Redeemer Arts

To Dance with God

2012-01-28T12:07:00.009-05:00

It takes a lot of imagination to be a Christian. If I believe Christ, then I am one with him just as he is one with the Father and the Spirit, yet they are three persons in one. Still more, if I am in Christ I have been brought into the Trinity itself, that whirling pas de trois of the three-in-one which the early church fathers called perichoresis (dancing around). This is perhaps one of the most imaginative realities that we engage as believers: our being united with the dancing Triune God.

How transformative it must have been for Christians in the early church to make this theological "discovery", though it was hotly, even violently, debated among scholars, clergy and laity alike. When at last the belief was crystallized at the Council of Constantinople and confirmed in the Nicene Creed, there must have arisen a new and existential sense of the relationality of God, a deeper glimpse into who God really is. If you believed in the Son, you became part of the dance of the Trinity and the reconciling power of the gospel was realized!

It's the difference between being at a party together with someone but doing and being altogether apart, or else being found with that person in the center of the dance floor entangled in a heated, writhing knot of dynamic knowing. I dare say that this is closer at least to the relational reality to which we have been invited in the gospel than many of our current ways of imagining what it is to know God. Do we know him as Trinity? Can we conceive of our own sway and leap and dip and grind as we are animated within the dance of divinity? Is it of any consequence in our concept of worship and of vocation?

As artists, we are especially equipped to enliven the awareness of God's people to his perichoretic imminence. The Wild One, the Holy One is dancing among us. He is within us and we are in Him through Christ. How does this truth transform the way we approach art-making or collaboration and even how we relate to our audience? The God of creation, who hovered over the waters, the God of the Exodus, and He who died and raised from the dead is now become your dance (Father), your dance partner (Son) and your music (Spirit).

The people of God have justly been accused of having an atrophied sense of imagination and a scarce appreciation for mystery. We cannot change the past, but let us not tolerate a lack of imaginative exploration in the midst of such wonderment, such mystery and beauty, as the gospel and the Spirit present to us and to the world. Let us look to the dancers and the dance makers. Let us look to the Spirit who calls out, "Shall we dance?"

Kenyon

* Holy Trinity, Andrei Rublev

Remember

2012-01-20T22:04:00.007-05:00

Many view artists as misunderstood loners writing with wadded balls of paper around their feet or as painters wearing paint-smattered smocks, wild hair, frantically muttering to themselves. Nicholas Wolterstorff gives us a more inclusive view “Art—so often thought of as a way of getting out of the world—is man’s way of acting in the world. Artistically man acts.” (Wolterstorff, Art in Action, p.5)

According to Margaret Kornfeld these actions can assist in knowing God. Our “God is a God who wants to be remembered and has created our bodies—with complex neurochemical systems—so that memory is possible.”(Kornfeld, Cultivating Wholeness, p.86) Writing to pastoral caretakers Kornfeld reminds them that “Our bodies remember through our senses.” Art performed for and by a community, say like a liturgy, aids memory, gives direction, breaks down walls of hostility.

Natalie Angier on assignment for the New York Times Science section participated in a symposium on the evolutionary value of art. She notes how looking at the breadth of history the action of art has been a “profoundly communal affair of harvest dances, religious pageants, quilting bees.” Furthermore, she recalls how “passionate town rivalries… gave us the spires of Chartres, Reims and Amiens.” Moreover, it is through shared art experiences people are united together and are “persuaded to treat one another as kin.”

Angier goes on to describe how the lofty origins of art start from the “intimate interplay between mother and child.” The “visual, gestural, and vocal cues that arise spontaneously and unconsciously between mothers and infants” are aesthetic “operations of ritualizations.” (“The Dance of Evolution,” NYTimes) In other words, the human capacity to create art and liturgies are utilized by mothers everywhere, through all time. It’s interesting to note how Angier writing from an evolutionary framework establishes art as a relational operation. “Artistically man acts” because he is responding to its creator.

If the secular world can recognize the aesthetics as a fundamental catalyst for community and relationality why haven’t Protestants fully utilize this particular category of being? Shouldn’t Christians use all possible means to aid our memory of who we are in Christ? Perhaps, then, more embodied activities need to be enacted in our corporate worship. The artist Robert Adams speaks of memory from another perspective: “The thing the artist is trying to give you is a reminder of those rare times when you did see the world so that everything seemed to fit—so that things had consequence. The majority of evidence is for chaos, let’s face it. Most of the time things don’t seem consequential. But the value of art is that it helps us recall transforming times that are of such a quality that they last.”*

Worship allows us to respond to God’s work in our lives. Through a community’s set of symbols and actions they recall how life makes sense despite its perceived chaos. Good Christian liturgies happen to display theology; thus teach theology alongside the sermon, maybe even deepens it.

Artists, please help Christians remember.

--Maria

*PBS art:21 series

Body Life

2012-01-13T15:28:00.004-05:00

Kenyon and I have written various times on this arts blog concerning the artist’s role towards undoing the mind-body separation evident in our society. We happen to believe that the aesthetics can mobilize and connect Christian being and doing. This is why the programming at InterArts Fellowship relies just as much on its artistic presentations as it does with its informative speakers. I often, and I admit crankily, critique along with Matthew Crawford “the view that theoretical knowledge is the only true knowledge (Crawford, Shop Class As Soulcraft, p.171). Crawford wisely perceives how our embodied experiences, especially through working with our hands, allows us to grapple with the material world that lies “outside of the self.” The knowledge gained from such exercises is anything but theoretical. Yet Christians continue to struggle with how to integrate the realities they experience daily with what they know of God.

Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen asserts how Christian anthropology has been shaped by our fear of the material, sensual, and idolatrous. Thiessen relates how this suspicion has specifically affected three areas: “the perception of the senses, the role of the body, and the view of women.” A fourth should be added—wariness towards the non-Western, the other (Thiessen, Theological Aesthetics, p.11). Our emphasis towards science, data, and the analytical gives little attention to the sensed wisdom accrued through the arts, our gender, and non-Western ways of being.

As a woman, an artist, and a Hispanic, I am a bit overly sensitive to the repercussions brought on by this overemphasis on thinking as the sole means of knowing. Our embodied reality seems to hold little significance. Yet through Christ’s incarnation we are called to love him with our entire being: strength, heart, mind, and soul. This is why I believe the artist must continually create and participate in the larger culture. In our contemporary context it is the artist who must be the theologian in order to reconcile the many schisms caused by a disembodied worldview. We have isolated the mind from the body, faith from work, and have caused disruptions between race and gender. Through Christ’s redeeming work artists are called to reevaluate and re-humanize society that we may participate in true body life.

I hope you will be able to join Jenifer Ringer, Ken Masur, Andrew Nemr, Andy Mineo, Abe Cho, John Lin, Tom Jennings and our hosts at Calvary/St George's on Monday night as InterArts Fellowship seeks to celebrate not just our physical bodies, but the unity we possess through Christ as the body.

--Maria

BODY LIFE: Hoffen und Unschuld

2012-01-05T18:04:00.006-05:00

hoffen und unschuld (hope and innocence)

My wife Emily is a person who genuinely loves life. She is apt to make faces at babies on the subway and gasp with joy at the first appearance of spring in Central Park. Historically, I’ve been suspicious of such optimism, but I am finding myself challenged to further examine the source of this hopeful outlook. The more I seek the more I find that perhaps it is my own cynicism that I should hold in suspicion.

Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the great poets of the German language, believed that in order to write poetry one must live a great deal of life and experience it with subtle inundation. In his first and only novel, Journal of My Other Self, the main character muses that a poet must have many adventures and losses which then seep down into his very being, eventually becoming a source of inspiration. In part, Rilke is saying that a poet must actually love life itself.

It could also be said that love of life is elemental to Christianity since the gospel presents hope for life, even the hope of eternal life. Yet, in the gospel hope is ultimately tied to divine love. Love always protects, always hopes, always perseveres. The story of the gospel portrays divine love as a singular form of activism rooted in irreversible promises and evidenced by violently protective tendencies from the Exodus to the Cross.

If I accept the gospel as true, then I am challenged to accept my own identity as the beloved of God, the focal point of divine love. I suspect that this notion has at least the potential to fill each moment of my small life with palpable hope, a sort of chain reaction of positive realizations: If I am reconciled to God, then perhaps I can be reconciled to my fellow man. If to my fellow man, perhaps there is hope for the complexities of our shared existence in the world.

In this view, it seems that the smile of a baby on the subway might reasonably prompt me to contort my face into a ludicrous expression (perhaps pulling my nose and cheeks upwards toward my eyes and exaggerating the effect with a lipless smile) if for no other reason than to share a moment of solidarity with a child. In the gospel, Divine love has made me innocent again and the world is mine to discover anew as often as I am reminded of this life giving hope.

One artist who certainly understood the human longing for hope and innocence was the incomparable German choreographer, Pina Bausch, whose life and work have been celebrated by director Wim Wenders in the 3D film Pina now playing at select theaters in the city. Certain screenings at IFC and BAM will also include discussions with Mr. Wenders. As we begin the year examining BODY:LIFE at our upcoming quarterly InterArts Fellowship January 16th, this film might help to orient ourselves to the immense care and attention one can give to bodily life and expression.

Kenyon

The Fear of Miracles

2011-12-23T09:06:00.007-05:00

You must have had your own dreams
the life you always thought you’d lead
the roads you wanted to follow
the secret victories
But God sent you an angel
with his monster’s wings
heavy with heaven’s incense
blue and red, gold and green
And when he finished speaking
this world had turned unreal
the walls around you paper
the sky itself a spell
and singing through it all
the strains of a song
that burned the world with a blue flame
as you began to sing along
but the world was not consumed
only changed
the angel’s wings shone like the sun
the walls faded away
a shepherd became a king
a king became a child
the dead laughed and the lame danced
as the rich men cried
and all the dreams you’d called your own
glowed, then turned to ash
and you nodded your head
and the angel vanished
and left your dreams at your feet
like the cinders they always were
but buried there among them
was a crown made from stars.

--Carey Wallace

Christmas tidings from the Arts Ministry staff. Thank you, Carey, for sharing the first part of your Christmas poem with our readers. Carey Wallace is the author of The Blind Contessa's New Machine.

BODY LIFE: Proximity

2011-12-16T16:09:00.005-05:00

He who has the Son has life. 1 John 5:12

Do you feel it? I know I do. Fragmentation. There is distance yet between the life I wish to live in my body and the life I am currently living. Just as a pianist is always reworking her repertoire and dance makers constantly rework classic choreography, it feels like I can only ever see or enjoy a proximate measure of beauty in this life as I work to close the distance between truth and experience?

If the Incarnation reminds us that life in the body is not merely a waiting period before the Renewal of All Things, the Ascension shows us that there is a something more that is, at present, out of reach--something for which to hope, a directive for our strivings. The Russian writer, Anton Chekov, in the closing scene of his masterwork Uncle Vanya, examines the idea that those who suffer in the body will finally be at rest. The vision of hope offered, perhaps in desperation, by the character Sonya portrays a kind of relaxing exhalation: “…we shall see all earthly evil, all our sufferings swept away by the grace which will fill the whole world, and our life will become peaceful, gentle, and a sweet caress…We shall rest!” This sentiment also rang true for the writers of early Negro spirituals and twentieth-century gospel singers whose oppressive circumstances fomented their longing for bodily and spiritual rest.

Growing up between these two aesthetics, gospel music and classical theater, I was never sincerely interested in the kind of hope that could only offer post-mortem relief from my experiences of suffering. Unfortunately, it seemed that this was exactly what Christianity was selling and I was a reluctant customer. As scholar N.T. Wright revealed in his timely laymen’s book, Surprised by Hope, I was among those believers who survived on “what is at best a truncated and distorted version of the great biblical hope”. How happy I was to learn that there is another way of engaging with Christianity and the grace which will fill the whole world.

For me, I continue to wonder how each encounter with beauty on earth, though temporary, can lead me closer to the culmination of beauty in the earth, Thy Kingdom Come...Certainly the birth of Jesus was the first taste of this beauty, the breaking through of eternal hope in that dark, earthy cave filled with the smell poverty, of animals and the cries of a teen-age mother giving birth. The marring ache of injustice was there at the moment of the incarnation, that knowing which says this is not how it should be! And into this knowing, Jesus was born. In the midst of it, he died on the cross. But perhaps the glory of Christianity is the particular hope which arises if you believe that he who was the first taste of eternal beauty is also the first taste of eternal life.

Belief in the resurrection is almost completely about the hope we have in the body. And this is the hope that I need because, like Uncle Vanya and like my slave ancestors, I am still living my life in my body with all my capacity for joy and suffering. I need a hope which has significance for these years of struggle and ecstasy, inspiration and mundanity. As we celebrate Christmas, earth’s first glimpse of eternal beauty, let us also remember he who is LIFE itself, undying and without fear.

--Kenyon

BODY LIFE: The Irrationality of His Harvest

2011-12-09T17:15:00.010-05:00

Those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy--Psalm 126:5

Artists understand something of what the farmer knows in his tilling and planting, in his waiting and watering--the one thing we do not control is the harvest. Harvest fruit, whether sheaves of wheat or pages of poetry, is born of divine strength and wisdom. Do we resent this process in our art-making? The mystery and helplessness of not being able to control the outcome? Do we make demands of ourselves and of our work that God would not endorse? Do we even want to scold the Maker for the kind of fruit that he prefers and the harvest he schedules?

God honored our bodily lives by taking human form. He is closely familiar with our prolonged, seemingly limited, seemingly fruitless harvest and yet he says we shall reap with shouts of joy. Where does this shout come from? What kind of paradoxical notion of joy is this? Is this just another religious saying that holds no relevance for real life?

On the cross, Jesus Christ faced the most disastrous dry period that could ever come upon anyone. He was completely and mercilessly cut off from his life source, left to die alone underneath a dark and empty sky with no God to call on and no chance of rescue. And he suffered this experience in the flesh. Now, the worst possible human disaster will never happen to us because it already happened to him on the cross. Ah! now there is that shout of joy from deep inside you. When once it hits you that no amount of dry ground, no seeming hopelessness, will ever be able to destroy the seed of divine life that grows in your body if you believe in him who died and rose again… For those who believe, the ground is never quite dry. For those who believe in him, even death itself can only lead you to resurrection.

Are you waiting for your harvest time? Will you trust him with your dry ground? Will you say with Paul, “Our present sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory that is being revealed in us…” and with King David, “I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living. Be strong, take heart and wait for the Lord”? He is cultivating a shout in your uttermost.

Kenyon

Square Halo Books

2011-12-02T13:01:00.006-05:00

Today I am going to share with you an interview I conducted with Ned Bustard, Creative Director of Square Halo Books, Inc.

Q: First things first, please explain to me the significance of your company name.

Ned: In church art there are round halos, triangular halos and square halos. The square halo was for people who were living saints. It was our desire to publish books that would serve Christians in our day. So it seemed a good fit.

Q: How did you company get involved with making art books?

Ned: Well, it wasn't our vision when our company began, that's for sure.

We started with the goal of being a press for theological works. We wanted to create a place where folks could get published, regardless of who they were. Looking back at the history of our company, we were featuring art in our books even from our first title. And our non-art books continue to feature art like Gregory Wolfe's Intruding Upon the Timeless which contains many beautiful engravings by Barry Moser, and our most recent theological title The Beginning which had a suite of linocut prints created expressly for the project, yet also released as a separate portfolio. The artists included in that effort were myself, Chara Bauer,Tanja Butler, Matthew Clark, Tyrus Clutter, and Edward Knippers.

But we started doing books particularly about art because I wanted to read a book like, It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God. It didn't exist, so we made it. That book ended up featuring several New Yorkers: Tim Keller, Krystyna Sanderson, James Romaine, and Makoto Fujimura. The premise of It Was Good was that A Christian looks at the world through the eyes of one who has a restored relationship with the Creator, and receives a new vision affecting every area of life—including the creative process. I believe at that point we need to ask the question, "what does it mean to be a creative individual who is a follower of the creative God?: It Was Good sought to answer that question through a series of essays on artmaking—and with lots of full color art. Ironically, many books on the arts don't have much art in them.

Q: Mako Fujimura is involved with Redeemer in many different ways and sometimes attends services. Have you made any other books that include his work?

Ned: Yes, Mako has become a good friend. After It Was Good we worked with James Romaine to make the book Objects of Grace: Conversations on Creativity and Faith. That was a collection of conversations with some of today's most intriguing artists—Sandra Bowden, Dan Callis, Mary McCleary, John Silvis, Edward Knippers, Erica Downer, Albert Pedulla, Tim Rollins and K.O.S., Joel Sheesley and Makoto Fujimura. In addition to the interviews it also featured a discussion with Mako on how September 11th impacted him and the art community. After that book came out we published Faith and Vision: Twenty-Five Years of Chrisitans in the Visual Arts, which featured Mako's work, and then just recently we had the pleasure of publishing Rouault-Fujimura: Soliloquies which is a small book that pairs Mako's work with that of Georges Rouault.

Q: What book projects do you have in the works?

Ned: We have a couple of non-art books coming down the pike, but the next title to come out will probably be the "sequel" to It Was Good— It Was Good: Making Music to the Glory of God. That project includes (among others) Redeemers own, Tom Jennings. We don't have a release date for that yet, but if folks are interested in that or in any of our other books, they can visit our website, or follow our blog, or "like" our Facebook page.

Q: Thank you for sharing your love of God and art by creating Square Halo Books. You have also given us some great Christmas gift ideas. We look forward to reading It Was Good: Making Music to the Glory of God.

--Maria

Water in the Desert

2011-11-25T12:31:00.006-05:00

“And all mankind will see God’s salvation.”

