The Deep Places: Accessibility and Responsibility

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

A Pound of Nard

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

Beauty and the Temple

“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