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Theological Table-Talk
By Hugh T. Kerr

THE MUSEUM

Having just returned from nearly eight months in Europe, travelling and studying under a Guggenheim grant, some impressions and reactions may be permissible in this section. Since my project had to do with "symbolism and religious ideas," I write not about political or ecclesiastical conditions as such but about certain (to the tourist) very obvious social and cultural patterns which (to the theologian) also have religious application.

Everywhere the traveller goes in Europe there is a museum. Some sophisticated tourists, with Fielding's Guide to Europe under their arm, may deliberately pass up the museums in search for the best place to eat and the best spot to shop. But if you would see anything at all of old Europe's treasures preserved from past days of glory, you must enter the museums. There are hundreds to choose from, for every city has one or two and often several. And in addition to museums of all kinds there are castles, palaces, villas, manor houses, for mer residences, and summer pavilions of kings, princes, dukes, popes, archbishops. There in brocaded splendor and glittering array the guided tour gapes and gawks at the furniture and bric-a-brac of an aristocracy that is no more.

Instructive as the museums and palaces may be, there is about most of them, especially in the gloomy grey light of winter, a haunting , nostalgic quality. For the museum is a repository for ancient riches. Some of these are still highly prized, but many more only curiosities. Customs and tastes in art and architecture, in what we call today "gracious living," change swiftly. Perhaps this is reason so many tourists hire an official guide to take them through the corridors of the past. A recent cartoon picturing two tour outside the Louvre carried the dialogue: :"What guide did you have?" "We went through without a guide!" "But how did you know what to admire?"

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This line of reflection, for whatever reason, often led me to think of the Church. Perhaps it was the disillusioning experience of walking through St. Peter's in Rome and the various Vatican adjuncts such as the Sistine Chapel. Here one inevitably wonders about the relation between Church and culture. The interaction between medieval Christianity and Renaissance magnificence is everywhere exhibited. Yet the relation of essential Christian faith, of the teaching and the person of the Galilean, of the virtues of humility and meekness to the opulent extravagance of an institutionalized Church of princes, secular and sacred-this is also very obvious and very disturbing.

When in my naïveté I asked what the schedule of services was in St. Peter's, thinking it would do a Protestant good to worship at the citadel of Roman Catholicism, I was told by the Chief of the Guides in Rome-"St. Peter's is no longer a church; it is a public museum."

Is this capable of further, more general extension? Has the Church become a museum? That is a loaded question, but one of the sad and pathetic things about many of the great cathedrals and famous churches of Europe is that, for the most part, the only people who are inside are tourists. Notre Dame in Paris on Christmas Day was deserted, and there was no evidence of Christmas anywhere in the Cathedral. The Reformed theologian in me is tempted to say that all this is true of Romanism but that Protestantism, on the contrary, is alert and alive. I wish it were so. Has the Church become a museum, a repository of interesting relics from the past, a maze of aisles through which tourists wander and wonder? Lest I be charged with faithless cynicism, let me say I am not ready to answer that question in the affirmative. To say "yes" to that is to say "no" to the Gospel. But the question is there, and it cannot be evaded with pious phrases or proper theological propositions. To the Reformed among us comes again the unceasing summons to be reformed and to be reforming.

BREAD AND WINE

Every visitor to the Continent, especially France and Italy, soon discovers that eating and drinking are highly ritualistic, even sacramental. No self-respecting Latin European would dream of gulping the breakfast coffee as he dashed for the office, snatching a sand-

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wich at a drugstore for lunch, sitting down for dinner at 6 p.m. to a single main dish-even if it happened to be steak and french fries. The whole social-and perhaps religious-tradition is against such a vulgar attitude toward food and drink. At least the Frenchman or the Italian would think it vulgar to treat food as no more than fuel.

