How do we experience and know the beautiful? Is the awareness of the beautiful a biological response built within our nature? Has God so made us that like the swallows long for Capistrano, we long for the beautiful? Or is this awareness learned? Or, is it both? Are we born with an innate sense of the beautiful and yet the nurturing and enhancement of that awareness grown and expanded through proper care of the imagination.
Is the imagination the human capacity to experience wonder and awe? Is creation therefore, a starting point for the growth and care of the imagination? Are we created to feel some sort of connection with nature and if so how do we differ from the animals? Do dogs experience a sunset as something of grandeur? Do mountain goats look down over the hills of the alps and acknowledge their beauty? Yet we know that animals do respond to the beauty of each other as they perceive it.
Much of beauty is acknowledged in how the genders respond to one another. If beauty were unreal then why would making love to a bar maid be any different than making love to a beauty queen. Some would say that this admission of beauty or noticing is actually attributional on the part of the individual and that awareness is not innate in the object of desire but projected by the one viewing. In other words, someone had to tell this person that that was beauty. This perception seems to have some validation as we see how beauty in terms of genders is very different from culture to culture.
Is the honoring of nature in cultures we may consider more ancient another outlook an admission of beauty? Can we expand the idea of beauty to be the true, and the good?
How do we know beauty? How do we know when we are experiencing beauty? What is the sensate and accompanying engagement of the intellect that tell us we are in the presence of the beautiful? Beauty is an experience besides an idea or concept. The experiencing of beauty grounds us in our humanity.
For Christians, beauty takes on an ethical and moral dimension. Our imaginations are informed and constructed in and through our relationship with God. His way of imagining and creating tell us something about the beautiful. Thus, there can be beauty to the eye that may not be beautiful to the heart. Pornography is like that. Attractive people can be involved in behavior that to the heart one finds offensive. This is why the experience and awareness of beauty is not just innate and or natural. We must learn to see and know the beautiful. Our fleshly natures come into this world with an affinity for knowing and sensing the power of the flesh. Thus we know the power of another human on our eyes and even our hearts.
God is a jealous God. He, and He alone is beautiful because He reflects and embodies the fullness of all things. To know Him, to see Him, to experience Him, is to then be able to know the beautiful. Because we have deconstructed beauty and allowed something to be visually beautiful as in the case of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography, we do not understand that in God’s aesthetic, to gaze upon something that was not intended to be gazed upon is to misunderstand the power of the beautiful.
The human body is beautiful. It was meant to be adored, cherished, touched, embraced and even yearned after. However, the power of this experience was to be tempered in the context of marriage. Why? Because of the power of the beautiful. We are so overcome by the beautiful that we often loose our ability to make sound decisions unless we properly interpret the beautiful. How so? The beautiful are those objects, and experiences and people and places that truly make us noble and more reflective of our spiritual natures and capacities.
This is why beauty is taught. Although sexual intercourse may not need to be taught in the strictest sense of teaching, it is clear that instinctual engagements may not bring ultimate pleasure. We humans have the ability to ponder and enhance the inspirational. We can re present experience out side of real time and then reengage that experience again with the depth of out imaginations (e.g. erotic art). Art is the instinctual re presentation of experience such that its meaning, power, and presence can be heightened and enhanced and repeated..
The Forming of the Imagination
Some believe than imagination is actually the soul. The imagination is the capacity of humans to hold experientially, the depth and breadth of consciousness. Thus, the nurturing and care of the soul are the nurturing and caring of the imagination. There is a difference between what is imaginary and what is imagined. The imaginal is the thoughts and responses one has that accompany consciousness such that time and space and experience appear to be real. The grooming and proper care of the imagination is what soul making is all about. Thus, the poem.
The Color of Soul Making
Blue fire
Slipped into my room last night
Sighed heavily
Illuminated my labored breathing
And the shallow rise and fall of sorrow’s chest
As if both color and flame could speak
Their words came forth
“We are your indigo angels.
In this place most call a desert
Your sister the white Iris blooms
In this dryness the soul flowers
Reverie fills the darkened cobalt horizon
Lovers held in suspension
Melt into each other
And weep with longing
Here imagination burns a cerulean glow
Melancholy marries Kandinsky
And all this pondering rekindles
A thousand years of exile
In the unreflective underworld of black and white.”
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
On Pondering Rothko’s Chapel Paintings
All art is religious
All color, hue and shadow
Name the space we wish to inhabit
There is no private space
No secular terrain
No words free from moral agency
No melody floating above
Waiting for birth in this place
Even the seemingly mundane world of decoration
Marks the moment and space
With my personal attention
My intentional gaze
My need to enchant my world with purpose and meaning
My naming allows me to know for certain
Like Helen Keller’s water
I relish the discovery
And bathe in its glory
Poem by David M. Bunker
All color, hue and shadow
Name the space we wish to inhabit
There is no private space
No secular terrain
No words free from moral agency
No melody floating above
Waiting for birth in this place
Even the seemingly mundane world of decoration
Marks the moment and space
With my personal attention
My intentional gaze
My need to enchant my world with purpose and meaning
My naming allows me to know for certain
Like Helen Keller’s water
I relish the discovery
And bathe in its glory
Poem by David M. Bunker
Art as Gift
For over a half century I have labored between the often apposing worlds of two economies: the economies of gift and commodity. The embattled land that divides these worlds is one few from either side traverses thus making their connection daunting and full of stridency. Artists tend to see their craft as a gift while business people discover what is beautiful and true and offer a way to create wealth through the exploitation of the gift. Joseph Conrad said, “The artist appeals to that part of our being…which is gift and not an acquisition-and therefore, more permanently enduring. It is the enduring nature of art making that I am most interested in.
Can one acquire a gift by their own will? (many in American Idol would seem to act as if they could or can). Being an artist today is so enmeshed in the search for belonging and identity. But if you could acquire a gift through your own personal will would it be considered a gift at this point?
Many an artist has a daunting gift placed upon them early in life. Mozart was composing at the age of four. Candid conversations with artists often uncover the awareness of this giftedness and its benevolent bestowing. Even D. H. Lawrence was aware when he commented, “Not I, not I but the wisdom that blows through me.” If we would apply the idea of divine bestowment upon the inner nature of creativity and giftedness, why then would we not apply some kind of spiritual worth to the very creation of the artist, i.e., the painting, the song, the poem? Could it be that our own divine worth as human as a gift to humanity resonates with the art as gift exchange?
Holidays are always magical times in that we begin to anticipate the gifts that will be coming our way. Birthdays tend to generate the same exhilaration as we prepare to be blessed by those we love. It is clear that Christmas is a metaphor for what Christ brought into the world. He is the Father’s gift and in many ways we model that literally in our own gift giving. Could you imagine paying your friends and loved ones to buy you gifts for Christmas or your birthday? Of course not as those days are days where you are redeemed and atoned for. It is about blessing you and you in turn bless others.
