James Carse and Charlie Brown

I’m still preoccupied with James Carse’s The Religious Case Against Belief. At one point, Carse talks about the nature of poetry. He says that poetry – or any form of original expression “from hairstyling and dramaturgy to oratory and ceramics” – “says nothing.” Poetry’s only meaning is its own creation. “Poetry is… not about anything.” As Carse says, “If we could agree on what Oedipus Rex is about we could focus on the agreement and ignore the play. But the play defies replacement by anything besides itself.”

My sense is that Carse overstates his case a bit, or doesn’t quite state it correctly. Poetry or art is about something: it is just not about anything that can be bottled up in some definitive understanding or replaced by other language. Carse recognizes that there is some content to poetry. Elsewhere, he says that poets “exercise the freedom of opening doors” and that poets are the “sources of unexpected wisdom.” But the attempt to sum up the meaning of a poem, or reduce it to a few words or a few pages, is likely to hide more than it reveals. As Carse says, poetry “does not translate into belief, or into rational thought of any kind,” and its meaning cannot be captured. Poetry, nevertheless, discloses reality in some way and enriches our lives. To attempt to translate that disclosure into something familiar and manageable inevitably obscures it. There is a possibly apocryphal story about Robert Schumann. After he had just finished playing his most recent composition, an earnest young man approached him and inquired: "Extraordinary, Herr Schumann! But what does it mean?" Schumann simply sat down and played the piece again.

Carse, unlike many of religion’s critics, does not consider religion to be some attempt to compete with science with an alternative explanation of the universe. Religion, rather, for Carse, is closer to art. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is a great mosaic of art forms: literature, music, liturgy, architecture, the graphic arts amassed over thousands of years in one great collection. Carse says that “[r]eligion in its purest form is a vast work of poetry.” “[A]s richly verbal as religions are, like poetry they say nothing.” I might qualify this by saying that they say nothing that can be encompassed by some other form of expression.

Perhaps, this is why the conclusion of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is so deeply satisfying. In total exasperation Charlie Brown cries out, “Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” Rather than give Charlie Brown some common bit of boiler plate – you’ve heard them all: Christmas is all about Jesus, or family, or giving rather than receiving, or love, or children or wonder – he simply recites the Luke birth narrative. This, of course, just begs the question because Linus never explains what the chapter from Luke means. Just as the meaning of religion cannot be captured, neither can the meaning of Christmas.

Although to be true to Carse's point, Linus would have to read, not just the Luke passage, but Matthew's account as well, and every other treatise, story, poem, song, liturgy or anything else that's ever been written about Christmas in the last two millenia or so. He'd also have to display every piece of art or sculture that's ever been created that focused on Christmas. Once that was complete, Linus could finally and truthfully say: “ . . . And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” The meaning of Christmas runs deeper than any description. There's simply no explaining it away.