Luring the statues back.

Abstract

I played hooky from the ANA meeting in Washington, DC in June and went to the National Gallery. In my ramblings there, I found myself looking down long hallway at larger-than-life painting of woman from Whistler's Symphony in White series. It was so lovely, even from distance, that I stopped and stared, then turned down the hall to get closer look. I stood before it, gazing up at the dark-haired woman, her expression pensive. Or was it melancholy? Lost in my imaginings, I did not notice the other occupant of the room until he spoke from behind me: Have you finished your three Hail Marys? I turned, startled, not sure what he meant. You act as though you're in he observed. You approached that painting as if it were an altar. What he said was true . Art can be like that for me, like being in church. I was just shocked that stranger could see it. Powerful images, wherever we find them--in art, literature, poetry, theater, or the world around us--often have sacred quality. In fact, it is just this sacred quality that gives them their power to move us. Images that are highly charged, that touch us deeply, have the potential to activate what Carl Jung would call the religious instinct, by which he meant the psyche's innate need and capacity for sacred experience. Encounters with such images are profound and I would go so far as to say essential to our psychological well-being because images and imagination give vitality to the psyche. Not only do they connect us to what is sacred, but they stir our senses, call forth new ideas or long-forgotten memories, and spark creativity. Like seeds, images find their way into the ground of the psyche, where they may lie fallow for time before germinating and bearing fruit. images that come to us, and to larger extent the manner in which we receive and cultivate them, determine the quality of our psychological lives. Sterility is the price of non-engagement. Without lively imaginal experiences the psyche withers. Poets and artists have given us many striking images of this imageless state, the desolate psychological landscape, devoid of vegetation and animation, that results when we lose touch with the images that feed our souls. In his poem Return, for example, Yannis Ritsos tells us, The left first, followed by the trees, people, and animals. lights of the village went out and the land became desert where newspapers and tumbleweeds swirled in the streets. Then, he says, a man came back . . . stuck his key in the ground . . . and cautiously, one by one, the returned (Ritsos, p. 27). Poets and artists are all too aware that their creativity depends on imagination. If they lose access to images, if the statues depart, then the work will stop. But what about attorneys, housewives, computer programmers, bus drivers, or nurses? I would venture to say that access to images and the imaginal process is equally important for them; it is important for us all. For when we lose this connection, especially to the sacred, our inner world becomes the barren wasteland described by Ritsos, which we, in less poetic language, call depersonalization, alienation, meaninglessness, and depression. Last December, I spent weekend in London. For all the obvious reasons and for many personal ones, Westminster Abbey was first on my list of places to see. Imagine my dismay when I entered the vestibule of the church, and found myself in what felt like an amusement park, crowded tourist attraction, complete with chattering people, popping flashbulbs, loudspeaker announcements, crude placards, and vendors hawking their wares. All that was missing was the popcorn. I meandered down the aisles and into the naves, circling the tombs and pondering their inscriptions, some dating back to the 14th century. I was surrounded by history at its most powerful. Buried here were all the people I had studied as child growing up in India, all the figures that had so stirred my imagination. …