Wrestling with faith and art in this terrific compilation of a literary journal's "greatest hits."
Bearing the Mystery: Twenty Years of Image is a volume of greatest hits from the tiny quarterly Image, devoted to visual and literary attempts to grapple with questions of faith. Image was founded in 1989 by editor Gregory Wolfe and a handful of others, “to counter the notion that great art could no longer be made by those who wrestle with matters of faith,” as he puts it in his introduction, “Something Understood.” At first, some thought Image merely a “high art” outpost for conservative culture-warriors, but Wolfe offers a different vision: “Image sought to be a countervailing force … We chose presence over activism, being over doing,” by offering a collection of attempts “to limn the anguished and occasionally ecstatic glimpses human beings have of a presence that is wholly other and yet strangely intimate.”
Nonetheless, it is certainly true Image offers a range of content and perspectives unique within today’s higher criticism, which generally drips with disdain for religion. “In the pages of Image,” by contrast, “ancient scripture and contemporary literature have been interrogating one another,” creating a conversation whose contributors are “creed-sayers and grapplers, Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, and Jews, abstract and representational artists, the whole panoply of human experience.”
Bearing the Mystery is 413 pages of fiction, essays, poetry, painting, and more, and while it is impossible to convey the scope of subject matter or the breadth of talent condensed in this anthology, this review will offer a few glimpses at some of the highlights. Consider, for instance, “How to Pray,” by Ben Birnbaum, an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn. Birnbaum begins with the last words of Rav Eliezer, spoken nearly 1900 years ago, and recorded in the Babylonian Talmud: “And when you pray, know before Whom you stand.” Birnbaum offers a collection of unlikely stories of prayer and holiness—of gluttony and theft and lewd dancing turned to worship. Finally, he concludes, “‘With all your might before God’ will do it every time—will make a prayer of eating, of dancing, of singing, even of kidnapping the Torah."
“Discovery,” a short story by Deborah Joy Corey, follows the childhood of two girls on a river hamlet (somewhere in the Midwest, we presume) as they learn of hubris and humility from a visiting biologist. Early on, the narrator offers this aside:
Leonard loves to tell us about advances in science. Sharon and me eat it up. The topic of biodeterminism seems to be his favorite. He taught us that word. Biodeterminism. He says not long ago they made a goat from a human egg. I wondered what kind of advancement that would be. It made me think the whole world might be going backward.
In “A Week in the Word,” Patricia Hampl describes her visit to California monastery: “I stumble back in the dark to my—hermitage. The word interrupts with a medieval hiccup this—how do we describe this culture of ours?—this postmodern world, this banquet of possibilities … I’m on a mountain, praying, thinking my thoughts—or rather, trying not to think them for once” (136). In the rigidity and the solitude, she discovers what Anthony Esolen has called “the wisdom of tossing choice away”: “I am launched by the Psalms into a memory to which I belong but which is not mine. I don’t possess it; it possesses me. Possession understood not as ownership, but as embrace. The embrace of habitation. Hermitage of the word.”
“A Musician’s Diary,” by Mark Heard, describes his lunch “with an executive from a Christian record company.” At one point, the executive asked some pointed questions abut Heard’s spiritual life: “I’d just like to hear you say, ‘God has called me into the ministry of music.’” Heard’s response: “I told him that would probably not be my choice of words, and I would feel presumptuous saying something that implies I’m on a first name basis with the Almighty.”
Finally, in this reviewer’s favorite selection, “The History of the Miracle,” Erin McGraw introduces a tired stay-at-home mom fearfully and wonderfully caught up in divine purposes beyond her reckoning. A scene in a church kitchen is pitch-perfect: McGraw describes Iris beginning to prepare sandwiches for a large group. She realizes quickly that there isn’t enough, but goes on making them, thinking to slip out to the store when she runs out. However, before she realizes it, everyone is fed, and left on the counter
was the butt end of the ham, half a bag of oranges. Renee had to take her by the elbow and force her to sit down, when finally Iris felt blind with fatigue. Renee pressed a sandwich into her hand, but Iris couldn’t lift it to her mouth. “We didn’t have that much food,” Renee was saying. “You know we didn’t.” “Hush,” Iris said.
Bearing the Mystery is the perfect introduction to an important forum in the world of art and literature, and an indispensable resource for faithful believers across religious traditions seeking inspiration and encouragement in their own attempts to limn the divine.