For one thing, food and drink have been hard to come by in Europe for centuries, and in many places and in many families they are far from plentiful even today. Bread is still bread, "the staff of life" and an inevitable and necessary feature of every meal. It is often home baked, comes in endlessly variegated sizes and shapes, invariably encased in a crunchy crust, and eaten as often plain as with butter. To cat one's soup or spaghetti or fish or veal without gnawing constantly on a chunk of bread would be for the Continental intolerable. Even the Continental breakfast, which seems so skimpy to Americans and Britishers, is a well-rehearsed rite of rolls, croissants, brioches, butter and jam, as elaborate in its own way as griddle cakes and sausage.

'The ritualistic attitude toward the drinking of wine is well-known by all travellers, especially Americans, who laugh and joke about it and generously indulge themselves. But wine is not merely an alcoholic drink, it is (like bread) hand-made, so to speak. It does not come from the corner "package store"; it comes from the little, local vineyards and is the careful and loving distillation of sun and rain, of hills and valleys, of spring and summer breezes, of the sky which fertilizes and the earth which receives the impregnated seed. To be sure, water (or at least so they say) can now be safely drunk in any large European city or town. But water, which has its own unique symbolism, is not the same as blood-red wine which reminds the Continental of the elemental, coursing, slightly intoxicating processes of nature. As we should know from Pentecost, the effect of drinking too much new wine is apparently somewhat similar to being filled with the Holy Spirit.

But apart from such an ambiguous parallel, does all this have religious significance? It is no accident, I think, that the Eucharist, the sacrament of bread and wine, should have been interpreted so naturalistically or realistically in Latin-European Catholicism. The dogma of transubstantiation, regardless of Aristotelian metaphysics, is easily acceptable to the Frenchman or the Italian whose every meal, every day, is a sort of ritualistic miracle of bread and wine,

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taken quietly, in leisure, in pleasant surroundings among family and friends.

Contrariwise, go to Protestant Germany, the Netherlands, or to Great Britain and you immediately pass over into very different eating and drinking habits. Not only is the food different, generally heavier, but the mystique surrounding even the humblest restaurant in France or Italy is lacking. Not that food and drink are lacking; far from it. But the northern Protestant eats his ragout, sauerkraut, roast beef, boiled potatoes, and drinks his lukewarm beer with a gusto that would horrify a Frenchman or an Italian.

Is it more than coincidence, then, that the Protestant North in Europe, especially the conservative Calvinistic tradition, has not only bad an uneasy conscience about food and drink but also about the sacraments of Christian faith? But such a question makes it look too simple. It is not really a matter of Catholic versus Protestant or of wine versus water. It is the old problem of nature and grace, of sacred and secular, and that issue-irrespective of how we cat or drink-requires fresh consideration in our day.

THE HIGH PLACES

Anyone driving a small foreign car over the well travelled highways of Europe soon learns that the roads in the southern part of the Continent are mostly up and down and around. Trains go through tunnels and planes fly over the highest Alps, but downshifting the gears in a Volkswagen, whether to go up or to brake on a downgrade, is a tedious and sometimes painful introduction to the countryside. From Lyons in mid-France south into Provence, the storied and high-story towns of Nimes, Orange, Avignon, and especially Les Baux begin to try the driver's skill while he does his best to enjoy the view. Along the French Riviera just behind the glittering beaches, bill towns like Grasse (perfume) and Vence (Matisse) stand back from the sea in security and loftiness. Monte Carlo is an escalator of villas and shops from sea to sky. The tiny principality of Monaco boasts three "Corniche" roads: Grande, Moyenne, and Inferieure (but one is tempted to say that as roads they are all "inferior"). Switzerland's landscape is of course topsy-turvy and so are the roads. And except for the flat plain from Milan

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to Venice, Italy too is mostly vertical. The spectacular and dizzy Amalfi drive from Naples to Sorrento and around (and it is really around) to Positano, Ravello, and on to Salerno is a tingling experience, especially for the driver. In Sicily, if possible, the hills are higher and the roads are steeper. The Greeks, whose temples in wonderful preservation still adorn the island, built with a view for a view. The Greek theatres at Taormina and Syracuse, the stately ridge of structures at Agrigento, the jumbled heap of columns at Selinunte, and the magnificent aloofness of the temple at Segesta are silent but articulate witnesses to man's age-old longing to go up to the high places, to look out on his surroundings from a lofty perch, and there to build a temple, a tabernacle, a fortress, or, in more modern times, a hotel or a restaurant.

