You Are the Light of the World

[Fisherman’s Bastion, Buda Castle. Mixed media, 11”x15”. 2023]

Thinking about people whose light is definitely not under a bushel for me shades dangerously toward celebrity worship, but here goes. These are people in my recent viewing whose lights shine brightly and inspire me. I own that I am thinking about them because they’ve been featured in film or TV that I’ve watched within the past few weeks. I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to assert that they share some commonalities:

• Zora Neale Hurston (“Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space” on PBS)

• Elvis Presley (“Elvis,” Baz Luhrmann biopic on HBOMax)

• Andy Warhol (“Andy Warhol Diaries” on Netflix)

• Nan Goldin (“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” Laura Poitras documentary, recently in theatres — coming to HBO soon?)

[Anything that is underlined in this post is a link to more info, a bit of music or media, or a book. For the full Jed Is Lit experience, follow the links!]

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was an African-American anthropologist and leading light of the Harlem Renaissance who struggled on the periphery of academia. She was a student of the renowned Columbia anthropologist Franz Boas, but Anthropology, while insisting on being a science, had trouble accepting Hurston’s participant approach to the discipline (she studied hoodoo in the American south and in the Caribbean) even though Margaret Mead was doing similar work in Samoa at around the same time. Hurston published Mules and Men in 1935. This was described in the documentary as anthropology that went over the edge toward literature. It wasn’t well-received. Her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, WAS acclaimed and has been taught to generations of high school and college students. Baracoon, posthumously published in 2018, was described in the documentary as a counterpoint to Mules and Men — fiction with a big nod to anthropology. Zora Neale Hurston, in spite of resistance, found a way to express her own response to black culture in the south and the Caribbean and we’re all the richer for it.

Elvis Presley (1935-1977). The accident of his white childhood in a black neighborhood of Memphis led to his being probably the greatest cultural appropriator of the past century. His first recordings, the “Sun Sessions,” brought great black music, rock ‘n’ roll, to a white audience. The biopic pays appropriate hommage to Elvis’s African-American influences and accurately presents Elvis as sympathetic to African-Americans. And it’s a relief to see that a very racist quote attributed to Elvis is debunked at snopes.com. The biopic presents Elvis as overcoming immense pressure from his manager and commercial forces to persevere in shaking his hips and performing the sometimes gospel-inspired music in the way that he wanted. It’s surprising that the biopic doesn’t use his rendition of My Way. I guess in the end he didn’t really do it his way — he was exploited by his manager and prevented from doing a world tour. Yet his light shone bright. And Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Big Mama Thornton, Arthur Crudup, Junior Parker, etc., found new places on the map because of Elvis. In the 1990’s, during my brief period as a stay-at-home dad, I ran into one of the Uptown play group moms on the Downtown A-train, and was SO surprised when she attributed the downfall of civilization to Elvis. Wow. I was speechless.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) is acknowledged to be probably the greatest artist of the late twentieth century. This is bolstered by the 2019 Whitney museum retrospective that covered most of his career, from Coke bottles and Campbell soup cans to Interview magazine to Andy Warhol’s TV. I came away from the retrospective agreeing with the critics that his use of color in all of his paintings and screen prints is pretty darn good. For sure, my colors in the piece reproduced above are under the influence of Andy. The makers of the series on Netflix have taken what must be one of the most boring diaries ever published and turned it into a fascinating document of the late twentieth century, with the help of the typically affectless voice — recreated with artificial intelligence — of Warhol himself reading from the diary. This misfit from a Pittsburgh immigrant family, acutely aware of being gay and of his own ugliness, was the one who presciently told us that in the future everyone would have 15 minutes of fame. G. and I just watched Episode 3, in which Andy (described as “a liberal democrat”) and his entourage get invited to Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration and all of the best parties. The editor of The Preppy Handbook, Lisa Birnbach, appears latterly embarassed about the anti-gay stance in her book, but demurs that the book was written by two gay men. What did this have to do with Andy? The book was meant to be satirical, but the WASP mores, business-orientation, and sartorial suggestions that were lampooned were taken seriously by Americans. The book was treated as a manual of behavior for the 1980s. Andy was obsessed with preppy style. During his career as a male model, he had the cable-knit sweater draped over his shoulders many times. I’ll devote another post to Andy Warhol, because at the same time that I find some of his attitudes repellant (his self-acknowledged superficiality and relentless pursuit of business), I think he was a great artist.

