o taste and see -- robert spiotta

8/3/2019 O Taste and See -- Robert Spiotta

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conver a forum for Authentic transformation

volume

9.2fall | winter 2011

THE

PROBLEM

of PAIN



This article originally appeared inFall/Winter 2011, Issue 9.2: The Problem of Pain: A Forum for

Authentic Transformation .

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E D I T O R ’ S N O T E :

Pain is deeply, necessarilyparticular. Oten it is ourown pain and suering orthe pain and suering o someone we love that causesus to turn to God and ask ana n g u i s h e d , “ W H Y ? ”Recently, the tragic move-ment o earth, wind andwater—what insurance com-panies reductively call “acts

o God”—have devastated communities romJoplin, Missouri, USA, to Minamisanriku, o theMotoyoshi District, in Miyagi, Japan. Thesepowerul events rock our core, both literally andspiritually. Questions o theodicy arise, and westruggle with God’s goodness.

As our editorial team considered an image or the coverand this O Taste & See eature, we wanted to honor the actthat each person’s pain—whether it is loss o heart, health,hope or home—matters. We didn’t want to put one particular

image o one particular type o pain on the cover, because that

would necessarily exclude those who haven’t experiencedthat type o pain. We considered using a piece o classic artor an explicitly Christocentric image—both good choices we

believe, yet we wanted to create a contemplative space thatactually allowed or the questions and the pain to be elt rather

than moving too quickly to answers or theology.When we discovered this image o the globe, constructed

by the NOAA shortly ater the tsunami rst struck Japan, wewere taken aback. While not a piece o “art” per se, it is aGod’s-eye-view o our world, and the pain that seeps across

it. We elt that our choice was urther conrmed when wediscovered the meaning o the Japanese word or “pain,” which

is the kanji that appears in the title o this piece.受難 (jyu-nan) is actually two kanjis and one word.受 (jyu) means “toreceive” and 難 (nan) means “something very hard, or not

easy.” When combined, the kanji literally means “the pain/ something hard, that person received.” The grace is that Godgoes urther—the dictionary denition o this kanji is “thepain when the Christ was crucied on the cross,” “suering;ordeals,” or “The Passion/the Crucixion.” We pray that as

you read Robert Spiotta’s excellent meditation on the image,

and spend time with it yoursel, God will speak into yourparticular pain, and that you will be drawn toward His cross.

o ta ste and see a meditation on 受難 | by robert spiotta

imge crtey f the us ntl ocec d atmpherc admtrt.



E D I T O R ’ S N O T E :

P

ain is deeply, necessarilyparticular. Oten it is ourown pain and suering orthe pain and suering o someone we love that causesus to turn to God and ask ana n g u i s h e d , “ W H Y ? ”Recently, the tragic move-ment o earth, wind andwater—what insurance com-panies reductively call “acts

o God”—have devastated communities romJoplin, Missouri, USA, to Minamisanriku, o theMotoyoshi District, in Miyagi, Japan. Thesepowerul events rock our core, both literally andspiritually. Questions o theodicy arise, and westruggle with God’s goodness.

As our editorial team considered an image or the coverand this O Taste & See eature, we wanted to honor the actthat each person’s pain—whether it is loss o heart, health,hope or home—matters. We didn’t want to put one particularimage o one particular type o pain on the cover, because thatwould necessarily exclude those who haven’t experiencedthat type o pain. We considered using a piece o classic artor an explicitly Christocentric image—both good choices we believe, yet we wanted to create a contemplative space thatactually allowed or the questions and the pain to be elt ratherthan moving too quickly to answers or theology.

When we discovered this image o the globe, constructed by the NOAA shortly ater the tsunami rst struck Japan, wewere taken aback. While not a piece o “art” per se, it is aGod’s-eye-view o our world, and the pain that seeps acrossit. We elt that our choice was urther conrmed when wediscovered the meaning o the Japanese word or “pain,” which

is the kanji that appears in the title o this piece. 受難 (jyu-nan) is actually two kanjis and one word. 受 (jyu) means “toreceive” and 難 (nan) means “something very hard, or noteasy.” When combined, the kanji literally means “the pain/ something hard, that person received.” The grace is that Godgoes urther—the dictionary denition o this kanji is “thepain when the Christ was crucied on the cross,” “suering;ordeals,” or “The Passion/the Crucixion.” We pray that as you read Robert Spiotta’s excellent meditation on the image,and spend time with it yoursel, God will speak into yourparticular pain, and that you will be drawn toward His cross.

o taste and see a meditation on 受難 | by robert spiotta

imge crtey f the us ntl ocec d atmpherc admtrt.

