Friday, September 24, 2010
A Dialogical Journey
This year, Redeemer Arts Ministries will be embarking on a ministry-wide dialogical journey, exploring what it means for us as artists to allow the Gospel to change our hearts, our communities and our world.
How can we learn to articulate our spiritual callings as artists? What descriptors, what roles and words can we assign to one who is called to the work of renewing culture through art-making? We came up with six descriptive roles or themes in which we'll root our discussions:
The Artist as Disciple
The Artists as Theologian
The Artist as Creator
The Artist as Servant
The Artist as Cultivator
The Artist and Beauty: The Glory of the Lord
Over the course of the ministry year, we will be using these roles as a framework for our discussions at IAF and in the various vocation groups. We invite you to join the dialogue through attending arts ministry events and by posting your responses to our weekly blogs as we unpack these concepts in the coming months.
See you soon at InterArts Fellowship!
Kenyon
Friday, September 17, 2010
Embodied Soul Work
Stanley Hauerwas commenting on the disciplined life of the artist writes, “Artists, who must learn to submit to the medium in which they work, demonstrate the kind of training necessary for any of us to see the world rightly.” (Hauerwas, “Fully Human; Art And The Religious Sense.” Image Number 60 (2009): 103) But the regiment of an artist is not just an analogy or a paradigm for the well-ordered life of a Christian, it is reflective of true Christian embodiment. Just as the ascetic directs the body to God, the dancer can likewise make room in the body for God to nourish self and others. What makes anyone want to exert such effort? Love—therefore, Jones is correct, “Love must have a body.” (Mark of His Wounds, p.108)
A theology of embodiment is crucial for our technical age, with our rational ethos. The Church needs dancers, painters, and actors to teach us how to inhabit our bodies. Christians are called to be present in space and know how to move in space with real presence in order for love to take shape physically. Let us, then, offer up to God our bodies and our bodies of work and begin to praise him. Let’s dance.
--Maria
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Gold Rush!
Before I moved to
In the Screwtape Letters Off-Broadway, Max McLean portrays a voracious demon surviving on human souls for food. During one of his disdainful lectures on “tempting”, he quips that the best way to destroy a human’s spiritual potential is to keep them always focused on the future or past, never enjoying present pleasures or provisions. It's the kind of joke that gets a knowing chuckle from the audience, as we all recognize in ourselves a constant striving for more. In a similar way, a ravenous pursuit of recognition detracts us from our true callings as artists in the city: to enjoy and to become the gift of God. God became a Gift for us in Christ, and we are meant to become like Christ who was a servant to all. So what has become our gold, our treasure? For what reward do we walk by the riverbed with pans jangling? What drives us as we write, rehearse, network, audition, study, design, paint, perform and collaborate?
Recently I came across a video of Bill T. Jones accepting a commission to create a new work. His stark humility and brazen generosity remind me of what a gift it is to be an artist: To have this food for our souls, and to be able to extract meaning from living in a way that is transferrable to others. I’m reminded that I must continue my journey as an artist for some other reason beyond recognition. Even in
Take care in the city, friends. I hear there's gold in that river!
Kenyon
Video of Bill T. Jones, Receiving a commission
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt3fdKj-P6Y&feature=related