How do we balance art and order?  In Death in Venice, Thomas Mann's masterful portrayal of a man whose life unravels when he becomes entranced by the sight of a young boy and who, eventually, succumbs to cholera, we see some clues.  Underlying Mann's narrative is a wrestling with the balance between restraint and excess.  How must a man deal with this kind of attraction and yet remain a part of society?  How should a person indulge her pleasures while conforming to prevailing social mores?  Or should she?
     Art is a funny and wonderful thing.  It requires excess, that is, it must be able to think outside of the box, to ponder what isn't right now, to step into the unknown, boundaries or not.  Good art springs out of honest and determined exploration of possibility.  On the other hand, many of us have seen art (the image of a crucifix submerged in urine; two totally nude people standing outside a museum; a pile of junk on a concrete slab; or a cartoon portrayal of the prophet Muhammad come to mind) which we find silly, distasteful, repulsive, or something else.  We have issues with its boundaries.
     Yet the calculus is difficult.  It's an ordered world--that much is readily apparent--yet it is populated with often disorderly people.  On the other hand, it is often out of disorder that even greater order and meaning come.  One person's disorder is often another's gateway to dream.  Even though I may not find all art sensible, I am willing to look at the bigger picture and recognize that if God is there, everything, things apparently good as well as things apparently bad, occur in a purposeful world.  There is point.  Order is there,  and purpose abounds.  Art defies, and art exceeds, yet all things remain.  It's a curious nexus.
     As it should be.  We're not likely to find meaning, much less God, living in a box.