2011 TōhOKU EARThqUAKE AND TSUNAMI EPIcENTERcoloration dEPicts ProJEctEd WavE sizE

9.0-MagnitudE [MW] undErsEa MEgathrust EarthquakE

15,698 dEaths, 5,7 17 inJurEd, 4,666 P EoP lE Missing [Est]



conversationsjournal .com

I you are anything like me, the news o theearthquake and tsunami that recently devas-

tated the nation o Japan crept into yourawareness gradually. Even i you heard thenews right away, it wasn’t until you startedseeing the pictures, the video, the coveragethat the enormity o this event truly hit you

emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Images have an impact

on our souls, communicating truth—and suering—inways that thousands o words cannot.

Especially powerul images come directly at the viewerwith the raw and unavoidable hurling orce o universalpain—like a stick in the eye. Take another look at the image

o the globe on the rst page o this article. In images likethis satellite photograph o Earth ater the recent Japaneseearthquake and tsunami, the visual and visceral lie dan-gerously close together, close as lovers, separated (i atall) by something as sheer and permeable as a cell mem-

brane. I immediately recognize the empty black hole,tsunami Ground Zero, belching and oozing purple all-out

and irradiating most o the visible hemispheres with anappalling drape o hot burning orange; and the orangecape itsel seems to uel itsel through what appears to be

a bloody red arterial system, all signiying to me nothing short o universal pain, disaster, calamity, death. I eeldizzy, nauseated, utterly disoriented, alone—the amiliarand unwelcome symptoms o extreme pain.

To someone like me, brought up in the Sixties onconstant television news coverage o the bloody Vietnam

conlict, and sureited on a lietime smorgasbord o sophisticated electronic imagery, the searing lurid redsand the poisonous greens evoke other horriying and

very personal connotations: the in-vitro sonogram o the child we lost to miscarriage, my wie’s mammogram

diagnosing breast cancer, tornado radar sightings on thetelevision screen at night, sonar imagery searching orkids who drown in vacation lake accidents, live televi-sion coverage o 9/11. The French language has anintriguing term, coup de foudre, which they use to

describe overwhelming and unexpected strikes o light-ning, or blows o ate, thunder rolls rom nowhere, thatleaves victims completely devastated and out o control.Here in this image we see the Earth in the awul wakeo a universal coup de foudre. Do you eel that? Like me,do you want to run away rom it, avert your gaze?

As a sel-protective gesture, the academic in me wantsto gain some emotional distance by moving into my heador an exercise in what art historians might call “ormal-ism.” Formalist analysis makes the image itsel primary,pushing history, personal meanings, and indeed human

lie to the background—in this image, to the dark andunknown side o the Earth, as it were. With analysis theimage becomes merely the semi-abstract arrangement o line and color: the perect circle o vivid three-dimension-ally shaded hues against a at black background. Already

I eel better, but rom this “externalized” perspective, verylittle can be said in the way o meaning. Squeezed out

emotionally, do you become bored with the image like I

do? Do you even question its value or contemplation?Will you join me in switching perspectives again and

taking a commercial, perhaps even materialist, view o the photograph? From the angle o the consumer, the onewho simply wants to use, I see something appealingly

unky—perhaps a stylized peacock eather draped acrossa tie-dye red and orange ground; and I also recognize the

popular image o the stylized Earth. Yes, that will sell!This universal avatar can be silk-screened on thousandso T-shirts and sold at Urban Outtters. It’s a potentialuniorm or college students rom Tokyo to Boston to

Moscow to Beijing. To be completely au courant thisphotograph really deserves to be a disaster-relie undrais-ing icon or the iPad or Android, an image replicated and

broadcast by Facebook and Twitter. Click on the Earth todonate $5 to tsunami relie. But that’s not entirely satisac-

tory, either. Do you eel the banality and absurdity o thishybrid commercial/altruistic approach? Do you eel the

violation o the pain it represents?

Finally, I wonder i this image reminds youo anything deeply personal? I am recalling a particularly painul childhood incident.

It wasn’t such a serious thing, really, andI hesitate to compare it with such cata-clysmic suering, but being out o control

and in pain is always personally signicant, and it taughtme something that I want to connect to this universally

painul event. My own “stick in the eye” was actuallya ootball in the ace.