This is John the Baptist’s ministerial tagline taken from the prophet Isaiah. Make straight paths, fill in valleys, lower mountains, all of these feats now possible by human ingenuity. But these accomplishments begin with a voice in a desert proclaiming the impossible is now evident: God is near. Culture is made through our longing for eternity.

Like John, artists are called to barren places to proclaim through word and deed God’s active and baptizing presence in the world. Here, little hope grows into highways and byways to God. Through our hands we smooth the rough places: one designs a bridge, while another writes a song that speaks into the heart of our universal pain. Either way Christians are called to be actively constructing wonders that reflect God’s salvation.

Isaiah and John the Baptist are usually associated with Advent for they make the bold proclamation that God will show himself in this world. In many ways artists are like these prophets. In the wilderness we live life preparing our communities for a final face to face with our Savior. Through our creations we acquaint, acclimatize, baptize, presage what ought to be, what can be, what shall be. Therefore, artists and prophets:

You who bring good news to Zion,

go up on a high mountain.

You who bring good news to Jerusalem,

lift up your voice with a shout,

lift it up, do not be afraid;

say to the towns of Judah,

“Here is your God!”

-Isaiah 40:9

This Advent become like John and Isaiah. Testify concerning Him through your art.

--Maria

Art as Relational

2011-11-18T15:34:00.008-05:00

God desires for us to know him. So, when the Word became flesh, the Triune God actively established himself in our world through a relationship. Even now when we read the four apostles' distinctive gospel accounts of their time with Jesus our emotions are drawn upon because of specificity of time, place, people, and things—their experience and our experience become essential. The artistic value of the narrative is its ability to feed the imagination by employing what is familiar: emotion, experience, the things we bump against day in and day out. Unlike the scientific that views things as object, Jesus, Incarnate, make all things subjects. In the same way, art employs things—ideas, emotions, people, and places--and begs for the participant to “see” them. At a recent lecture the sculptor Anish Kapoor reminded the audience that “art is good at saying ‘come here and take a look at me.’” * Art, therefore, can assist in detecting Jesus, who John relates “was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.”

Roberto Goizueta also reminds us how the aesthetic “allows us to live life itself as an end in itself rather than as some-thing to be understood.” Goizueta observes when we treat subject like object--analyzing emotions and things as information, we continually set apart the emotional and spiritual dimension of our humanity (Goizueta, Caminemos Con Jesus, p.94). Likewise, John Dewey notes how in our society "prestige" goes to those who use their minds “without participation of the body.” Dewey continues that a further mind-body separation occurs when we depend and take control of the “bodies and labors of others” to accomplish our ideas and wants (Dewey, Art as Experience, p.21). As artists we frequently experience this disconnect when we are asked to create something overnight with no consideration for creativity's lengthy and costly process. The prophet Isaiah laments how we are people who hear, but never understand; we see, but never perceive. It takes relationship between the heart, mind, and body to hear with our ears, and understand with our hearts, in order to be healed.

Art allows both emotion and experience to formulate connections and weave patterns until the next experience causes us to establish anew our way of seeing, feeling, knowing. Art enables our transformation, the taking in of the new. And, indeed, it became the gospel writers’ mission to explore the new world Christ initiated. Furthermore, according to theater director Peter Sellars, our experience with art “holds us together.” * The sharing of art deepens our relationships with one another and with the art itself. Think of how much more we understand a work of art through the action of describing it to another. Art enlarges us. We, reciprocally add to its profundity. Through Christ, we no longer look at the world as object, to be owned, exploited, ignored. The king, who calls us his subjects, asks us to be in relationship with the world. Art is one way of embodying this commitment.

--Maria

* Quotes from Anish Kapoor and Peter Sellars are from the New York Public Library Lecture Series event of November 13th. Their conversation also included Brian Eno.

Missing the Mark

2011-11-11T17:39:00.010-05:00

Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang up and I died. Romans 7:9

I like to say I got into acting on a fluke, but I believe God wanted me to be an actor so that I would become more like Him and that through my work others would see what Christ has done. In my pursuit of each character I discover that God is changing me, whispering to me about my own heart. The work of the actor has been called incarnational. We embody characters and enter the world of their story in order to pursue their ultimate good no matter who the character might be. All good actors discover their character through compassion, identifying with them and seeking their highest end.

I once prepared a scene for a TV episode in which my character was being questioned by the police at his little brother’s funeral. At first I believed my character was angry at his brother for having lived such a careless life and ending up a statistic. Just beneath the surface of his anger was latent sorrow and grief. Simple right? But the moment of breakthrough in the audition room came when I realized that my character was actually angry at himself and desperately trying to avoid the shame and guilt he felt for being unable to save his brother, a task that was never within his ability to accomplish. It turns out there’s something more universal than grief…pride.

A funny thing happens in our hearts whenever we hear about the thing which we must become… or else. Somehow we construct a perimeter by which we can measure or express our negligible resources to pull it off. And when the dust settles we’ll tax the world and everyone in it before we can admit our own failure to measure up to the standard. It’s a very fancy version of the blame game. The bible refers to this high standard as the law. But why is it that a perfect description of our intended purpose in the world, our teleos, awakens in us a sense of dread or even self hatred rather than inspired moral character?

In the Garden of Eden (Genesis chapters 1-2) Adam and Eve had no concept of their smallness in the great scheme of things, and they were never meant to. An infant is small but is never made to feel small in the world of the family. In fact it’s just the opposite. We’ve all seen how the nuclear center of the family shifts to accommodate a new born. But let the infant get the idea that it will enact it’s sovereignty on the local government to produce abundance and society on its own, then it must either have a moment of devastation or else it must find a vision more within its reach.

The gospel shows us that Jesus Christ the King, who does all things well, made himself lowly and condemned on the cross so that we could be held in great esteem by our Heavenly Father. He became insignificant so that we could become God’s treasured possession. Most of all, he fully claimed the condemnation that cries from every corner of every human heart “You’ve missed the mark!”

As you continue to reflect on the intersection of Christ's work on the cross and your own work in the world, consider how these gospel-conversant questions for the actor might also apply to your daily reception of God’s favor and love, which he stands ready to lavish on you in every moment of life, especially now.

Kenyon

Suggested Questions for the Actor in Loving Pursuit of a Character:

(Also may be helpful to ask questions in first person or “in character” using "I" and "my")

■ What does my character like most about herself/himself?

■ What is she/he most proud of in the story of their life?

■What would she/he likely change about herself/himself or their story if they could?

■ What mark or measure would she/he feel they have failed to attain in life?

■ What does she/he most regret in their life?

■ With whom does she/he need to be reconciled?

■ How will they she/he know they have been restored in that relationship?

■ How will she/he know when everything is finally ok in their story?

■ How would they describe “the good life”?

The Art of Suffering

2011-11-04T11:41:00.002-04:00

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

T.S. Eliot, Second Quartet, East Coker, III

Suffering loosens the belief we are in control. When all we undertake falls apart and God seems to have gone on vacation, distress discerns an action that can be accomplish; that of waiting. What accompanies an artist’s wait? We create in hope. It is this aspect of art that reflects Christ’s redeeming work in the world allowing us to render every act of creativity as a sign of hope. Art reaches for the eternal despite our society’s refusal of such categories. As Christians we understand this hope as the beauty of redemption through the salvific works of Christ.

Edward Farley in Faith and Beauty maintains beauty is a manifestation of Christ’s redemptive work. Redemption allows us to uphold what is deemed valueless. Here, the darkness becomes light, the cast off is repurposed. Artists have the ability to take what is broken then reconstitute and employ it towards art. For Farley it is this transformative action that constitutes beauty. “Redemption reaches and reshapes into new freedoms all the ways in which the human being is infected by sin” (Faith and Beauty, 93).

John Dillenberger goes further and suggests difficult art needs to exist. He relates how the “literary and the visual are… affirmations in their negations; indeed, they negate in order to affirm” (A Theology of Artistic Sensibilities, 224). Artist make plain what needs to be—what should be, what can be. Ultimately, it is hope that drives the impulse of art making for it seeks to grasp Jesus’ work of redemption and transformation. Whether we are believers or not we all long for renovation. The nature of transformation, therefore, must fall under the Christian artist’s purview. In our own work we accept the waiting and the mysterious chaos of our lives then proceed to shape, arrange, and re-form it. Jeremy Begbie encouragingly reminds us, “In Christ, all that is ugly and subversive in the cosmos has been purified, beautified and fulfilled. Therein lies the promise for the transformation of all things” (Voicing Creation’s Praise, 175).

Redemption does not negate or ignore the ravages of sin but restores all things. Jesus’ transformative power goes further to redirect and transforms our inordinate desires. It is in the waiting where our love, hope, and faith finally reaches out for the Triune God. Barbara Brown Taylor speaks about this in terms of disillusionment. “Disillusionment,” she writes, “is the loss of illusion—about ourselves, about the world, about God—and while it is almost always painful, it is not a bad thing to lose the lies we have mistaken for the truth” (The Preaching Life, 8). It is in darkness we begin to see, feel, know. While waiting for God we offer him the pain, suffering and the waiting, which in turn, makes our work his.

Wait—for the darkness shall be light,

Maria

The Physicality of Grace

2011-11-01T18:42:00.004-04:00

…You have given me relief when I was in distress. --Psalm 4:1

He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me. --Psalm 18:19

You have not handed me over to the enemy but have set my feet in a spacious place. --Psalm 31:8

If we put ourselves at the center of our lives, the world becomes a very small place. We become like an infant in a crib, pent up and cut off from the physical reality of the world in which we live. But grace offers us a different experience of ourselves and the world. Through grace we receive the physical world and our own bodies again.

When the Psalmist exclaims, “You have brought me into a spacious place…” he imagines a realm over which he does not have complete control. For in the world of his control he finds himself hunted by cruel enemies and tortured by guilt. In this world of his own making he is murderer, thief and adulterer. Yet when “in the day of his disaster” he is met by the Lord, he is led into a spacious place. This large room is an incredibly visceral description of grace as is David’s own physical sense of relief. He no longer feels trapped by his own deficiencies, instead he is lifted up and out. Relief came to him in the body because grace is a physical-realm response to a physical-realm problem. As a man thinketh so is he. But let us not limit this to the rational mind only. As a man thinketh also includes our imagination and our perceived existence in the physical realm.

Holiness connects us to deeper reality and we enter holiness by relinquishing control of our physical life to Jesus Christ. We enter holiness only through the realm of grace and we enter grace through yet another embodied experience. That is, the life that we would otherwise have lived in our bodies now must die in order for us to truly live.

Reflection

When at last we give up trying to protect ourselves against the flood of destruction that is due to us because of sin, and when at last we allow that flood to come crashing down as it has upon our Lord. When at last we put our imaginations to their highest use and remember him who gave himself for us and yet was without sin. When we see him, blazing and bleeding, seated at the right hand of God with our world under his feet and our destinies in the twinkle of his eye…When we see that he became inglorious for us, as shameful as a rapist, as guilty as Macbeth so that we could be wrapped up and held in the safest arms in the universe…Then we will enter the spacious place, that broad room of David, and the great, ancient sigh of relief which only the gospel of grace can induce in a human soul.

Kenyon

The Artists Role As Connector

2011-10-21T11:35:00.007-04:00

Last April’s InterArts Fellowship, entitled “The Artist as Cultivator,” sought to investigate the connections between art and prayer. Without too much explanation we hoped the art--in the form of dance, song, music, and poetry, would lead some to prayerful ruminations. But, we also longed to portray the beauty of prayer.

One of the outcomes of April’s IAF were two separate Reflect nights initiated and facilitated by Nathan Troester at his church in Williamsburg. Nathan commenced the evening with prayer and a short theological presentation, later asking the handful of invited artists to reflect and response through their respective artistic mediums.

Graphic designer, printmaker, and creative director of Live From Bklyn, Dailey Crafton, shares his account from the first Reflect night in Live From Bklyn’s blog. I link the post here, but allow me to excerpt some of the content for this reflection:

as i meditated on the concepts of the transcendance/eminence of God, my thoughts were drawn toward the name that God gives himself, “I AM.” this name speak of self-existence, completely independent upon anything else for survival. transcendence defined (and named). i also thought about the Christian doctrine of God-incarnate in the person of Jesus. about how he had a body, hair: a beard. eminence. from these thoughts i also moved into thinking about the material/immaterial dichotomy. immaterial God, material man. I AM material, as it were. i’mmaterial. and that was the concept.

within the swirls of the piece, you can see the word i’mmaterial. and the line is a continuous, unbreaking line, symbolic of the infinite. i also wanted to capture the idea of humanity, so i used a pattern that to me is evocative of hair, a beard to be more specific.

What Dailey’s description from the Reflect event provides is an example of how artists can integrate prayer and art while also portraying their role in connecting abstract ideas with concrete matter. Yet more is being bridged, we also see the reconciliation of spirit and body, work and faith, product and process. Dailey demonstrates how art belongs in the realm of theology, and theology certainly can shape our art. Witnesses to such interactions come away with a deepened understanding of God, while also refreshed by possibilities. It is firmly set in my mind how artists are called to be bridge builders in our ever increasing disconnected world.

Pray artfully,

--Maria

Thank you, Dailey, for allowing us to reference your blog post. Dailey’s i’mmaterial linocut print is available through his online shop.

When Life Doesn't Stop; Making Time For Your Dreams

2011-10-14T14:30:00.004-04:00

“In creating, the only hard thing’s to begin; a grass-blade’s no easier to make than an oak.”

James Russell Lowel

I have lived with an idea for a book for over eight years. Of course the inspiration hit me just as I became pregnant for our first son – right at the dawn of a new age of monumental time consumption. But over the years of considering and thinking about this idea, I realized that never does a spark of inspiration hit just as you are about to go to a divine lake retreat for three weeks of uninterrupted creative time. Never. Last spring, I realized that I had three main obstacles that were looming over me and making me more than procrastinate, they were causing a paralysis: time, task, and comparison.

I have been part of International Arts Movement for over 10 years. IAM is an arts organization not just for artists, but for anyone who has a desire to rehumanize their sphere of influence; to creatively make it more good, true and beautiful. I have always come away from their conferences feeling inspired and motivated to be a better person in every area of my life. But the last two conferences were especially significant to me as they helped put legs to something my heart had desired for many years – to write.

Makoto Fujimura, painter and founder of IAM, says that when he paints, it creates time in his schedule because it feeds his soul. It made me think about time to create in a whole new dimension. I had thought about time linearly: time out equals time gone. There is not enough time to get the things done merely to survive, let alone the seemingly luxurious time to write. But what it – what if– time to create didn’t take away, but added? I had also toyed with the idea of waiting until a more perfect time arrived. I know – it’s laughable. I knew there was no such thing as a perfect time, yet I still deliberated over it.

And who hasn’t thought of writing a book? Millions of us have. It’s on many of our bucket lists: get a book published. Whether that is from a desire of status, accomplishment, or because we have something we must say… I’m not sure. But for me, whatever the motivation, the task itself seemed gargantuan. It was like looking up at the Cliffs of Dover: straight up, impossible to climb, and fearsome to complete.

Then as I looked at the idea of my novel, a 1930′s historical fiction mystery set in New York City, I made a deadly choice: I compared how others write, to how I should write. Most of the mystery authors I love to read create an outline from beginning to end before they begin. So I tried that – and failed miserably. I had characters, I had a general sweep of where I wanted to go… but an outline was a virtual impossibility.

Finally, after a lot of frustration, I found some inspiration. I went to a book signing by one my favorite authors, perhaps one of the most creative people I’ve ever met: Jasper Fforde. He said that he often “just wrote” because he liked to see where his writing would take him. And he frequently used what he termed as “off-ramps.” Events or actions thrown in here and there – completely unrelated to the current storyline – that he may or may not choose to use at some other time in one book or another. I loved that. I loved the idea of letting characters and situations develop as I crafted them, seeing where possibilities could take me. Click to read further.

-L.A. Chandlar

Laurie is a longtime member of IAM, wife, mother of two, and lay ministry leader. And she still finds time to write! Please visit Laurie's website for more of her musings.

The Artist as Theologian

2011-10-03T19:18:00.006-04:00

Remember the days when a conversation at Starbuck’s about the deeper matters of life and longing would inevitably end with one party resolutely declaring, “Well, that’s true for you but it’s not true for me”? It seems like only yesterday that relativism reigned as the catch-all response to issues of ultimate concern from philosophy and religion to sociology and even law.

In his recent talk at InterArts Fellowship, Steven Garber sought to orient our community of artists to the times in which we live and encouraged us towards meaningful actions and conversations within our hearts, communities and world. As he does in his book, The Fabric of Faithfulness, Steve reminded us of how the Age of Enlightenment and the rationalism of the modern era have left many in contemporary society with a dulled awareness of human destiny and purpose. Yet, Garber notes, even relativism is coming under strong suspicion amid the devastating scenarios of our war-torn and disaster-prone world, not to mention the accompanying nihilism which offers a bleak and gangly vision of human flourishing.[1] Unfortunately, this dilemma has left many in our society confused, depressed and floundering for a sense of meaningful purpose for their lives. [2]

It seems that in order for the church to navigate this scenario, artists must become engaged in developing our shared understanding of both our times and our God. Cue: the artist as theologian. Clearly, God's world is not black and white. There are grey areas that cannot be packaged or easily reconciled without the use of abstract thinking and imagination.These times may require the presence and participation of artists within the church in order to know God and make him known within a culture that has lost its anchor in rationality and reason yet has grown increasingly suspicious of relativism as an easy fix to the inconsistencies between our knowledge and our experiences. As artists we tend to live in the tension between the what is and the what ought to be as we work. Our gifts and our way of seeing allow us to accept and explore mystery.