Lewis Hyde, whose book generated much of these musings, said, “...the way we treat a gift can sometimes change its nature.” How many times have you commented on a painting on someone’s house to discover its creation was a loved one who had passed on and the painting then became very “special?” What makes this gift special is its attributes. We decide what something is worth. Even beauty is ultimately attributional
Churches have long honored certain objects and have deemed them sacred or near sacred. Where are the gifts of art that in ages past filled our churches? Have we unwittingly commoditized the spiritual dimensions of art as gift and how can we revitalize that sentiment and posture? Much like Hyde, I do not mean to totally deny the ability of art to be commodified. But can a gift be merchandised and if not where are the gifts of art in the Church?
In recent years I have come to define myself as a creativity coach. This is an odd moniker and one that most people question upon seeing it on my business card. Throw in spiritual direction and ethos experience designer and you’ve got a confused world on our hands. So I heartily agree with Hyde and many artists when they articulate, “Labors such as mine are notoriously non remunerative in a society dominated by market exchange. How is the artist to nourish himself, spiritually as well as materially, in an age whose values and market values and whose commerce consists almost exclusively in the purchase and sale of commodities,” queries Lewis Hyde.
I have met many artists over the years who do labor under the weight of their calling to be an artist. This is due in part to their unwillingness to create under the shadow of triviality and shallowness. An artist’s service to their gift in some ways demands a degree of submission to gift integrity thus making capitulation to market forces highly improbable if not impossible. But the artist works out their giftedness and salvation as it were under the canopy and cultural contradictions of capitalism. How does one live when an undisciplined acquisitional spirit is allowed to run rampant? How does one carefully guard the integrity and the spirit of the gift such that it continues to bear the fruits of beauty truth and goodness? And if art is made as gift, how can it embrace its very purpose in being if it is not given as such?
I think the Church as community holds some of the answers to these questions. To some degree I am calling art “gifts” because of their sacramental ability to form and inform the inner world of the soul. Why do the gifts of the inner life lack public currency amongst Christians? What does it say about us and to us that we have allowed much of our sacred objects to be bought and sold at such cheap prices and in such tawdry ways? I contend there is livelihood of the Spirit that is missing in today's creative world where Christians are attempting to mine the imagination’s gifts from the inner world. Are there ethics of gift exchange intrinsic to the ethos of Christians and are we neglecting those experiences and demands in our current creative climate?
How do we define wealth? What makes us wealthy? Some might say abundance while others might say the possession of things of worth. Others might see wealth as objects that have history, meaning, and belonging embodied in their creation. What we value in a specific culture informs our material things as being of worth or worthless. Could we be undermining the very worth of certain artistic renderings when we buy and sell them to one another? Some might ask then how would artists make a living? Good question and is especially pithy in a materialistic world where worth once again is often tied to the monetary value given certain commodities. Do we see something as being worth more when we pay a lot of money for it? Is it possible that this may work outside the Church but inside the Church is dangerous and belittling to the exchange of gifts of art?
Art is a language. Certain philosophers contend that language precedes reality. In other words, before we speak it, we are unaware of its “really realness.” If a certain part of our speaking and naming is truncated and diminished, could then certain parts of our being be retarded or crippled or non existent? This is why we artists are at our very core story tellers and namers much like the original Adam.
In recent years a small group of us came together around the idea of restoring beauty. ORB, or the Organization for the Restoration of Beauty was created for the sole purpose of recognizing and empowering acts of beauty truth and goodness through the means of artful gift giving. One of the ironies of this emerging enclave was its originating city-Nashville. Nashville, along with LA and New York has always been a bastion of commerce when it came to the arts and especially music. Thus, a group designed to question that ethos by its very nature has an uphill climb. Undaunted we trod forward knowing that for all of us, enduring works of art, although commodified at some point, appeared to be innocent to some extent in their creative origins. How could we help foster a new ethos of creativity where the imagination and the inner world won out over commerce and merchandising? The more we explored the possibilities, the more we discovered an underlying disenchantment that was close to a boil. Buoyed up by the Internet, many younger artists were now able to by pass the art broker who arbitrarily ascribed the value of the gifts offered up. When this broker or wholesaler was taken out of the picture, a new renaissance of art making now had chance to emerge. Praise God.
For years I heard from many in the music industry that the masses always needed to have things dumbed down. Whether it was beauty or worship, give them the Cliff’s Notes. Can real art be Cliff’s Notes version of life? I think not and most artists would heartily agree. For anything of worth to endure, there must be some quality about it that transcends the banality of its time. Being able to step outside your own skin and the skin of your culture (to some extend – no one can do this completely) gives the artist a posture of knowing that is truly experienced and embodied. In ways art making is hyper-immanence that finds itself hidden in transcendence. It is in the gift of God’s only Son that God reveals both His otherness and His willingness to take on our embodied flesh and inhibit it. That is what creation is all about. That is what creativity is all about. Gibbs and Bolger in the book entitled Emerging Churches tell us that, “the urge to create is not ego driven but rather arises out of a theology of personhood and community identity.” Indeed we are discovering that the modern self is myth and that an authentic self is always communally constructed and formed. We become ourselves as we come together with others. The two are simultaneous. Although we are subject to the fall, God’s creation was still good and His image is still imprinted in all things through what the Scripture calls common grace or prevenient grace ( for all you Bible majors) Creativity itself is a gift of worship.
The Language of Art Making
Art as gift is a certain way of speaking. In the context of faith and spirituality, it offers the artist the ability to truly be prophetic as some truths and sentiments are by their very nature confrontational or at the least not going to be popular. If everything’s worth is ultimately seen through its ability to be mass marketed, we will not challenge the masses with issues of spiritual formation that by their very nature are hard to swallow for all people. Lives of simplicity and slowness are not engagements most people in western societies even want to consider. Yet their voice must be heard. How do we build a platform for the voices that by their very nature may be sifted?
Economies of the Creative Spirit
Like Hyde I am most concerned with the gifts that come with power and grace and speak commandingly to the soul. Those offered in fear, spite, rancor, or greed are not my interest here. Whatever we have been given is to be given away again… a principle of gift giving. It is the sharing of art that brings delight. The struggle for artist in a modern or post modern technocracy is the McDonaldization of creativity and consumption. Modernism has tended to focus on efficiency, calculation, predictability and control. This of course presents some real challenges to creativity and a gift. We see this today in American Idol, the ubiquitous nature of My Space, You Tube and other conduits of conversation that tend to raise up the most banal and trivial and then create a place where that spirit is duplicated in mass. The aesthetics of "art making as gift" reframes this cultural force and roots its identify in community and service as well as devotion. These become the philosophical and heartfelt postures from which art making derives its purposes and meaning.Although the fall often pushes us towards misdirection and misplaced motivation ( i.e. self expression as a right, endlessly expressing minute reflections of the self as if interesting redeeming on and on…) Read Suzi Gablick’s work on the death of modernism. Still the urge to create and give that expression as gift remains in our souls as the key that breaks a code. As Christians we see, the kingdom of God as the creativity of God. ( Doug Padgett) We move beyond seeing life as a consumptive rite of passage and more as all gift.
