Angel

Once, people had viewed commerce through the lens of faith. Now it seemed people viewed faith through the lens of commerce. Instead of arranging

their lives to live in accordance with their faith, they went “church shopping” to find a faith that fit their lifestyle. Something had been lost, Paul believed, yet he realized there was really no way to turn back the clock.

Mike had stirred up so much enthusiasm for his growth mission that it would have been foolish of Paul to try to squelch it. He certainly did not question Mike’s intentions or his devotion to the church. Yet the board president was unyielding in his opinions, and it was hard to convince him of the value of anything that could not be quantified. At issue today was the crumbling church steeple, which had become an eyesore and a home for bats. Repairing it properly would cost $30,000, and Mike was in favor of tearing the old thing down.

“People don’t choose a church because of what the building looks like,” Mike said. “They’re not attracted by steeples. They come because they see ads or billboards. What is important is what is inside. The church could be in an old car lot. Advertising is where we need to spend our money if we want to grow.”

Paul was having a hard time articulating his argument. He had not received a formal education in the finer points of church architecture and design. He only knew that there were sacred places, and they spoke a language he understood without words, beyond intellect. There were places that invited contemplation and places that called for activity and involvement. The mega churches with their rock music, headset microphones, and video screens were as far from his sense of a sacred place as the mind could travel. A church should be a departure from the outside world of constant distraction and stimulation, not an imitation of it.

The little white wooden churches with their towering steeples were created for simple people. Farmers, laborers, and artisans could enjoy a humbler version of the impressive medieval structures that were artists’ visions of what heaven might look like. The arched doorway and triangular roof pointed to heaven and also represented the three sides of the trinity. Two spaces off the sides of the sanctuary jutted out and created a cross shape. When a worshiper took communion, he walked through the nave and approached the altar up three steps—the number three again, the trinity. Behind the altar, a high vaulted arch represented heaven. All the time they were surrounded by the cross, metaphorically demonstrating that the path to heaven was through Christ’s sacrifice, his death and rebirth.

“There is an entire symbolic language in church design,” Paul said. “If you destroy part of the design, you’re changing the language. If you take one word out of a sentence, it changes the whole meaning.”

“Come on, Paul,” Mike said. “It doesn’t stop being a church if it has no steeple. The steeple is nice, but it’s not necessary.”

“No, it’s not necessary. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important.”

Paul knew that there was a value in architecture, in arts, in beautiful things. Why do those things matter? Because they do. The only way to make a convincing argument for architecture is with poetry, and people who don’t care for art are immune to poetic language as well. You either understand it in your soul or you don’t. Trying to explain the value of aesthetics to Mike was like trying to explain the color blue to someone who’d been blind from birth.

Paul had brought along an illustrated art book, hoping he would find something in it to help make the point that the steeple was worth saving and should be a priority. He flipped through pages of classical devotional art to find an image to demonstrate the clear connection between aesthetics and worship. As he turned the pages, he came upon a reproduction of Portrait of a Young Woman in Profile by Sandro Botticelli.

He stopped flipping. He recognized that face. It was his angel. It was not an exact copy, but the resemblance was striking. He ran his finger along the profile, the familiar line of her nose, the curl of her lips. Was it possible that he had seen an actual muse? Had this being traveled through time, taking on different forms, inspiring great works of art as she went? No, that was ridiculous. He had shaken hands with a flesh-and-blood man.

“I don’t think we’re going to make any more progress on this issue today,” Mike said. “Let’s plan a date for our next meeting.”

The meeting ended without a final resolution on the steeple. The general consensus seemed to be that the first priority was growth, that growth would bring in new pledges, and that when the pledges increased, they could discuss fixing the steeple. If they didn’t grow enough, fast enough, to increase their income before the steeple rotted away, it would have to come down. Paul vowed to himself that he would write a sermon, or a series of sermons if need be, on the value of beauty in worship, the grand tradition of the old cathedrals, the metaphors built into church architecture, the sacred value of places, the “angels in the architecture,” as Paul Simon had sung. He hoped he could summon enough inspiration to be persuasive.

He went back to his office, shut the door, and stared at the Botticelli painting. Paul thought maybe he understood what he had responded to when he confused the young man for an angel. His face reflected the great works of classical art. It was an archetype for an ideal of beauty that was neither masculine or feminine. There is nothing obscene about recognizing archetypal beauty when you see it. He had only confused a sense of recognition for a feeling of desire.

Thanks to advertising and marketing, beauty, in our culture, is almost always linked to desire. A beautiful woman is draped across a new car. Models in bikinis sell beer. You are supposed to want to possess the beauties on television or to be like them. Beauty is a call to action—you’re supposed to do something when you see it. To just stand back and appreciate it—we don’t have time for it anymore. Museums are not interactive enough. We want our beauty to give back. If it doesn’t, we have no use for it.