What might it look like for your work to become a context in which the mysteries of God are explored and embodied? Have you ever experienced a way of living and working in the arts that integrates and enlivens your engagement with the gospel? Will you as an artist identify with the community and calling of the people of God?

Kenyon

[1] The Fabric of Faithfulness, Garber. After Virtue, Macintyre. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, Bernstein.

[2] Generation Me, Twenge.

Our Story

2011-09-23T17:33:00.003-04:00

Artists in the Church need to develop a theory of art informed by the bible in order to return to the world a profound story. With society’s loss of the meta-narrative contemporary lives feel detached, humanity’s significance seems to have diminished, we have forgotten what it means to be human. Despite how the power of God’s story has shaped Christian lives for some time now, we choose to depend and trust those who can feed us information, analysis, doctrines. Furthermore, viewing soul salvation as the primary function of Christianity means we have missed the rich dimensions of God’s redemptive plan for the world. We have disconnected God from our everyday lives and experiences. As Christians we need God to break into our lives in real and tangible ways. We need to reconnect with the whole Christian narrative. Perhaps art, which so heavily depends on narratives, is one way we can practice entering into God’s story again.

The whole of the Christian narrative speaks of a triune God, his people, and his plan for the world. God as Father, Son, and Spirit is a unified diversity. Likewise, he is the true unifier amid the great variety he has created. Therefore, our God is equipped and has equipped us to handle the many episodes, sagas, and movements that are part of the Christian epic. We need artists to formulate new stories rooted in the biblical narrative. We need to write, play, and dance in the margins of our beloved texts.

Typically, in our contemporary society, an artist’s identity is tied to what they create, not in God the creator. Our formation as artists, our art, must flow out of what we know and experience of God. If faith transforms our art, think how much more, the Triune God will open the art-making praxis to inform faith further. Gerardus van der Leeuw asserts art will intersect with religion if it “turns to the absolute; where the wholly other is.”(Sacred and Profane Beauty, p.33) Van der Leeuw quoting Jacques Maritain writes “If you want to make Christian art, be Christians, and seek to make a beautiful work, in which your entire heart lies; do not try to make it Christian.”(Sacred and Profane Beauty, p.36) Part of formulating a theology of the arts is redefining what it means to be a Christian—God’s work of art. Let’s begin to retell God’s story through our hands, feet, lips.

Maria

There, But For The Grace of God

2011-09-16T14:44:00.003-04:00

there

but for the Grace of God lay I still

paralyzed but not still

devoid of peace bereft of hope

leper

perishing

languishing, lost, in a bed, in, deep in oppressive, depressive despair, slave to myself, blind to all else...

only by His command was I able to rise! And come forth

broken

one foot in front of the

other

unsure

afraid

desperately alone

unloved

unwanted, and therefore

worthless...

worthless.

(or so i thought - little did i know i was)

limping towards Love that saves

away from where my death was certain, imminent, and well underway

now

restored

redeemed

and Eternally Loved i lay me down to sleep

and sleep soundly

in the selfsame bed

finding my rest in

Him who my soul doth keep.

ileana santamaria

Vocalist and musician, Ileana Santamaria, typically performs this poem to the music of the classical Spanish piece, Nana by Manuel de Falla

The Dialogue Continues

2011-09-10T15:25:00.016-04:00

A friend of mine tells a story of a woman he loved and lost to a terminal illness. He recalls how he strove to make her last days so full of life. She dreamed of going to Italy, and because it was clear she would never make it there he transformed her hospital bedroom into a living Italian montage complete with a gondola! He painted the walls with scenes from Venice, Rome and Florence...all to make her feel full of life. He went on to recall being by her side as she lay dying. Offering him some of her last words, she passionately whispered, "He is Life!"

Scripture tells that He who has the son, has life (1 John 5:12). If there's one thing we are seeking in New York City it's this sense of really living: to have Life. Artists especially depend on this over- abundant sense of being alive to both suffering and joy.

Last fall we began considering six themes regarding the calling of the artist in view of the gospel. Now, as we start a new ministry year, we invite you to consider one over-arching theme which we will approach this coming Monday at InterArts Fellowship with the help of Steve Garber. The theme is simply Life, capital "L". We intend to explore this theme in four ways:

Abundant LIFE

Body LIFE

Spirit LIFE

Eternal LIFE

Through our programs, events and conversations with you we hope to explore the reality of abundance, the imminence and import of life in the body, the mystery of the spirit and the hope of eternity. Join the dialogue through quarterly gatherings of InterArts Fellowship, in Arts Vocation Groups and on our InterArts Facebook page.

Hope to see you soon. Take care in the city!

Kenyon

Walking With Christ

2011-09-02T13:49:00.006-04:00

Reading Roberto Goizueta’s Caminemos Con Cristo (we shall walk with Christ) startled me into realizing how much my own theology of work aimed folks solely towards kingdom transformation in our world. To be sure, this is a good and a worthy project, but Goizueta has reminded me how social transformation is not our end and purpose. In Genesis, God deems humanity good, before he gives out work. Therefore, while God calls us to cultivate, perhaps we should perceive this human activity as aesthetic: the desire for a beautiful life that drives us to do good. Now, I recognize, process and production are not mutually exclusive when we put ourselves into God’s hands. But, I need to be constantly reminded not to measure and value human worth as the world does. So, forgive me, while I counter the pragmatic tendencies of our present realities by promoting process over production. As Goizueta points out, it’s the process, the way we go about our work that makes us distinctly human beings.

While, it's the artist-side of my role as an arts ministry coordinator that encourages artists to create works that are community building, social commentaries, theological meditations, and mimetic observations; its my theological-side that reminds them that their creations do not define them. As my colleague Kenyon constantly quips, "It's your life, taken up in Christ, that determines your worth." While art accomplishes wonderful things, our ability to do, mainly demonstrates we are beings. Ultimately, it’s not so much what we produce, but how we allow our strengths, abilities, foibles, and failures shape the way we live in God’s grace.

The parable in Matthew 20 concerning the hired workers illustrates how God is not as concerned with productivity as we tend to be. Here, he compensates those who worked all day the same as those he commissioned a few hours before pay. In fact, the parable depicts a landowner more preoccupied with giving men work, then his need to pull in crops. This landowner goes out five times to ensure every man within his reach has purpose and meaning for that day. It is God who hires us, therefore, making us desirable.

In a kingdom where the last will be first, our Christian theologies of culture must not solely rely on transforming the world through our work. Goizueta outlines the danger of this one-dimensional agenda: “If the act of production is the prototypical human activity, then all human activity will tend to be judged by the criteria of production…Human life will be viewed and valued as the means or instrument through which we produce a desirable product, whether that product is income and profit, food, or the classless society.”

What? You haven’t written that socially transformative book or shaped lives by calling to attention the horrors of corruption through a photo series? In Mark 18, Jesus calls a child and brings him before his disciples, who were intent on finding out the kingdom hierarchy. Jesus tells his audience, those who are humble like a child, become the greatest in the kingdom.

When introduced to a child, it is not usual to ask the child, or their parents, what they do for a living--a child just lives. Healthy children experience awe and discovery through play. They find joy in newly acquired abilities. Indeed, these actions are precious gifts befit for the kingdom.

Shall we walk with Jesus as we work?

Maria

Passion

2011-08-26T14:16:00.008-04:00

The inclination to do good, whether it is conquering a creative technique or a particular ski slope, falls under the realm of the aesthetics. Aesthetics, therefore, relies on desire, this in turn, incites us towards action. This is one of the theories William Dyrness works with in his latest book, Poetic Theology. Here, Dyrness relates how it takes human passion “to act, build, and create;” therefore, we should view these events as deep soul movements towards reaching the good. For Dyrness, our best moments are shaped, not necessarily by what we know, but by the longing “for a life that is attractive.” So, Dyrness asks Christians this question: “In places where community development is in progress, what sorts of practices might best reflect this impulse?”

What are the structures, stories, and events that act like beacons orienting our daily developments? What are our best shared activities that help shape beautiful and good communities? Where do we invest significance? Because of Christ’s redeeming work in the world we should seek out elements and practices that correspond with the gospel in order to sculpt deep and meaningful lives. We need to pick up God’s pattern of play, celebration, and redemption found in the surrounding cultures. Beauty draws people together, beauty also directs us towards God. Beauty, therefore, should also be a hallmark of God's people.

Dyrness further cautions how non-manifested values merely remain separate from us—mere abstractions. As we explore our traditions and the Scriptures we must continually take into account the human drive towards the aesthetic. For Dryness, the impetus to create an attractive life is an expression of God’s presence. We all long to be complete, but as the people of God, this hope relies on Christ's beauty and glory. Far from distractions, we must learn to see worldly goods, this includes our vocation as artists, not as means of power or self-glory, nor as an end in itself, but as a gift pointing us towards a life with God and his good creation; God reflected in and through our cultural patterns and trends. The Hispanic theologian, Roberto Goizueta reminds us how the aesthetic is “rooted” in the concrete. Aesthetics happens through our bodies, for “life is always corporeal.” It, therefore, becomes the artist's job to manifest the human need for the transcendent. Alysha Creighton’s stop action animation The Touch depict these themes of desire, embodiment and the transcendent. The Touch reminds us how the arts, the material, are conduits of God’s touch.

We must question if the desire we have for Christ and his kingdom is purely negotiated through the abstract and propositional. If so, we must devise concrete practices to pull the kingdom into our everyday reality.

Allow your art to draw you, and others, to the love of God. Receive his touch.

Maria

Thank you, Alysha, for granting permission to use, The Touch. Alysha Creighton recently completed a summer residency program at SVA.

Glimpses

2011-08-14T13:13:00.019-04:00

This week, while walking back to the office from lunch, I was struck by the image of a demolished building undergoing construction on a midtown street near Broadway. It's the kind of thing you could walk by every day and never notice at all. But as I took in the scene, I was impacted and, honestly, a little disgusted at it's current state. I began to imagine what it might have been before it was demolished: a nice restaurant, hotel or office building. Still, I found it difficult to imagine that it could ever be anything of value again. Whatever it was before has been utterly ruined. My thoughts were interrupted when a piece of dry wall flew out of nowhere onto a pile, startling me.

I hadn't even seen him because he was buried so deep underneath the debris. A young worker, taking his job quite seriously, had gone down under what used to be a stairway and was gutting the basement with a vengeance. In that moment I saw a picture of our faithful Creator. He is committed to restoring all things: our hearts, our relationships and the very structures of creation itself from the rooftop to the bassment. Can we see him at work? Will we put on a hard hat and follow him into the dark?

As we look toward the Center for Faith & Work Conference, let's pray that God will give us glimpses of His spirit accomplishing His work of renewal in the world. Let's ask God to open the eyes of our hearts to see him at work in our city.

Kenyon

The Spirit's Work

2011-08-14T12:26:00.008-04:00

In my apartment building in Queens, I am fortunate to have a superintendent with a kind and humble heart. James is a man of principle and deeply committed to his family, including his autistic son, Jason. We live in an old pre-war building with lots of issues so I am in regular communication with James for repairs. The problems in my apartment don't seem to be unique among the other 60 rentals in our building because this year James installed a little drop box in the lobby with instructions for how to make a service request and a little pen dangling from a string. It works like this: the tub gets clogged...again, and I drop a little note in the box explaining the problem, the level of urgency and a range of times that I can be available to receive the work. So, far it's been a pretty efficient little system, with perhaps one drawback. I'm never exactly sure when he's coming or how long it will take to do the repair. Most often, I find myself interrupted from REM sleep by the doorbell and jolted unexpectedly from my Tempur-Pedic pillow about an hour before I had intended to wake up on a weekday morning.

I can't help but notice the similarities of this ongoing relationship to that of my prayer life. I receive so many answers to my prayers with the same scraggly disposition that James meets when he shows up at my door, toolbox in hand. What do we imagine the Spirit's work will look like when we pray, "Lord, change my heart. Make me more like you"? It is far more the will of the Father than my own that I be transformed into one who reflects his character. The disconnect comes in how I tend to think about and imagine the process of bringing about this transformation.

For the most part I think we have quite a different view of our hearts than God has. It's fitting. The plumber has quite a different view of your toilet than you do as well. For you, it's part of an unconscious habit of doing a business about which you take no particular notice until something has gone wrong. In God's reality your heart is a place of massive devastation, and yet also a place of glorious beauty and potential. This has everything to do with who he is, and the quality of his nature. In his nature lies the hope of our hearts. He's on the job. But are we awake to receive him?

Kenyon

The Reality of Abundance

2011-08-05T17:26:00.008-04:00

On the table of pine

Stood a tiny Bowl of Blackberries (click to listen)

You poured into it the whitest cream.

In the corner her tail

Wrapped around her tiny body

As herself she did softly clean.

Outside on the lawn

Gently blowing the linen

Almost as if it were a dream.

And in the porcelain sink

My sorrows deep.

Pulled the drain and

I sent them out to sea.

My only wish,

For this.

My only wish,

For more of this

by Jonny Rodgers. See it live at the next InterArts.

Something in Jonny Rodgers depiction of that tiny bowl of blackberries served with cream on a picnic table re-affirms for me a sense of the reality of Abundance. There is a place or person somewhere in the universe that truly fulfills the last aching abyss of the human heart. It is only a sense in my deepest heart of hearts, but could there be some validity to this feeling?

Everything in our culture seems to operate at a deficit, home loans, car loans, student loans, national debt....Yet our individual hopes and desires perhaps are running the highest deficit of all. I look at hundreds of faces each day riding the subways. I look at my own face reflected on my desktop as I write. Contentment seems even more elusive today than the large, dark creature I thought I saw while peering intently into the waters of Loch Ness at age sixteen.

When C.S. Lewis refers to our having desires which cannot be satisfied in this life, he hardly seems to paint a picture of Abundance. He does however conclude that we must, then, be made in fact for another world, suggesting the afterlife which is central to the Christian belief in resurrection. Still, it is difficult in the midst of our longings to find comfort merely in the hope of a life to come. Don’t you agree?

The Police, in their harrowing anthem Spirits in the Material World make a similar observation to Lewis’ but arrive at quite a different conclusion. Where does the answer lie, living from day to day? If it’s something we can’t buy, there must be another way. We are spirits in the material world. The answer for Sting seems to be a realization that life in the body is somehow of less consequence than a disembodied life would be. The song gives me a sense of needing to escape my body, a sentiment which was so heart-wrenchingly expressed by the character Evan in Justin Lerner’s recent New York film premiere, Girlfriend. Actor Evan Sneider delivers a stealth performance as a young man with Down’s syndrome who falls in love with a beautiful and troubled single mother in a rural suburb. For Evan, being in his physical body seemed to keep him from his desire for romantic love. Rocking out at my desk to The Police performing this incredibly virile song leaves me with a feeling that we’d all be better off if we could only escape our bodies and live a purely ephemeral, spiritual life. It’s little wonder that the opening lines to the song decry contemporary efforts to reform society or the human condition. Why engage in politics, religion or even relationships if there's no real hope?Indeed, there must be another way.

Being a song-writer and a follower of Christ I am trying to understand the tension between recognizing the brokenness in my own heart and life, and allowing that brokenness to take over my view of myself and the world. If it weren’t for my pain, I wouldn’t have much to share with others. On the other hand, I also have this notion in my gut, having met the resurrected shepherd, that even the darkest night will one day be a distant memory in the face of such beauty as He possesses and which He will one day restore to all things. Living in this hope means loving Abundance: loving the world while regarding only one thing as most precious. That thing is a person, whose mystery is enough to tickle the laughing/crying soft flesh of our longing. Yet, He is master enough to restore all things. The reality of Abundance stares us back in the face through the eyes of this mysterious and masterful person. In holding him dear, all things become dearer to me.

Kenyon

The Practice of Pilgrimage

2011-07-29T15:00:00.003-04:00

Amid many recent faith and art conversations, including James K.A. Smith’s Gospel & Culture lecture, one point keeps coming up: talk is good, information invaluable, but transformation also happens through the doing. There is a need in our technological society for Christians to form new practices and disciplines that direct us to the triune God, which in turn allows us to be the physical church in his material world.

Also of late is my back to back attendance of a couple of art and faith conferences. These events have set me thinking how there is an emotional, spiritual, and even physical need for these gatherings and how these short digressions from our noisy lives parallel the Christian practice of pilgrimage. In fact, I’d like to argue that the Christian conference or the neo-pilgrimage is a discipline, a doing, where like-minded people gather to experience and enact a spiritual journey fortified by mutual encouragement. Using Jamie Smith’s term relating to driving desires, there is a liturgy that these specific-themed, extended time, corporate gatherings, offer. (After all, our desires direct us to choose the conference according to its distinct content.)

Yes, the discipline of pulling away for solitary prayer and reflection is necessary, but just as invaluable is the practice of setting time aside to travel a long or short distance with a group of God’s beloved. Hands down, face to face time beats Facebook entries. Cell phones give way to meaningful conversations. Sharing similar concerns brings about impromptu prayers. Here, lecturers and friends can offer up “a hymn, a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation” for the benefit of God’s people amid a culture that continually pushes relationships into a virtual world.

We need each other to reignite our specific mission in the world. Our journey—we surprisingly find at these gatherings—is not so solitary, after all. In deed, the Center for Faith & Work looks to gather on November 4th and 5th, those who understand the doing is just as important as the knowing. We hope you will join us this fall on our neo-pilgrimage as we examine God’s call towards cultural involvement and human flourishing.

--Maria

Visual Poems

2011-07-22T14:34:00.006-04:00

Recently viewing Terrence Malick’s visually stunning, Tree of Life, I revisited another visual treasure, Julian Schnabel’s poetic film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly beautifully conveys the human capacity to create and generate art despite tragic and confining perimeters through the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, jet setter and fashion editor of Elle magazine. After a stroke leaves him paralyzed with Lock-in Syndrome, Bauby grapples with the meaning of life. However, Bauby still possesses control of one body part, an eyelid. It is through the means of blinking, Bauby slowly communicate his story.