Can one acquire a gift by their own will? (many in American Idol would seem to act as if they could or can). Being an artist today is so enmeshed in the search for belonging and identity. But if you could acquire a gift through your own personal will would it be considered a gift at this point?
Many an artist has a daunting gift placed upon them early in life. Mozart was composing at the age of four. Candid conversations with artists often uncover the awareness of this giftedness and its benevolent bestowing. Even D. H. Lawrence was aware when he commented, “Not I, not I but the wisdom that blows through me.” If we would apply the idea of divine bestowment upon the inner nature of creativity and giftedness, why then would we not apply some kind of spiritual worth to the very creation of the artist, i.e., the painting, the song, the poem? Could it be that our own divine worth as human as a gift to humanity resonates with the art as gift exchange?
Holidays are always magical times in that we begin to anticipate the gifts that will be coming our way. Birthdays tend to generate the same exhilaration as we prepare to be blessed by those we love. It is clear that Christmas is a metaphor for what Christ brought into the world. He is the Father’s gift and in many ways we model that literally in our own gift giving. Could you imagine paying your friends and loved ones to buy you gifts for Christmas or your birthday? Of course not as those days are days where you are redeemed and atoned for. It is about blessing you and you in turn bless others.
Lewis Hyde, whose book generated much of these musings, said, “...the way we treat a gift can sometimes change its nature.” How many times have you commented on a painting on someone’s house to discover its creation was a loved one who had passed on and the painting then became very “special?” What makes this gift special is its attributes. We decide what something is worth. Even beauty is ultimately attributional
Churches have long honored certain objects and have deemed them sacred or near sacred. Where are the gifts of art that in ages past filled our churches? Have we unwittingly commoditized the spiritual dimensions of art as gift and how can we revitalize that sentiment and posture? Much like Hyde, I do not mean to totally deny the ability of art to be commodified. But can a gift be merchandised and if not where are the gifts of art in the Church?
In recent years I have come to define myself as a creativity coach. This is an odd moniker and one that most people question upon seeing it on my business card. Throw in spiritual direction and ethos experience designer and you’ve got a confused world on our hands. So I heartily agree with Hyde and many artists when they articulate, “Labors such as mine are notoriously non remunerative in a society dominated by market exchange. How is the artist to nourish himself, spiritually as well as materially, in an age whose values and market values and whose commerce consists almost exclusively in the purchase and sale of commodities,” queries Lewis Hyde.
I have met many artists over the years who do labor under the weight of their calling to be an artist. This is due in part to their unwillingness to create under the shadow of triviality and shallowness. An artist’s service to their gift in some ways demands a degree of submission to gift integrity thus making capitulation to market forces highly improbable if not impossible. But the artist works out their giftedness and salvation as it were under the canopy and cultural contradictions of capitalism. How does one live when an undisciplined acquisitional spirit is allowed to run rampant? How does one carefully guard the integrity and the spirit of the gift such that it continues to bear the fruits of beauty truth and goodness? And if art is made as gift, how can it embrace its very purpose in being if it is not given as such?
I think the Church as community holds some of the answers to these questions. To some degree I am calling art “gifts” because of their sacramental ability to form and inform the inner world of the soul. Why do the gifts of the inner life lack public currency amongst Christians? What does it say about us and to us that we have allowed much of our sacred objects to be bought and sold at such cheap prices and in such tawdry ways? I contend there is livelihood of the Spirit that is missing in today's creative world where Christians are attempting to mine the imagination’s gifts from the inner world. Are there ethics of gift exchange intrinsic to the ethos of Christians and are we neglecting those experiences and demands in our current creative climate?
How do we define wealth? What makes us wealthy? Some might say abundance while others might say the possession of things of worth. Others might see wealth as objects that have history, meaning, and belonging embodied in their creation. What we value in a specific culture informs our material things as being of worth or worthless. Could we be undermining the very worth of certain artistic renderings when we buy and sell them to one another? Some might ask then how would artists make a living? Good question and is especially pithy in a materialistic world where worth once again is often tied to the monetary value given certain commodities. Do we see something as being worth more when we pay a lot of money for it? Is it possible that this may work outside the Church but inside the Church is dangerous and belittling to the exchange of gifts of art?
Art is a language. Certain philosophers contend that language precedes reality. In other words, before we speak it, we are unaware of its “really realness.” If a certain part of our speaking and naming is truncated and diminished, could then certain parts of our being be retarded or crippled or non existent? This is why we artists are at our very core story tellers and namers much like the original Adam.
In recent years a small group of us came together around the idea of restoring beauty. ORB, or the Organization for the Restoration of Beauty was created for the sole purpose of recognizing and empowering acts of beauty truth and goodness through the means of artful gift giving. One of the ironies of this emerging enclave was its originating city-Nashville. Nashville, along with LA and New York has always been a bastion of commerce when it came to the arts and especially music. Thus, a group designed to question that ethos by its very nature has an uphill climb. Undaunted we trod forward knowing that for all of us, enduring works of art, although commodified at some point, appeared to be innocent to some extent in their creative origins. How could we help foster a new ethos of creativity where the imagination and the inner world won out over commerce and merchandising? The more we explored the possibilities, the more we discovered an underlying disenchantment that was close to a boil. Buoyed up by the Internet, many younger artists were now able to by pass the art broker who arbitrarily ascribed the value of the gifts offered up. When this broker or wholesaler was taken out of the picture, a new renaissance of art making now had chance to emerge. Praise God.
For years I heard from many in the music industry that the masses always needed to have things dumbed down. Whether it was beauty or worship, give them the Cliff’s Notes. Can real art be Cliff’s Notes version of life? I think not and most artists would heartily agree. For anything of worth to endure, there must be some quality about it that transcends the banality of its time. Being able to step outside your own skin and the skin of your culture (to some extend – no one can do this completely) gives the artist a posture of knowing that is truly experienced and embodied. In ways art making is hyper-immanence that finds itself hidden in transcendence. It is in the gift of God’s only Son that God reveals both His otherness and His willingness to take on our embodied flesh and inhibit it. That is what creation is all about. That is what creativity is all about. Gibbs and Bolger in the book entitled Emerging Churches tell us that, “the urge to create is not ego driven but rather arises out of a theology of personhood and community identity.” Indeed we are discovering that the modern self is myth and that an authentic self is always communally constructed and formed. We become ourselves as we come together with others. The two are simultaneous. Although we are subject to the fall, God’s creation was still good and His image is still imprinted in all things through what the Scripture calls common grace or prevenient grace ( for all you Bible majors) Creativity itself is a gift of worship.
The Language of Art Making
Art as gift is a certain way of speaking. In the context of faith and spirituality, it offers the artist the ability to truly be prophetic as some truths and sentiments are by their very nature confrontational or at the least not going to be popular. If everything’s worth is ultimately seen through its ability to be mass marketed, we will not challenge the masses with issues of spiritual formation that by their very nature are hard to swallow for all people. Lives of simplicity and slowness are not engagements most people in western societies even want to consider. Yet their voice must be heard. How do we build a platform for the voices that by their very nature may be sifted?