Nan Goldin (1953- ), is a photographer whose work is represented in the permanent collections of major museums around the world. Her most notable work, according to wikipedia, is The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1986), a book documenting post-Stonewall gay culture, through photos of her family, friends, and others. A few of us village residents made a pilgrimage to the United Theatre in Westerly, RI, to see Laura Poitras’s “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” in the little screening room there a few days ago. The movie is all about Goldin’s life and career, weaving together three strands: her reaction to her stultifying and conformist upbringing in suburban Massachusetts and the suicide of her older sister; her involvement in AIDS activism in the 80’s and 90’s alongside other luminaries of the art world such as David Wojnarowicz; and most important, her successful campaign to have the Sackler name removed from the Metropolitan Museum and other cultural institutions around the world. The Sacklers were the owners of Purdue Pharma, the company responsible for Valium and Oxycontin. The aggressive marketing of Oxycontin by Purdue is considered the major cause of the explosion of opioid overdose deaths in this country. (For the whole story, read Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain. Keefe is featured in the film.) Goldin’s success in this campaign is all the more poignant considering what she overcame in her own life to make it happen — a period of time as a sex worker, a near death from Fentanyl, etc. I cried virtually nonstop through this movie, but I was glad to see it. One of the things I was crying about was my awe at the impact that Nan Goldin has had.

I keep going to the Centering Prayer group at the little Episcopal church in the neighborhood. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my beginner meditator’s experience.

The group meets once a week for the meditation practice together, along with a session of Lectio Divina. The group also frequently listens to or watches a video or audio clip from a talk, conference presentation, or sermon. Thomas Keating’s talks about Centering Prayer have been immortalized on YouTube. Cynthia Bourgeault, an Episcopal priest who has written extensively on Centering Prayer, was featured this week — a recording of her conference presentation to SAND (Science and Nonduality) on Radiant Intimacy of the Heart. We also frequently hear sermons by Matthew Wright, priest-in-charge at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Woodstock, NY. Many of his sermons are available on SoundCloud.

The Lectio Divina portion of the meeting is dedicated to reading, reacting to, and contemplating the assigned gospel passage for the following Sunday. It’s not supposed to be about “dissecting” the passage. Not dissecting is hard for me. I come from a family of English majors and lawyers, and my brother, who has studied Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, is no slouch as a Biblical scholar.

Last week and this week the lectionary has brought to us a couple of the greatest hits from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. Last week it was the Beatitudes, and this week it is Salt and Light.

I got hung up reacting to the Beatitudes on the phrase “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” What does Jesus mean by “poor in spirit”? I wanted the phrase to mean people who don’t have a spiritual life or people who are depressed. Also, Sweet Honey in the Rock’s beautiful rendition of The Beatitudes from their 1987 Carnegie Hall recording kept running through my head. Fortunately, members of the Centering Prayer group came to my rescue to explain that “poor in spirit” has a specific (counterintuitive for me) meaning: “‘Poor in spirit’ means an inner emptiness and humility, a beginner’s mind, and to live without a need for personal righteousness or reputation. It is the ‘powerlessness’ of Alcoholics Anonymous’ First Step.” (Quoting from Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, January 30, 2018.) I was also reminded of a conversation that I had with a writer friend of mine towards the end of the 1980’s about the phrase, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.” It was the go-go 80’s in New York, and my friend, sceptical about Christianity, seemed particularly offended by that phrase.

This week, from the “Salt and Light” passage, “You are the light of the world” jumped right off the page for me, and the verse from the Godspell song followed quickly. “If that light is under a bushel, it’s missing something kind of crucial.”

Perhaps it’s hubris, but one of the reasons I retired early from my library career was that I felt that my light was “under a bushel.”

I have to keep reminding myself that celebrity, notoriety, being “distinguished” — these things aren’t necessary to being “the light of the world.”

We can all be the light of the world if we are true to who we really are.

Personally, I’ll be needing God’s help with that.

Many thanks to G. for her editorial help.

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