COLORING INSIDE THE LINES
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The pneuma where it wishes blows,
the sound of it you hear, but do not know
whence it comes nor where it goes—
for all who are born of the pneuma, it is so.
The Gospel According to John 3:8*
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When I was a child, we had coloring books with pre-drawn pictures in them, and sets of crayons for coloring-in the pictures. We were taught the importance of coloring inside the lines. I suppose it was good practice for such things as eye-hand coordination. It also taught us to distinguish between the figure and the background. The background itself was defined by the rectangular page; even if I couldn’t keep the colors inside the prescribed (pun intended) lines, it was definitely forbidden to color outside the page—on the carpet, for example!
Early on, failure to keep within the lines—or even the boundaries of the page—was assumed to be due to inability. Lessons and explanations were offered. At some point, however, it was assumed that such failure was due to carelessness or disregard: disrespect for the boundaries and what lay outside them. Coloring outside the lines might bring a mild rebuke—“You know better than that.” Coloring off the page could bring not only rebuke, but punishment—“How many times have I told you to be careful! You’re going to ruin the carpet! Give me the crayons and go to your room! You can have them back when you learn to be more careful!”
One day, I learned a trick: I would draw new lines on the page with a black crayon (I still thought all the lines had to be black). Then I would color inside those lines. I learned that I could expand the pictures in the coloring book in many, many creative ways. And still color inside the lines! (And if the page was not big enough, I would tape several pages together—which not only solved the carpet-problem by expanding the ground, but added new creative dimensions as I connected whole pre-drawn pictures with my own lines.)
I never learned to let go of those fundamental “artistic” rules: lines must be clearly drawn and rigorously respected when coloring. (No Jackson Pollock, I!) Perhaps that’s why I was eventually told that I had no artistic talent—that, and the fact that I couldn’t really draw very well either.
All that is, of course, a parable. My religious education followed a similar pattern. I learned that there were clearly prescribed (pun, again, intended) beliefs, and that the colors of one’s thoughts had to be kept inside the lines. I learned that creating new pictures by drawing new lines was at best heterodoxy; worse, heresy; worst, apostasy.
Early on, failure to keep within the lines—or even the boundaries of the page—was assumed to be due to inability, or lack of proper understanding. At some point, however, it was assumed that such failure was due to carelessness or disregard—or rebellion. That’s where the fire and brimstone started to come into play. One must be terrorized into staying inside the lines, and ostracized if he still refuses.
I hear the message often: if you do not believe right, you don’t have the Holy Spirit (or some other terminology in some other religion). The Holy Spirit dwells only inside the lines of right belief. If you knew the Holy Spirit, you’d color inside the lines. And if you don’t, your soul is condemned to everlasting hell, to the lake of fire! (When you're little, you get sent to your room; when you're big, you get sent to hell.)
Well, the verse quoted from the Gospel of John says that the Spirit blows where it wishes, where it will, regardless of the lines drawn by people in books or creeds. Of course, one can attempt to draw lines around that verse by using other verses to con-texualize it (there’s a pun in that hyphen, too). But I think that goes against the whole point of Jesus’ statement here: that the Spirit will not be told to color inside your lines!
There is a paradox here. And the paradox is that the Spirit is the artist and the ground, from which and in which she travels, crayons in hand, coloring as she will. For her, there is no carpet off the page. Like Jackson Pollock, she paints without first drawing lines—and perhaps, like Pollock, there are mysterious fractals to be found in her painting.
Fire and brimstone? All too often, the desperate reaction of those who fear that—since their salvation was found inside a given set of lines—if the lines are not tightly kept, their salvation might be in question. It is not their salvation that the freely-blowing Spirit threatens, but the limits and conditions of their faith.
But the secret is not that one should color outside the lines. The secret is to trust the faithfulness of a Spirit that knows no graven lines; and to learn to color like she does...
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* pneuma can properly be translated as spirit, wind, breath—even, following the Stoics, wind-fire.
Sermon Competition Round #3
28 Jun '07 17:344 edits
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