustained reflection on my ongoing encounter with beauty.

My exploration of these primary categorical ideas of beauty, goodness and truth, the so-called transcendentals, has yielded an abiding insight. These ideas have to do with what is there, there in the sense of something that you and I apprehend through our experience, but whose origin is not reducible to our experience.

In other words, beauty, goodness, and truth, aren’t just ‘in here,’ as I might say to myself, pointing to my head. Beauty, goodness, and truth, are not simply a product of our thoughts or imagination, even though they have a notable effect upon our thinking and conscious experience. No, they have this effect upon us because they are there for you and for me to encounter in the world around us. And so, they are not attributable solely to the processes and generative power of our conscious awareness.

At some point we come to perceive that beauty has a reality that is independent of us. Beauty is a real property of some or even of many objects of our experiential perception. Beauty is therefore not dismissible as being only a feature of our subjective apprehension of those objects, nor is it a projection of ourselves upon them. Because beauty is there, in the world, the beauty we encounter summons a response from within us.

This principle underlies Elaine Scarry’s first main point in her reflections on beauty. As she puts it, “beauty brings copies of itself into being… beauty prompts a copy of itself.” This is true not only in the more obvious sense in how a painter or a poet seeks to render sensual experience and perception in pigments or in words. It also happens when we return again and again in our minds to images and sensations prompted by what we have seen, heard, and felt. Repetitively we return to what we have encountered, to the thing or things we want to continue to be present to us and within our ongoing experience.

 

I will reflect on Elaine Scarry’s book again in a future post. The cover design for it, shown above, is by Tracy Baldwin, based on an illustration from J. Gilbert Pearson’s Birds in America, Vol. 2, from a drawing by Henry Turston.

A Building That Evokes Awe and Wonder

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This is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, and astonishingly it has survived twenty centuries since its construction during the great age of Rome, around 120 A.D. Replacing two earlier buildings lost to fire, this third one was built for the ages. After two thousand years, its coffered ceiling remains the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world, and it continues to evoke awe and wonder among architects. The building is, of course, the Pantheon, whose formal Christian name is the Basilica of St. Mary and the Martyrs.

Unlike some buildings of equal stature and antiquity, the Pantheon has survived because it was consecrated as a church that has since been in continuous use. First built as a temple whose practices were anchored in pagan religious cults, its original Greek name suggests that the building was dedicated to a multitude of Roman God’s. Indeed, many modern visitors know the building only by its classical name rather than by its later Christian one, even though the transition from its original purpose for pagan worship to its current one occurred fourteen-hundred years ago!

Think about that for a moment. A pagan temple, apparently dedicated to a panoply of Roman deities, was then consecrated as a church, and renamed to commemorate Christian saints. The building’s earlier purpose and meaning was not seen as inimical to its later use for holy Christian worship.

For some of us, that is unimaginable! It seems more likely that the building would have been razed, and its materials reused to build an entirely new building for Christ-inspired liturgies. That such a removal and replacement did not happen represents courage, the courage of holy imagination turned loose to see what is good, positive, and hopeful, even amidst the remains of a decaying or already dead civilization.

The origin of the great feast of All Saints, that we celebrate on November 1 or the following Sunday, is identified by some historians with the re-dedication of the Pantheon for Christian worship, in the spring of the year 609 or 610. In its subsequent role, the building commemorates both Mary and remembered Christian witnesses to the Faith. Its new name may reinforce a misleading idea that saints like Mary, as well as the martyrs, are unique and special persons, marked out for attention because they are so different from us.

In the century after the Pantheon was consecrated as a church, the community of those honored on All Saints came to be seen as including all those who have ‘washed their robes in the blood of the lamb,’ to quote an All Saints lectionary reading from John’s Revelation. This fits well with the more expansive biblical understanding of saints. Because, in the New Testament, ‘saints’ are all the baptized; in other words, they are everyday members of the Church.