After such accomplishments do we dare utter excuses for not making art? The Diving Bell and the Butterfly discloses how our particular vantage point of the world must be shared, even if the sole instrument toward production is the blink of an eye. To work through brokenness is to honor and own our humanness; this is heroic poetry. Tree of Life offers the same message, the cosmic proportions of our spiritual journey, comes through the broken, small and mundane; poetry in motion.

Poetry constructs a defense against despair, and it takes battling despondency for Jean-Dominique Bauby to realize not all human actions had been taken from him, he continues to own and utilize memory and imagination. Memory allows him to cherish relationships and past events—the sensory world he so took for granted—while imagination offers the freedom to visit these moments with a fresh perspective. For Bauby memory becomes aligned with the intrepid explorer clad in an ancient diving bell suit; an ambivalent symbol for both discovery (about himself, the world, his relationships) and claustrophobic confines. The butterfly is the flight of imagination; it signifies incomprehensible hope, beauty and the true freedom our souls and bodies long for.

Schnabel’s film draws on visual and linguistic metaphors to produce a tale of a man and his physical constraints that also relates to our lives. Unfamiliar hardships—the diving bell or personal constrains of our lives--together with the winged butterfly of our imaginations, allow for murky-watered journeys in under-visited and unfamiliar places. The film makes a case for beauty and creativity and how they sanction and hallow our existence.

If our tendency is to think outside of our bodies, as some suggest, Schnabel accomplishes an act of incarnation by placing us inside a body. The camera skirts by eyelashes to view the world through Bauby’s good eye. We, thereby, are forced to enter into the “skin” of Jean-Dominique Bauby. Within his metaphorical shoes we join the groping action of human creativity that strives to make sense of the world. Likewise, as we watch and hear Bauby “grope” to find import within his meaningless body, we too begin to discover the implications of our broken and encumbered lives. Much like Tree of Life, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly celebrates life, and that’s poetry, too.

Be a poem,

--Maria

Summer Prayers

2011-07-15T11:31:00.012-04:00

In July

i.

Oh, Holy Spirit,

Come upon me, like a warm breath of air, sweet with the smell of summer;

Or the first telling of lilacs in spring.

Guide me home.

I don't know how to get there myself.

I am incomplete.

ii.

Father,

Weigh heavy on me with desire;

Might I trust the light of your grace.

Part your clouds that I may gaze into a world of light,

And my soul be set free.

I run towards it,

And I don't look back.

I am taken up,

I am part of

A foreign light.

It is not me,

But it must be for me.

Oh wonder! Oh power!

You are terrible,

But my soul longs to be filled with your beauty.

To send off,

Into the glorious adventure.

I run towards it.

Ever and ever and ever towards it.

I don't look back.

iii.

Father,

Do fill me with your purpose.

Show me that nothing satisfies as fully and as completely

Yet lays on me so gently and so safely.

Don't let me go.

Make me alert.

Show me that strength and perseverance are real.

May your urgency rest upon me.

Make sharp my perception

Yet don't let me stray into superiority or selfishness.

Father,

Make your intentions clear to me.

Might I walk into them without fear

But confident in your ways.

In August

i.

Father,

Melt me into myself,

Quiet and afraid in you,

My protection.

ii.

I am not alone.

These feelings are shared

By Christ.

iii.

Father God,

Teach me to let go.

Would that your warm breath caress against my face,

And comfort me as nothing else will.

That your quiet voice

Would be my strength alone,

To fill this hole inside of me.

Remake me

A creature sensitive

To these things.

Prayers by Ned Shalanski, Summer of 2010
Ned is a lay-leader of a fellowship group
for artists at Redeemer, and has contributed to the
community through InterArts Fellowship and the
Greenhouse. Find out more about his faith & work
in the city by watching the new Arts Ministries video
posted on InterArts Fellowship's Facebook page.

John 20: The Second Gardener

2011-07-08T11:48:00.003-04:00

In the beginning God affirmed matter and set into the cosmos a generative force that allows for both, beauty and sustainability. Yet the fall obscures our perception of his world; lost is our view of the garden. Our need for glory somehow trumps the Triune God’s. Thus, tarnished by brokenness, we no longer see God or the world rightly. This is one reason why art has held such a tenuous position in the church, as well as our culture, for it reflects the status of our soul—our lost sense of beauty.

If we, therefore, want to include the work of our hands as part of our spiritual formation we must develop a Trinitarian view of God that includes the Father’s affirmation of creation, Christ’s redemptive action in the world, and an acknowledgement of the Spirit that accomplishes the Spiritual—seeing God’s presence in the physical world. Revelation by the Spirit helps us trace the dynamic movement of God towards us, through our grime-encrusted reality.

The Gospel of John takes us on such a journey and to another garden. After the crucifixion of Jesus and his entombment, the bereaved Mary identifies the resurrected Christ as gardener. Some may argue that Mary’s mourning leaves her bewildered and muddled. But, could it be possible that Mary possesses the ability to see the genesis of a new story (just as she was able to perceive the two angels in the tomb unlike Peter and John?)

Placed in a virgin tomb, in a garden, the second Adam now appears and reminiscent of Genesis 2, God, now incarnate and resurrected, breathes onto his followers and tells them to “receive the Holy Spirit.” John 20 holds the key to animate our cultural renewal theologies: forgiveness offers a spectacular view of what God has created and assists wholehearted engagement with the world. Christ breathes his Spirit onto his followers to equip them for this mission of reconciliation. Jesus, through the Spirit, reconciles us to the Father and calls us to do the same.

John 20:23 reads: “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven: if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” This is a crazy statement considering all the flack Jesus himself received when he forgave sins. But, the power given to us by Christ, through the Spirit, apparently empowers us to forgive sins—God is near! This means we acknowledge the brokenness that corrupts God’s world, but out of the Triune God’s love, we forgive these sins. We can only live as forgiven and hopeful people when we look, as the disciples did in the gospel of John, at the scars bore by the resurrected Jesus. And it’s by these scars, fashioned by Christ’s generative action of forgiveness, that will enable the glory and honor of the nations to enter the Holy City. Beauty will finally be recovered.

However, for Mary, Jesus’ humble role as ultimate gardener, the second Adam, also makes him, Rabboni; the one who instructs and constructs the way for us to be human, forgiven, cultivators of beauty.

Receive the Holy Spirit.

--Maria

Quarternity

2011-06-24T11:52:00.007-04:00

Anselm Kiefer’s painting Quaternity depicts a bare wooden interior. The room is the artist’s studio containing three small, seemingly contained fires and a serpent. The three flames are labeled Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; the serpent is branded, Satan. I will not presume to read into Kiefer’s symbolism, but for the sake of this entry I will utilize Quarternity to make a statement regarding Christianity and the arts. As I see it they both sit in an upper story, an emptied attic, displaced by the preference for the technological, scientific, rationalistic and pragmatic. Despite the fact our society regards the church in this way, Protestant Christianity has created a similar attic to place art.

Yet Kiefer’s studio holds a key towards the integration of faith and reason, symbol and statistics, spirit and materiality. He depicts the Trinity as flames ready to ignite the embodied soul with real light in order to illuminate our fragmented world. At the same time we must be alert to the serpent in the room undermining the Trinity’s work by fracturing what should be united. Quarternity, four, not three, speaks of a God who acknowledges sin and moves beyond himself to address it.

Therefore, we too, must move beyond the ground floor status of rationality and integrate with the upper story. Our one God, Father, Son, and Spirit is the source of all creation. We must worship him not just with mind, will, and intellect, but with our whole embodied being. This means putting into our Spiritual practices things like drawing and data entry. God as one and three, restores matter and revelation and re-cast the idea of living inter-relationally with a dependence on both fact and fiction, faith and finance, relationships and retreats, art and religion.

The incarnate Christ has prepared a place for us in the Father’s house. To be sure it has many rooms, so with the Spirit’s help--the one who creates porous boundaries between disparate properties--let’s practice living life in the whole house, not just the attic.

--Maria

Regarding this entry listen to Jamie K.A. Smith's Gospel and Culture Lecture, Culture As Liturgy.

The Deep Places: Accessibility and Responsibility

2011-06-17T17:32:00.014-04:00

ac-cess /'ak,ses/ , n. a means of approach or entering a place.

ac-ces'si-ble, adj. easy to reach or influence.

As artists we have access to a key environment in the structure of a human being. Nigel Goodwin calls it "your belly". Martha Graham calls it "your center". Aretha Franklin calls it "my soul" and King David called it "my innermost being". This deep place exists between dreaming and waking where we are most ourselves, in which no pretense could ever possibly materialize, where the passions and fears that drive our lives are cultivated. But we would be kidding ourselves to think that artists have some kind of original authority or credential at the gateway to the deep places of the human heart. No, it is only in collaborating with the most mysterious Artist of all that we ever even come close to accessing the deepest realms of human longing. It is in this place, the deep place, that we need God to meet us most of all.

So, much of our work as artists is a kind of active or skilled waiting, as we delve into this mysterious place where the Holy Spirit is quite impressively on the move like a merchant sailing a trade route in hostile waters. Much of our work, indeed, is looking, listening and waiting to respond or simply be awed by what the Holy Spirit is doing in us, through us and around us. Unlike us, He is not limited by time, place or resources. He has infinite power to access the deep places in every human heart.

Might we consider that the spiritual responsibility of the artist could be a matter of stewarding the access we’ve been granted to this most potent environment? How are we doing as artists with stewarding the access we have to human hearts? How are we doing as a community of artists within churches...within families...within society? As individuals? Have we learned the discipline of listening, looking and waiting? Are we aware of how He might be moving in our own deep places? Understanding accessibility and responsibility might help us discover an important aspect of our spiritual calling as artists, particularly within the church. But certainly, the first environment we must explore is our own.

Have you been met in the deep places by the Spirit of the living God? Certainly we are being met by many other presences, personas and influences in the deep realms of our hearts from which our longings stir us to daily actions and ways of being; or to use James K. Smith's helpful description, our cultural liturgies. Has the risen Christ stepped into your "inner most being" lately and impacted your "center"? Would you notice if He did? Does He sometimes seem to take flesh in your dreams, or perhaps he's used the melody of a song or a childhood memory to take apart your facade until you crumble at His feet? Has He undone you with His skillful, compassionate artistry? Has he melted your heart with warm fear and penetrating hope?

If artists do not learn to articulate and understand the nature of the spirit’s work through the various mediums of the arts then we may ourselves begin to conceive of a lesser value for the power and access we’ve been given by the grace of God. In this world, we need merciful merchants on the waters of that deep river. Artists do not control the heart, but we can know Him who is the Desire of nations.

It is because of Grace that artist’s can operate in the deep places. Grace was bought with a price. Let us give the Lamb of God the reward of His sufferings. What He seems to desperately want in all of this is to create hearts that are awed by Him and Him alone. As He says, to remove our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Isn't it ironic that all of the other things that move us deeply and control our lives only make us harder, colder, less alive, less human? But He works with all the maniacal devotion of a research scientist who's discovered a cure, using his own body and blood as the test subject.

Let's look and listen and wait for the Holy Spirit to invade the deep places of our hearts; and as He gives us grace to move others, let's move them to awe at the One who paid such a price to have full access to our hearts.

Kenyon

Art and Suffering: Some Thoughts On Referencing Without Resting

2011-06-10T18:13:00.003-04:00

A recent trip to with friends to the United Nations NY Headquarters, and a subsequent perusal of its main gallery's current photographic exhibition, DeterMined, prompted me to revisit some thoughts on art and suffering. With the biblical prompting to "look after" those who suffer (James 1:27), I am particularly provoked by works that deal with the subject.

DeterMined showcases the work of international photographers Kike Arnal and Arne Hodalic. A series of large-scale color and black and white photographs display portrait-like images of survivors of cluster munitions explosions in Lebanon and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The photos are well done, but painful to gaze at for long. In one, a preteen floats in a suffocating circular pool whose radius extends just beyond the boy’s outstretched arms and two unequally-stubbed thighs. A veiled woman clutches a mechanical contraption with her truncated fingers, boldly and ironically grasping the culprit with its own affect.

Collectively the works imbue a tired tenacity, humanity's perpetual flailing to remain afloat in life’s harrowing waters. Reminiscent of the work of Dorothea Lange - whose depression-era Migrant Mother Series at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles always moves me - they are aesthetically pleasing but weighty.

Quickly crossing 2^nd Avenue to return to Midtown away from the UN gallery with its nagging heaviness, I paused in front of the construction site of a new consulate building as my friends, a block behind me, sought to catch up. The shredded blue tarp surrounding the high metal meshing of fence and rough plywood waveringly discouraged viewers from witnessing the rubble of the site’s previous occupant. Through an eye-level opening in the plastic, I gazed at the jumble of broken concrete and metal rods, the splints that would soon welcome new growth and infrastructure. I thought about how art on a gallery wall, like the hole someone had created in the plastic tarp, perhaps likewise acts as a pealing away of something we’d like to cover.

But why did the exhibit bother me so much? The ending lines of a research paper I once wrote about Picasso’s Guernica perhaps provide a subtle answer: “As long as pain and struggle accompany the politics of our public and private lives, surely [the work] will maintain its impact.” There is a universality to suffering that instills in us desire to witness it. It is the artist's task to discover how to reference such depravity without resting there.

--Janna Aliese Dyk

Janna works at NYCAMS and has helped lead the Art Leaders and Vocation group.

Thomas Martin

2011-06-03T08:54:00.008-04:00

This week we welcome and enjoy Thomas Martin's latest work.

Q139 Pencil, Colored Pencil, Copic Markers, Graphite, Acrylic on Paper

Q138 Pencil, Colored Pencil, Gouache, Copic Markers on Paper

Q137 Pencil, Colored Pencil, Copic Markers, Graphite, Acrylic on Paper

Q125 Pencil, Colored Pencil, Gouache on Paper

Q108 Pencil, Copic Markers, Gouache, Ink, Colored Pencil on Paper

For me, drawing is a way to integrate my whole person, the unconscious, the felt and the rational, the desire to organize and the impulse to improvise. It functions as an intermediary moment between the idea and the reality, between the emotion and the response (T.S.Eliot, The Hollow Man). In this sense, drawing is a membrane through which outside(what is other) flows in and inside (what is personal) flows out. My drawings, therefore, embody fluctuating and contradictory states of understanding, feeling, and/or being.

--Thomas Martin

www.thomasmartinstudio.com

Taking The Plunge

2011-05-20T16:22:00.007-04:00

It is safe to say artists have experienced the complex distance between what is and what will be. This is usually typified in that stilled moment, the one prior to a performance or clean canvas, when every ounce of being gathers to commence action. It’s like convincing yourself to take the plunge into water, despite the uncertainties of the frigid deep, and the discomfort of stinging eyes. Jumping into action is a faith act, as we follow what will be.

Eventually, swimming with quick peeks and frantic strokes, we accommodate ourselves to the task of consistent motion. Art is the start of a journey between the cold facts of what is, and the exhilarating embodiment of what can be. The broad strokes, the rough gasps for air, the tingling of cold skin, are all part of the excursion into the deep. And, yes, we are changed by the process, soaked, tired, slimy, but we know we’ve done well when others take the plunge in after us.

Lewis Hyde understands these experiences as gifts. He writes, “The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labor satisfies. We are lightened when our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom.” (Hyde, The Gift, p. 25)

The gospel parables call us to plunge into storytelling, where, like Jesus, we show people the world in mysteriously new and refreshing ways.This week Kenyon and I met with Jonathon Roberts and Emily Zempel of Spark and Echo. They hold a unique take on storytelling by incarnating, or rather, “illuminating” the Scriptures through the means of experiencing multi-art disciplines through their website and monthly events. Spark and Echo invite artists to respond to the written Word by making art. Here, art mediates the mysterious depths of God’s word. Don't you want to dive in?

Be refreshed. The kingdom has come, let’s swim in it.

--Maria

How Much is Too Much?, or Wrestling with the Place of Culture in Devotional Life

2011-05-13T14:46:00.006-04:00

"I was born in a house with the television always on," sing David Byrne and the Talking Heads in their song Love for Sale. What could be truer than that for most of us? Yet even with the television blaring (and sometimes because of the television blaring), we manage to hear God's voice in the culture...because He's everywhere, and not only in a monastery.

We know that, but we also feel a certain tension. Christians live in a gap between "Be still and know that I am God" and Marshall McLuhan's "the medium is the message." I for one often feel the pinch, wondering how to mind the gap.

Witness a recent morning, when I started the day with quiet meditation on events in Jesus' life using Ignatian

exercises designed to help me see Jesus aright so that I "might be with Him, become more like Him and serve Him more." After an hour or so in prayerful reflection on Scripture, I went to the gym carrying two novels, a year-end issue of Time, and an iPod with a Tim Keller sermon downloaded and an energy-pumping playlist. I read from and listened to each in the course of an hour. I also had access, anytime I looked up from my elliptical machine, to four television screens, each tuned to a different channel -- as I was invited to think about (for far less than 30 seconds each) the plight of freezing citrus, the unethical treatment of elephants, full-body scanners, "healthiest super-foods" and "why the Sun didn't swallow the Earth." Just an average couple of hours for an average middle-aged woman, trying to orient myself towards God and live out the implications that flow from what I know and where and who I am. All before 9 a.m.

I'm used to trying to pay attention to everything all at once, yet sometimes I wonder if I fully take in any of it. Sometimes I scream an Anthony Newley-esque "stop the world; I want to get off" as I long for solitude and silence. At other times I want to be in the middle of the action. I still wish I'd been in the crowd for Oprah's and The Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling" flash mob scene on Michigan Avenue last fall. Yes it was commercially produced and motivated; but it was an orchestrated act of joy, and I even imagine it as a foretaste of heaven (probably with different lyrics).

