I got to talking with my cousin Joe’s friend Ron during dinner one evening while I was in NY for my aunt’s wake and funeral a few weeks ago. Turns out Ron and I like a number of the same spiritual writers and, in the course of our conversation, he asked I had read a book titled Leap, by Terry Tempest Williams, which he said had had a great impact on him. I had neither read nor heard of the book, which sounded interesting from his description.
Within a week after my return to Minnesota, the copy of the book Ron purchased and sent to me arrived at my doorstep and I just finished reading it. The book uses Williams’ multi-year examination of Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych, The Garden of Delights, as a vehicle for her journey of faith. She explores, examines, and almost moves into, Bosch’s images of Heaven, Hell and Earth and, in the process, probes and deepens her faith as a Mormon.
Her descriptions of Bosch’s work (which I’ve only seen pictures of, never having been to the Prado) are fascinating and there is a ton I really liked about this book. I found particularly powerful her descriptions of Hell. Hell as the “tortured chamber of our own hearts.” Hell as solitary suffering. (“A suffering that cannot be shared is a suffering that cannot be endured.”) Hell as “the Great Forgetting,” an inability to remember what moves us. Hell as an inability to perceive beauty. Her images are much more terrifying that images of burning in flames.
Williams asks a lot of questions during the course of the book. Many are questions that we all ask of ourselves in one way or another. Here are some of them:
Can a painting be a prayer?
What do we choose to preserve?
What am I afraid of? What are we afraid of?
What happens when our institutions no longer serve us, no longer reflect the truth of our own experience?
How do you paint your own conversion?
Where do we hide our passions, our positions of truth, when everything around us lifts a finger to our mouth and says, “Hush, do not disturb the peace”?
What is the principle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that means the most to you?
What do I believe?
We all need to figure out what we believe (and what it is about Jesus that means most to us) and Williams’ questions offer a lot to think about.
There is a lot else I noted as I was reading. Her definition of heretic as one who deviates from the consensus, who holds an opinion contrary to generally accepted beliefs. Her pairing of obedience and trust. Her effort to distinguish religion and spirituality (albeit in a way different than I would). I suspect on a second reading I’ll find a lot more.
Creo en Dios! 