For example, at the opening of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes “to the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus.” Paul is referring not just to a select elite within that community; he is referring to all of them, who are – through Baptism – in Christ. Therefore, on All Saints, we commemorate not only saints who are remembered on particular feasts, but we celebrate all the baptized, including my granddaughter, Charlotte Mary, ‘Christened’ this past Sunday as she “put on Christ” and became a “child of God through faith (Gal 3:26-27).”

Here, among the tourists admiring beautiful ancient Roman architecture, and especially that great curved ceiling with its oculus or skylight, there are surely many saints to be found. We can hope they pause to pray in the midst of their visit and remember the ‘light of the world.’ Jesus, in John, refers to himself by these words. Perhaps to our surprise, Matthew quotes Jesus as saying that – after their call – his disciples share this remarkable identity and vocation with him.

What can we learn from the Mosque-Cathedral?

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Interior view of the Mosque-Cathedral

 

In my prior post on the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, Spain, I reflected on the shaping effect of both Christianity and Islam on this building over the centuries, and how – side by side – the influence of both religious traditions are still evident today. In this second post, I offer further reflection on the way we might think about the points of contact between these two traditions as we find them in this place of significance to adherents of each.

In the well cared-for beauty of this Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, we discern interwoven architectural forms that reflect overlapping historical periods, which were shaped by differing cultures and faiths. I think inspiration can be found here as we – like so many others – face a challenge. This is the challenge of seeking to retain an appropriate confidence and peace about our own faith and traditions while genuinely respecting and appreciating those of others. Obviously, what this building first represents to the people of at least two traditions is prayer. Sensitive to that fact, we may be moved by the beauty of this place to pray that a greater openness to what is positive and of enduring significance in the world-views of other peoples and cultures – wherever we and they live – might be more evident across nations today.

Though relying on communication with the divine presence may appear passive to some, it is no small thing to entrust such prayers to God’s Providence. But we can also act toward this end in other ways. If circumstances permit, we can try to engage with one another in conversation. We could do this, perhaps most successfully, based on things that may be universal rather than upon what might be particular to individuals and their communities. Among things generally considered as universal are the three primary so-called “transcendentals:” beauty, goodness, and truth. For even as we have divergent notions about what constitutes compelling examples of them, in principle we can still agree about the value that these three abstract but also foundational concepts have for all people.

Of course, achieving in practice a consensus regarding truth (religious or otherwise) may be impossible, and agreement regarding goodness nearly as difficult. In seeking a greater harmony between differing viewpoints, we might therefore explore with one another what we find to be beautiful, in nature, in the arts, and in each others’ cultures and traditions.

Conversation based on the realm of beauty is more likely to be open-ended and less likely to be personally judgmental. Such conversations might even help us see glimpses of this transcendental within one another, if only briefly. For we have all been made in the image and likeness of the Creator, who has made of one blood all the peoples of the earth.

For Jews and Christians, Genesis 1:26-28 provides us with the source of our concept of the imago dei, our theological understanding that all human beings are made in the image of God. Christians go further in believing that God made all things through Christ, in their original state of goodness (John 1 & Colossians 1). These beliefs undergird our confident faith statement that God has made of one blood all people regardless of how much or how little we seem to have in common. These beliefs also provide the ground for what can become a shared source of hope.

 

 

A Mosque-Cathedral?

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Interior view of the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, Spain

 

In order to appreciate this UNESCO World Heritage Site in Cordoba, Spain, which has a history of having served as both a church and as a mosque, it is helpful first to consider the better-known example of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Its architecture and interior are widely appreciated, as is its history of once having been the largest Christian church in the world (built ca 537). Through the Ottoman period, from 1453 until 1931, it served as a mosque during which time Christian symbols and imagery were either removed or hidden. In 1935, under the official secular government of Turkey, the building was converted into a museum. Recently, the Hagia Sophia was officially re-established as a mosque for Islamic prayer.

Less familiar to many is another building created for prayer and worship with a similarly varied history, known officially as the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption in Cordoba, Spain. Its origin as a Christian basilica also dates back to the 6th century, and its subsequent long history of having been a place for Muslims to pray helps explain the hyphenated descriptive label of ‘mosque-cathedral’ that is commonly applied to it.