Feeling that tension, I've been thinking lately about the dichotomy between the positive role of popula

r culture in my devotional (yes, devotional) life and the overload I feel when "the world is too much

with (me)."

To continue reading go to its original placement on the Washington Institute's website.

--Cary Umhau

Cary is our guest writer, she regularly blogs at www.holyvernacular.wordpress.

com and can also be found at www.caryumhau.com

Through A Glass, Darkly

2011-05-06T10:26:00.003-04:00

1 Corinthians 13:12

my hand groping for my glasses

when I wake in the night, my eyes

reaching through the dark

that is close around me, closing

my reflection as I stand

barefoot before the mirror

my bedroom empty of light

and I dissolving in my nightgown

nothing but a shadow blooming

then out of the gloom

a glimmer: my dark eyes peering

trying to find the edges

of myself, searching for

something more certain

how we see

or think we see, ourselves

things outside of and within us

things that are bigger than we are

for now, this waiting for my eyes

to adjust to the dark

and later to the light:

when morning comes

I'll push aside the curtains

and be blinded

how we know

to wait for the light to return

so we can see more clearly who we are

and what makes light

and what it is we're made of

my hand now scribbling these lines

in the dark, birthing a poem

I cannot see myself

bringing forth the words

from black of wet womb

into the blanketed grey

pushing it out

this slippery living thing

trusting your hands

will be there to catch it

--Emily Ruth Hazel

More of Emily's work can be found in Body & Soul: Poems by Emily Ruth Hazel (Finishing Line Press). Email maria@redeemer.com for information on how to order. Emily also appears in the second edition of RedeemerWrites, and she will read at the IAF Summer Showcase.

Martha: A Diet of Tears

2011-04-29T10:33:00.008-04:00

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way,

he came to a village where a woman named

Martha opened her home to him. Luke 10:38

Hallowed preparation call;

how honed steel breaks through

onion, whose tattered outside

coat crackles like pitch in fire.

Now fragrant incense rises to

bring lacrimatory plea

long held composed. Come, Duty,

bid these hoarded tears, unroll.

Down, beyond face, neck, arms trace

path back to garden's fall.

Bulb, broken, nourishes all.

Maria

Irresistible Mystery

2011-04-22T23:04:00.011-04:00

This Easter season we share the benefit of hindsight as we reflect upon Christ's death. We behold the spectacle of God's shameless love, his inordinate response to our need for rescue and reconciliation. And yet, those who were most expectant of a rescue in Jerusalem experienced instead the disaster of his trial and crucifixion, the scattering of his followers and the seeming triumph of injustice as Jesus cried out in despair to an unresponsive heaven. How can a God who went to such extremes in order to come near to humanity also be known for his elusiveness and mystery? Why would he go to such great lengths to make himself known only to play hard to get? As artists I think we have some sense of the motive in God’s mystery.

When once the inspiration comes to do something which is truly worth doing no matter the cost, an artist will often set her face like a flint in the direction of the goal until it is achieved. But if one has sacrificed greatly for someone or something, one does not announce it with trumpets and fanfare. To do so would belie a false motive. Even the most outrageous and non-conformist artist would cringe at the idea of "showing her hand".

In our historical view of the cross it would seem that the Great Artist does indeed show His hand by outlandishly sacrificing his own life for sinners. Yet many who watched him die could not perceive the implications of the event. Even in his death his motives were cloaked in mystery, revealed only to a few. The soldier who stood near the cross hearing the final words and breath of Jesus, understood him in that subtle moment to be the Son of God. What kind of tactic is this? It would seem that God, in the most radical and inordinate act of history, chose not to spell things out for His audience, but allowed himself to be misunderstood completely. Even after making himself vulnerable to the extent of nakedness and suffering cruel murder he made no justifying statements and offered no concise explanations. He remained a mystery even in His death.

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,
Yet we considered him punished by God,
Stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The punishment that brought us peace was on him,
And by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:4-5)

On the cross, God shows himself to be the Master Artist. His passion for us and his response to our brokenness was far too authentic to be reduced to simple solutions and comfortable conventions. No, instead the Artist's Statement took on flesh and mysteriously dwelt among us. This was certainly an unexpected response to those he considered to be his audience. The beauty of the cross lies in its mystery, that is, in the mysterious intentions of the Master Artist who, in willingly losing it all, gave us everything. Suddenly, the sufferings of an innocent man become the hope of all who will suffer for all time.

The God of the Cross still shrouds himself in glorious, irresistible mystery, though he has made himself vulnerable for our sake. Yet will we today hear the subtle whisper of his ever present Passion? Amid the clamorous mystery of His seeming indifference to our current view of things, could the God of the Passion be as radically involved in rescue and reconciliation today as on the cross?

Kenyon

The Artist as Cultivator

2011-04-15T11:15:00.006-04:00

In Andy Crouch’s, Culture Making, Christians are encourage to take up the posture of cultivation. Kenyon and I have proceeded to use the term cultivator as one of the various roles of the Christian artist. Tonight at InterArts Fellowship we venture one step further and will highlight the relationship between prayer and cultivation in the life of the artist.

Here is how we see it, both prayer and art are cultivating actions. Prayer tills our souls, cultivation works at shaping the material world. Together, prayer and cultivation echo back to the scene in Genesis 2, God’s Spirit animates the man who is then placed in a garden. Quite rightly, it takes life-giving faith to engage in generative, meaningful work. Furthermore, Henry Van Til states there are two main actions Christians perform in the world, prayer and work, ora et labora, cultus and culture. Both are life expanding. Our prayers speak through our deepest inner being in order to draw us out of ourselves to work assiduously in the world.

This is why I’m intrigued by the story of the cursed fig tree that withers in Matthew 21. It bridges Jesus’ cleaning of the temple, with the stern warning that if God’s people do not produce fruit for the king, they too, will wither. The disciples amazed that Jesus could quickly dissipate the fig tree hear the reply to their wonder, “Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.” According to Jesus, you can even move mountains, if you just ask.

God longs to make us a house of prayer that we may bear choice fruit. But the biggest miracle is that prayer enables us to hand over our harvest, what we have cultivated, back to the Lord. We are called to be both temple, the house of prayer, and Bethpage, the house of green figs. God’s creation is such that it harbors extraordinary potential. There is no need to hoard the firstfruits because we live in God's abundance. So when we enter into relationship, through prayer, with the giver of live, we should begin to see possibilities even among mountainous impossibilities.

The artist as cultivator invests in soul-stretching activity. Through prayer and the the creative process we align ourselves with God. We urge you to hand over your harvest to the true landowner. Prayerfully cultivate, cultivate prayerfully.

--Maria

Flying Quilts

2011-04-01T14:20:00.009-04:00

As a painter coming from a fine arts background I’ve always resonated with the craft of quilt making, so it was with great pleasure, if only for a short time, the wall between art and craft came down like a house of cards. This past week 650 red and white quilts, somewhat resembling playing cards, where visually stacked on top of one another in circular formations to create pied-color rooms in the vast Wade Thompson Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory.

The installation, Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts or as I like to call it, “the flying quilt show,” conveyed a museum-like seriousness through its dramatic lighting and grand physique, yet the affair was whimsical, celebratory, and a homage to the collaborative work of women, past and present. This week the Park Avenue Armory did not displayed high art, or low art, it simply held art. For the installation touted what art does best, it made the mundane monumental.

Pieced together by hundreds of handmade quilts, the exhibition represented the particular, the collaborative, and foremost, it honored relationships. The majority of quilts were created by groups of women looking to celebrate a rite of passage for a community member. Knowing the initial impetus for these quilts deepened the meaning and scope of the show. Represented were hundreds of women, their marriages, childbirths and life stories, patched together and quilted in red and white. Through the grand scale of the Park Avenue Armory, the foundational, yet overlooked things in life were finally honored.

And here is where I tie in the gospel parallel of transformation. Just as Christ’s redemptive work ennobles, artists can pick up this God rhythm, take up the ordinary and celebrate it. Through Jesus’ actions in the world we can praise the small, the quiet, and the humble things of this world. The triune God also bids our work to be collaborative, communal, a celebration of the infinite variety of relationships we hold in our lives.

Piece together some art for the glory of God,

--Maria

Art Illuminates: A Lenten Reflection for the Artist

2011-03-25T17:18:00.006-04:00

PROLOGUE

We must never imagine that art is wholly subject to the fallen mind. On the contrary, the fallen mind must be lifted up in taking in the art. Art can offer us a taste of the kingdom come and illumine our hearts and minds in view of the renewing work of Christ.

ACT I

Because of the gospel, the artist can delve into the deepest grime of fallen man’s mire to illuminate God’s hidden glory through the power of expressive mastery. This assumption of imminent glory is predicated by the incarnation: that God has visited man in His mire. The reality of this truth has radically changed the material world in which the artist seeks to work. Therefore an artist who works in view of this reality may enter into a particular context with hope to see Christ’s own hand at work. In this way, Christ is the master of all who aspire to create.

ACT II

Yet, if Christ is master of the artist, then artists must also receive His most striking and paradoxical distinction, that of the servant-king. For Christ did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, but made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant. Therefore, as we are encouraged by our own God-likeness, being made in the image of God and possessing His power to create, we also identify with Christ as the humble servant of all. In laying down His life, Christ demonstrated the sublimity of His own expressive mastery. In the gospel, divine love is the central subject of God’s masterwork. Creation becomes the object of His love and Christ’s life, death and resurrection are the potent vignettes of this hyper-radical performance-art piece of cosmic proportions which will culminate, of course, in the glorious return of the servant-king. Behold, I am making all things new!

ACT III

Art that is created in view of the gospel is sacramental. It invites the divine presence. It seeks to transcend and yet be embodied in the physical. This transcendent embodiment is rooted in the Christian hope, the redemption of our bodies. If our bodies are to be redeemed, then we also have hope that life in the body may also be redeemed. Therefore, the sacramental element of art—transcendent embodiment—extends even to the material elements of one’s trade and the disciplines of mastery. Light, color, sound, stone, skin, bone, breath, pen, paper, laptop…all are included in the sublimity of this hope of redemption. Most joyously, we realize that the artist herself, through the hope of the gospel, is swept up into this work of Renewal. The performance which is now in previews is awaiting the opening night. In the gospel, the artist becomes broken bread and poured out wine through the wringing and emptying of her own soul, releasing the storehouses of hidden glory. For is not God at work in our hearts to restore us?

EPILOGUE

It is not merely in the letters on the page, the mixing of the paint, the pointing of the foot, the distinction of the brand, the delivery of the lines or the structure of the story, but the artist himself in body, mind and soul set apart for this breaking and pouring out in sacramental service. To what end? So that no stone shall be left unturned in declaring and realizing the Renewal of All Things through Christ!

Kenyon

New City

2011-03-18T11:16:00.004-04:00

In the book of Revelation John is shown the bride of the Lamb exemplified as a brilliant city coming down from heaven. This is not a city fabricated from steel and poured concrete. Instead we find purified gold, excavated stones, cut jasper, emerald, and sapphire. Its gates are colossal pearls plucked from the deep. This city holds an overwhelming material presence and bids us to use all of our senses.

Why this solid, tactile description? Are we, the bride, the Holy City, called to be a magnificent material presence— beckoning touch to ascertain its reality? Like John, let’s be carried away by the Spirit to behold such a visceral image of what we are to become. For in our present state we are raw material in need of being purified, excavated, cut, purged and plucked. Our rough surfaces and extraneous burrs must be smoothed away to reveal true beauty.

As Christians, and as artists, we do not disregard the material despite its flaws; we view possibilities. We wrestle, almost battle, to materially manifest ideas, distill insights. Jesus comprehends the painful process of creating, the exertion needed to dig up what must come to light. What makes the city in the book of Revelation a work of art is its thoroughly worked-over presence.

Artists, as we watch the horrors of Japan unfold, let us be reminded of John’s vision. It was the angel who held the seven bowls of plagues that took John by the hand to show him the New Jerusalem. It takes pain and process to make us more real, more solid, more beautiful. This is the nature of both Christianity and art.

--Maria

Mirror

2011-03-11T17:41:00.007-05:00

Infrequently and unexpectedly, art can surprise us. It can feel a bit like catching a glimpse of oneself and one’s surroundings in a mirror you didn’t realize was there. Recently, I had this experience while watching Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage. The succinct title reflects the film’s unmerciful directness. Separated into six episodes and almost exclusively featuring two lead characters, Johan and Marianne, the film surveys a marriage by making us privy to the critical turning points in the narrative arc.

Scenes from a Marriage offers at least two insights. The first is specific to the subject matter of the film (marriage) and the second is a broader point about the way Christians encounter art.

Let’s start with marriage. When the film begins, Johan and Marianne are presented as a picturesque married couple and the envy of their friends. This presentation appears to reflect what both characters believe about themselves--their circumstances are ideal: they are an upper-middle class couple, youthful, attractive, interesting and successful. This seeming perfection sets the stage for the central conflict.

As Johan and Marianne discuss their relationship throughout the film, Johan believes their marriage is possible because they possess the ideal circumstances. Marianne believes they share the same “language” and that this shared language enables their marriage. These beliefs become irrelevant when Johan begins an affair with another woman.

What interests me most about the narrative to this point is that most marriages are sustained and many fail out of these beliefs. Nearly as soon as Johan and Marianne articulate their assumptions things fall apart.

Love is conspicuously absent. Most of us believe in the power of love which is a kind of emotional-romantic attraction to or infatuation with the other. It’s exciting, but less exciting is the kind of love that actually holds marriages together. The latter love involves things like self-sacrifice and compassion. Many people get married out of the former rather than the latter, their partner posses an attractive inventory of circumstances and goods. Or like Marianne, they believe they share something special and exclusive with their partner. Each assumption is based on a sort of idealism, material in the former case and romantic in the latter. This film offers a rebuke to anyone who believes that their material comfort or romantic idealism will serve as the lasting foundation of marriage.

What makes this film instructive for Christians (and for all, really) is that Bergman offers an unmediated view of the couple’s split and each individual’s search for self-fulfillment. Johan and Marianne turn out to be ugly people with a huge predilection for selfishness, adultery and violence. It would be easy to judge them if you thought you were a much better person. Bergman offers no judgment. He simply shows us how rotten human beings can be to one another, especially when real motivations revolve around their self-procured and perceived happiness.

This illumination opens to a larger point I would like to make, not about Christians and marriage, but about Christians and the arts. One of the ways Christians can engage the arts is by taking the time to seriously consider work that may or may not be complementary to their faith. In doing so we may find there are works like Bergman’s that remind us of our own insufficiencies and false gods. Regardless of the intent of the author, and Bergman would certainly have disagreed with the conclusions I drew, we might find that modern art is very much aware of our contemporary spiritual poverty and personal insecurity.

This is why contemporary art has something to tell us about ourselves. It is the art of the society and culture in which we live. Both are contexts to which we are often more beholden than we would like admit and we ignore this at our own peril. In this regard, the force of the Christian narrative in our lives is largely a counter cultural one. Sometimes contemporary art with all its capacity for dissonance and the grotesque is the smelling salt we need to bring us to our senses. Bergman’s film is not a Christian one in terms of the answers it offers but I think we can consider it so in terms of the unflinching look it offers of something we call sin. When we are honest with ourselves, this unflinching look isn't simply an interesting story told by a gifted film director. It is our mirror image we come to confess each Sunday.

--Daniel

Daniel Clemens is a painter and writer participating in our seven-week study, In The Living Room

Art Matters for God's Sake

2011-02-18T10:43:00.008-05:00

“Art Matters for God’s Sake,” is Adrienne Chaplin’s title for the next Gospel and Culture lecture and the impetus for this reflection. The assertion that art matters to God is interesting when our society tends to vilify the arts as something elitist, frivolous and impractical. Now, I have known for quite some time, art matters for my sake. Personally, art making has provided a much needed emotional space equivalent to the junk drawer most people possess. I take great comfort in knowing I can take time from my busy schedule and dump a whole bunch of emotionally charged things in one safe place. So, how, exactly, does art matter for God’s sake?

Yes, yes, there is all that beauty and poetry and stuff that draws me closer to God. Again, this is art for my sake; how exactly does art matter for God’s sake? Is it the liturgical art we offer to God in worship that matters? Or does art that matters for God’s sake take form as cultural goods? Why not both? I can think of one example where both are true, Camille Paglia in her lecture “Religion and the Arts In American” writes, “One of the most brilliant products of American creative imagination, hymnody has had a massive global impact through popular music.” Paglia goes further to remind us, “Where ever rock ‘n’ roll is played, a shadow of its gospel roots remain.” Paglia traces a root of urban black rhythm and blues back to the “ecstatic, prophesying, body-shaking style of congregational singing” that was characteristic of American revivals.

Okay, so a whole bunch of people who fell in love with God at the same time needed to somehow express that love together. These days it’s crazy to think how our country’s musical history was shaped by worship. But it’s not really crazy when we begin to enumerate all the great art and architecture that was made precisely to draw people together to worship God. No wonder Paglia goes as far to say the “route to a renaissance of the American fine arts lies through religion.”

I guess I could continue and come up with a hefty list of why art matters to God, I’m sure you have a few things to add, too (feel free to do so). For now consider this entry as a teaser for Adrienne Chaplin’s lecture. Please join us on February 27, 1:00pm at Hunter College, to take into our own beings—to reflect on, why art matters to God. Who knows, maybe this event will lead to that renaissance Paglia was speaking of?

