Sunday, September 26, 2021
Sunday Reflection: Order and Disorder
Throughout, one theme of the Bible is order and disorder. In the Old Testament, God repeatedly tries to bring order to the world, often through severe measures (ie, the flood). In the New Testament, Jesus brings disorder, in a way.
In a discussion with some great thinkers last week about this, we talked a little bit about art (which is always relevant to a discussion of principles-- after all, art deals with those principles in a nuanced and challenging manner when it is at its best).
We talked some about the work of Mark Rothko. To an untrained eye (like mine), this kind of abstract art seems disordered, almost random. But when I talk to someone like my dad, it becomes clear that the painting is deeply ordered at many levels: in the colors used and their inter-relation, in the shapes they form. In other words, something that seems to be disordered to us is actually ordered in the eye of its creator.
We blame disorder on God, but perhaps it is a failure of our lesser eye.
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When I look at a Rothko painting I see balance and precariousness. One little change and it would be an ordinary effort.... a muddle of paint. Somehow he created canvases where the center of interest was the whole piece. There are no hard edges or lines. He did not use large blocks of solid color nor dramatic voids of color. He did fill the space he had with subtle whimsy, disorder, softness and sureness. The whole was his goal. How he got there gave us some great art. Layers of disorder well ordered.
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