Divine Debts In The Land of Giants
How do legacy, destiny and divine gifts have to come together to pay a divine debt? Hopefully the city of Rome and the works of Michelangelo have the answers.
What a sight to behold. The Sistine Chapel ceiling and adjacent altar wall are known to be Michelangelo’s magnum opus, the greatest work of one of the world’s greatest artists of all of human history. Transcendent of time and language, generations and cultures, nationalities and religions. Marvelled across the world and throughout the centuries by those lucky enough to bask in its glory. And now, here I stand beneath it.
It is so immersive, so all-encompassing, so utterly resplendent. It is too much to decode initially. Over 300 supersized and superhuman figures dance in dynamism, flying off the walls and into our imaginations; it sucks you into a whole new realm of fabled reality. A world of gods and giants, demons and devils, myths and legends, of religious fever pitch and mystical, metaphysical alchemy. These are tales and stories that have accompanied us throughout our entire lives but have always been confined to the monotonous, monotone set-type text of worn bible pages and the regurgitated and uninspiring words of priests, preachers and teachers. With one step forward and with one glance upward, they have finally come to life.
Exploring Rome is very much an extension of this world. Everywhere one goes these giants reside. Trevi Fountain, Fountain of The Four Rivers at Piazza Navona, Musei Capitolini, Foro Italico stadium, Borghese Gallery, Piazza del Campidoglio, Piazza Venezia, the list goes on and on and far beyond. Even if you walk across the 354 feet of the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II bridge these behemoths contest in magnificent action telling the patriotic allegories of ‘oppression conquered’, ‘loyalty to the state’, ‘freedom’ and ‘unification of Italy’. These Ubermensch are everywhere and their ubiquity communicates just how far from home you really are. Not simply geographically but historically and conceptually. You are not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy, but in a land that time never forgot, celebrated in perpetuity across the aeons by its adoring denizens, breathing new life into old marble as old adventures are told anew by the next generation. It is a land that erupts with so many literal larger-than-life heroes and dramatic scenes that are so adeptly crafted into existence you realise with every single footstep through the city, you enter into a new episode of history, fantasy and wonder. I can’t help but recall, W.B. Yeats who wrote:
“I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
Staring back up at Michelangelo’s heavenly manifestation, I’m still struggling to take it all in. What does this mean? How does this affect me? What am I feeling? A voice inside my head whispers softly, ‘stay with me, stay with me’. Previous to my arrival at the Sistine Chapel was the completion of a two-hour walking tour of the Vatican museum. To say that I was a little pooped is very much an understatement. I look around and pounce upon an available spot on the busy benches that line the perimeter of the chapel. Tour groups pour in in waves. A scattered team of frustrated but surprisingly professional minders remind us constantly not to take photographs (everyone is taking photographs), not to make any noise (everyone is making noise), not to stand by the steps that lead to the side chapel (people are always by these steps). These announcements, even the ‘please remain silent’ requests are asked politely in person but also belted out over an aggressively loud speaker system, just in case.
I sit. I stay. I stare. ‘I might never be back here again’, is a thought I chew through, ‘so take it all in’. An hour passes and there is still so much to process. It’s one thing to witness what is in front of you, it’s another to ask ‘What lesson do I take from this? Why is this important? What does this change in me?’. These are questions I try to ask of most experiences in my life, but being witness to one of the most prolific and prestigious experiences the world has to offer, the ante is perhaps higher and the questions even more relevant.
“Not impressed?? Oh, you think you can do better??” my inner voice spits out, “Where’s your Sistine Chapel then??”. And that’s it. That is exactly it. The piece of the puzzle that my subconscious had told me to hold out for. The epiphany. The revelation. The realisation of what Michelangelo’s divine expression was actually saying, not just to me but to humanity through the ages:
Where is your masterpiece?
What are your divine gifts?
How will you apply them for the greater good?
How will they bring humanity together?
Can you create a legacy that will last 500 years and beyond?
Show us the magnificence poised beneath your fingertips!?
Where is your Sistine Chapel?!
In a letter to the scientist Robert Hooke in 1675, Isaac Newton famously wrote: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”. Everything we have in this current day iteration of life is due to the advances, innovations and hard work of those that have come before us. These Giants of art, craft, science and industry rallied their wills and skills and pushed the human race forward. We do indeed stand on the shoulders of these giants, but what divine debt does that incur? The debt that we too are obligated to use our God-given/cosmically-ordained gifts to push the human race forward once again, to provide the sound footing for future generations to stand on our shoulders, to enable them to see that much further than those than came before them.
The Sistine Chapel is Michelangelo reminding us of this eternal gauntlet, this divine debt we all incur while simultaneously providing us with the proof that it can be reconciled, how it is a debt that can be paid off. He has shown us what the cost of admission is to run in the great human race. ‘This is my legacy to humanity, what is yours?!’, the Sistine Chapel screams. It changes the question from “I wonder if we all have a Sistine Chapel ceiling within us?” to “You better hurry up, future generations are waiting!”.
Crikey.