Our Future Is Now

2011-02-11T15:36:00.007-05:00

Sometimes believers work hard at being spiritual, forfeiting the reality of their humanity. Jeremy Begbie, on the other hand, believes it is by the Spirit we grow more authentically human (Begbie, Voicing Creation’s Praise, p. 118). The resurrected life of Christ brings meaning and hope to our bodies—to being human. This hope, according to Gordon Fee, is empowered by Jesus’ resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit, which stamps believers with eternity (Fee, Listening to the Spirit in the Text, p.140). As Christians we basically live life geared towards the eschatological—a life imbued with our final outcome—an age when we’ll continuously glorify God in our full Spiritual bodies. According to Fee the early Hebrew believers understood this new age as the life of the Spirit—a fulfillment of a long awaited promise. Artists, we are privileged to live a life filled with the Spirit, looking ahead towards eternity.

What does this mean for artists working in the 21^St century? We must commit to human flourishing. Spiritual renewal is tied to cultural renewal. Having a relationship with Jesus, through the Spirit, enables us to see the world the way God sees it. But it is not enough to keep these visions in our heads. Nicholas Wolterstorff insists “that there is in man a deep dissatisfaction with merely holding in mind his religion.” There is a human longing to make our convictions concrete through song, sculpture, or drama (Wolterstorff, Art in Action, p.145).

It is our job to project through our creations a world that includes the reality of Christ’s glorified wounds. Spirituality can bear the marks of pain and suffering only because they already live with Jesus in the eternal realm. This is true beauty.

Love Jesus, be spiritual, make art.

Maria

Exploding Destiny

2011-02-04T19:30:00.007-05:00

When Christ, Who is Your life, appears, then you will also appear with Him in glory -Colossians 3:4

I love what some of the great theologians have said about Paul’s radical claims of hope for our lives and destiny in view of the gospel. Reflecting on Colossians 3:4 John Calvin writes, Here we have a choice consolation -- that the coming of Christ will be the manifestation of our life. John Wesley, the great Methodist theologian, sounds almost astonished as he writes,The abruptness of the sentence surrounds us with sudden light. Our life - The fountain of holiness and glory. Shall appear - In the clouds of heaven. Wesley seems to echo Christ’s own words in John 7:38 when He winsomely remarks, Whoever believes in me, streams of living water will flow out of him. What could Jesus possibly mean when he says that if we believe in Him we will become some kind of spring or fountain of life?

In George C. Wolfe’s play The Colored Museum, Junie Robinson, known as The Soldier with a Secret, attempts to describe the look on a dying man’s face. He says, All the hurtin’ that was gonna get done to em and that they was gonna do to other people was right there clear as day…but when He died, all that hurtin to come just left his face…He finishes the eerie soliloquy by speaking directly to the audience with a whisper: I know the secret to your pain.

What George C. Wolfe is hinting at in this vignette is that the only way to be free of all of the brokenness of this world is through death. And he’s right. But Paul in Colossians 3 says that if you believe in Jesus and the hope of the gospel then you are already dead to this world and you have a life that is being kept safe for you with God. Colossians 3 shows us that Christ is the source of all the good that will ever come from your life or that you will ever taste in this life, though for now it is only a taste. Haggai 2:7 calls Him the desire of nations. In the Psalms King David sings, As the dear pants for water so my soul pants for you… and …My body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water. David realized that all of his greatest desires in life were actually longings for Christ Himself.

As artists, we are fortunate to taste Christ’s beauty and glory in relatively small portions here and there through making and enjoying good art. But the hope of the gospel is that if you believe in Christ, then one day not only will pain and death have no power over you, not only will you be in the presence of the source of all goodness, but you yourself will become a source of the ultimate light and glory. At once, in His presence, all our longing for Him will be so overwhelmingly satisfied that we ourselves will burst forth in an explosion of New Life, a detonation of generative potential.

How can we as artists live and work in view of this great hope? Can we, through the power of the gospel, create flares and bursts of the coming explosion when we will be made new? God hasn’t given up you or your art, He intends to make you more prolific than you can imagine…In the gospel, you have an exploding destiny.

Kenyon

Bridegroom, Master, King

2011-01-28T09:40:00.006-05:00

Matthew 25 tells three stories related to waiting. We have the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, the parable of the talents, and then we get a glimpse of the future when the Son of Man, on his throne, separates his people according to what was done while waiting for the king. These three stories relate how we are to live in the present, shaped and marked by a future.Yet there is a peculiar and mysterious thing about our faith—our end goal is not an inaccessible, unattainable prospect. Our future, an eternity spent with God, through the invitation of Jesus Christ, breaks into the present. What we do now, while we wait for the bridegroom, master, and king, shapes and transform us into the people of God.

Matthew 25, first off, shows us the importance of knowing Jesus as the bridegroom. The impending intimacy of a deep relationship with God causes the wise person to carry enough oil for the realistic long wait. Artist, likewise, must presently live as the beloved, but that is not all. In the second story of Matthew 25, we learn there is something for each of us to do in while we wait the Master’s return. As Christians we are called to grow and expand the talantons—the portions of accumulated wealth—he has entrusted to each of us. Our natural abilities, our vocations, our material possessions, our social positions and networks, all that has been given to us, needs to be cultivated. For it is the entrepreneurial servant the master deems good. The servant whose only action was to preserve, finds darkness and sorrow. Beloved artists must work and shape this world as servants of the returning master.

And finally, we must live life waiting for our king. In the final tale of Matthew 25 we find social responsibility is a component of spirituality. Those who alleviate hunger, thirst, exposure, and maladies are fit to sit at the right of the throne. If Jesus is the good king, his priority is proper care for his kingdom. A thriving kingdom provides the basic needs for its inhabitants by seeking human flourishing through all sectors: economics, law, art, education, health care and more. With the love of the bridegroom and privileges given by the master we are called to work together with Jesus to build his kingdom whose reign will extend into eternity. Culture renewal comes from the spiritual renewal of waiting for Jesus as bridegroom, master, and king.

The Creative Spark

2011-01-21T11:36:00.004-05:00

The LORD said to Moses, “See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft. Exodus 31:1-5

A heightened sense of creativity is usually the first telltale sign of an artist. A toddler who uses the shape of an angle for a nose, instead of a dot or a circle; a child who climbs up to the piano keys and strikes out a melody he heard; a young girl who, despite not having taken a single dance class, spins with grace and poise. This is usually how we notice that someone has that special quality, that prodigious creative spark, which we hope over time will develop into a brilliant flame. It's a joy to some, and disappointment to others, that exceptional creative talent is so often, as they say, “something you’re just born with.” It’s true, some are called to be artists, and some are not. But is there more to this explanation than we’re realizing? How can we as artists better understand our unique—or perhaps eccentric--role as creative people?

In the Genesis account of creation, we find a God who has created all things out of nothing, and sees it as good. God, as Creator, is thus the origin of creativity itself. We are not only residents of his creation; we are also his creation, made exclusively in His image. We should understand that our creativity is given by God with the same purpose as our other distinctly human attributes: they reflect God and bring Him glory. We seek justice because God is just. We want to do good because God is good. And we love to create because God is creative.

This truth can bring a great deal of consolation. As artists, it's not uncommon to feel a sense of neglect from the church in terms of our vocation. At times we have felt like pariahs for pursuing a “secular lifestyle" in the arts. It sometimes feels like there is little or no place in our doctrines and theologies for the freewheeling ecstasy of artistic expression. Compared to doctrine, that at times seems rigidly black and white; the sensuality of creative exploration might appear hedonistic, chaotic, and ungodly. There is some truth to this notion; artists over the centuries have been known to use art as a vehicle for such hedonism, chaos, and ungodliness. But if we are to grow in our understanding of the Father, then we cannot ignore any one of His attributes. And if we examine Scripture and still deny that God loves art and creativity, we have created a false God.

In Exodus 31, we see that God not only makes room for art, He commands it. He wants it. We see that art is to be made in a way that brings joy, in a way that communicates His presence. Art is God’s gift to us, a gift to be given back to Him. Like Bezalel, artists have been specially equipped to be creators. Our creations bring glory to God, the Creator of all things, the inspiration for our work, and the source of our light.

Julian Leong
Julian is our guest blogger this week. He is one of our Actors Vocation Group leader

Fashionable Beauty

2011-01-14T11:54:00.002-05:00

I recently posed the question to a group of artists, why does art matter to God? To my surprise, only one respondent employed the word beauty. Beauty is, forgive the term, out of fashion. Indeed, Crispin Sartwell surmises that the declined value of beauty has much to do with its association concerning pleasure. Sartwell asserts that beauty arouses longing. Thus, Christians’ anxiety with inordinate desires discourages any trek into the territory of beauty. But it’s interesting how the contemporary secular world is just as fearful of beauty as its Christian counterpart. Perhaps this worldly wariness stems from frustration. Beauty produces a longing for perfection, which eventually, leads to dissatisfaction, then topples into cynicism.

How can Christians invest in the beautiful without despairing over desires and disappointments? Let’s follow the lead of the artist who waxes, “One thing I ask of the LORD…that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” In Psalm 27 desire and beauty are bound up together in the life-long pursuit of knowing God. Therefore, by knowing true Beauty, Christians should be at the forefront of reviving beauty for the rest of the world.

What about combating the world’s dissatisfaction with beauty? Again, we need to follow the artist who proclaimed in the same psalm: “The LORD is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear?” To gaze upon the beauty of the LORD will melt away the dissatisfaction and pessimism produced by our longing for perfection. Christians must live and create in the humbling light of true Beauty. True Beauty is our salvation for he accepts our pauper state—that fact that we are not fully clothed in glory—yet.

Seek Beauty. Live and work knowing one day we’ll be wholly wrapped in His splendor.

--Maria

Terroir

2011-01-07T18:19:00.008-05:00

One of the things I love about wine is its ability to express the essence of a particular place. Within the tiny orb of a grape is the potential to offer complex flavors and aromas which, when given time and great care, seem to re-imagine the world in which it was grown. The relationship between human beings and the soil beneath our feet can be delicately examined and enjoyed in a glass of wine. Yet, as with so many treasures of the earth, the grape must be carefully cultivated in order to unlock its artful articulation of place. In Genesis 2, God planted a Garden in Eden for Adam and Eve to care for, and God placed gold and other precious metals beneath the soil near the garden as a surprise, it seems, for them to discover, cultivate and enjoy.

And the gold of that land was pure, aromatic resin and onyx stone are also found there (Genesis 2 NLT)

French winemakers are particularly concerned with the authentic expression a wine offers the world in regards to the place it was cultivated. The word they use to describe it is terroir (pronounced ter-wah). Technically, terroir refers to the dirt or the terrain on which one might grow wine. But a winemaker understands terroir as the comprehensive description of a vineyard’s growing conditions, including elements in the soil and exposure to frost or sunlight. All of these elements and more are summed up in terroir. It is the essence, even flavor, of a piece of land. Hidden in the grape is the power to reveal terroir.

Inspired by the French tradition of preserving terroir, winemakers around the world are working to discover the essence of their particular terrains, and proudly invite the world to experience the beauty and potential of their region. Wine is being cultivated under some of the harshest growing conditions imaginable, agriculturally and otherwise. South Africa, Israel and Turkey are all producing distinctive wines. Wine regions are springing up all over the U.S. in some unlikely places including Texas, and the Arizona desert. God in His perfect love and wisdom so endowed His creation with treasure that each region has the potential to produce distinctly beautiful sense experiences, celebrating the glory of the Creator.

I am the True Vine and my Father is the vinedresser…I am the vine and you are the branches. The one who remains in me—and I in him-bears much fruit.

(John 15:1, 5)

In John 15, Jesus refers us again to a garden, as in Genesis, with His Father planting again. But now, through the gospel, God places us not in a garden but in Himself through Christ, the True Vine. And not only are we in Christ, but He is even in us! This is the radical truth that so amazed Paul when he wrote, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Talk about terroir! In Jesus we discover the true essence of our selves and our world, not merely what is on the surface but all of the conditions in which His subtle complexity and majestic glory are being revealed. No matter how difficult the conditions may be, God has sent His very presence into the soil of our lives in order to reveal His glory. Jesus Christ is our terroir. He Himself is that elusive, complex and ever-present beauty worthiest of seeking, most treasured in finding, and most longed-for in lacking.

My friends, what is the Great Gardener working to preserve in our hearts, in our city, in our world? Let us prayerfully seek to join Him this year.

Kenyon

New Year: New Artistic Initiatives?

2010-12-31T09:04:00.006-05:00

In the parable of the talents, Jesus is clear that he does not want us to be wasteful with what little we have. Instead, the servant with the least amount of resources learns that he who is faithful with small things will be given more.

As we confront issues of funding for artists in the twentieth century church, we have to ask whether our funding systems are simply handouts, or if they innovatively encourage creativity that is both redemptive and generative.

By redemptive, we mean that, at the intersection of a theology of beauty and the church’s broader theological narrative, we find the opportunity to support art that is “on earth, as it is in heaven”—projects that are re-humanizing, full of resurrection, etc.

By generative, we mean art that is not a dead-end. Art that moves towards becoming self-sustaining, "pays it forward" by being life-giving to another person or work of art, or paves the way for future creativity, broadening the horizons of what arts practitioners consider possible. Most often, generative initiatives may come through projects (or even business plans) that confront systematic challenges within the creative realm, which require the “big bucks.”

Take the example of micro-grant programs like SOUP, the Detroit-based version of the national movement towards artists funding other artists. Area artists gather monthly to eat together, each participant contributes a small amount for admission, and attendees propose creative projects. At the end of the meal, the crowd votes on which proposal to fund with that evening's income.

Suppose that we re-worked the church’s current grant-like model of funding from Angel investment groups towards a combination of micro- and macro- initiatives. Democratic, grassroots dinners like SOUP only maintain their integrity if they remain small. (A 1,000+ SOUP night would be a conference, not a dinner.) So, let artists go on funding other artists until the end of a term when the completed projects funded by that year's microgrants are entered into a larger competition for funding. The projects which proved to be most successful, generative, redemptive, would receive a much larger grant so as to expand their scope. (Those who have been given little will be given more.)

Such a model would be revolutionary on a number of levels. 1) It engages artists in the decision about what to value instead of leaving our artists at the mercy of the art market. 2) It starts with a small responsibility, a small amount and entrusts those who are faithful with that amount with more. 3) It would be a systemic approach to funding (and growing) arts projects.

Rather than haphazardly giving grants to individual artists for single projects, the model develops groups of artists and pipelines of projects, paying innovation forward, and being truly generative.

Maureen Lovett, Director of the New City Arts Initiative

Natalie Race, Editor of The Curator

The authors thank Maggie Guggenheimer, Kate Daughdrill, and the International Arts Movement whose insights have influenced the thoughts behind this post.

Epiphany Is Manifestation

2010-12-24T22:55:00.005-05:00

Epiphany can be seen as manifestation of the divine. As Christians we believe God can break into our lives in real and tangible ways. Not as a distant fire or cloud, not like a scorching burning bush. Christmas means Epiphany came as a small vulnerable child needing to be held.

Epiphany also occurrs through the mundane rhythms of life: a maiden at her task, men in the Far East studying the sky, and shepherds tending fields nearby. To these folks Epiphany appeared in the ordinariness of being, a gift wrapped in occupational details.

Simeon’s Epiphany took place in the temple. Here the old man gains the peace to die. And so, with this strange appearance of a new kind of life, one that is fully divine and fully human, there comes a death. Epiphany bestows the peace necessary for self to die. This peace comes by way of the cradle and the cross—the natal incarnation of the Christ and his ignoble death.

In chapter 1 of Colossians we read about creation. We learn who made it, upholds it, and redeems it. We read how God reconciles all of it to himself: heaven and earth, spirit and matter, the invisible and visible. Jesus’ work in and through creation and his death are the Christmas gifts of Epiphany, the manifestation of the divine in our lives. With his death our new birth and the birth of many of our creations become possible.

Those who have seen him re-orient their lives. Shepherds continue to shepherd, but because of Epiphany Christ deepens the meaning of shepherd. The wise men, in order to protect their Epiphany, re-route their journey home. And if Jesus “is the image of the invisible God,” as a small and hungry baby he hallows every mother’s embrace. Christmas asks us to make room for both a birth and a death in the ordinariness of life.

Welcome the gift of Epiphany.

Maria

Joseph and the Spirit

2010-12-17T10:48:00.010-05:00

Christmas sermons, stories and songs don’t generally focus on Joseph. But then there is the nativity narrative found in Matthew. Because Joseph’s story demonstrates reliance on the provision of God, I must confess my own inability to worship God out of his abundance.

Here is a man who must take home a wife who is with child, a child not his own. But God’s command to Joseph goes further than the adoption that includes his Davidic heritage, he says to Joseph: when you fulfill your fatherly duty of naming this alien, give him the name I choose for him. Furthermore, this child will lead you to stables and through deserts. He will drink from your limited water supply and eat from your small table so that you and the world may know my abundance and grace.

Presently, we have two young adults living at home. There is my grown son and another who is not my own. To the son, all that is mine is his, I don’t expect him to restock the cereal, but I ask him to on occasion. To the other, I’m annoyed if she doesn’t replace a bar of soap. With the stranger I live in scarcity holding on to what belongs to kin. So, I ask myself, how did Joseph do it? The text gives us the key: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

The Holy Spirit takes what is un-familiar, and seemingly un-related, in order to lead us to an abundant life with God, a life with Christ. Therefore, do not set to divorce, but rather take in what is not yours. With the Holy Spirit this axiom becomes fundamental to both art making and the Christian faith. Live life and make art out of God’s abundance.