Only portions of the foundation of the original Christian building remain, which are visible on the site below the present structure. Most evident to contemporary pilgrims and visitors are the architectural elements related to its 500 year history as a mosque. These are associated with the Spanish Islamic period and its successive caliphates that dominated the Iberian Peninsula from the 8th century until the 15th. History remembers this part of the Islamic world for being a cultural center and a significant place of exchange between Muslims and Christians involving advances in fields such as agronomy, astronomy, mathematics, and pharmacology.

In 1236, Christian worship was restored to Cordoba, and to this building that had been markedly expanded for use as a mosque over many hundreds of years. Yet, the overall character of the structure did not receive substantial alteration until the 15th and 16th centuries, when architectural elements more readily associated with Christian churches were added.

This time gap of several centuries represents a remarkable fact. Religious stewards of the building resisted an impulse evident in certain strands of Christian missionary theology, an impulse that – for example – sometimes has had the tragic effect of providing hospitality to antisemitism. This impulse rests on the view that the introduction of the Christian faith to the spiritual lives of people and to pagan places of worship necessarily involves a thorough process of eradication and replacement rather than an openness to seeing aspects of what came before as being compatible with the new. The originally pagan Pantheon in Rome, now known as the church of St. Mary and the Martyrs, provides what may be the best known example of this type of openness.

Like its sister structure of the Hagia Sophia in previous times, the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba serves as compelling place for pilgrims from within many traditions, Christian, Islamic, and others, to visit with an appreciation for history and the arts, and to find time for prayer and an opportunity for fellowship.

Entrance to the ‘mihrab‘ within the Mosque-Cathedral building, situated so as to indicate the direction of Mecca, and previously used by the imam in Islamic worship

The ceilings of the Renaissance nave and transept of the same building, completed in 1607

The theme of potential compatibility between differing religious and cultural traditions, introduced in this post, will be developed in the following one.

 

 

Do We Give Thanks In Darkness?

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Rembrandt, Paul in Prison (1627)

The troubling darkness of October 7 lingers. The following is my recent homily, offering reflection on how we can respond to a time like this.

 

We are always prone to being unsettled or troubled by unexpected challenges, whether nearby or far away. Since we believe in an almighty and loving God, unanticipated darkness, sorrow, and anger can confuse and upset us. For the people of Israel and Gaza, and those who care for them, October 7 and the days since have been filled with the news of much evil and much suffering. But, if ‘God is love,’ and the giver of all good gifts, as Christians believe, two questions we cannot easily answer will bother us: How can God allow natural and moral evil to happen? And why does God tolerate the suffering of his creatures, and especially of people made in his image?

When facing questions like these, I like to turn to some of Paul’s words in Philippians that we have heard in our recent Sunday lectionary readings: “God… is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2:13). These words may be hard to accept — and hard to live by — especially if we are discouraged or fearful about what is happening around us. Yes, we hear Paul in Scripture say that God is at work in us. But we may not feel like it’s actually true. Indeed, we may find it hard to believe that it could be true. Yet, Paul wrote these words while he was in prison.

This is what we need to remember: Our feelings are fickle! Our moods and general equilibrium are subject to the ups and downs of our circumstances. Things happen to us, which are not of our own choosing. Feelings are the same way. They also ‘happen to us.’ The difference between what happens to me, and what I choose for myself, is very significant. I can’t do much to change events in the world. And I have difficulty keeping the emotions stirred by them from affecting me. But I can reflect on how I respond to them, in terms of what I decide, and what I choose for myself.

So, instead of dwelling on feelings of discouragement, inadequacy and aloneness, I have another choice. I can choose to remember Paul’s words, and repeat them to myself: ‘God is at work within me. God is at work within me. God is at work within me, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.’