Economies of the Creative Spirit
Like Hyde I am most concerned with the gifts that come with power and grace and speak commandingly to the soul. Those offered in fear, spite, rancor, or greed are not my interest here. Whatever we have been given is to be given away again… a principle of gift giving. It is the sharing of art that brings delight. The struggle for artist in a modern or post modern technocracy is the McDonaldization of creativity and consumption. Modernism has tended to focus on efficiency, calculation, predictability and control. This of course presents some real challenges to creativity and a gift. We see this today in American Idol, the ubiquitous nature of My Space, You Tube and other conduits of conversation that tend to raise up the most banal and trivial and then create a place where that spirit is duplicated in mass. The aesthetics of "art making as gift" reframes this cultural force and roots its identify in community and service as well as devotion. These become the philosophical and heartfelt postures from which art making derives its purposes and meaning.Although the fall often pushes us towards misdirection and misplaced motivation ( i.e. self expression as a right, endlessly expressing minute reflections of the self as if interesting redeeming on and on…) Read Suzi Gablick’s work on the death of modernism. Still the urge to create and give that expression as gift remains in our souls as the key that breaks a code. As Christians we see, the kingdom of God as the creativity of God. ( Doug Padgett) We move beyond seeing life as a consumptive rite of passage and more as all gift.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Thoughts on Creatvity & the Arts
The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world that in the stock markets or the debates in congress.
Hedrick Willem Van Loon / The Arts
I want to make things that are beautiful and moving. I want to make art; they want to make things that are fast and useful, practical.
Laurie Anderson
An artist needs only three things. First he needs encouragement, the second he needs encouragement, and third he needs encouragement.
Unknown
Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.
Thomas Merton
I cannot understand why people are afraid of new ideas. I am afraid of the old ones.
John Cage
There are two fools in every market: One ask to little and, one ask to much.
Russian Proverb
To teach is to show
M.C. Richards
God’s word is in all creation, visible and invisible. The word is living, being, spirit, a verdant greening of creativity. The word manifests in every creature.
Hildegard of Bingen
Man lives by images.
Gaston Bachelard
The imagination seldom sleeps. It is very busy seeking the new.
Gaston Bachelard
Imagination is so vast, so large, so free that is grows our souls and allows us to contemplate grandeur.
Gaston Bachelard
I am happiest when I am caught up in and lost in acts of creativity.
Meister Eckhart
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
Vincent Van Gogh
At the heart of our dignity lies our power of creativity.
Otto Rank
We write to taste life twice.
Anais Nin
Creativity is our real nature.
Matthew Fox
Hedrick Willem Van Loon / The Arts
I want to make things that are beautiful and moving. I want to make art; they want to make things that are fast and useful, practical.
Laurie Anderson
An artist needs only three things. First he needs encouragement, the second he needs encouragement, and third he needs encouragement.
Unknown
Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.
Thomas Merton
I cannot understand why people are afraid of new ideas. I am afraid of the old ones.
John Cage
There are two fools in every market: One ask to little and, one ask to much.
Russian Proverb
To teach is to show
M.C. Richards
God’s word is in all creation, visible and invisible. The word is living, being, spirit, a verdant greening of creativity. The word manifests in every creature.
Hildegard of Bingen
Man lives by images.
Gaston Bachelard
The imagination seldom sleeps. It is very busy seeking the new.
Gaston Bachelard
Imagination is so vast, so large, so free that is grows our souls and allows us to contemplate grandeur.
Gaston Bachelard
I am happiest when I am caught up in and lost in acts of creativity.
Meister Eckhart
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
Vincent Van Gogh
At the heart of our dignity lies our power of creativity.
Otto Rank
We write to taste life twice.
Anais Nin
Creativity is our real nature.
Matthew Fox
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Art and the Dark Night of the Soul
Art as Transformation, Passage, & Sacred Act of Devotion
Between living and dreaming
There is something else
Guess what it is?
Antonio Machodo
Creative expression at its best is alchemical in that it looks for ways to turn all things to gold. All that is objectionable and worthless in the eyes of others may now take on a sacred glow. This glorious deepening takes us downward, outward, and inward into things here to fore inaccessible. Now we sit before the furies we believed so ugly only to find them endearing and even soulfully supportive.
It is the common ordinary that now becomes wonderful. The very acts we deemed plausible, permissible, and even predictable now are seen with moral clarity and the nobility of the human soul begins to shine. All wounds and scars are spiritual and full of light as well as dark. All weeping and laughing becomes poetic.
The artist begins to learn meditatively to enter the cauldron of experience with a sense of surprise and wonder. Being human is neither a problem to be solved nor the soul a project to be conquered. By renaming our humanness with glory and reverence the focus of our divine assignments takes on less of a search for problems and solutions and more a revealing and unveiling as well as transformation.
Thus, a dark night can paradoxically return us to our childlike wonder about how to engage life. If the soul is not truly the imagination but the part of our being most aware of the soul, then this return to its musings allows us to leave behind the ideas of life as health and prosperity and be welcomed home to this sacred ordeal called life.
A rigid persona is the last bastion of protection to fall for the artist. Wonder by its nature is heightened observation with the ego and meaning held naturally at bay. Rigidity and protective identities will not welcome the hidden beauty of experience as the possibility of being wrong or hurt still hold the persona together. We can be so fearful to discover our worst nightmares. Ironically these dark aberrations and specters of ungrace carry with them the secrets to our beauty hidden in this darkened sphere. The very elixir our deadened somatic weariness longed for is the humid atmosphere within this realm. We begin to drink in the air we thought so full of poison and find it sweet and like a savor to the tongue. We drink in the blackness and discover this hidden color within. Much like the mystics before us we discover the invitation to see arrives in the irrational and beauty of imperfection.
The way of the mystics is an inverted world. Emptiness brings us into the sacred. Clinging to our fullness's makes us feel confused. But holy ignorance is something else. Holy ignorance, only learned in the dark night, is essential for authentic creativity to flow.This poem came from a discussion with a friend. We were talking about how so many seek the way up, the way of light, the way of truth and how in our middle ages we come face to face with our inability to even know what we don't know. This "grand humbling" is a fall from grace (or maybe a divine push) but it is God's way, nature's or creation's way if you will, of offering up a new manner of seeing and knowing. Thus...the poem.
The Fortunate Fall
There is a dark glimpse
A radiant disintegration
A tumbling
A humbling
In it I am broken open
As though a fall had bruised and yet healed my head
Plummeting to the ground
My vision is altered
I lay there gasping and holding myself
Waiting for absolution
My very cells cry along with me
And now..