My parents sent me to a rigorous athletic camp whenI was ve, which turned out to be a complete “bust.” I’mnot sure what my amily or the camp was thinking, because

the lessons were too advanced and the physical expecta-tions beyond my maturity, so I came away emotionallytraumatized rather than athletically trained. (Isn’t that alot like lie, though? Most o the time it’s overwhelming!)When I was eight, they tried again by enrolling me in agentler week-long camp oering mainly swimming, hiking,

and crats. It started out okay: we at least spent some timein the cool damp woods exploring, rather than running and vomiting on a 120 degree track, and I became pro-cient at some basic lie-saving pool maneuvers. I especiallyenjoyed the crats, and I spent the happiest period o each

day carving, sanding, and nishing a small wooden maskto take home at the end o the week. Thursday I paintedthe mask bright lobster pink and let it to dry. All nished;lie under control.

That same Thursday we had a ree period ater art,

so I wandered into the multi-purpose room used or box-ing and martial arts. Walls padded, sounds mufed, theairless chamber smelled o oam rubber, sweat, and ear.I remember seeing several boys and an older counselorgoong o and tossing balls around. Then out o nowhere,“Whizzz-KPOP,” a perectly spun ootball drilled into the

middle o my ace with blinding orce. A random teenager



fall | winter 2011

had successully demonstrated his prodigious throwing

power by taking down an eight-year-old. I elt the electric black nausea and dizzy disorientation o extreme pain. Itasted blood in my mouth. I wailed a lot, and the counselorgathered me up and wrapped my head in a wet towel anddrove me home early, where he tried to come up with areasonable explanation or what happened. But he couldn’t.There was no reasonable explanation.

By some miracle, my nose wasn’t broken and no teethell out, so ater a night’s rest, everyone assumed I’d bene. But I wasn’t. I’m not sure I’ve ever been “ne” since.I don’t think I went

back or the last dayo camp, or everpicked up my care-ully crated totemmask, because myown injured head

was totem enough.This same summer,

my older brothers’riends began return-ing rom ghting in

Vietnam, and it wasobvious to me thatsome o them came through intact to resume “regularlie” while others displayed obvious physical and emotionallosses; they would never be ne and okay. I was old enough

to “put two and two together,” so ater that summer Iabandoned the notion that I was sae in this world andthat things would always “turn out ne.” And even mysmall camp experience was traumatic and painul enoughto make me skeptical o the related idea that pain andsuering should be welcomed as a “necessary” tonic or

the soul. Uh-uh. That kind o reasoning, even to an ado-lescent, seemed like pure absurdity, a way o making people do or endure horrible things that they wouldn’totherwise tolerate except or the act that they had beentrained to cut o their receptivity to their own inner lie

and to the world. The better lesson, and the one that I did take away rom that experience, is that pain is unavoid-able. But i pain is unavoidable, what do we do with it?

Here we are tempted to all into a trap: trying toexplain pain. I or one do not believe that an omni-

scient God owes us any explanations, and our attempts

to igure out the mind o an ininite being end up inabstraction and despair. But I’m no theologian. Toargue the point better I deer to the ine example o Walker Percy’s protagonist Will Barrett, rom his novelThe Second Coming , which wrestles more masterully

than I can with this great subject o theodicy. In thestory Will Barrett lays an ingenious trap or God—anexperiment to put God to the test and orce Him todemonstrate His love and existence. Bored and alien-ated by his upper-middle-class, gol-stroking lie, Will

attempts to escape by hiding in a cave and taking barbiturates until God shows up, proving His love and

existence, or Will dies, proving there is no God.

(Notice the ironic name o the character “Will”!)But Will’s philosophical stunt is interrupted bya coup de foudre, the unexpected intrusion o—Knock knock; who’s there?—PAIN! A throbbing abscessed tooth wakes Will rom his drug-

induced coma prematurely, orcing him out o thecave and back into the world, where he must abandon

his artiicial experiment and sel-reerential explana-tions. What Will unexpectedly inds next is love. ButI am getting ahead o mysel.