Paul’s appreciation for the young man was of a different sort. It was elevated and pure, like a trip to the museum. You do not have to be gay to appreciate Michelangelo’s David. You do not look at a portrait of a reclining nude in a museum in the same way you look at a photo in Playboy. Paul wondered if he was feeling the same emotions that Botticelli had felt when he saw his muse.

Paul nearly managed to convince himself that he had only felt attraction to the young man because he loved the woman in the painting. After all, he had confused him for a woman when he walked through the door. The thought comforted him. But for this theory to be true, he would have to have loved the painting before he loved the man. That wasn’t the order of things. He did not dream of the stranger because of a resemblance to the artist’s model. He stared at the artist’s model because she reminded him of the young man. As he gazed at the painting, he tried to edit out her female-ness, to ignore the lavish braids and the heavy red gown and to focus on the features that most reminded him of the man he had seen and so desperately wanted to see again. Paul tore the page out of the book: an uncharacteristic act for someone who had always disapproved of people who damaged books with underlines and margin notes. He pinned the portrait to his bulletin board so he could draw inspiration from it every day.

By night, the inspiration was a different sort. He couldn’t resist the urge to imagine himself kissing those soft lips, putting his hands on the angel’s narrow hips, drawing him toward his own body. When he gave himself over to the fantasy, it felt wonderful. But the next day, having crossed over into desire for the man and not the image, he was filled with guilt, sadness, and a preemptive sense of loss.

His guilt was not because it was a homosexual fantasy. Over the years, his mind had conjured all kinds of strange and exotic sexual fantasies. Many things that made his toes curl in the confines of his own mind were not things he would ever try in reality, nor did he want to. His guilt was over his failure to love purely, without the desire to possess. He was debasing the spiritual significance of the encounter, transforming it from art to pornography.

Desire could only lead to disappointment. He wanted something down to his bone marrow that he knew could never be. The young man was remarkably attractive. Anyone could see that. He had to be married or surrounded by beautiful women—or both. Even if there was a chance that he could love a man, there was no chance that he would be attracted to an average-looking, forty-two-year-old minister. Each night the fantasy brought Paul soaring to new heights and then brought him crashing down to new depths of loneliness, and the cycle began again.

Ian

The Seattle-based author Bruce Barcott was drawn to Rainier and compelled to climb. “We come for the pretty sights,” he wrote, “but also to find a place still free from… life-saving constraints. We come to the mountain seeking beauty and terror.”

Paul was determined to write a sermon that would convince everyone of the symbolic value of the steeple. The theme would be great art, classic artists, how they experienced the transcendent and tried to translate that into church architecture for the rest of us poor slobs. He told Julie not to interrupt him. He just needed two good hours to get the sermon written. He went into the office, sat down at his desk, and stared at the computer screen. So, beauty and Christianity. The spiritual value of recognizing beauty. He gazed at the portrait on his wall. The words did not come.

Maybe he’d just check his e-mail first. Mike Davis was hyper-ventilating about attendance again and not reaching their goals for growth—as though they were selling stock in salvation and needed to get a better return on the investment. Mike might not have intended it, but Paul always felt there was an inherent criticism in his messages. There would be more people at the church if only Paul were a better minister, more exciting, more inspiring, just a little more interesting than Sunday-morning reruns of reality TV pr

ograms. Maybe that was just his own sense of guilt. He knew he was uninspired these days. The ministry was supposed to be a “calling.” Why did it so often feel like a job?

When he had decided to go to theological school, he was full of ideas, the love of Christ, a desire to serve God and make the world a better place. He had never dreamed of budgets, office politics, and dealing with difficult and demanding personalities. There was so much more paperwork than he’d ever imagined. But then again, does anyone really dream about paperwork when they’re a kid? Does anyone sit with the guidance counselor and discuss the everyday tasks of the career they choose? Firemen and airline pilots are probably overwhelmed with paperwork too.

It just seemed like all of the nonsense pushed out the time and mental energy for the important things. He could be more present for people in need, and be more inspiring with his sermons, if he wasn’t spending so much time going to budget meetings and making decisions about whether to buy or lease a photocopier for the office.

Right. So, a sermon. He picked up the red-letter Bible and thumbed through it. He just needed to find one verse to latch onto, to use as his central metaphor and theme. Nothing was jumping out at him…. Maybe he should speak about e-mail…. Julie was not going to let anyone bug him, and yet here he was clicking on the little envelope icon over and over and being distracted without any help from anyone.

A church member wanted to come in for a meeting to talk about her money problems. She said she felt overworked, tired, and not able to do what she really wanted in life.