This insight helps us hear, consider, and then perhaps accept, Paul’s challenging words to us. He is saying something much more profound than “be happy,” or “be cheerful!” Instead, Paul is urging us to make a choice, a decision to rejoice and give thanks, even if we may not feel like it. “Rejoice in the Lord always,” he says (4:4), which is different from saying, “always be happy about the world.” It often seems impossible to be thankful for or about the condition of the world. But, we can still be thankful for the Lord who overcomes disorder, and who in the end makes things right. Paul says that the Lord is near, and so we should not worry about anything. Believing that the Lord is near takes precedence over anxiety and concern about what is amiss. Believing that the Lord is near is a choice we make, and not a feeling we wait for.

The imprisoned Paul teaches us how another willed-decision accompanies relying on the Lord’s nearness. In all circumstances, we can — by prayer — let our requests be made known to God with thanksgiving (4:6). This is equally a result of choice, rather than depending on how we feel. When we make this conscious choice to give thanks in all circumstances (rather than for them), Paul tells us that the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus (4:7).

Therefore, confidence, reassurance and peace are not simply feelings that may or may not happen to us. They are, instead, the result of willed-decision-making. So, Paul asks us to keep on doing these things, and that as we do them, the peace of God will be with us.

When I dwell upon what I fear, on what makes me angry or depressed, I give in to feelings that happen to me, especially in relation to circumstances I cannot change. But Paul asks us to do the opposite. Instead of dwelling on the negative, he urges us to reflect on what is positive. Think instead, Paul says, about whatever is true, honorable and just: about whatever is pure, commendable and worthy of praise (4:8). And he urges this based on choices we can make.

Notice what Paul is not saying as he urges us onward. He is not saying, ‘hope for’ good things, which might happen someday. He is saying think about the good that is already true, and happening right now.

In an accompanying lectionary Gospel reading, Jesus says that God’s kingdom ‘is like a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.’ We have all been invited to this wedding banquet, and we are participating in it in our lives today. Again and again, the servants of the king go out and call people to respond to the king’s invitation. But like so many of those in Jesus’ story, we let other things get in the way.

Among what gets in the way are things we worry about, or we feel pressure to get done. Our attention shifts from the wedding invitation, and gets centered on our calendar, and on our ‘to do’ list. Then we get distracted by our anxiety.

Again and again God’s invitation arrives, through the King’s written Word, and through the voices of the King’s servants who call us. But other things press against and bend our priorities, and these other things shape our lives… even though we have been invited to a wedding! We are invited to a celebration and a feast! Joy is written into the invitation. But rather than let God’s joy touch our hearts, strangely, we let lesser things inhabit our imaginations. Many gifts and wedding favors are given to those who come to this wedding supper. Yet, in time, the wedding begins to feel like a ‘work-day,’ when so much seems to be asked of us. We then shrug off the invitation-bearers, as if they are a nuisance, rather than bearers of a joyful message.

So, we should remind ourselves of Paul’s words. For he says,”Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say Rejoice… The Lord is near.” As Eugene Peterson translates the words that follow, Paul also says this: “Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns.”

Worries can be fashioned into prayers, and concerns can be shaped into praises. We can voice our concerns to the Beloved. It’s a choice! But our natural inclination lets worries and concerns drift into complaints and laments. Yet, we can choose! We can choose to rejoice, and to pray, and to praise. Of course, it may seem perverse to try and give thanks for the things that cause us worry and concern. But that is not what Paul is encouraging us to do. We can still give thanks in the midst of those things. We can give thanks that, despite troubles, we have been included in the wedding supper of the Lamb. We give thanks that we have become members of the Bride of Christ. We have been joined to the Beloved, whose wedding banquet we are part of today. Thanks be to God!

In a Time of Darkness

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Chicago’s Unity Temple, by Frank Lloyd Wright (1908)

 

In a time of darkness, we seek light from above.

A couple of days after offering my reflection on “A Desecrated Beauty,” I heard the terrible news from the Holy Land with its many troubling details.

The desecration of beauty can rightly be seen as a violation of what is sacred. If we can associate this idea of violation with the greedy despoliation of an old-growth forest, or the thoughtless pollution of a tranquil waterway, what greater offense against the wisdom and love of the Creator exists than atrocious barbarity unleashed upon human persons made in the image of God?