Merry Christmas,
Maria

The Annunciation's Drama

2010-12-10T09:41:00.005-05:00

A sort of advent ensues prior to a dramatic play. We make our way to the theater, purchase tickets, take our seats and wait for the curtain to rise. Yet something else transpires pre-show. We willingly put ourselves at risk for we know art has the ability to alter our belief systems— including the ways we view the world and ourselves. And thus it is so with Christianity, the world being altered by a true story. George Steiner goes as far to define the narrative of the annunciation as the scene of “gravity breaking into the small house of our cautionary being.” Indeed, beware of the angel’s announcement that the Holy Spirit is birthing something new in you, for as Simeon uttered to Mary, “A sword will pierce your own soul too.”

The Christian narrative asks us to give up our wants, or rather, re-align them with God’s. This push and pull is the formula for good drama. And what drama, as Lionel Trilling observes, “does not consist of the opposition of ideas?” Art unsettles. This is how it aids the arrival of Jesus. Art interrogates our ways of being, and hopefully, acknowledges our need for Him.

In literary terms, Edward Said would describe the “opposition of ideas” as “antithetical positions.” Here logic and reason dally with pure contingency. According to Said, this volatile combination generates meaning. And so in the logic of art making we become faithful through the contingencies. Faithful art provides meaning, produces new life, and breaks up the walls of our cautionary being.

Let advent and the annunciation enlarge you.

--Maria

Creativity and Incarnation; The message of Advent

2010-12-03T12:15:00.007-05:00

In The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller the playwright describes a singular moment of artistic creation – the very first time in rehearsal that actor Lee J. Cobb actually became the character of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.

…Lee rose from his chair and looked at Milly Dunnock and there was a silence. And then he said, “I was driving along, you understand, and then all of a sudden I’m going off the road…”

And the theater vanished. The stage vanished. The chill of an age-old recognition shuddered my spine; a voice was sounding in the dimly lit air up front, a created spirit, an incarnation, a Godlike creation was taking place; a new human being was being formed before all our eyes, born for the first time on this earth, made real by an act of will, by an artist’s summoning up of all his memories and his intelligence; a birth was taking place above the meaningless traffic below… I knew then that something astounding was being made here. It would have been almost enough for me without even opening the play.

Miller’s fascination and wonder at witnessing a live artistic birth reveals a wonderful truth – that creativity and incarnation are intertwined. Many artists have experienced similar moments when time stands still and something new suddenly springs to life. It is what makes art so thrilling. The only fitting descriptive language that seems to suffice is the supernatural.

The beauty of Christ’s incarnation, which we celebrate at Advent, is that God chose to become like us, to identify with us, in order to save us. He did not come as a raging storm, smiting everything in His path. He came as Emmanuel, God with us. He felt what we feel and experienced what we experience. This is not the action of a remote and uncaring deity but of a lover doing whatever is necessary to rescue the beloved. Take away the incarnation and you drain the power of Augustine’s conclusion: “God is more intimate to me than I am to myself.”

--Steve Shaffer

Steve is a fellowship group director at Redeemer. This entry is excerpted from his presentation from the Living Room study series.

Galaxy Quest For the Artful Theologian

2010-11-26T13:06:00.008-05:00

In my mind, I always envisioned a theologian as a real book-wormy pious person with no connection to anyone of the artistic bend. I am now of the opinion that all artists are secret theological agents.

I have a strange fascination with certain movies. Galaxy Quest (1999) starring Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver is one of them. From a superficial standpoint, the movie is pretty silly. It starts out as a mocumentary of the Star Trek phenomenon. It sports stereotypical characters that were once a part of a popular TV series who now make a living signing autographs at space conventions. Through a crazy turn of events, these now washed up and embittered TV characters end up meeting real aliens who have been following their show for years reverently terming the wisdom from the program series "The Historical Documents". These perky extraterrestrials reveal that they have based their entire existence on whatever truths they had gleaned from the series' contents. In order to rescue the aliens from impending doom these faux-futuristic astronauts, with the help of some dedicated fans, end up using the wisdom from their experiences as actors on what they thought was a trite scripted series to save the day.

On some level, artists are the crazy TV characters embodying truths that are being observed by the outside world. Another generation will look at the products of the artists' efforts--for we are guardians of the ancient record. It is a record of galactic proportions. The artwork tells a story which is our theology in motion.

--Molly Franzone

Molly is a Filmmaker Vocation Group leader and has worked in children's television programing.

Holy Grounds: The Role of Place In Your Spiritual Life

2010-11-19T11:45:00.004-05:00

What is holy ground for creative and spiritual people living in New York City? In Redeemer’s most recent writing workshop, we discussed having a special place carved out for God and for our writing.

Our apartments are cramped. Our lives are full of distractions. If we don’t carve out time and space for the things that really matter to us, it’s likely we’ll continually push them aside and never get around to them.

In the story of Moses and the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-12), God commands Moses: "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground." God invites us to take off our shoes and encounter the Holy. In New York City, we can encounter God on the subway, in Central Park, and on our rooftops—but we have to pay attention; we have to open our eyes. Intentionally seeking out and creating sacred spaces, where we can read the Word of God and cry out to the Lord, helps us focus and tune in to God’s presence.

Setting up a room of one’s own, as Virginia Woolf might say, may also give us the impetus to write. New York City doesn’t always lend itself to quiet, private spaces but we can seek out a corner of our bed, a quiet nook in the library, or a cozy spot by the window of a coffee shop—our own sacred spaces for writing. Always writing in the same place and only writing in that place is a bit Pavlovian: over time, it triggers an automatic reflex to go into writing mode.

Where do you encounter the Holy? Do you have a sacred space carved out for quiet time with God? For your writing?

Writing prompt:
Write about your favorite sacred space in New York City.

—Stephanie Nikolopoulos

Stephanie is a leader for the Writers Vocation group and helped edit our literary magazine, RedeemerWrites.

A Pound of Nard

2010-11-12T16:51:00.004-05:00

It’s funny how often I hear an artist say something like, “I wish I could stop being an artist, but it’s not possible…” Less funny is how often I feel this way myself. No matter how difficult it gets to simply keep making art in the midst of my busy, city life, there’s always a sense that I must continue to tell stories in song, film or on stage. I can’t throw aside the activity of developing characters or interpreting the dance of lyrics and melody anymore than I can stop eating, sleeping or breathing. Giving in to the fact of my particularity as an artist is both freeing and costly. Freeing, because I can immediately begin to joyfully explore and share my gifts; but costly because a life spent as an artist will ultimately require self-sacrifice in one way or another. Joy and sacrifice, freedom and great cost: these experiences are common to artists, but also to those who would follow Jesus with all their heart.

I love the story in John 12 of the radical and artful gift given to Jesus by Lazarus' sister, Mary. About a week before Jesus would be crucified He attends a dinner party with His friends (one of whom, Lazarus, Jesus had raised from the dead). At some point during the evening, Mary honors Jesus with a radically sacrificial and intimate gift by pouring out a year’s earnings worth of spiked nard (a costly perfume oil) on the feet of Jesus and completing her presentation by wiping His feet with her hair. No doubt, a hush fell over the room as the smell of the fragrance filled the house and Mary stood silent, her hair still wet with perfume. Mary’s gift was radical, sensual and even scandalous in her cultural setting.

In all accounts of this story, the first to speak were the disciples, scolding Mary for wasting the nard which could have been put to some practical use like feeding the poor. But Jesus receives the gift with heartfelt and solemn gratitude. For Him, Mary's gift came just in time. It was just the encouragement and solidarity He needed as He faced the reality of His own impending act of sacrifice. Mary's gift resonated both emotionally, spiritually and prophetically for Jesus, a comfort He would not receive from His sleeping disciples in Gethsemane. Despite the cost to herself or her reputation, despite her fear, Mary offered the gift she'd prepared, in all it's particularity, and it did not disappoint.

The gifts of the artist and their expression, worked out through obedience and faithfulness, are meant to bring healing and wisdom to the community of faith, to the neighborhood and to culture at large. The process of making art requires something of us. We must give ourselves over to the process in which we allow the art to be expressed. As Madeline L’Engle reminds us, art is incarnational, it impregnates us. Therefore, creation can become like a kind of sacrament, a sign of present grace and future glory. It is an act of worship on the part of the individual artist. Yet, in community, this sacramental act can be prophetic, making Divine truth newly apparent. This is the mysterious and essential work of the Holy Spirit, filling the house with the fragrance of our offerings. May it also fill our lives, our communities, and our cities.

Kenyon

An Intern's Musings

2010-11-05T10:47:00.006-04:00

Within my first week in New York City as an Arts Ministry intern, I found myself sandwiched in the corner table of a Thai restaurant, deeply engaged in theological conversation with Kenyon and Maria while practically bursting with excitement about what the next four months of my life would entail. Little did I know that this conversation would contain one of the most influential pieces of wisdom I would take away from my entire season at Redeemer. After a brief ‘get to know you’ session, Maria went on to elaborate upon the amazing particularity of God’s delight in us as artists. She described a friend’s passion for needlework as an integral piece of her existence, explaining that God places these meticulous details into our image to rejuvenate and renew our hearts. I tried to mask my inner excitement with serious nods of agreement, but the newly introduced truth behind this statement rang in my ears for the coming months.

In David Taylor’s For the Beauty of the Church, Barbara Nicolosi also focuses on the specificity of artistic giftedness, saying “every one of us has to become an artist because the practice of art makes us focus on the details. Whether it’s gardening, or cooking, or needlepoint, or whatever it is that you do, everyone has to master the details of a craft in order to keep their life vibrant and their perception of God in the ‘tiny whispering sound’ keen.” The encouragement we receive from this reality is that even our smallest forms of self-expression shed light on the glory of our Father. In the Arts Ministry’s most recent gathering of The Living Room, we discussed the artist as theologian, reveling in the fact that God is even more committed to our artistic flourishing than we are. This means that every seemingly inconsequential piano recital, bouquet arrangement, incomplete song, dance class, embroidered handkerchief, or passion for painting ultimately brings joy to our Creator. We can now relax in our enjoyment of these gifts, no longer regarding them as superfluous or selfish, but as important and full of purpose.

Rachel Rogers

Knowing the Creative Christ

2010-10-29T10:39:00.007-04:00

Time and time again, when discouraged by the estranged relationship our society has with the material world, that also translates as an indifference towards the arts, I revisit a piece of art: the hymn found in Colossians 1:15-20.

This doxology is a cosmic big band explosion of praise conveying how all of creation culminates in Christ. This praise flows from a revelatory grace that attributes the wisdom of the ages to that of Christ. Failure for artists to understand this theological song can discount Jesus’ own creative work. It is through Christ, God accomplishes his creative and redemptive purposes in and for the world. It is only through the broken and resurrected body of Jesus where we find hope. Hope, not only for our bodies and the material world, but also for our bodies of work made up of, and existing in, the material world. Christ is at work redeeming all things through the cross.

The wisdom of the cross bridges the visible and invisible, heaven and earth, the concrete and concepts. Seen through the cross, our art pronounces our humanness with a heavenly accent that hints of a life beyond our limitations.

Knowing that Jesus holds all things together—past, present, future, seen, and unseen—where, then, are all of our doxologies? If we read and meditate on Colossians 1 we have no excuse for artistic inactivity. Please take the dancing shoes out of the bag, reboot your computer and complete your short story, open the piano bench and take out the unfinished song, and praise him who reconciles all things to God.

--Maria

Solitary Query

2010-10-25T23:28:00.009-04:00

Do you ever find yourself wondering, What am I doing here in the city? I love what the Apostle Paul says to an astute group of urbanites in the book of Acts,

He determined the times set for us and the exact places where we should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being.(Acts 17:26-28)

God, in His wisdom and love, created each of us with a deep interconnectedness to Himself, relationally and missionally. In fact, the place in which we find ourselves and the gifts we possess are ordained by God to draw us to Himself, and into His great work of renewal.

Because of the gospel, my work becomes a setting for my personal renewal. If I belong to Christ, then I am wholly His and I must bring my whole self into my work as an artist. God is at work to make us whole, and to make us His! Therefore I do not solely serve the industry or my own personal gain. My work, like my heart and myself, is being swept up in the great work of renewal that God is accomplishing in the whole of creation.

Kenyon

Beauty and the Temple

2010-10-16T01:02:00.007-04:00

“Where there is no temple there shall be no homes”—T.S. Elliot, (The Rock, II.40)

In the Hebrew Scriptures the Temple represents God’s abode, the place where heaven and earth collide. With the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Spirit becomes “the way God himself is now present on planet earth, by indwelling his people.” (Gordon Fee, Crux, Summer 2008, p. 5) We become the new living Temple of God, the home of heaven on earth. As artists it becomes our job to sing, dance, and paint believing that artistic activity can be a service towards God and one another. T.S. Eliot writes:

The Lord who created must wish us to create

And employ our creation again in His service

Which is already His service in creating.

For Man is joined spirit and body,

And therefore must serve as spirit and body.

(T.S. Eliot, "Choruses from The Rock")

With the Spirit, our living bodies now possess entrée to the seemingly inaccessible. It is through the Spirit, YHWY becomes Father (Gal 4:6; 8.14-17). It is through the Spirit enemy becomes brother. And it is through the Spirit we become empowered to make this world home, practicing for our true home yet to come. We need the Spirit to enable true relationships with the triune God, with each other, as well as with the material world. Much of our Christian teaching has emphasized the first two, but the biblical emphasis on the beauty of the Temple tells us God cares about the things of this world. So much so that N.T. Wright asserts, “The virtue of the royal priesthood, the new living Temple, ought to be the cultivation and celebration of beauty at every level.” (After You Believe, p. 232)

Furthermore, the Spirit joins in our creative activities; it helps give life to our materials. But ultimately life with the Spirit signals a life dependent on God. Christian cultural renewal is at the mercy of Spiritual renewal. There shall be no true beauty in our earthly home, without the beauty of the Temple.

--Maria

Strange Fruit

2010-10-08T17:51:00.005-04:00

One of the artists in our community at Redeemer, a classical actress, recently encouraged me to think more about the idea of God’s sanctifying work in our life v/s our own ideas of success: His fruit v/s our fruit. In the process, I’m attempting to draw a tangible connection between our lives in the city, and the purposes of God to reconcile ourselves individually, even artistically, to Himself. How can we see a connection between our personal sanctification and the Grand Work of Renewal that God is bringing about in the world, of which our own salvation, sanctification (and potentially our creative expression) are an evidence?

Perhaps married life is a good starting place. When I got married I had some good intentions, like wanting to love and serve my beautiful-sweet Emily, and see her reach her potential in Christ. But also, in my own sinful condition, I married her to make myself happy forever and found new hope in this “perfectly wonderful person” whose love could make my life, somehow, more pleasing to God. On the surface, those don’t seem like bad things, but they aren’t exactly what God had in mind. He does intend to make me happy forever and He knows that union with Himself is the only hope of that. But happiness is not the point of marriage, though it is a pleasant bi-product. Rather, in laying down my life for my wife each day, as Christ did for me, my heart is transformed to be like His heart, bringing me into fellowship with God who is the source of all true Joy and the only reward worth longing for. It wasn’t even a bad thing that I wanted a perfect person to justify me and make me right with God. That person just isn’t my wife. It’s Jesus. So, those two, seemingly small, distinctions become major shifts in my reality and lived experience.

Just as my marriage is not about making me happy, I had to realize that my being in New York may not be for the reasons that I initially had in mind. But that doesn’t mean that the Sovereign God of my life and this world doesn’t have a reason for me being in NYC. In fact, I can take a pretty good guess that it has a lot to do with the life of Christ being formed in me (which involves a very unpopular word beginning with an “s”), and the hope that I, yes even I, can join Him in His work of renewing all things, through creative endeavors which flow from a heart and life which are being renewed through suffering (I waited until the end to drop the “s-bomb”). And He is so lovingly faithful in bringing about this end, that He will allow many trials and Graces to come until Christ is fully formed in me. “Christ in me, the Hope of Glory”!

I can’t help but think of Paul, the apostle, chained to the wall of a prison cell, probably unable to write on his own after being cruelly beaten, but joyously testifying in a letter to the church in Philippi. He writes in Philippians 1:29,

“...for it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake…and, “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit…”.

Perhaps the most exultant part of his letter to the Philippians is in chapter 3 when he says,

“( vv. 7-11) Whatever gain I had, I count as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as [dung] in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

God bless you as you seek His purposes for your life and creative work in the city. Grace is at work here, in us and around us. Thank God for that Reality check.

Kenyon

Working Out Of The Resurrection

2010-10-01T17:18:00.006-04:00

Just as Jesus becomes the face of the Father, his broken and resurrected body gives access to the Spirit, who helps us live a renewed life. According to N.T. Wright, from the moment of the resurrection, “the forces of decay and death have suffered their major defeat, and from now on new creation is under way, with its first signs being the new life of those who believe the Gospel.” (The Redemption, p.84) Wright understands how the resurrection not only impacts our future, but is a reality that transforms Christians in the here and now. Therefore, Beth Felker Jones is correct in stating “Resurrection doctrine is indicative not only of final hopes, but also of present attitudes toward the bodies of the living.” (Marks Of His Wounds, p. 4) Jones believes God revealed himself through our senses by the Spirit which “has granted us the body of the Son.” It is through a broken body, that new life emerges. What this means for artists is amid the brokenness, “we can invoke nature with proper care…we can appeal to the nature of our own bodies, as we know it through the risen body of Jesus who is the paradigm of our own redemption.” (Marks Of His Wounds, p.100)

Life with the Spirit transforms our thinking about bodies and bestows a new attitude towards the things of this world. In her book Marks of His Wounds Jones directs us to the Augustinian understanding of embodiment and our inordinate desires. Our bodies and the material world are not necessarily the source of our sins; it is our disproportionate desires for these things. Through the Spirit, it becomes possible to possess a right relationship with God, that reorders our desires appropriately. Our art, then, becomes the means through which we can understand God and the world in a deeper way, not an end unto itself. By the Spirit, the material realm no longer enslaves, instead, we become free to value and nuture the things of this world, including art and the things it points to. Miroslav Wolf understands having dominion over the natural world means being responsible for God’s created order not “simply the satisfaction of human needs and wants.” (Work in the Spirit,p. 147) Thus, through the Spirit, we fulfill the Cultural Mandate, not because we must, but because we long to. Christ’s resurrected body prompts our desire to see all things become new again. Therefore the resurrection, according to Paul, allows us to give ourselves “fully to the work of the Lord,” this includes our art making endeavors, because we know that our “labor in the Lord is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:58)

--Maria

A Dialogical Journey

2010-09-24T17:00:00.007-04:00

Recently, we’ve had the pleasure of meeting with lots of pastors who are seeking ways to better serve the artists in their cities and congregations. It’s been exciting to see that God’s Spirit is moving in cities around the world to build bridges between artists and communities of faith. These meetings have also given us the opportunity to step back and really clarify the concepts that we have found to be most vital in this dialogue concerning artists and the gospel.

