Silence, Beauty, and The County
Not far from my house are ghost towns. The eerie remains of a bygone time when coal was king. Driving is a past time of mine and I am often drawn to drive thru these towns. The experience always elicits an emotional response. Words have never accompanied the feelings just silence. Taken by an inescapable solemness I usually just drive and let the emotions wash over me. This all changed on my last quiet drive.
In January, Martin Scorsese is releasing his new movie Silence. It’s based on the 1966 historical fiction novel by Shūsaku Endō that tells the story of a 17th century missionary to Japan. On the recommendation of a friend, I decided to read the novel and also read Silence and Beauty by Makoto Fujimura.
In Silence, Father Rodrigues begins as an idealistic missionary who charges into an extremely dangerous environment where Christianity has been outlawed. He seems to relish the opportunity to become a martyr much like an 18 year old Marine dreams of war. Like the soldier after his first glimpse of the horrors of war, he soon realizes the journey is going to be much different than he had envisioned. He spends his time in hiding and isolation until he is captured because of the betrayal of a “friend.” This idea of betrayal is carried through the novel. The Japanese had learned that killing Christians caused the church to grow, so they chose instead to force apostasy. They would force everyone to deny Christ publicly by stepping on a bronze image of Christ known as a fumi-e. Father Rodrigues was ready to die for his faith but that was not an option. He would have to either walk on the fumi-e or be forced to watch Japanese Christians be tortured and killed as a result of his stubborn faith. After much anguish, he stares at the fumi-e and God breaks His silence. He hears Christ cry from the fumi-e:
“You may trample. You may trample. I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. You may trample. It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.”
He then steps on the fumi-e and is forced to live the rest of his life known as an apostate.
Silence is not an easy book to read. It forces the reader to grapple with questions of faith. If there is a God, why does He allow suffering? Why does it seem He is silent? Where is God when things go wrong? As I read this story, I was not ready to process it. I was moved by the coldness of the author, the darkness of the story. The ideas of hiddeness, silence, and betrayal all merged into the same emotion I felt on my drive through The County.
McDowell County, affectionately referred to as The County, was once a booming community. In the 1950s the population topped 100,000. Its county seat, Welch, was a bona fide metropolis.It was a hub of excitement and a dream come true to immigrants seeking good paying jobs.
The area was built around one industry, coal. Coal fueled the growth and also the decline of The County. In just over 50 years the population has decreased by 80%. As mines began to shut down, people had to leave. In 1982 U.S. Steel shut down the Gary mine and the Alpheus preparation plant causing unemployment rates in the surrounding towns to go as high as 90%. The household income in McDowell county during this one year alone fell 66%. Homes instantly lost almost all their value and families were forced to move. Unable to sell their homes, they simply left them.
Time went on and brush, weeds, and poverty grew undeterred. The silence was unmistakable but why was I drawn here? Why would I make the drive towards Bishop and turn at Horsepen? I seemed to find in the silence a certain beauty that I could not understand or articulate. Brokenness and ruin that seemed to sing the siren’s song.
I remained drawn but perplexed until I opened the pages of Silence and Beauty. In this book, famed artist Makoto Fujimura, took me on a journey that helped me make sense of this inward drawing. Fujimura is an artist trained in the ancient Japanese art style of Nihonga, where rocks and minerals are pulverized to create prismatic pieces that when layered creates a refractive surface. This training and his background as a Japanese American who can view Japan as both an insider and an outsider seems to have positioned him perfectly to bring clarity to all the emotions that Silence had generated in me.
Fujimura introduced me to the Japanese idea of wabi sabi. This is an idea of beauty that we do not seem to understand in the west. Wabi speaks of something wearing out or worn. Sabi can literally mean “rust.” The Japanese see beauty in things that are old, worn, dying, rusting, etc. They see beauty in the wrinkled eyes of an elderly lady. They see cherry blossoms being the most beautiful when they are falling from the tree.
I realized that I had sensed anger when seeing the image of Christ on a fumi-e stone that had been rubbed smooth and almost unrecognizable because so many feet had trampled on it. So many people had chosen to renounce Christ. The fumi-e caused me to be repulsed. To feel righteous indignation. How dare they do that to my Christ. But with the help of Fujimura I began to see the wabi sabi.
When Fujimura paints, he first beats and breaks minerals until through brokenness comes beauty. The beauty of Christ is that He came to be broken. The early church realized this when they would have viewed the cross as I viewed the fumi-e. The cross was a curse, a source of shame and death. It was only associated with outcasts and criminals. Yet the early church saw in it a light shining through darkness or as Fujimura would say, a “faith born of suffering.” Christ, on the night that he was betrayed by a friend, sat with those closest to him and celebrated the first Holy Communion. He picked up a piece of bread and broke it and likened it to his body which would be broken for us. We no longer are able to see the cross or the bread in the light the first Christians did. We have commercialized it, normalized it, shined it up, and have turned it into jewelry or tokens of faith.
To understand Christianity you must be able to see a God that left His perfect kingdom to come and enter into our brokenness. To carry our shame. Even to share our questions of faith. For on the cross even He cried “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” In the fumi-e I found a most beautiful picture of a God that was trampled and worn, that was betrayed and shamed. In the fumi-e I found a Christ that understands my struggles and brokenness. A Christ who has been hurt and betrayed. A Christ that was an outsider and an outcast. A Christ that was a recipient of Peter’s embarrassment and Thomas’ doubt. In the fumi-e I found the cross. I found my savior that bore it all to give me hope in darkness. Joy during silence.
Now when I decide to veer onto Rt 52 and drive thru towns that are worn and rusty I see beauty. I see hope in a God that understands brokenness and poverty. A God that delights in restoration and I see a savior with His pierced hands reaching out to The County. Through the silence I can almost hear Him saying:
I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland. Isaiah 43:19