Human warfare, whether justified on occasion through acts of reasoning that seek some form of the good, or abhorred as an absolutely unconscionable choice, always involves some evil. Hate does not reflect our better nature, unless perhaps it is hate for the ultimate source of all that is not of God. Yet, paradoxically, we so often embody evil through violent acts against people whose views and behavior we refuse to recognize, not only by damaging things that other people value, but by hurting them, even fatally, as well.

In spite of this, following Augustine and Aquinas, I accept the premise that acts of violence can in some circumstances and on some occasions be justified as acts in the service of justice and even of love. The view that the defense of other human beings can be a justifiable expression of our love for our neighbor, even if that defense may involve the use of force and acts of violence, is and has been a formative strand of biblically informed Christian moral reasoning. Therefore, I offer no judgment upon Israel and its leaders who are presently involved in responding militarily to the large-scale acts of terrorism against their nation and people.

Whether for decisions made in haste, or acts undertaken after due deliberation, Israel’s leaders and people will have occasion to judge themselves, their reasoning, and what they have done or not done. History, and others not directly involved, will certainly call them to account.

People impacted by the present conflict may find it difficult or even impossible to seek ‘light from above.’ Yet, in the midst of darkness, those who seek beauty, goodness, and truth, will best be prepared to receive that light, and the healing that comes with it. For the divine light is not absent and can be found.

Whether the divine presence is known and named as revealed, or unknown, or even secretly sought, Christ is the center of all that exists, the one in whom all things hold together, and through him God’s Providence is enacted. Evil will be vanquished, and all that is good or open to God’s redeeming guidance will be brought by him to its intended fulfillment and bliss (see Colossians 1:9-20).

For “the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned” (Isaiah 9:2 & Matthew 4:16).

 

A Desecrated Beauty

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An encounter with beauty may provide a gateway to what is holy. For beauty often embodies and expresses something sacred. When this is so, a violation or desecration of beauty can strike us as having the character of evil.

When apparent destruction befell Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, or earlier upon the Golden Spruce tree in the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, people learning about these events were shocked and in mourning. In the case of Notre Dame, a devastating fire accidentally accompanied repair work on the building. But with the Golden Spruce, a  willful human act destroyed a spiritually significant tree.

The several hundred year old Golden Spruce became widely known based on news reports of its loss, and through a subsequent book by John Vaillant. An extremely rare genetic mutation occurred in one of a very large species of trees common to the Pacific Northwest, the Sitka spruce. Vaillant tells the story of this beautiful tree, which was known as Kiidk’yaas to the First Nation Haida people. The Golden Spruce was revered through a mythical spiritual story retold over countless generations in Haida oral tradition.

The author draws us in to the significance of this particular tree for the Haida and for many others, including the person who figures principally in his narrative, Grant Hadwin. He was a forester and logger who developed a reputation for having extraordinary skills as a woodsman who possessed seemingly superhuman physical strength and endurance. Paradoxically for someone whose livelihood depended upon employment by forest product companies, Hadwin over time developed an increasing antipathy toward the detrimental effects of commercial logging and the forest clear-cutting with which he and the industry were associated. Over time he became known as a radical environmental activist, whose views may have been inspired by some remarkable spiritual experiences.

Vaillant lays the groundwork for his story about the Golden Spruce by offering a compelling introduction to the ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest coast and its islands. The reader comes to appreciate the unique habitat within which early European explorers and traders found the huge trees of the old growth forests. These trees include Douglass Fir, Western Red Cedar, and the Sitka Spruce, which in diminishing numbers are still seen today. The reader also learns about the history and culture of the Haida, and the detrimental impact caused first by Sea Otter pelt traders, and then by foresters, upon what became British Columbia, its islands, lands and first peoples. Given this background, one might expect that Grant Hadwin would somehow be the hero of the story, given his abilities, integrity, and emerging commitments.

