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| "Francesca" Rare Masseria collotype at Manresa |
But they don’t all turn out great. In fact some are downright miserable. One in particular in the mid-90s they put me in a room where the pipes were so noisy that I was unable to sleep. When I complained about it, they put me in another room that was even noisier. I was at the time in the depths of the CFS so not getting any rest for the weekend was not the right prescription for meditation and spiritual growth. I was miserable. I left resolved never to do another retreat there. However, by the time the following January came around, I solved the problem simply by requesting a room in the new wing, all of which were very quiet. They have been very good about accommodating that ever since.
Some years have also been negative experiences for spiritual reasons. Though most of the staff at Manresa are gems, there is one priest there with whom I simply don’t get along. For two years straight I got stuck with with this guy. I spoke, he listened, he left. No response, no input, a waste of time. I did not consider those to be a very good retreats. Needless to say, I have never gone to see him again but I have also never had another retreat where there wasn’t someone else available.
So I have had some very good retreats and some very bad retreats, though mostly good. But this year was the first time that the retreat just left me flat. There is always a point in the retreat where a flash of inspiration strikes me and I can see so clearly what path I must take for the rest of the year when I leave. Sometimes this happens in the first five minutes, sometimes in the last five minutes, usually in between. My routine is to spend a good deal of the weekend browsing through the book store and the library until I stumble upon some passage in some book that really speaks to my life.
It may have been because this year I was so preoccupied with all the noise and activity in my life that I could not relax and let go and was just counting the hours until I could get back to my usual gaggle. Maybe I was excited about the impending delivery of my dream Korg that I had been drooling over for years and had finally found a deal I couldn’t pass up on New Year’s Eve. Or maybe it was the priest who advised us to just let go, be silent all weekend and let the retreat speak to us, not even read. Well, I needed that reading in order to facilitate the retreat speaking to me. I guess I won’t follow that advice any more.
The retreat left me empty. I just counted the hours until it was over. It wasn’t until the last few days that I began to understand that I had indeed taken some valuable things away with me. I will share three of the highlights now.
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Being the first time this men’s retreat was given by a female director, we were offered a new perspective we had never before enjoyed. It should have been no surprise then when she brought up a sensitive topic that had never been raised before – pornography. She didn’t make a big deal out of it, just casually mentioned that it had become particularly pervasive due to the Internet and in her years of counseling, she had seen how very destructive it is. "Do not fool yourselves gentlemen," she said. "There is nothing normal about viewing pornography. It is always harmful."
Ever since I started these retreats I have brought in some issue of Catholic teaching with which I do not agree. Every year I go to Manresa expecting at least the possibility that they will tell me I cannot believe what I do and still be Catholic. And every year the Jesuits tell me that, though my views are sufficiently complex that they would never lend themselves to a 15 minute homily, they are nonetheless in line with official teaching. It may be true that certain members of my fellow faithful do not feel I am following the law, but I am. I am completely orthodox. (This is why the personal conference each weekend is always the highlight.)
There is a saying, "Never say never." I would also say, "never say always." So when Mary, our director, made that statement and said that word, I had to go talk to her about it. It was not at all my intention to defend pornography. But as a counselor dealing only with people who are having marital troubles, I could understand that she would only be seeing people at their worst. As with most issues, I see pros and cons in everything. I only wished to offer some perspective. I readily concede that many adults use pornography for selfish and destructive purposes. As for young people, I really see that as nothing more than a long held tradition of rites of passage. But when mature loving adult couples choose to occasionally use softcore pornography as a marital aid, I fail to see the harm in that. I know a good many healthy moral couples who have freely volunteered this to me. So I do not agree that it is always harmful. That’s what I wanted to convey. Like everything else, even pornography depends on circumstances and is very much in the eye of the beholder.
Much to my surprise, when I expressed these views and even shared the kind of pornography that couples I knew used occasionally to spice up their marriages, her response was an emphatic, "That is not pornography." I freely admitted to admiring the female form myself. Her response was that God made us as sexual beings and there is nothing sinful about appreciating our sexuality and admiring that of others. So I took it one logical step further. "And if the female form is nude? Is it then pornography?" "Mike, I own nude paintings myself. That is not pornography."
So the argument came full circle. Just what is pornography? Is that not the whole issue, that nobody can really answer that question? The old saying is true, "I can’t tell you what pornography is but I sure know it when I see it." The fact is there are more than a few people in this world who do consider nudes to be pornographic. Whether it’s a nude or something more graphic is really just a matter of degree. Christianity teaches us to live a life of piety but if the main purpose of piety is to promote strong families and marriages, and if strong marriages are only built on a foundation of the most intense forms of intimacy, who then gets to say where piety ends and pornography begins? My perspective is that it is an individual matter.
