On Transcendence

Last night a friend came over for dinner, and she and my two roommates were talking about the concept of beauty in art – Sara and Olivia were saying they think it’s important and people should still talk about it, while Ksenya (the art historian) was saying she’d like to, but it’s been deconstructed, so she no longer has the vocabulary with which to do it.
As part of that discussion, the word transcendence came up. That word has never said much to me – it seems kind of empty (and highfalutin). Kind of like “sublime.” I said as much, and Olivia said, “Don’t you feel transcendence when you listen to Bach?”
I’m not sure if I do, but it reminded me of the only good description of transcendence I’ve ever read. It’s from a book by an author that I’d never heard of (my dad bought it b/c he thought it looked interesting, and gave it to me), but really enjoyed – Acts of Faith, by Philip Caputo (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). (It’s not a Christian book, though some of the characters are.)

This is a scene where Quinette Harding, an evangelical Christian from Iowa who has come to Sudan to buy back victims of kidnapping with money raised by her church, has a transcendent moment on her second or third day in Africa.

Soon crickets filled the silence, so many chirping at once that they made a single high-pitched cry, like locusts in late summer. Frogs croaked in the green corridors along the stream forming the town’s northern border. They also made one unbroken chorus, the croak of each individual lost in the din of countless throbbing throats. Quinette felt the racket of insect and amphibian more than she heard it; it seemed to penetrate her skin and vibrate inside her, becoming one with the rush of blood through her veins; then in an instant her flesh became like the smoke from the herdsmen’s fire, all sense of herself as a separate being evaporating as her soul, set free, dissolved into an ecstatic union with frog song and cricket screech and the vast dark plain lying under the starts of an alien hemisphere. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before, and when she came back to herself just seconds later (though she felt as though she’d been gone for hours),, she tried to make sense of it. There was no drug or drink on earth that could have produced such a sensation, such an intense joy. Starting back toward her tukul, her head as buoyant as a balloon, her limbs tingling, she remembered something Pastor Tom had read to her in one of the counseling sessions she attended when she joined his church “That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.” That was the transcendent emotion she’d sought but hadn’t found in her spiritual rebirth. She’d discovered it here. More than anything she wished she could remain. In this immense, unknown country she could begin her life anew. (148-49)

I like this description, but I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything exactly like it. My moments of extreme joy and humility and awe haven’t involved completely forgetting about myself – maybe b/c I do believe the universe is personal, and I always see myself as relating to that Person who makes it so. In fact, I think a moment such as the one Quinette experienced would scare me a little. I have gotten glimpses of that feeling while watching certain movies (e.g. Contact, A. I.) – and I do like to feel that there is something bigger than myself. But the moments that seem to make the rest of life worth living – I don’t forget about myself, but I remember who God is, and I have a sense of the whole universe making sense and and working out and revolving around him who created and rules it. I see myself as a tiny part of all that.

N. T. Wright captures this well in his chapter on Revelation in Following Jesus (Eerdmans 1995).

Easter isn’t just about you and me and our present spiritual experience, or our hope beyond the grave. Easter is the beginning of God’s new world. … Easter is the victory of the creator over all evil. It is the victory of the God of love over all tyranny …. It declare that, after all, God is God, and that his kingdom shall come and his will be done on earth as it is in haven. Easter speaks of a world reborn.
What language can we borrow to do justice to an idea that big? Well, why not try thunder and lightning, earthquakes and tornadoes, devastating terror and joy so rich and full you could swim in it? Yes, we may need the picture-language of the book of Revelation. (54-55)

(I just hope he doesn’t think it’s all only picture language. I definitely believe picture-language has been used to describe the many prolepses of the Day of the Lord that have happened (e.g. the locust plague on which the book of Joel centers; the destruction of the Temple in A.D 70) and will happen, but I hope he doesn’t think there won’t be the Day of the Lord, the End of All Things, where Jesus will visibly “com[e] with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him (Rev. 1: 7).” Anything else would be a let-down.)