The Bible speaks often of hills and mountains and high places. The Psalmist looks to the hills for divine help, and Jerusalem is a city "whither the tribes go up." Bultmann would suggest we demythologize Isaiah's spatial Vision of the Lord who was "high and lifted up," but we may reflect briefly on the obvious implications of these and other high places.

For one thing, a high place promises an extension of vision. To go up is to be able to see further and better than down below. The exalted panorama is bigger, better, brighter. Another feature of the original high places was their security from outside threats. The hill towns of Assisi and Siena, for example, were virtually impregnable. Even today it is some trick to circumnavigate the hairpin curves up and over the mountain passes, and in Switzerland even with the best mechanized equipment many roads are tightly closed during the winter months.

Still another aspect of the high places is the sense of exhilaration and ecstasy which increases the higher you go up and the more the oxygen in the air decreases. Regardless of age or physical condition, climbing a steep hill makes the heart beat a little faster and the lungs breathe a little deeper, and perhaps the brain may swim a little freer. Mountain climbers have always known about this, and Captain Cousteau tells us that there is a corresponding giddiness and intoxication for those who swim too deep or too long with aqua lung under the sea.

The higher up the more numinous is the experience, the nearer one is to the boundless sky above and to the heavens where Deity

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dwells. So Moses on Mount Sinai and Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. And whatever it was that infuriated the Old Testament prophets about the pagan high places, against which they thundered, Christian Churches over the centuries have often been built upon the hills. The Conquistadores in Mexico erected their Churches on top of Aztec pyramids; Europe is dotted with chapels on hill tops (a striking recent example is Le Corbusier's Notre Dame at Ronchamp); the great high-reaching Gothic cathedrals like Strasbourg, Cologne, and Salisbury carry the worshipper's eye and soul up and up and up.

What means it then that today the fascination of the old high places seems to have diminished? Once inaccessible and difficult to assault, the old securities and ivory tower euphoria have vanished. There is a curse on "modern Gothic," and "contemporary" church buildings like our ranch houses and suburban factories hug the ground, are low lying, and tend to move out rather than up. Or is it possible that a whole new experience of the high places is opening up before us in the as yet highly ambiguous but greatly exciting possibilities of space travel?

THE RED TAPE WORM

The formalities of travel in Europe so far as customs and credentials are involved have in recent years been cut considerably. Crossing and recrossing seventeen borders, we were never once asked to open our baggage for custom inspection. With stateside license plates on the car, the only document ever inspected was the "green card" representing liability insurance coverage. The police Were everywhere courteous and patient and helpful, though sometimes at the point of exasperation. The Paris gendarme knew where our asked-for destination was, but because of the maze of one-way streets he couldn't direct us to it; he suggested we park the car and walk. His Rome counterpart, finding us faced in the opposite direction for the Trevi Fountain solved the tangled problem by stopping all traffic and personally leading us in a forbidden U-turn.

But red tape still exists in quantity in Europe, and pity the poor traveller who unwittingly finds himself ensnared in its toils. Sometimes a simple trip to the postoffice can become the day's ordeal. Except in Britain where everyone patiently and quietly queues up

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in line awaiting his proper turn, the Continentals push and shove in fierce individualistic competition, just as they drive, by the way. There are also hierarchies within hierarchies which most tourists do not know, and priorities are administered accordingly. Try something just out of the ordinary, such as an air-mail registered package to Hawaii, and the whole officialdom of the postoffice will gather around for the discussion.

