Living ironically: the burden of prophetic awareness…

Most places I have to interact with ironically. It’s rarer when the place itself is aware of its own irony. Then i can interact with it straight. When a camera shop, for instance, is aware that it is selling a metaphor of human perception, i can just enjoy it. When everything is just a product, i have to put on other lenses to enjoy the treasures of that shop. Perhaps its like this for all artists, or ironic participants in life’s drama.

A church building for instance, is also a metaphor, and a teaching about beliefs around the sacred. Specific beliefs. We “read” architecture to get to the theology of that particular church building. Just a thought. Maybe also with people, if we really do think we are just our external roles and not eternal poems of God, it’s harder. When we realize we are these poems, temporarily behind a counter serving coffee, everything changes in the depth of interaction. We have an I-Thou exchange rather than an “I-it” in Buber’s language.

Going back to the church building metaphor. When the true church is meeting in a church building, it’s interesting. It almost makes the building redundant, or just an echo of the actual Voice in the rooms. Most artists experience this when they go to a church building, if the true church happens to be gathered in that building.

Perhaps, its just being hyper aware of the symbolic meaning of things, even while participating in them. Maybe that’s one thing the artist brings to the table—the awareness that the table itself is also a metaphor of communion and community. Hum, some ironic food for thought, anyway today!
Maybe that is the burden of prophetic awareness.