Nature nurtures me
Folding all the compromise into her bosom
She is created to take upon herself
A portion of this weighty fall from grace
I need not leave myself to find myself
This pain befallen me
Is not me but is me
This diminishment has muddied my head
Clarity not an option
I lay there for awhile
Pondering the very angle of my gaze
On my back
Closer to the end
Closer to my rite of passage
I wonder why I had never seen this before
This state of need is my gift
All that is rigid and self protective seems shattered
This is initiation
This is my offering
The dark glimpse
My redemption
Much of the artist’s sense of the gloriously beautiful is buried within the naming of their perception. How would I know what is beautiful? How and why would I rename this blackness to a highly exquisite sadness that breaks open my sorrow for myself, for others, for the world? Oh that I had known this brokenness offered so much in darker days but……my naming of the beautiful came through my sense of pride and my carefully designed methods of reflecting only that which I deemed clean and carefully safe.
To welcome the dark night is to begin to see all experience as the stuff of glory and transformation. Nothing is outside the purview of transformation and atoning renaming. The intentions and motivations of the immature soul are so riddled with complexity and purposefully so. The more we can avoid the beauty of life through obfuscation the more we can hide from the responsibility to be ourselves. Radical faith and trust are just that; radical by their very nature. I cannot go into the hinterlands of shadow and mystery on a Disney pass. Entry into this territory of the soul comes only through the baton being passed by the mysterious teacher placed into our lives at first unawares. This wise window or door may be a person, a book, a film, a lover, or a parent (often in the throes of their own exchange of longing).
This encounter is a baptism into the authenticity of our being. In this time we begin to feel the long arduous road here to fore filled seemingly with pain and sorrow or mediocrity and capitulation. Now in the din of depression's hauntings or illness and suffering or divorce or business failure, we are forced to listen to the stillness of the soul’s utterings.
As though our place in the world has been waiting for our arrival we ever so slightly begin to hear this voice in the distance telling us of the southland of the heart where respite and welcome await. This is our unique vantage point through the very eyes of our own heart. Only we can see from this location, from this spot. This is our sacred pose. We are who we have been waiting for.
So much of our journey depends upon our ability to believe God loves us and will speak. In an age of so much talk and chatter, it is wise to wonder and test the voices we attribute to God. On the other hand, as Peter Rollins says in How Not to Speak of God, God is both silent and verbose, hidden and yet revealing, distant and yet so present we cannot stand it. This is the paradox of being in a world where we have banished God from our minds and think He has left our hearts. He cannot leave our hearts for He is that space. This is where His home is. Here is the poem...This is my work. This is our work.
Oh That Christmas Were Real!
In its absence
I came upon a room
A room full of angels
Sitting bored and unnecessary
Smoking Pall Malls
Playing cards
Waiting on the cynic
All those grand wings
Feathers of trust and truth
Were folded and put away
Because of undue holiday nostalgia
Standing at the door
I felt compelled to weep aloud
In hopes the winged creatures
Would see their awful estate
But I am mute
For this room is my heart
My protectors have been grounded through my fear
The fear these messengers have no word for me
So this absence is my dismissal
Still uncomfortably drawn into their presence
I reluctantly enter the room
Nearly choking on the smoke
I walk amidst the angels as though invisible
Just a few steps into the space
Nearly inaudible
I hear this chanting
This is no trance
Cast upon these beings
They see me clearly
They are merely waiting
Waiting for my return
I stop and look down at one herald
His gaze transfixes mine
His very countenance alive with awakening,
Startles me into this beautiful surprise
So I am Christmas!
I did not know !
Now the absence begins to speak
“Be not afraid
I bring you tidings of great joy
You have been missed
Now go and tell others.”
I so hungered for this blessing
In this new posture, as our heart's broken open, we begin to accept the limitations of our descriptive trek. We cannot bring to pass all we can imagine. This need not stop the creative work but bring its phoenix wings to the ground at times. These limitations are not mocking us but informing us as artists. This is the frustration of gestation and contemplation. We cannot always bring to pass what we imagine. This is the frustration of artists who see something or hear something they are not yet able to communicate.
As we trek down this new road or step into this new realm we begin to feel the weightiness of the ego and pride in our unique description of our brokenness. To embrace the sacred wonderful is to open up ourselves to the sacred ordinariness even in ourselves. Centuries of telling have now formed our deepest self defining. We are gifted. We are special. We are above, without, and pridefully so.
The self is always implicated in our creative work. During the dark night the gift of our creativity now is revealed as a burden as well as a blessing. We are constrained and restrained by this gifting. It never was merely ours to exploit for personal gain and the building up of the ego. When our creative purposes are designed and empowered through self inflation the importance of our work becomes exaggerated and amplified. Our estimation of the very act of creating takes on the ego's pressure to make this about our worth rather than our mission and sacred pose and place in this life. During the dark night we begin to see how this posture keeps us from speaking the truth in our work as this over valuing is dangerous to our souls. No one can speak into our work, no one can edit, no one can critique, and in fact we may hold our work at bay from all to see as though it were too special to be engaged. Because creating takes a large sense of self the danger in the act is the inability to see beyond oneself to the blessing of the gift.
When we allow our art to be gift ( as opposed to a commodity or mere thing) this empowers one to not have to place commercial concerns over the worth and purpose of the creative act. This is why life blossoms most inside community where even the dark night becomes a gift to others who will indeed traverse this well worn road and enter this murky darkness.
This glorious dark is wrought with danger and saints like St. John of the Cross have given us a map for traversing this terrain of the soul. Without a map and a community within which to walk along side, the dark power of truth is soul crushing. Artists like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are poets who felt the overpowering call of the awful rowing towards God but never felt any respite as the rowing was shared by others. This seeming absence of God and light is only countered by the presence of others who are acknowledging our naming as beauty and not as despair.
Art in the 20 century especially has focused unduly on the darkness but without the guides of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila. We need guides and we need cohorts to traverse this beautiful black water. Without the crossing we remain domesticated in the land of our childhood sequestered on an island we call a continent.
Between living and dreaming
There is something else
Guess what it is?
Antonio Machodo
Creative expression at its best is alchemical in that it looks for ways to turn all things to gold. All that is objectionable and worthless in the eyes of others may now take on a sacred glow. This glorious deepening takes us downward, outward, and inward into things here to fore inaccessible. Now we sit before the furies we believed so ugly only to find them endearing and even soulfully supportive.
It is the common ordinary that now becomes wonderful. The very acts we deemed plausible, permissible, and even predictable now are seen with moral clarity and the nobility of the human soul begins to shine. All wounds and scars are spiritual and full of light as well as dark. All weeping and laughing becomes poetic.
The artist begins to learn meditatively to enter the cauldron of experience with a sense of surprise and wonder. Being human is neither a problem to be solved nor the soul a project to be conquered. By renaming our humanness with glory and reverence the focus of our divine assignments takes on less of a search for problems and solutions and more a revealing and unveiling as well as transformation.
Thus, a dark night can paradoxically return us to our childlike wonder about how to engage life. If the soul is not truly the imagination but the part of our being most aware of the soul, then this return to its musings allows us to leave behind the ideas of life as health and prosperity and be welcomed home to this sacred ordeal called life.
