Parade of the Powers
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.”
That this Dali-inspired painting titled The American Dream is unsigned and its artist cannot be tracked down perhaps cynically seals its irony. Indeed, many cheap art-print websites pass it off as a painting of the master himself! But if the artist is unknown, the message of his (or her) art is clear: it is a parody with a stinging social message, riffing off of Dali’s Temptation of St. Anthony (1946).
Dali’s masterpiece is a profound and insightful depiction of the monstrosity of the demonic, and its subjection to the weak by the ultimate revelation of divine weakness in the Cross. It needs little interpretation: Anthony is beset, not just with those temptations most scintillating to us moderns, with icons of lust and of glory, but with images of spiritual coherence, independence, virility, and strength. For his part, he is naked and beaten, helpless before the terrifying horde. But claiming the power of the Cross, the Powers tremble: Christ has defeated them by his embrace of death, and Anthony, following the way of the Cross to the point of his own nakedness and disability, wields the power of that defeat, though himself no great victor.
In American Dream, however, there is neither outlet nor possibility of either resistance or victory. The Powers and Principalities are simply on parade in all their horrible caricature. A blindfolded Washington steps forward courageously but aimlessly, oblivious to his the burden of his ball and chain, or the great train which follows in his wake. He is crossing no Rubicon, and lighting the way for his blind eyes with a perfunctory scale of justice — a scale which, in fact, is yet another implement of the money changer.
The ghastly figures following behind are not difficult to interpret: old Uncle Sam is even more withered, his strength sapped by the parasitic cash register emerging from his gut (although he does manage to push out a Pinocchio nose to cultivate a couple more leaves of cash). Oblivious to his sorry state, however, he is more concerned with the bearded, beturbaned, and white-robed figure (Osama bin Laden?) perched on his heaving back like a woodpecker than sorry and disintegrating form. Behind him, a dog-pig draped in the Chinese flag carries a bank vault, with a golden Hindu idol perched atop, which seems to be in the process of disintegrating into coin. An oil-filled camel follows behind, while in the rear, a pastiche of classical statuary and Mt Rushmore serve as the façade for some great factory filling the air with putrid clouds of black smoke. The classical figure is crying waterfalls, beneath filling an ocean, where Big Ben (representative of the old English tradition) slowly sinks.
Beneath the feet of these towering figures, two tiny, naked lady liberties wail and lament (or perhaps they are dancing and celebrating?) The desert is littered with symbols of finance, and the altar in the distance erected to infinite growth and irrational exuberance. It is an artifact of bleak, nihilistic, surreal cynicism.
Anthony knows the exit, even from this more horrible and relatable parade of powers. The way is the Cross: is weakness, foolishness, and defeat. Lord, have mercy upon us.
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.
— The Holy Apostle James, Brother of our Lord (James 5:1)
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
O merciful Lord, grant to your faithful people pardon and peace, that we may be cleansed from all our sins and serve you with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Steps up to heaven
Thomas Mccallum is a folk musician based in Nova Scotia. This cover of Christ the Fair Glory is hardly his best work — I highly recommend checking his website, linked above, and checking out his recently released album! — but it is the only “cover” of the hymn I’ve ever found on anything other than organ, and I appreciate hearing this robust angelological hymn (of the 8th C superstar Rabanus Maurus, no less!) brought forward into a new voice for a new generation.
Upcoming this week (Sept 29) is Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael and all the Angels, of which this hymn is an important instance. Against our heavily moral and rather bleak sequence of lectionary readings, the upcoming feast signals a shift in seasons: from the hardness of fall transitions into the wonder of (what I call) “Pumpkintide,” where we confront the mystery of the most vibrant and colorful life juxtaposed with the nakedess and death of oncoming winter. Concurrently, we’re about to shift from James to Hebrews in our Epistle cycle, so that changes the color of our readings significantly.
