TOD 03.17.08

“I’d rather watch paint dry…or grass grow…or water evaporate.” Such expressions are born of the notion that entertainment ought to be more interesting than mundane reality. But consider some of the great art in history such as “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Monet’s water lilies, or even cummings’s poem about a world mudlucious and puddle wonderful. These aren’t vicarious peeping Tom exposures to exotic events. They’re epic expansions of the ordinary.

They glorify God by teaching us to find awe in an easily overlooked reality rather than exploiting our train-wreck impulse and riveting our attention to things ever stranger and more remote from our lives. Paint drying, grass growing, and water evaporating are bafflingly wondrous events. The question is whether men raised on inverted art can appreciate them.

Shakespeare wrote dozens of sonnets on beauty and love, whereas Aerosmith sung about Love in an Elevator. And in a world drooling over the blasphemous variety of the pornographic, how will men ever learn to take joy in the rich commonness of a single woman for the rest of their lives life…or a simple Savior?

Children aren’t born thinking the world is boring. They had to learn the error from someone.