A rigid persona is the last bastion of protection to fall for the artist. Wonder by its nature is heightened observation with the ego and meaning held naturally at bay. Rigidity and protective identities will not welcome the hidden beauty of experience as the possibility of being wrong or hurt still hold the persona together. We can be so fearful to discover our worst nightmares. Ironically these dark aberrations and specters of ungrace carry with them the secrets to our beauty hidden in this darkened sphere. The very elixir our deadened somatic weariness longed for is the humid atmosphere within this realm. We begin to drink in the air we thought so full of poison and find it sweet and like a savor to the tongue. We drink in the blackness and discover this hidden color within. Much like the mystics before us we discover the invitation to see arrives in the irrational and beauty of imperfection.
The way of the mystics is an inverted world. Emptiness brings us into the sacred. Clinging to our fullness's makes us feel confused. But holy ignorance is something else. Holy ignorance, only learned in the dark night, is essential for authentic creativity to flow.This poem came from a discussion with a friend. We were talking about how so many seek the way up, the way of light, the way of truth and how in our middle ages we come face to face with our inability to even know what we don't know. This "grand humbling" is a fall from grace (or maybe a divine push) but it is God's way, nature's or creation's way if you will, of offering up a new manner of seeing and knowing. Thus...the poem.
The Fortunate Fall
There is a dark glimpse
A radiant disintegration
A tumbling
A humbling
In it I am broken open
As though a fall had bruised and yet healed my head
Plummeting to the ground
My vision is altered
I lay there gasping and holding myself
Waiting for absolution
My very cells cry along with me
And now..
Nature nurtures me
Folding all the compromise into her bosom
She is created to take upon herself
A portion of this weighty fall from grace
I need not leave myself to find myself
This pain befallen me
Is not me but is me
This diminishment has muddied my head
Clarity not an option
I lay there for awhile
Pondering the very angle of my gaze
On my back
Closer to the end
Closer to my rite of passage
I wonder why I had never seen this before
This state of need is my gift
All that is rigid and self protective seems shattered
This is initiation
This is my offering
The dark glimpse
My redemption
Much of the artist’s sense of the gloriously beautiful is buried within the naming of their perception. How would I know what is beautiful? How and why would I rename this blackness to a highly exquisite sadness that breaks open my sorrow for myself, for others, for the world? Oh that I had known this brokenness offered so much in darker days but……my naming of the beautiful came through my sense of pride and my carefully designed methods of reflecting only that which I deemed clean and carefully safe.
To welcome the dark night is to begin to see all experience as the stuff of glory and transformation. Nothing is outside the purview of transformation and atoning renaming. The intentions and motivations of the immature soul are so riddled with complexity and purposefully so. The more we can avoid the beauty of life through obfuscation the more we can hide from the responsibility to be ourselves. Radical faith and trust are just that; radical by their very nature. I cannot go into the hinterlands of shadow and mystery on a Disney pass. Entry into this territory of the soul comes only through the baton being passed by the mysterious teacher placed into our lives at first unawares. This wise window or door may be a person, a book, a film, a lover, or a parent (often in the throes of their own exchange of longing).
This encounter is a baptism into the authenticity of our being. In this time we begin to feel the long arduous road here to fore filled seemingly with pain and sorrow or mediocrity and capitulation. Now in the din of depression's hauntings or illness and suffering or divorce or business failure, we are forced to listen to the stillness of the soul’s utterings.
As though our place in the world has been waiting for our arrival we ever so slightly begin to hear this voice in the distance telling us of the southland of the heart where respite and welcome await. This is our unique vantage point through the very eyes of our own heart. Only we can see from this location, from this spot. This is our sacred pose. We are who we have been waiting for.
So much of our journey depends upon our ability to believe God loves us and will speak. In an age of so much talk and chatter, it is wise to wonder and test the voices we attribute to God. On the other hand, as Peter Rollins says in How Not to Speak of God, God is both silent and verbose, hidden and yet revealing, distant and yet so present we cannot stand it. This is the paradox of being in a world where we have banished God from our minds and think He has left our hearts. He cannot leave our hearts for He is that space. This is where His home is. Here is the poem...This is my work. This is our work.
Oh That Christmas Were Real!
In its absence
I came upon a room
A room full of angels
Sitting bored and unnecessary
Smoking Pall Malls
Playing cards
Waiting on the cynic
All those grand wings
Feathers of trust and truth
Were folded and put away
Because of undue holiday nostalgia
Standing at the door
I felt compelled to weep aloud
In hopes the winged creatures
Would see their awful estate
But I am mute
For this room is my heart
My protectors have been grounded through my fear
The fear these messengers have no word for me
So this absence is my dismissal
Still uncomfortably drawn into their presence
I reluctantly enter the room
Nearly choking on the smoke
I walk amidst the angels as though invisible
Just a few steps into the space
Nearly inaudible
I hear this chanting
This is no trance
Cast upon these beings
They see me clearly
They are merely waiting
Waiting for my return
I stop and look down at one herald
His gaze transfixes mine
His very countenance alive with awakening,
Startles me into this beautiful surprise
So I am Christmas!
I did not know !
Now the absence begins to speak
“Be not afraid
I bring you tidings of great joy
You have been missed
Now go and tell others.”
I so hungered for this blessing
In this new posture, as our heart's broken open, we begin to accept the limitations of our descriptive trek. We cannot bring to pass all we can imagine. This need not stop the creative work but bring its phoenix wings to the ground at times. These limitations are not mocking us but informing us as artists. This is the frustration of gestation and contemplation. We cannot always bring to pass what we imagine. This is the frustration of artists who see something or hear something they are not yet able to communicate.
As we trek down this new road or step into this new realm we begin to feel the weightiness of the ego and pride in our unique description of our brokenness. To embrace the sacred wonderful is to open up ourselves to the sacred ordinariness even in ourselves. Centuries of telling have now formed our deepest self defining. We are gifted. We are special. We are above, without, and pridefully so.
The self is always implicated in our creative work. During the dark night the gift of our creativity now is revealed as a burden as well as a blessing. We are constrained and restrained by this gifting. It never was merely ours to exploit for personal gain and the building up of the ego. When our creative purposes are designed and empowered through self inflation the importance of our work becomes exaggerated and amplified. Our estimation of the very act of creating takes on the ego's pressure to make this about our worth rather than our mission and sacred pose and place in this life. During the dark night we begin to see how this posture keeps us from speaking the truth in our work as this over valuing is dangerous to our souls. No one can speak into our work, no one can edit, no one can critique, and in fact we may hold our work at bay from all to see as though it were too special to be engaged. Because creating takes a large sense of self the danger in the act is the inability to see beyond oneself to the blessing of the gift.
When we allow our art to be gift ( as opposed to a commodity or mere thing) this empowers one to not have to place commercial concerns over the worth and purpose of the creative act. This is why life blossoms most inside community where even the dark night becomes a gift to others who will indeed traverse this well worn road and enter this murky darkness.