The central irony of the narrative centers on Hadwin’s concern about the rapacious devastation of the old growth forests by commercial interests and their professional employees, who generally approach the land’s natural endowments as resources to be exploited, quickly and extensively. Yet, Hadwin himself targeted the Golden Spruce, seeing it as a corporate ‘pet,’ falsely preserved by a company in a park-like artificial island of nature, surrounded by lands violated by those who had no care for them. In the process, Hadwin – through an apparent combination of correctable ignorance and oversight – seemed surprised and defensive when he learned about the Golden Spruce’s significance for the Haida, on whose lands it had long stood.

In this book, the author accomplishes several things that taken together may seem incongruous. We gain a regard for the immense scale of the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, the towering size of their tall trees, and the hundreds or even thousand years over which some of them have grown undisturbed. We become aware of the astonishing danger and rate of mortality associated with tree felling, while coming to admire something of loggers’ courage and tenacity. And our righteous anger is stirred by the corporate appropriation of natural resources for commercial benefit at the expense of the cultural and spiritual significance of forests. For forests number among special places that have long reminded people of our higher values, and are a context where we can rediscover deeper purpose and meaning for our lives.

Vaillant  leaves us with another unresolved sense of paradox. It is prompted by the knowledge we gain of how the Haida, long feared as brutal victimizers and enslavers of other First Nation peoples, themselves became victims of hostile social, economic and geographical forces. Against this backdrop, we learn how a well-liked man, who was regarded as having extraordinary skills and integrity, and who might once have been defended by the Haida, perpetrated a bewildering act of environmental desecration and came to be seen by them as an enemy of their spiritual history and culture.

Kiidk’yaas, the Golden Spruce may be gone. The transcending beauty it had, and which it still represents, will last.

A sapling from Kiidk’yaas

A Beautiful Garden: Nitobe Memorial (Part II)

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In Part I, I closed with this observation: one does not visit a Japanese garden in the way one might go to a park, as a context to pursue some activity like an exercise walk, but as a place to experience simply being.

Here we encounter a paradox, perhaps one of many associated with traditional Japanese gardens. At first, for many Western visitors, the elements within such a garden, and their arrangement, catch the eye and draw one in further to an encounter with what is seen there. Yet, what is seen within a Japanese garden exists less to provide an object of attention, and more to facilitate and enhance how one sees. A journey around the garden therefore encourages a journey within. The “spirit that informs [the] spaces” found in “a garden created and maintained in the Japanese tradition,” to which the UBC website alludes, is a spirit or quality of experience to be nurtured within the viewer who encounters this intangible element of the garden.

A carefully arranged sense of space therefore forms a prominent feature of traditional Japanese gardens, where plantings and structural objects both near and further away are placed deliberately. Except for the surrounding walls, there are no straight lines in a Japanese garden, and formal symmetry is strenuously avoided. Plantings and objects are more often placed singly or in three’s, given how two points often suggest a line and three suggest a circle. The spatial interrelationship between such things as large stones, trees, and water features is not accidental, and for the Japanese has a spiritual as well as visual significance.

In Japanese garden design, each particular feature, whether alive and growing or humanly made, has a distinct significance and is purposely chosen for its location. Perception of this is enhanced when a visitor becomes aware of how the elements of a garden’s composition are selected with an appreciation for seasonal viewing, such as at the annual cherry blossom time. Throughout the year plantings in the garden draw attention to themselves through an occasional heightened display of color, or by contributing to a muted harmony of differing tones and textures. On successive visits, a familiar place somehow can seem different.

Plants, shrubs, and trees in Japanese gardens are cut and trimmed so as to appear manicured  just as European topiary is studiously tended, albeit with very different results. Whereas gardeners in the Southern U.S. might allow azaleas to grow unevenly to avoid looking like a hedge, ornamental shrubs such as holly and cedar, and the branches of evergreens, are painstakingly shaped by the Japanese-trained gardener, often into softly rounded forms. These provide contrast to the smooth sculptural shapes of tree trunks, while also standing out against the flat reflective surface of ponds.

Traditional Japanese gardens usually contains a pathway, a design element not unique to such gardens, though its treatment in this context draws attention to itself. For the pathway through the garden can be just as important as what is viewed from it, so that the experience of the journey becomes in some sense its destination. Even in a relatively compact space, a consideration important in Japan, a pathway in a garden can make a small area seem much larger than it is, as the visitor is prompted to slow down and live into the present moment.