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

Embodied Soul Work

2010-09-17T14:22:00.003-04:00

Through Christ, love took form as a body. Jesus, the ultimate love offering, is the foundation for a theology of embodiment. How does this theology relate to artists? Since we will soon relaunch a dance industry vocation group let’s refer to a dancer’s work. Hours of discipline result in wounds and pains to the body; artistic activity can be physically challenging. Yet through the bleeding and bruising we are able to witness the wonder and awe of patterned movement and physical elegance. Beth Felker Jones speaking of Christ, but a fitting remark for a dancer, proclaims, “If we want to know the shape of a holy life, we look at the wounded body.” (Mark of His Wounds, p.111)

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

Gold Rush!

2010-09-08T12:30:00.014-04:00

Before I moved to New York I was a commuter, coming in on the train from New Haven to audition for Broadway and television. I always made a point to connect with old friends who had found their way to the city. Scouring the theater district near Times Square, I’d knock on stage doors and wait for their tired, cheerful faces to appear. It was like panning for gold, something you can do on the fly if you happen to be walking along a river with a rich mineral deposit. Cities are like that, urban frontiers with gold rush magnetism, rich in culture and opportunity. New York’s gold rush attracts artists from far and wide who come with pockets empty and pans jangling, hoping to find those luminescent moments of glory, crowning their young lives with the shining gold of recognition. But did God really call us to New York City merely to pan for gold, to strive for recognition? Well, no. In His rich love and mercy, God has given us this time and place to graciously shape us (you and I) into His treasured possession. While we do good work and make art happen, we become like rich deposits of gold that shine amid the current of this city.

God meant this to be a richly rewarding journey for us, one that leads to our maturity and wholeness. When we envision our art as the context in which God can do deeply sanctifying work in our lives, then the work of art making, whatever discipline it may be, moves us towards God,not just recognition, approval or a false sense of identity. Such pursuits are poor substitutes for our true callings as servant-leaders. As we strive merely to be faithful with our gifts, we become gifts to others, to the city, and most of all to God. Our true calling is to become like Him in His death and resurrection for the glory of God. Sometimes the “death" can look like a missed opportunity or a seeming failure in which we see what we've been truly trusting for our identity, comfort or hope. I surprised myself last month while having a drink with a friend and chatting about a recent missed opportunity. "That was my only life-line in the city!" I exclaimed with a truly pitiful sigh. He smiled and gently repeated my words back to me with his hand on my shoulder. Thank God for His Holy Spirit who is with us along the way to instruct our hearts and minds as we continue reading scripture daily and prayerfully sharing our lives with others.

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 New York City, those moments are too fleeting to sustain a faithful pursuit of the work. God created us as artists not to pursue the glittering lights of the city but to become the glittering lights of the city. As we work, faithfully pursuing our craft with joy, our art becomes rich deposits in the river, flowing steadily on toward the city of God.

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

Word and Deed

2010-08-12T12:22:00.004-04:00

Genesis Chapter 1 portrays the transcendent God creating the world through speech. At the pinnacle of God’s creation is humanity. “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” is the decree God imparts to the male and female in Genesis 1:28. Genesis chapter 2 depicts a more intimate God, physically handling materials and transforming them into his creations. The dust of the newly created earth becomes an aspect of mankind. “By means of the mysterious ed [moisture], the dry, dead earth became admamah, living Earth.” (Kessler and Deurloo, A Commentary on Genesis, p. 42)

In Genesis 1, God creates through speech; in Genesis 2, God fashions life through his hands. All that exist comes into being through word and deed. In the same way, the New Testament portrays Jesus bringing life through both command and action. In Luke 5 he instructs the paralytic to get up and go home. While a few verses before, Jesus touches an unclean leper and orders him to be clean. But, my favorite story is that of the Centurion, found in Luke 7 and Matthew 8, who astonished Jesus with his faith. In this narrative work and command are tied together through the job details of a pagan official. When the Centurion commands, action is demanded. This is a fact from his daily life. Faith, then, for the Centurion is not a personal preference, it is a fact. If he can command action, the creator of the universe can work beyond earthly expectations. One may surmise how the Centurion holds an integrated faith and work theology, being able to see through his work, the shape of kingdom life.

For Christians, stories, poems, commands, warnings, and songs shape our lives. Words work their way into our being and doing. Through them God speaks truth, but he also gracefully eases his wisdom through our daily activities of work, play, and worship. The Centurion understood how all of life comes under God’s sphere of influence. Perhaps he perceived, like the psalmist, how the skies proclaim the work of God’s hands; how day after day they pour forth speech. Psalm 19 tells us the “commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.” God’s commands, his words to us, illuminate the works of Jesus, Word and Flesh. Artists rely on both God’s words and his deeds in order to abundantly create through both.

--Maria

Little Treasures

2010-07-28T15:26:00.006-04:00

Do you ever get the feeling that you were meant for another time or place?

My wife, Emily, and I were walking to a restaurant on the East Side this week when I noticed a small gathering of people, furtively surrounding a row of cardboard boxes on the sidewalk. I immediately recognized this scenario. The all-too-familiar posture of contained, pedestrian greed was all the evidence I needed that time was short. I had to act. Emily suppressed her hunger momentarily and followed me across the street. Books! There were books! Freshly left on the sidewalk from some nearby office or studio, some of them looked new! I waited for Emily’s voice to patiently remind me that I’m not allowed to collect any more books, but it didn’t come. Too late now, I’m digging through boxes like a looter in a national disaster, only with a faint sophistication and poise as if to say, “I certainly don’t need these books”.

In a box that seemed to have belonged to a graphic designer, a lover of beauty, I came across my little treasure. The striking cover was all purple hues, natural textures, lavender in a field…it was a book dedicated to lavender, and to how its fragrance and bloom so richly adorn the region of Provence in France. Well! I wasn’t going to miss this! I scooped the book up nonchalantly, giving eyes to Emily that it was time to make our exit. She was relieved that I’d only accumulated a single book. At dinner, we talked and dreamed of France…again. What would our lives look like in France? “What would we do?” she said. We both agreed that it would be reason enough just to BE there.

Ok, so we certainly have a romantic view of the French countryside, but I wonder if some couple in Provence isn’t dreaming of New York City. We have these inexplicable desires to be elsewhere, don’t we? More than that...we believe in our hearts that we could, in fact, be meant for another existence altogether. The little treasure I found in the box on a city street made me long again for my true home, my true city. C.S. Lewis affirms this longing in his timelessly lucid Mere Christianity, suggesting that if we have desires which cannot be satisfied in this world then it must follow that we were meant for another world.

Perhaps our art-making, too, serves as a reminder of our other worldliness. Not merely that inspiration emits from a mysterious source, but that we as artists are consumed by work that addresses elements of our world which are not entirely of this world. As we discussed at Inter Arts Fellowship this month, art extracts information from text or experience which is not expressly present in time and space. In this way, art groans with the universe in eager expectation for the final and eternal proliferation of beauty and grace, the Redemption of all things! As I live my days in the city, I’m thankful for lavender reflections in cardboard boxes, and for the beautiful reminder of art. May we always be graced to discover it.

--Kenyon

Art and Care

2010-07-19T17:27:00.003-04:00

Last spring I attended a retreat for Christian art leaders held at Laity Lodge, outside of San Antonio, TX. How gracious for an organization to provide space where leaders could share their stories of healing and spiritual deepening through the use of art. Listening to these various accounts I realized just how much artists are currently using their gifts as tools towards pastoral care and spiritual growth, regardless of whether they classify it as such.

Professor Howard Clinebell defines pastoral care as “ministry of mutual healing and growth within a congregation and its community.” (Basic Types Of Pastoral Care And Counseling, p.26) To witness God’s people utilizing the language of art for the well being of its community is exciting. Having to be always an advocate for the arts in this pragmatic society, I found these testimonies to be a healing balm for my own soul. I am in awe of God’s provision for the Church. This organic impulse to utilize art in the most humble ways also widens the scope of art within our postmodern context. In our society art is a thing onto itself — it exits for its own sake. To counter the bias of our scientific and technological society this belief is sometimes necessary, but art also lives to heal, unify, as well as to inspire.

One year after the Laity Lodge retreat, the Center for Faith and Work decided to incorporate a more creative hands-on approach in our yearly retreat. Our desire was to grasp great teaching by engaging it through a variety of activities that included embodied interaction. After all, as Margaret Kornfeld reminds us, “God is a God who wants to be remembered and has created our bodies — with complex neurochemical systems — so that memory is possible.” (Cultivating Wholeness, p.86)

The weekend began with individuals creating a personal collage representing the good/bad of their vocational field. This activity enabled retreaters to process their circumstances and articulate them to group members. Later on, we commenced our evening worship by passing out glow sticks that illuminated our parade to the meeting hall. Once we reached our softly lit destination, participants beheld a giant mosaic floor scroll made from their collages. Surrounding the mosaic were simple musical instruments, waiting to be picked up and played with. The glow sticks, now collected together in a glass urn, illuminated our evening filled with songs, prayers, and praises. All these concrete activities helped reinforce our teaching for the weekend: our stories, held together, can become aligned with God’s story.

Art is a receptacle for our stories. But, art also helps us to understand God’s story in deep and meaningful ways. Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon put it this way:

"How does God deal with the human fear, confusion, and paralysis? God tells a story: I am none other than the God who ‘brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of Bondage’…In telling that story, Israel comes to see itself as a people on a journey, an adventure. Its ethics become the virtues necessary to sustain Israel on the road." (Resident Aliens, p.54)

Art reminds us that beauty is possible even in the midst of our broken and confused lives. Art helps sustain the community of believers on the journey of being and becoming the children of God.
--Maria

Looking without seeing

2010-06-28T17:22:00.009-04:00

[We’re sorry it’s been so long since we posted something new – it was a very busy spring! We hope you’ve been enjoying your summer so far…]

So, those of you who know me well have been wondering just how long it would take before I went on a rant. Here we go….

My husband and I have enjoyed visiting Washington, DC twice in the last two years. It’s cheap and easy to get to from NYC, you don’t need a car to get around, and the museums are free (relatively speaking – they are directly supported by our taxes). A year ago when we visited DC for the first time since childhood, we were disappointed that what we remembered as one of our favorite museums, the National Museum of American History, was closed for renovations. So, when we went this spring, we were eager to visit that museum and the Museum of Natural History, which we had also skipped a year ago because we were frustrated by massive numbers of school groups. (Okay, so neither of these are art museums…but bear with me for a few minutes, I’ll be making a point that applies to art.)

We were first shocked to find that American History Museum no longer actually displays artifacts – at least, not many. What we both loved about the museum as children was the sheer quantity of really cool stuff. Now, one or two objects might be displayed alongside large displays of “context” – signage with photographs and text, an interactive video, etc. – telling you about the importance of the artifact, suggesting how to think about it, and encouraging you to have a personal interaction with it. Although (according to their website), “The Museum has more than 3 million artifacts in its collection,” I’d be surprised if even 300 are actually on display today in the new, re-envisioned museum which is finding “new ways to present the objects of our nation's past.” Um…was there a problem with the old way?

Then we went to the Museum of Natural History. We failed in our effort to time our visit around the swarming schoolchildren and teenagers, so we stepped over and through them to get to the exhibitions we wanted to see. I remembered being gobsmacked, as our British friends would say, by the Hope Diamond as a child, and the rest of the gemstone collection, so we visited it.

The gems were incredible – but I was amazed to see that, instead of actually looking at the pieces, the schoolchildren (and their adult chaperones!) were instead compulsively photographing them, one after another, rushing as quickly as possible through the exhibition to be sure they got to see everything.

We had noticed this on our previous trip, too, at the amazing Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, which is made up of numerous statues and other creative interpretations of FDR’s presidency. A group of pre-teens – with T-shirts from a Christian school, no less – raced through the memorial, posing with the statues for photographs, and never actually took time to see the pieces and be affected by their meaning.

Imagine yourself here…sitting on FDR’s knee…or petting the nice doggie….

To have an experience of anything – whether it is a historical artifact, a beautiful piece of human craftsmanship, or a tribute to a great man – requires attention. Attention, in turn, requires an absence of distractions (like multiple layers of “context”), plenty of time (which might require being selective), and focused sensory engagement (looking, listening, touching, tasting, smelling, or moving).

Has life started to move so fast that we are afraid we’ll miss something if we pay attention? Does interacting with something, inserting ourselves into it, make it “ours”? Are we so fearful that another beautiful experience will never come again, that we feel the need to capture and hold onto it, even if only in a photograph?

1 Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

Perhaps, really attending to what we have here – even if it is only as a digital photo of the Hope Diamond is to the real thing – can lead us to a greater eagerness and hope and joy now about what we will experience then.
--Luann

The Drama of Believing

2010-03-29T14:26:00.002-04:00

What greater drama is there than the Christian narrative? The Bible starts with toe-tapping rhythmic ordering and ends with the show stopping, coming down from heaven, glittery gemstone city. It’s as if our world held a concealed secret reality to be discovered only in the sweetest of dreams. In between these scenes we see humanity’s struggle to love God more than their desire to play God. God’s faithfulness, always present, brings the drama to a climax with the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The coming of Christ is epiphany. By knowing Jesus, humanity gains access to its own humanness, putting off its need to be God and growing in its need for God. Indeed, the Christian “actor” puts down the mask and picks up the rhythms of life in order to flesh out true character. Christian incarnation eliminates disguise. The actor no longer needs the mask as he leads those who willingly follow him into life’s tragedies and comedies.

Theater itself is a large collaborative effort. Here is an earthly paradigm for the rich interrelationships of which the Bible speaks. Theater, just as in Christianity, depends on a rapport between text and the writer of that text. The director, crew, and cast must all connect and relate to the same script. All parts work together to incarnate these words connected by speech and gestures. What actors say and what they do reflects what is written.

On Sunday mornings when we gather together to worship, we too enact a drama based on a text. We sing songs, make speeches, and perform gestures that embody the Scripture stories. We work Scripture into our own beings every week through the body of Christ, the gathered church. We practice now a bit of what we will be doing together forever. And, art and beauty—the songs, symbols, and settings of the scripture—is now and always will be a part of our corporate activity. What an exciting drama we behold and God unfolds.
--Maria

Affordable Art

2010-02-23T10:26:00.008-05:00

Can you experience great art in NYC at prices you can afford? Yes! If you know where to look and can plan ahead and be flexible.

[Do you have tips for affordable arts experiences? Share them as a comment below!]

Visual art: Some major museums have "free nights." The Museum of Modern Art is free on Friday evenings from 4-8pm, and Brooklyn Museum has a great "First Saturdays" event (coming up on March 6!) that is free and includes live music, dancing and other programs. Both would be great to attend with a group of friends!

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Cloisters (in Washington Heights) are always "pay what you wish" (check the fine print - it's a "suggested donation"). The Frick Collection - a great "unknown treasure" - is "pay what you wish" on Sundays from 11am-1pm, the Guggenheim on Saturdays from 5:45-7:45pm, and the Whitney on Fridays from 6-9pm (regular admission is only $8 at the Whitney through February 24!). Don't feel guilty - the museum would rather have you come for what you can afford than not visit at all! The staff won't hassle you. (If it would make you feel better, go to the museum three times in a year, and split your "suggested donation" into three installments.)

Check the Visitor Information page for other museums to see what they offer. Art galleries are always free and NYC has the best galleries in the world, featuring the most cutting-edge contemporary art.

Performances: A number of discount programs offer tickets to theater, dance and music performances for affordable prices. Theatre Development Fund, which also runs the TKTS booths, has a membership program that features tickets to all kinds of performances, between $9-$37, up to a month in advance of the performance. Annual membership is $30/year and is open to students, artists, teachers, those working in non-profits, retirees, and more. Click here for details.

Other ticket discount programs like Audience Extras and Play-by-Play have a higher annual fee, but only a small service charge for day-of-show tickets to a wide range of performances, including Broadway.

Many of the major venues also offer inexpensive tickets to their regular performances, including New York City Ballet ($15/ticket plus $20 annual membership), Metropolitan Opera ($20), New York Philharmonic ($31+) and more. Yes, you have to plan well ahead to get these tickets. And, no, you won't be on the front row. But let's face it, how big are the people on your TV set at home?

Some performances offer discounted day-of-performance "rush" tickets. Check the website of the organizations you're interested in for more details.

You also might consider ushering - it's a great way to serve the people and arts organizations of our city, and see some shows for free! Contact your favorite venue for more information.

Redeemer also offers group-priced tickets through our "Culture Club" program, which attends an arts event each month. Sign up for the email newsletter here to receive announcements about these events. Most Culture Club outings are not also announced in the worship service bulletin or elsewhere.

Enjoy some great art!
--Luann