From Chaos, Discovery

Hands down, this is one of my favorite themes in art, music and literature.  I could probably spend all day talking about different instances of it.  It is all over the pages of my favorites novels, emerging from my favorite albums and hitting you over the head in my favorite movies.

From madness, peace.  From terror, enlightenment. From chaos, discovery.

Struggling to only name a few.  A very simple example can be heard in Cursive's, Gentleman Caller.  The release that comes in the second half of the song makes the moral of the song that much more relevant and accessible.  "The worst is over."

Radiohead is constantly executing this theme well, but the clearest example is probably Paranoid Android.  Here, they are back and forth between chaos and discovery.  The haunting lines "The panic, the vomit - God loves his children" right before Jonny Greenwood kills you on guitar.

I couldn't find it online, but you have to listen to Midsummer's Impalpable.  The harmony of strings and drums at the end is ten times more lovely because of the cacophony that precedes it.

Though more difficult to sample online, literature is oozing with characters that emerge from the pit to absorb the light of discovery.  And I'm not just talking about climax and resolution, but the ah-hah moment that characters experience when their pain makes freedom taste sweeter.  Potentially my favorite character ever, Alyosha of The Brothers Karamazov suffers through the implosion of his narcissistic family and the death of his mentor, Father Zosima.  Unable to control or even predict his environment, Alyosha weeps only to find that he weeps for everyone, sympathizing with the pain of the planet and longing to see it healed.  "He fell to the earth a weak youth and rose up a fighter."

In a difficult instance of our theme (and in a foreshadowing of theological musings to come), Paradise Lost shows us a different kind of Satan.  Indeed, you can almost sympathize with his intention (that is, if he ain't lying) to reveal the depth of God's mercy by bringing low humankind into the cesspool of sin.  For only from this rank perspective can the Father demonstrate his Glory in his willingness to suffer any humiliation in order to win us back.  Is it fortunate that we fell?

Read 100 Years of Solitude.

And finally, cinema: Sometimes I get greif for being such a fan of Donnie Darko.  But it isn't the dark fantasy coming of age theme that interests me most.  It is the scene where Donnie shoots Frank in the eye and then turns to tell Frank's friend with tears in his eyes, "Go home!  Go home and tell your parents everything's gonna be okay!" And it is (spoiler alert: only watch until 1:30 if you don't want the ending ruined) this moment.

I also get asked how Magnolia can be my favorite movie and its because of the scene where William H. Macy's character, broken-mouthed and bloodied by the frog the strikes him in the face admits at last, "I really do have love to give.  I just don't know where to put it."  And her smile in the last frame of the movie makes you know, that all the chaos was worth it.

Its that glimpse of sun and sky from the concrete corridors of downtown LA. Its the moment (in real life) when a student wakes up from the stupor that surrounds him, the smug, entitled, self-infatuated fog that seeps into our bones in California to see the joy that comes from considering someone else's good before your own.  Its that year of therapy when a girl casts off the emotional shroud of abuse and neglect to demand more for herself and for her children.

From pain, growth. From chaos, discovery. From the cross, Resurrection!