GHG Studio - Faith and Reason Sleeping Together

Faith and Reason Sleeping Together

Adaptations of Mantegna's Agony in the Garden and Goya's The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

     When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane for the last time, right before his betrayal by Judas, he asked Peter, James and John to stay alert and watch out for him. They fell asleep. Not just once, but three times. They might as well have camped out. In Mantegna's painting copied on this sleeping bag, the Renaissance artist shows the three disciples sacked out while Jesus fervently prays above them.
     Around the bend, we find Goya's etching, No. 43 from his satirical series, Los Caprichos. This scene also shows a sleeping character, an intellectual at his desk. He too is asleep on the job, and nightmarish creatures swirl around him.
     As the old saying goes, "you snooze, you lose". Both faith and reason can fall asleep, be unaware, and lack compassion. One must be informed by the other, yet they are often at odds. Why are religion and science treated as polarities? On this sleeping bag, the two are still separated--but the key thing is that they are not on opposite sides. And this is a single sleeping bag, made for one, not two separate beings. Shall faith and reason "sleep together", become one?
     The creative process exemplifies the integration of faith and reason. The sleeping bag's production is one example. A leap of faith was required to construct something too large for the technical limits of handbuilt porcelain. It is difficult to keep an entire piece moist at this size, and it must remain moist to do the finishing details. Parts of the sleeping bag thus received less attention than I normally like to give. A pointed lump and a depression below it, for example, were accidents of quick construction that I would have smoothed out had the clay remained pliable. This odd area, however, became a fortuitous site for the Mantegna painting--the bump lent itself to emphasizing the praying figure of Jesus, and the concave region neatly tucked away the sleepers, as if in a cave. The second painting, of the Goya etching, found the only reasonable, flat site on the upper portion of the sleeping bag. For awhile, "reason" told me to find a third image--things just go better in threes--and I'd left room for a third painting. But a third image never materialized. Nothing seemed to fit. I realized that the two pictures are not on opposite sides of the sleeping bag; in fact they are fairly close together. Suddenly the concept jelled--faith and reason are not polarities. They do not have a third counterpart, but it is imagination that gives them interplay.

Afterwards, I found a pertinent quote for the piece. In the introductory "Memoir" to Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship, G. Leibholz writes: "When a man really gives up trying to make something out of himself--a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman ...etc ...and throws himself into the arms of God ...then he wakes up with Christ in Gethsemane."

(See Matt. 14:36-56, Mark 14:32-52, Luke 22:39-53)

Chlora's Sleeping Bag
Copyright 2005 Ginger Henry Geyer
(an appropriation of Faith & Reason Sleeping Together)

On the front row, Chlora's head bobbed like a slow fishing lure.
She tried to stay awake by looking at the air with her Xray vision,
but all she saw were bits of colored dust
where the sunrays shot through the stained glass windows.
She attempted to follow the flight of a fly, but it made her cross-eyed.
She resorted to drawing on her bulletin but her lines grew cramped
and they angled off the paper. Bats in the belfry swirled
around her head. The end was near. The stubby pencil fell
and clattered downhill between high heels and wingtips, prompting
giggles from her friends and a poke between the shoulder blades
from the pewed-up lady behind her.

The drowsy organist inadvertently provided a wake up call
when her elbow grazed the keyboard.
The organ emitted a loud squalk
and some kid hollered "Organ fart!"
The organist flared her nostrils, adjusted her reading glasses
and pounded out one measure of "Holy, Holy, Holy".
On cue the whole congregation suddenly arose.
Lord God Almighty picked up Chlora out of her reverie
into the world of cheraphim and seraphim,
which wert and art and evermore shalt be.

The three holies finally wore themselves out
and Chlora slumped back into her warm pew.
Her leg had gone to sleep and it was still buzzing.
She thumped and jiggled the sting away.
With one eye, she peered upfront.
The big Jesus painting over the altar was pleading
with her again, sweating blood in his Gethsamene pose,
his hands clasped over a big rugged boulder, looking
upward at the moon and stars.
Chlora had drawn him many times over.
The rock's texture looked best when she drew on top of the rough
Cokesbury hymnal. But usually she ended up with a sad sack Jesus
who was ugly as sin. She sighed and started again.
Jesus was caked over with all these sermons
and prayers of the people, confessions, baptisms,
and those sincere youth choirs,
but Chlora kept coming back to him.
She knew that the three disciples also fell asleep on the job.
He'd told those guys "You snooze you lose",
and they did it anyway, even when he counted to three.
They might as well have brought their
sleeping bags and sacked out.

Chlora had a sleazebag at home,
but she didn't get to go camping much.
Last time her family tried it a bad storm blew at their tent
till she and her sisters were squealing like the three little pigs.
They finally jumped in the station wagon and took off,
but there was no room at the inn
so they went home. Even though it was scary,
Chlora had always wanted to go back.

The first best thing about camping was was the almost-burnt marshmallows.
You had to pay attention and toast them just right, so they
wouldn't get blobby and fall off of the wire hanger.
Right before they burst into torches you had to blow out the flame,
and fight the temptation to swing the stick around, or else the
fiery ball of goo would fly off and put somebody's eye out.
Then you had to quickly eat them right off the hanger before somebody
smushed them between graham crackers and Hershey Bars.
To heck with s'mores; less is more when it comes to marshmallows.

The next best thing about camping was getting zipped up
to your eyeballs in a warm sleeping bag so you could watch the stars.
Chlora would pretend to be floating over the earth like
Orion does, twinkling and eating Milky Ways. She would make
a pie in the sky, like intellectuals do,
except when they fall asleep at their desk.
It seemed that the Sandman doesn't care if you're
full of faith or full of reason, everybody yawns sometime.

That was it! Chlora brightened up.
Being sleepy wasn't so bad, but the separation sure was.
If faith and reason would just sleep together
like parents do, maybe when they woke up they'd
get an imagination, the same way that parents get babies.

She left her camping reverie and
scribbled over her lackluster drawing of Jesus.
She resolved to pay attention to the details,
where God is reputed to hide.
Maybe He was in the cleave of the rock
and she could draw him out.
Sometimes it was good to go back to the drawing board,
but other times it was better to sleep on it.