Art and Music

My friend Ed in Albuquerque gave me a book to read on my last visit. The book is called Chasing Francis by Ian Morgan Cron. It's about a pastor of a large Church who had a crisis of faith and began to doubt what he believed. He felt that the culture or theology of evangelism suffered from limitations. So, he left his Church and went on a quest to see what God would reveal to him. A number his thoughts made great sense to me. Here is one.

One of the things he discovers is art and music and the role it plays in the believer's life. "Is the redeemed imagination capable of producing works of beauty that reveal God's Glory?" In the book he referred to Doctor Zhivago and Lara's lack of interest in anything religious. However, it was in Church where Lara would weep over the music. Cron asks, "What was it about music that awakened the spiritual in Pasternak's Lara?" "It was this," Cron says, "the object of all great art is beauty, and it makes us nostalgic for God. Whether we consider ourselves people of faith or not, art arouses in us what Pope John Paul called a universal desire for redemption."