This glorious dark is wrought with danger and saints like St. John of the Cross have given us a map for traversing this terrain of the soul. Without a map and a community within which to walk along side, the dark power of truth is soul crushing. Artists like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are poets who felt the overpowering call of the awful rowing towards God but never felt any respite as the rowing was shared by others. This seeming absence of God and light is only countered by the presence of others who are acknowledging our naming as beauty and not as despair.
Art in the 20 century especially has focused unduly on the darkness but without the guides of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila. We need guides and we need cohorts to traverse this beautiful black water. Without the crossing we remain domesticated in the land of our childhood sequestered on an island we call a continent.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Art as an Act of Devotion
Ideas for Making Art a Devotional Practice
1) Meditate on the creation story
2) Journal on the impact of the created world on your thoughts & emotions
3) Ponder something in nature of a created object for five minutes
4) Journal on the impact of the environment on your spirit and soul
5) Be open to emotions that art can do in you (e.g. paintings, film, music)
6) Develop a liturgical or sacramental side to your art
7) Go to museums
8) Join an arts group (CIVA)
9) Honor the arts in your church
10) Read books on art
Some Books to Ponder
Art in Action Nicholas Wolterstorf
Rainbows for a Fallen World Calvin Seerveld
Walking on Water Madeleine L’Engel
The Rock that is Higher Madeleine L’Engel
Making Room for Art Sally Warner
Uncontrollable Beauty Bill Beckley (Ed.)
The Healing Power of Stories Daniel Taylor
The Symbolic Construction of Community Anthony P. Cohen
A Rumor of Angels Peter L. Berger
Culture Wars James Davison Hunter
The Soul’s Journey Allan Jones
Imitation of Christ Thomas a Kempis
The Culture of Interpretation Roger Lundin
Living by Fiction Annie Dillard
For the Time Being Annie Dillard
Art After Modernism Brian Wallis (Ed.)
Music Through the Eyes of Faith Harold Best
The Closing of the American Mind Allan Bloom
Narrative Imagination Richard Eslinger
The Holy Longing Richard Rohlheiser
Symbols of the Sacred Louis Dupre
A Life in the Arts Eric Maisel
Art Marketing 101 Constance Smith
Listening to the Spirit of the Text Gordon D. Fee
Christian Apologetics in a Postmodern World Timothy Phillips (Ed.)
The Christian Imagination Leland Ryken
Imgologies Mark C. Taylor,
Esa Saarinen
The Repeal of Reticence Rochelle Gerstein
The Scandal of Pleasure Wendy Steiner
The Exile of Beauty Wendy Steiner
Conversations Before the End of Time Suzi Gablik
The End of Modernism Suzi Gablik
The Re Enchantment of Art Suzi Gablik
Art and Great Ideas Mortimer J. Adler
The Creative Life Alice Bass
The End of World as we Know It Chuck Smith
Civilizing Rituals Carol Duncan
Our Christian Symbols Frederich Rest
The Presentation of Self Erving Goffman
Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down Marva J. Dawn
A Royal Waste of Time Marva J. Dawn
The Divine Conspiracy Dallas Willard
The Spiritual Disciplines Dallas WIllard
We’ve Had Hundred Years of Psychotherapy James Hillman
The Culture of Narcissism Christopher Lasch
Art & Soul Hilary Brand &
Adrienne Chaplin
Beyond Liberalism & Fundamentalism Nancy Murphy
Deep Symbols Edward Farley
The Invention of Art/ A Cultural History Larry Shiner
Concerning the Spiritual in Art Wassily Kandinsky
Creating Robert Fritz
Plain Living Catherine Whitmire
Handbook / Pricing and Ethical Guidelines Graphic Arts Guild
Visual Thinking William A. Dyrness
Crying for a Vision Steve Scott
Moral Imagination Mark Johnson
Metaphors to Live By Mark Johnson
The Gift /Imagination & the Erotic Life of Property Lewis Hyde
1) Meditate on the creation story
2) Journal on the impact of the created world on your thoughts & emotions
3) Ponder something in nature of a created object for five minutes
4) Journal on the impact of the environment on your spirit and soul
5) Be open to emotions that art can do in you (e.g. paintings, film, music)
6) Develop a liturgical or sacramental side to your art
7) Go to museums
8) Join an arts group (CIVA)
9) Honor the arts in your church
10) Read books on art
Some Books to Ponder
Art in Action Nicholas Wolterstorf
Rainbows for a Fallen World Calvin Seerveld
Walking on Water Madeleine L’Engel
The Rock that is Higher Madeleine L’Engel
Making Room for Art Sally Warner
Uncontrollable Beauty Bill Beckley (Ed.)
The Healing Power of Stories Daniel Taylor
The Symbolic Construction of Community Anthony P. Cohen
A Rumor of Angels Peter L. Berger
Culture Wars James Davison Hunter
The Soul’s Journey Allan Jones
Imitation of Christ Thomas a Kempis
The Culture of Interpretation Roger Lundin
Living by Fiction Annie Dillard
For the Time Being Annie Dillard
Art After Modernism Brian Wallis (Ed.)
Music Through the Eyes of Faith Harold Best
The Closing of the American Mind Allan Bloom
Narrative Imagination Richard Eslinger
The Holy Longing Richard Rohlheiser
Symbols of the Sacred Louis Dupre
A Life in the Arts Eric Maisel
Art Marketing 101 Constance Smith
Listening to the Spirit of the Text Gordon D. Fee
Christian Apologetics in a Postmodern World Timothy Phillips (Ed.)
The Christian Imagination Leland Ryken
Imgologies Mark C. Taylor,
Esa Saarinen
The Repeal of Reticence Rochelle Gerstein
The Scandal of Pleasure Wendy Steiner
The Exile of Beauty Wendy Steiner
Conversations Before the End of Time Suzi Gablik
The End of Modernism Suzi Gablik
The Re Enchantment of Art Suzi Gablik
Art and Great Ideas Mortimer J. Adler
The Creative Life Alice Bass
The End of World as we Know It Chuck Smith
Civilizing Rituals Carol Duncan
Our Christian Symbols Frederich Rest
The Presentation of Self Erving Goffman
Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down Marva J. Dawn
A Royal Waste of Time Marva J. Dawn
The Divine Conspiracy Dallas Willard
The Spiritual Disciplines Dallas WIllard
We’ve Had Hundred Years of Psychotherapy James Hillman
The Culture of Narcissism Christopher Lasch
Art & Soul Hilary Brand &
Adrienne Chaplin
Beyond Liberalism & Fundamentalism Nancy Murphy
Deep Symbols Edward Farley
The Invention of Art/ A Cultural History Larry Shiner
Concerning the Spiritual in Art Wassily Kandinsky
Creating Robert Fritz
Plain Living Catherine Whitmire
Handbook / Pricing and Ethical Guidelines Graphic Arts Guild
Visual Thinking William A. Dyrness
Crying for a Vision Steve Scott
Moral Imagination Mark Johnson
Metaphors to Live By Mark Johnson
The Gift /Imagination & the Erotic Life of Property Lewis Hyde
Burning Man Festival & the Church
Longing to Belong
From Lollapalooza to Burning Man, secular culture has created some powerful symbols of community in recent years. Regardless of the pagan elements that deify art, hedonism and the individual, there is apparently something powerfully primal & spiritual that takes place at these gatherings. They serve as profane signposts of God hunger.