Padding along the soft pea gravel between areas of green covered by multiple textures from soft moss to tall bladed plant spikes, one gains glimpses and then temporarily loses sight of what lies ahead. Views include garden features such as a teahouse awaiting encounter, or a low-arching bridge from which Koi might be observed below the still water’s surface.

The UBC website says that “Nitobe Memorial Garden is considered one of the most authentic Japanese gardens outside of Japan.” A testament to this perception was provided by Emperor Akihito during a visit there. He said that, while in this garden, “I am in Japan.” Enhancing this sense of being in Japan is the presence of a traditional Japanese house in which opportunities to experience the ‘tea ceremony’ are seasonally available.

 

A Beautiful Garden: Nitobe Memorial (Part I)

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The Nitobe Memorial Garden on the grounds of the University of British Columbia (UBC) is readily recognizable as a traditional Japanese garden. Like other gardens of this type, it provides an experience of tranquility. Even in an urban area such as Vancouver, Nitobe Garden offers a quiet refuge from daily life concerns and tensions that visitors might carry with them.

An interpretive guide to “understanding Japanese Gardens,” found on the UBC Botanical Garden website, asserts the following:

… it is almost impossible to clearly state what defines a Japanese garden. Many Japanese resist classifying and categorizing the various features of Japanese gardens.

The website attributes this reluctance to the idea that beauty “not explained allows the viewer to remain in a state of wonder.” This worthy observation applies as much to modern abstract painting as it does to historic patterns of landscape arrangement. Yet, in this and in the next post, I will articulate characteristics that enable us to distinguish a traditional Japanese garden from, for example, a casual English cottage garden or a formal French garden.

The UBC website acknowledges how “most visitors can tell when they have entered a garden created and maintained in the Japanese tradition,” crediting this perception to people who “are sensing the Japanese spirit that informs these spaces.” This may be due to how various strands within Japan’s cultural history have coalesced to form a recognizable ‘style’ manifest in its gardens. Among the results of such a melding process, we can identify and describe several features in the Nitobe Garden that are common to other well-known Japanese gardens.

We can begin by observing how gardens and parks found in the East and in the West have a number of shared attributes. Among them, most gardens and parks around the world feature a scheme for the arrangement of their various parts even if it is not readily evident to visitors. Many such places appear to promote and preserve a ‘natural’ quality among the things growing in them, even in formal gardens. Some gardens and parks accentuate this natural element, perhaps in deliberate contrast to surrounding urban areas. This fosters an impression that the plants, shrubs, and trees have grown where they are of their own accord, and in their own way, regardless of any horticultural tending they have received. Especially in the West, ‘nature’ and that which is ‘natural’ are seen as what does not readily bear the imprint of human interaction, and as emerging more from its roots than from our planning.

Western gardens and parks may have gates, but often their entrance designs accentuate pubic access, providing a continuity of experience for visitors who may have potted plants or flowers where they live and work. In this sense, these garden and park entranceways draw people in from what is less into what is more. In the process, visitors are likely to encounter familiar though markedly larger and more extensively planted shrubs and trees, many of which do not appear to have been shaped or altered by human hands.

Formal gardens both East and West usually have marked boundaries and even barriers between what is within and that which is outside. Traditional Japanese gardens are typically surrounded by view-blocking walls topped by a ceramic tile parapet. These indicate a formal boundary between the transient outside world of energy-charged daily activity and the stillness available within, where visitors are subtly bidden to release their grasp upon time and their surroundings.

Imposing entrance gates mark a portal to a different realm lying beyond, as much as they appear to provide a barrier protecting what is within. Though these gates and the walls around a Japanese garden may serve to keep out intruders and foraging animals, they exist primarily for the sake of those who enter and take time there. For one does not visit a Japanese garden in the way one might go to a park, as a context to pursue some activity like an exercise walk, but as a place to experience simply being.

In the next post we will continue to explore what is identifiably distinctive about traditional Japanese gardens like the Nitobe Memorial.