The mysterious chain-of-command in the red tape bureaus is a constant source of amusement and despair at times. Go to a bank, cash a traveller's cheque, ask for fifty 100 lire pieces (for those never-ending tips), and then stand back and watch the staff pass the memo back and forth. One man signs it, anther checks it, another examines your passport, and still another takes down all your vital statistics including your wife's birthdate, and finally the proper official doles out the money with a flourish. Watching the changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace is a simple and conventional pastime, no entrance fees, no protocol, no special instructions (now that the Guards have retreated within the iron gates). But someone high in the palace police must have issued the regulation that the crowds stand back five feet from the iron railing Perhaps the purpose was to give everyone a better chance to see. But the minor officials further down the line, faithfully and mechanically following orders, kept badgering the crowds all through the ceremony, trying to maintain an imaginary line exactly five feet from the fence.

One more example. Coming home after a long time abroad is a wonderfully heart-warming thrill. But getting off a ship in New York and out of the pier is still an agonizingly protracted and largely needless confusion of customs inspection (perfunctory), porters (not necessary to tip them, so it says, but just try to get away without it), and checkers of all kinds. We hadn't been on an Atlantic liner for twenty-five years, but we couldn't see that much improvement or speed-up in this worrisome business had been effected in the meantime. It's still a headache.

Why do I recount these more or less trivial trials? Because red tape, officialdom, chain-of-command, documents, credentials, and memo passing are all so much a part of our contemporary culture. In the area of travel they may even be decreasing and more and more streamlined; but in other areas of life bureaucracy is multiplying at an alarming rate of speed. Certainly this is true in American

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education as every teacher and administrator knows all too painfully. And it has become an encroaching menace in the Churches as every pastor unwittingly turned operator knows all too well.

The minister's study in many instances has long since become the administrator's office. The ecumenical movement for all its tremendous contributions still seems to many an association not of Christians but of Churchmen. Denominational literature and programs descend on the pastor's desk with unrelenting regularity. Never has there been so much Biblical and theological discussion about the Church as the fellowship of faith, and never has the Church seemed so institutionalized, stratified, organized, impersona.,

The solution obviously is not to cut all red tape here or everywhere. The special problem of our time, and one to which our best prophetic minds ought to speak, is how we are to live with this bureaucratic tendency in a constructive and wholesome way, bending it to serve us lest we become its obsequious slaves.

LET THERE BE DARKNESS

Electricity is no doubt more plentiful and cheaper in America than in Europe. But is that the only reason why shops and offices are so dark and lightless, windows so shuttered and barricaded, homes so walled off and secured against the outside world, museums and showplaces so dingy, dark, and dim? I am told that fluorescent lighting uses more electricity when it is switched on and off than when it is left burning. But in Europe, where there is lots of this kind of fixture, the lights are invariably out-until you enter the store as a prospective customer. I have watched cobblers mending shoes and women making embroidery as they huddled inside the dark recesses of their shops. Clerks in offices pore over their figures without lamps or lights. Paintings on art museum walls are sometimes so poorly illuminated, they can be studied better in prints. Even the Museum of Modern Art in Paris with acres of window space was so cold and grey, and the windows so streaked with grime and dirt, that it was no pleasure to visit. Almost never, in the south of Europe at least, do you see a private home set in an expanse of lawn. Homes are walled off and shut up; windows sometimes have several layers of blinds inside and out; gates are usually closed and

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often locked; it is common to read a sign to the effect-"Beware of the dog!"

This living in the dark was something I never could get used to and, coming from America where we have so much light, picture windows, front lawns and backyard barbecues, this contrast was striking and unsettling. There are simple economic and socio-cultural reasons for this no doubt. But what bothers me is whether the Europeans live in the dark because they are afraid of the light; or is it because they know that life is not all light and therefore they have learned to be at home with the darkness. Arid for Americans, are we all sunshine and neon lighting and glass windows and walls because we understand the light; or is it because we are really afraid of the darkness and have never learned to make our peace with it?

It would be too didactic to pursue the darkness and light contrast farther, in the Bible for example or as representing the conscious and the unconscious, but here as in so many instances the age-old symbols have a way of reappearing and provoking reflection in not only one dimension but in overlapping planes of life and experience.