Even the Supreme Court has never been able to define pornography and has instead opted to leave it to community standards. And what has come of community standards? The 1979 Best Foreign Film Oscar winner got banned as child pornography in Oklahoma and Ontario because it portrayed a boy having sex with adult men. "The Tin Drum," a WWII story of a ten year old eking out an existence in war-torn Germany and the many depraved things he is subjected to by German soldiers in order to survive, is universally regarded as a work of art. No matter that it met none of the criteria of pornography which, by legal definition must be real sex, not just play acting. It must also be clearly lewd and lascivious with no redeeming artistic merit, not an internationally acclaimed art film. It took a 15 year court battle to finally remove this label from the film. That’s what came from community standards, since every community gets to call it whatever they like. In this case, a mere play about child abuse was deemed pornographic. By such a standard any TV movie that even mentions child molestation could be called pornography.
That’s why I had to respectfully challenge the statement. Pornography is always harmful? How can anyone make such a statement when they cannot even define what pornography is, let alone judge it to be destructive no matter what. Mary was clear that it was her opinion that the examples I cited as pornography were not pornography at all. I agreed with her, and that’s what made my case. What she had assured me would not be pornographic I could assure her that there were other people who would say differently. My point - who gets to make that decision? Once again, I am assured my views are orthodox even though there are many of my fellow Christians and Catholics who would emphatically say otherwise.
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What they say about pornography they also say about art. One person’s art is another person’s trash. Nobody can tell you what art is, they only know what they like. Which brings me to the second big highlight of this year’s Manresa experience. It is good that I waited nearly a full month after the retreat before writing about it since I didn’t really come to appreciate the beauty I had taken from the Jesuit weekend until just a few days ago. I didn’t know it at the time, but just as I was leaving the building on Sunday afternoon, I took notice of two pieces of art hanging outside the chapel that I had never noticed before, though the priests told me they had been on display for years. I could not read the artist’s signature so I left a note to have them send it to me. That has triggered a month of the most unexpected and most exciting artistic inquiry. Now, nearly four weeks later, I know what I was meant to find this year at Manresa.
The artist is Francisco Masseria and the two pieces of art are two very rare collotypes that came from a private collection and were donated to the Jesuits some years ago. After reading about Masseria now, I have come to appreciate what a treasure the Jesuits have in these two pieces of art.
Masseria was an Italian artist who moved to Argentina in the 1960s and did most of his best known work there. A prodigy, he had already achieved recognition as a world-class artist by the time he was 14. He specialized in painting children, mostly slum children, but always in festive regalia so there was no hint of their poverty in the portraits. And they are exquisitely beautiful portraits of the most lovely children imaginable. He became quite popular in Argentina as a painter of children and was in very high demand for his work and his services. But then he ran afoul of the repressive Peron regime and had to spend the rest of his life in hiding. Because he has spent his life in hiding, there is next to no biographical information available on him. I cannot even find confirmation whether he’s still alive. I did find commentary that almost all of his work remains in private collections so finding pieces available to the public for sale is a rarity. Nevertheless, I do see pieces being sold from collections from time to time on eBay and there is a collection of plates from Royal Doulton that is fairly readily available.
His work is exquisite. Even Jim, who is a pretty tough guy to please, thinks this guy is wonderful. So, as fate would have it, in the last few weeks I have found several beautiful pieces on eBay from this artist and this week, my first two pieces arrived. I got a plate of the piece called "Juliana" for $10, and the piece called "Gabriella" for $125. You might guess that Gabriella is considerably more famous. I also found a beautiful collotype of the piece called "Francesca" for $700 and an original oil titled only "Argentine Girl" for $2700. This oil in particular is gorgeous and believe me I’d be buying it if I had that much money for art.
So it seems the real graces I have taken from this retreat and will continue to benefit from all year is discovering the beauty of this world renowned artist and beginning what will probably become a lifelong quest to become a Masseria collector.
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And finally on the themes of piety and pornography and the beauty of art and Christian living, I will wrap this up with the third highlight of the retreat. I will confess that I never thought much of Mother Teresa while she was living. She always struck me as being arrogant. It was not until her death and when Newsweek magazine published her letters and diaries that I realized how wrong I was. Her letters showed a truly humble person who was ferociously struggling with her faith, unable to understand how God could allow such horrible suffering in India. But reading about this suffering soul gave me so much respect for her, showed me that she was so human and so much vulnerable to the same doubts and same explorations that we all are.
Before she died, she wrote a prayer for the rest of us so-called Christians as a model of the Christian life. More than anything else I’ve ever seen, this prayer summarizes everything that Christianity is all about ... or at least should be all about.
Mother Teresa’s Final Analysis
People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you;
Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, other could destroy over night;
Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today will often be forgotten;
Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
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| "Juliana" My first Masseria acquisition - $10 |
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| "Gabriella" My splurge - $130 |
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