 

The Curve of Time: A Beautiful Book

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I discovered M. Wylie Blanchet’s cruising memoir, The Curve of Time, at Village Books in Fairhaven, Washington, not far from the Canadian border. Evidently considered a classic by readers in Canada, I had not known about her book despite having long been an active boater and avid reader about seafaring. With an evocative water color painting as a cover image, a forward by the Seattle-based writer Timothy Egan, and with the copy in my hand being the 50th Anniversary Edition in hard cover, I was intrigued and bought it.

As the dust jacket blurb indicates, Wylie Blanchet set off on numerous summer cruises with her five children on the same boat from which her husband had earlier been lost in 1926, and presumed to have drowned. 25 feet in length, 6.5 feet in width, and with a relatively small enclosed interior, Blanchet along with her children bravely explored the sometimes forbidding but always mysterious waters along the coast of British Columbia and its adjoining and deep inland sea.

Wylie (a.k.a., Capi) in the wheelhouse of Caprice, and with her family one summer

Those British Columbia waters are famous for the very strong tides running in and out of narrow fiord-like inlets bordered by tall trees and sheer rocky walls that rise up several thousand feet. The walls above the water’s surface are generally paralleled far down below by their unseen foundations. ‘Capi’ Blanchet notes how often her marine charts indicated depths exceeding 100 fathoms in these waters  (600 feet), with the final distance downward marked as unknown. Among other challenges, such depths make anchoring nearly impossible except when a boat is secured to the shore.

Caprice, against a rocky shoreline

With one set of clothes per family member along with a bathing suit, spare but adequate cooking equipment and tableware, minimal sleeping accommodations both within and on deck, and the crew possessing a seemingly boundless sense of curiosity and desire to learn, the Blanchet’s explored hundreds of miles of what at the time were largely unpopulated and untamed seascapes and surrounding terrain. Capi Blanchet’s well-told stories about her family’s adventures during their summer cruises provide the material for her fetching book.

For those who have traveled to or lived in the Pacific Northwest, the author’s prose brings alive the look and feel, and even the smell of the moist coastal air found in that region. It may bring to mind books like I Heard the Owl Call My Name, and Snow Falling on Cedars, novels that also effectively describe aspects of that alluring part of the world. Yet, like those others, Blanchet’s book hardly prompts a romantic longing to explore waters and lands that, as she presents them, are full of potential danger because of their wildness (bears, a cougar) and unpredictable weather.

Readers interested in doing some ‘voyaging’ with Capi Blanchet through reading A Curve in Time will observe how she records experiences from the late 1920’s and 1930’s, and published her memories of them in 1961. She demonstrates sensitivity and concern about our encroachment upon the communities of people who originally inhabited the land, and upon areas of great natural beauty. Her perspective and writing may perhaps best be seen as helping – along with many others – to lay an early foundation for our contemporary approach to ‘the environment’ (a term whose present use would have been unfamiliar to her), and our raised sensitivity about the cultures of First Nations peoples.

Having read Blanchet’s compelling book, I am now curious to read Following the Curve of Time: The Legendary M. Wylie Blanchet, a biography by Cathy Converse. Though often demurring from drawing attention to herself in The Curve of Time, Blanchet clearly was a formidable woman possessed of great practical intelligence and a captivating sense of adventure. Retracing her voyaging would be challenging enough for many experienced boaters, but exploring those same waters in a boat the size of her’s, with its dependent large crew and minimal accoutrements, may suggest caution to other equally capable navigators.

M. Wylie (‘Capi’) Blanchet around the time of her marriage

For first time visitors to the Seattle area who are not embarking upon an Alaskan cruise, I heartily recommend even a short round trip on one of the Washington State Ferries. Having commuted daily to college for a year on the ferry between Vashon Island and Tacoma, and having regularly taken the ferry to Seattle on weekends, I remember how a 20-30 minute ‘voyage’ across parts of Puget Sound can help one experience in an economical and time-sensitive way a genuine bit of the maritime Pacific Northwest – the kind of waters that Capi Blanchet explored nearly 100 years ago.