Sing a new song unto the Earth - Book Review

"Lazarus Come Out "by Richard Cote, Ottawa, Novalis, St. Paul University, 2003, 183 pp

After a particularly dry and unimaginative Sunday Mass, nay 11-year-old daughter, Annie, exclaimed, "imagine if we could have drums and stories and movement and then a big cake every Sunday after Mass. Then we would really be celebrating, eh Mom, not just having a pit stop Mac-mass."

Her words struck me, particularly as I was reading Richard Core's "Lazarus Come Out! Why Faith Needs Imagination", a book dealing precisely with how entombed our religious imagination has become in these complicated times, and how desperately we need to find new images, symbols and connections to Gospel stories.

I thought of the monotony I had just experienced contrasted with the awe I have felt in moments in my life when the divine and mundane have intersected in mysterious ways; when I have, as Jesus implores, seen with the eyes of a child.

Cote believes that symbols and images of the past, such as devil images or masculine names for God are no longer useful in our faith journey because they represent a past reality which fails to evoke the mystery and awe that was their purpose. They are out of touch for us these days. Faith disconnected from wonder becomes buried like Lazarus. We need to find new symbols, new artwork, even a new language that will seduce our sleepy imaginations into being enthralled with the many places God touches our lives, including Mass. The mass-produced, plastic and plaster statues that decorate our churches are drab and lifeless art that fails to inspire us to pray, praise or reflect. He wonders what has happened to the Church as a patron of the arts? How did we arrive at such a lifeless desert? Has reason been so elevated in our culture that we have forgotten the imagination, much less value it as integral to faith development.

Annie was trying to rediscover joy

Cote suggests that we are in a desert time of flat symbols, while anesthetized by certain dark symbols like George Bush's "axis of evil." However, he holds out hope. Images of Lazarus and the desert are metaphors signifying both our dry, entombed imagination and a great transforming possibility for new life and rebirth. Our 21st century seems to be on a path toward death, and yet it holds possibilities if we accept our vulnerability. Our imaginations are dormant, but not dead, parched but not without life possibilities if we acknowledge and heal our witheredness. Sanctifying life over wealth, earth over progress, Eucharist as much present in people as in the communion wafer. Openness to eco-spirituality, finding wisdom in other faiths, feminine images of God: all are ripe with possibility.

It is ironic, however, that a book written about the imagination is presented in an authoritative and expository manner. Cote refers to God only as "he". Although thorough in its exploration of historical contexts for religious symbols, his book provided too few personal incidents and anecdotes for my liking, especially when it champions our own stories and connections with Jesus. I most enjoyed Cote's references to his own childhood, and the last chapter, which presents more questions than answers, leaving even more possibilities up to the imagination.

The spirituality of our parents will not suffice. A new faith will involve more personal risk than security, more ambiguity than clarity, more questions and doubts than ready-made "Mac-answers" as Annie would call them. Five cultural paradigms of our day, those of unlimited progress, the exclusive supremacy of reason, the supreme autonomy of the individual, domination and control of nature and a definition of success and efficiency, are imploding. The more we learn in science, the more we realize we do not know. Can our church be humble and child-like? We must begin to sing a new song to God and all the earth, one that recognizes our interdependence.

Awake, Lazarus, indeed.

Kate Marshall Flaherty teaches in Toronto.

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