The Dialogue Continues

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

Glimpses

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 Reality of Abundance

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

Solitary Query

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

Strange Fruit

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

A Dialogical Journey

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

Gold Rush!

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

Little Treasures

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