That’s when I remember the story our museum guide had recounted earlier, that despite the great honour of being personally selected by Pope Julius II to paint the Ceiling, Michelangelo actually turned him down. In those days saying no to the Pope was the equivalent of saying no to God himself, but it was because Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor and never a painter, and had no experience with frescoes either. Few people could have survived such a rebuttal, ending with the Pope forcing Michelangelo to accept the position, albeit offering him free reign on the designs. The work began in April 1508 lasting until October 1512. From firing his initial team to do the work painstakingly by himself, to fighting with the Pope for the agreed payment of 3,000 ducats (approximately US$600,000), Michelangelo even wrote a poem about his misery for the project, “I am not in the right place - I am not a painter.” Safe to say, Michelangelo hated the whole process from start to finish, albeit once the great work was unveiled he immediately earned the moniker of “il Divino”, ‘The Divine One’. He was henceforth regarded as the greatest artist of all time as the Sistine Chapel was deemed the greatest artwork of all time.
So what is the lesson here? What do we learn? Is our happiness not relevant to our success? Or inversely and far more worryingly, can unhappiness be an indicator of success? Is getting over our own self-imposed doubts and limitations the biggest and most important hurdle to overcome if we wish to achieve our potential? Do we need to appreciate that even when we don’t believe in ourselves it’s important to have those around us that do, and it is they who can push us into greatness? Or is that the hardest things in life, the mountains we never wish to climb actually end up being the greatest things we could ever accomplish? I want to know what Michelangelo thought. What did he think of his creation when it had finally finished? If he hated it, does that mean the artist isn’t even a relevant critic on the value of their own work? Did he think he could have done it better? Or in the end, did he view his sacrifices of mind and body as worthy charges to become Il Divino? Or the far more dizzying question, if he hated every second of this process and still created the greatest artwork the world had ever seen, what kind of interstellar-level entity could he have created if he had actually loved the work he was doing? So many questions the mind boggles.
I take another look at up… It’s just so surreal, so ethereal, so empyreal. Demons and devils. Angels and gods. Giants and men. All whipped up in fresh frenzy and furor. This perfect, enrapturing visual symphony frozen in time yet lavish in animation. It’s hard to ignore the prominence and importance of Michelangelo made of duality; he painted both good and evil, the dark and the light, the dream and the nightmare. Without the presence of one, the other loses value. Heaven has no significance without the contrasting Hell to balance its existence. The Ceiling shows how we need to treat both the best parts of us and what we may deem the worst parts of us as integral to the living, sacred masterpiece that we humans are. If we are to be at our most effective, most capable, most impactful, we must invoke all the sides of our being to enable us to express the great work that bubbles beneath our surface. The dark sides and the human flaws add to our depth, add to our identity, we are not who we are in spite of them, we are who we are because of them. Look at what Michelangelo has created and it’s impossible to argue otherwise. A great expression is an honest one, an honest one is balanced in such duality, drenched in both beauty and horror, weakness and strength, our flawed human side and our limitless godself. If we embrace it all, we know not the power and the magnificence of the masterpieces we can create.
What of confrontation and adversity? What do we do when the world becomes too much as we march upon our missions of such true expression? A closer look at the Ceiling shows that no matter the initial and apparent chaos, no matter how unfathomable, bamboozling or overwhelming some person, some situation or some thing may appear to be, it was all created one brush stroke at a time. It may appear daunting, but zoom in far enough and you can see each and every individual brush stroke. These brush strokes were not created by magic but consciously, by cause and effect, one by one, every single one is accounted for. So we should not fear the chaos when it comes for us, it may be made up of a million strokes from the devil’s brush, but each stroke isolated is one that you can conquer. Break down what you face to its individual brush strokes and you can break through anything.
One can’t help but feel intimidated by all of this, apprehensive at Michelangelo’s ‘eternal gauntlet’ that he has thrown down before me, that he has thrown down before all of us. How could little old me possibly be able to contribute to humanity in such a way as to impact the generations that follow? Perhaps the answer lies in the technicalities… as we first have to realise the levels of our greatest achievements are technically beyond our current conceptual abilities. If we can’t even imagine how we ourselves will evolve and how great we will become as we continue to grow, to learn, to expand, as we sail forward into a sea of a thousand tomorrows, we are therefore literally incapable of imagining how great the things that future version of ourselves will create will even be. What is important is a commitment to this neverending metamorphosis, a practice of expression and a mindset of embracing the unknown. We must be ready to ride the freight trains of chance and destiny at whatever time and place they choose to crash through in our lives. Wherever we go, we must create magnificent scenes, glorious scenes, painted using love and fire, happiness and beauty, tragedy and horror. We must practice creating scenes bigger and greater and more powerful than ourselves. We must conduct the orchestras of self and soul, we must tap into the Creatrix, we must tap into Source, we must let the fantasia flow with eyes wide shut and minds and hearts wide open. We must lift ourselves above the squalls of doubt and fear, worry and routine, status and quo. We must peek above the parapet of our own potential. And at times we must stop. Stop and pause and assess and reflect too. As I clock my fourth hour in seated pensive poise below these Sistine dreams, gawping and gaping in rife rumination, I realise this is as crucial as the commitment, the practice and the mindset. So stop in equal measure. Stop to ruminate, stop to reevaluate. Stop to ensure your great human race is not a mindless rat race. Stop to direct, to create, to impact. Stop to make history, stop to transcend time. Stop to simply allow Self to be expressed in any way it desires. If we do so, the application of these sacred wills and skills of ours will paint rapturous and dazzling constellations across the skies of our future. These impossibly bright and brilliant stars will inspire and guide the generations that follow us. They will flesh out the shoulders to be stalwart and sturdy enough to support the giants of the future. So take the time to stop. Take the time to wrestle with your own Giants that may be holding you back. Take the time to fly to this Land of Giants and see it all for yourself, whatever it takes, for the generations of tomorrow are waiting for you!