Glory Be

Spend any serious amount of time working in the arts and you're bound to stumble upon one or two or more moments of glory: a triple turn on point, the high C at 10am finished with a buttery vibrato, the character writing himself into your novel as you sit in your pajamas at midnight surrounded by rough drafts. It's all too easy to live in the lingering echoes of such moments. It reminds me of a lonely astronomer sitting in her observatory in the Arizona desert (ok yes, I'm thinking now of Jodie Foster in Contact but I had the generic image first!). I wonder if many of us would continue creating if we could not be refreshed by such blips on the radar.


I suppose the same could be said about our search for God. Much like the observatory, we wouldn't be looking if there hadn't been a contact made at some point. But in the arts we tend to latch onto to these moments don't we? It's more than a blip on the radar, it is our defining moment. The way in which we learn to respond to such anomalies will undoubtedly determine our experience in the arts. As Elizabeth Gilbert so graciously shared in her TED talk, we must learn to attribute these experiences of glory to a divine source outside of ourselves or else we will fall under the burden of re-creating such a feat on our own.


The exact opposite conclusion about glory is expressed by Oscar Hammerstein in the Sound of Music. One of my favorite songs from the score is Nothing Comes from Nothing. This languid ballad celebrates the unanticipated glory and grace of falling in love. Captain von Trapp and Fraulein Maria declare their love by moonlight and ponder that so rapturous and wonderful a love could come to them. The only explanation simply must be that they are the most deserving people on the planet or else it wouldn't make any sense for them to receive such a gift. Nothing comes from nothing...nothing ever could. So somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good. It's a logical conclusion I suppose, but as an artist I immediately think "If this good thing came because of exemplary behavior which I cannot now recall then I'm up a creek from here on out! I can never repeat that glorious moment and I'll be living in its shadow forever!" Does this sound like the way you view God's gifts sometimes, even the gift of your art? You seem to have many experiences of glory in which you create something truly special and share it with others, and yet there's no guarantee that you can produce or experience it ever again. Does it ever cause fear, even anger, that you will never have a sustained experience of glory?


I think these feelings are justified, honestly. God never meant for us to have mere blips and spurts of glory. He created us to live with him in perpetual, radiant glory as his beloved. The fits and starts of creating beauty in this life are like pulling the start cord on an old lawn mower or turning the ignition on an engine that needs some repair. But what Christ accomplished by dying in our place is that we can now get our lives back through his life and our glory back through his glory. As 1 Corinthians 5:14 reminds us, One died for all, therefore all died. And Paul elaborates on this revelation in his letter to his friends in Colossae when he writes, For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears then you will also appear with him in glory.


At our next InterArts Fellowship, Cherith Nordling and our own Maria Fee will help us explore how our work as artists, though now in fits and starts, will one day be fully experienced and shared in Eternity. That God has won back our lives on the Cross is a fact that sweeps our art work into a true, living and eternal hope.


Kenyon

The Creative Spark

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