S

o i we can’t avoid pain, and we can’texplain our way out o it, and wecan’t successully nd enough dis-tractions, what do we do? Here’s my

humble suggestion: irst, becomepresent to your own pain and to yourown body, without explaining, with-out escaping, without denying. Justdwell or a ew moments in the pain

o your particular circumstances and eel it. Yes, thatmay seem awul, because it is. It may lead to “grieving,”an even longer process o becoming present to yourpainul eelings and losses. Next, allow your heart toentertain the possibility that love and pain could besomehow related. This will probably not make rational

sense, because it is not an activity or your mind, buta lie-learned posture or your heart. Some people callthis a “spiritual discipline.”

You know the reality o this pain-love connectionalready, because you’ve heard it your whole lie in songs,

literature, poetry, scripture. You may remember thisdescription o Christ’s death rom the hymn “When ISurvey the Wondrous Cross,” by Isaac Watts:

“See rom his head, his hands, his eet/ Sorrow andlove ow mingled down!/ Did ‘ere [ever] such love and

sorrow meet?”In whatever mysterious way, and rom whatever

theological perspective you interpret the crucixion o Christ, his pain and suering also speak o love and o Christ’s sharing in the pain o the world: love and painmixed up together. Also, remember Jesus’ words to Thomas

in the Gospel o John, when all the other disciples are

In whv mu w, nd m whv hlgl v

u n h ufxn ch, h n nd ung l k lv nd ch’sharing n h n h wld:

love and pain mixed up together.

5

intEntionality oF thE hEart{ T H E P R O B L E M O F P A I N | F A L L / W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 | V O L U M E 9 . 2 }



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gathered in a closed room, and he arrives late (John20:24–29). Thomas the rationalist physically and meta-

phorically enters the scene rom outside the gathering o those who have just experienced the risen Christ (expe-rienced Lie), and Jesus tenderly oers Thomas theopportunity to touch his wounded hands and side. Jesusallows Thomas, invites Thomas, to touch and be touched

by the palpable evidence o Christ’s own pain. And it is

touching the wounds o Christ that opens Thomas’s eyesto proclaim in recognition: “My Lord and my God!”

Could it be in this silent embrace o pain, in the silentembrace by pain, we can experience the loving embraceo Christ himsel? Can we recognize Christ in our own

pain and the world’s? Whatever we take away rom pain-ul and traumatic experiences like mine, or the innitelymore painul experience o this disaster in Japan, noneo us can just “go back to camp” and pretend like every-thing is ne. Because it’s not. Incidents and images like

this one jolt us mercilessly (or merciully?) rom our sel-induced stupor o saety to remind us that the world is a

dangerous place: none o us will get out o it alive, andnone o us will get out o it without being hurt.

Which brings me to a nal interpretation o this image

I invite you to consider. Could the hideous black hole inthe Earth really be the wounded body o Christ himsel?(This is a poetic and mystical, not ontological, interpreta-tion). By handling it, touching it, becoming present to thiswound, becoming present to our own pain and the pain

o the whole world, o the thousands upon thousandssuering in Japan, or those suering in our own com-

munities, can we also become present to Christ and himto us? Can we enter this locus o death to encounter thelove o Christ, the amiliar warm breath o the Holy Spirit,and our own re-integrated selves?

Interesting term, coup de foudre, because it incorpo-

rates several paradoxical things at once: a bolt o lightning,

a thunderclap, something “out o the blue” that knocks you o your eet. And, it is also the French term or all-ing in love, experiencing love. Ironically, we all know thatopening yoursel to love is painul, too. So do you get it?

These dreadul blows to the sel and to the Earth canbecome an unexpected opening to the love o God—i ourminds can get out o the way.

a b o u t t h E a u t h o r

A graduate of Vanderbilt University (BA Communication) and the Parsons/New

School program at the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Nat ional Museum of Design (MA,

Design History), Robert Spiotta also completed additional post-graduate study

at Emory University, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Sotheby’s Instituteof Art (London). He consults nationally in art and interior design, and researches/

markets art and antiques. His design work and writing have appeared in Verandah ,

Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles , The Atlantan , Antiques Monthly , Southern Accents , Interior Design , and on

HGTV. Robert also works professionally in planned giving for non-profit arts institutions through Heaton

Smith Group. Robert performed professionally as a pianist, accompanist, and worship leader for fifteen

years, and is an experienced speaker, retreat leader and facilitator. Robert lives in Atlanta with his wife

Yvonne and their two daughters.

{ T H E P R O B L E M O F P A I N | F A L L / W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 | V O L U M E 9 . 2 }

o taste and see -- robert spiotta

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