How can the Church be such a gathering place? How can we foster such a degree of acceptance, welcome, and solace that people feel safe, honored, and a part of something bigger than themselves? There just might be some principles evident in these concerts and gatherings that might give us a clue as to what we are missing in our current configurations and communities.
A cursive look at much of the art currently making the rounds in film, music, and literature, reveals that the fear of death and survival in this complex world is on the minds and hearts of humankind. Sociologists and psychologists have observed that the fight or flight adrenaline engagement of many throughout the world is exacerbated by a deep sense of dislocation. How can I survive in a world that is hostile and ultimately not for me?
Events like Burning Man offer a respite , brief as it may be that says we can survive this currently hostile globe and that there just might be ways of living that could heal and assuage some of these over powering fears. As I age, I am tempted to look at the rage and aloofness of many in their teens and twenties with a degree of disgust and disdain. Get over it I often say but how can those younger than myself get over what in truth is still resident in my soul? I too carry within me a deep sense of dislocation and personal isolation. Who are my people? Where is my tribe?
Extreme fundamentalism in the Muslim world has brought violence onto the world’s stage as one of the primary ways humans solve their problems. If I am threatened, the goal is to destroy those who I deem as threatening me. Now my sense of belonging is built around enemies and fear. Ironically, much of modern day Christian fundamentalism has fostered a degree of this kind of paranoia as well. Even though it is clear than many pundits in the news media see fundamentalism through the lens of disdain for religion of any kind, much of their fodder comes from behavior that fosters little sense of community and belonging.
We (Christians) long for a sense of connection and yet much of our rhetoric to those on the outside is much the opposite. Can we display such a posture to others on the outside and not in fact live out that same posture to one another on the inside? Out of the heart the mouth speaks. We are within how we act without. Events like Burning Man and Lollapalooza seem to welcome everyone. It may appear as if I am over idealizing these events for the sake of a point and I am sure there is some truth here. But anyone researching the Burning Man event will quickly see that a message of belonging is deeply embedded in the core values of the festival’s creators.
The fact that this event takes place in the desert should not be overlooked. Just to attend such an event takes degree of risk and survival skills. Some Christians and others offer food and shelter to those fainthearted who attend the event for the first time and are unaware of just how hot the desert sun can become and how much a few days of celebration can deplete the body and soul. Now that is evangelism!
I am a part of a community that honors but does not worship art. To a few it is evident that something transformational is taking place in the act of creation at Burning Man. Liberation, empowerment, even atonement are concepts that emerge in the living art pieces that are offered up at the event. Creativity brings empowerment. Our community holds artistic expression with a high degree of respect and sees over and over again the healing that art and creativity can bring to those making art as well as those experiencing the expression. Cultural studies have informed of us how important symbols are to any community’s sense of belonging. That is why the indigenous non-commercial nature of Burning Man’s display is vital to the attendee’s sense of empowerment. They are sharing themselves. They are not buying someone else's sense of self or offering up someone else's reflections on life. These are gifts from the tribe. These are the aromas of real soul food. Limits of expression are surely stretched and hedonism may indeed be manifest but deeper into the matrix of this creative orgy one finds delight, abandonment and an unabashed sense of the sacredness of the self. I use the word sacred lightly here but indeed when people offer themselves without desire for fame, power, reimbursement, something can begin to happen. Those receiving the gifts now see them as divine offerings of the glory of the human.
For people to feel a sense of belonging, a hidden deeper part of themselves must be allowed voice. For people to feel welcomed in our community and empowered, we must quickly offer them a place where who and what they perceive themselves to be has a place of expression. To belong is to feel the release of one’s voice without shame. Could it be that some of what some may consider hedonism and paganism is really a yearning for a sacred place where one can break open into something beautiful? Do we in the Church truly see humankind as beautiful or do we first see them as sinners flawed and broken. I suggest that gatherings like Burning Man appeal to the part in many of us who wonder if people would accept us if they knew our real feelings on sexuality, on politics, on family, on money, on power even on one another. Real dialogue will only come when our love of God’s creation in others transcends are need or desire to share some message of truth. Living the truth leads with love and an open door particularly on weirdness, brokenness, and oddities of all kinds. Just how beautiful might the world appear when we give a place for these "wild" expressions of God's creation?
From Lollapalooza to Burning Man, secular culture has created some powerful symbols of community in recent years. Regardless of the pagan elements that deify art, hedonism and the individual, there is apparently something powerfully primal & spiritual that takes place at these gatherings. They serve as profane signposts of God hunger.
How can the Church be such a gathering place? How can we foster such a degree of acceptance, welcome, and solace that people feel safe, honored, and a part of something bigger than themselves? There just might be some principles evident in these concerts and gatherings that might give us a clue as to what we are missing in our current configurations and communities.
A cursive look at much of the art currently making the rounds in film, music, and literature, reveals that the fear of death and survival in this complex world is on the minds and hearts of humankind. Sociologists and psychologists have observed that the fight or flight adrenaline engagement of many throughout the world is exacerbated by a deep sense of dislocation. How can I survive in a world that is hostile and ultimately not for me?
Events like Burning Man offer a respite , brief as it may be that says we can survive this currently hostile globe and that there just might be ways of living that could heal and assuage some of these over powering fears. As I age, I am tempted to look at the rage and aloofness of many in their teens and twenties with a degree of disgust and disdain. Get over it I often say but how can those younger than myself get over what in truth is still resident in my soul? I too carry within me a deep sense of dislocation and personal isolation. Who are my people? Where is my tribe?
Extreme fundamentalism in the Muslim world has brought violence onto the world’s stage as one of the primary ways humans solve their problems. If I am threatened, the goal is to destroy those who I deem as threatening me. Now my sense of belonging is built around enemies and fear. Ironically, much of modern day Christian fundamentalism has fostered a degree of this kind of paranoia as well. Even though it is clear than many pundits in the news media see fundamentalism through the lens of disdain for religion of any kind, much of their fodder comes from behavior that fosters little sense of community and belonging.
We (Christians) long for a sense of connection and yet much of our rhetoric to those on the outside is much the opposite. Can we display such a posture to others on the outside and not in fact live out that same posture to one another on the inside? Out of the heart the mouth speaks. We are within how we act without. Events like Burning Man and Lollapalooza seem to welcome everyone. It may appear as if I am over idealizing these events for the sake of a point and I am sure there is some truth here. But anyone researching the Burning Man event will quickly see that a message of belonging is deeply embedded in the core values of the festival’s creators.
The fact that this event takes place in the desert should not be overlooked. Just to attend such an event takes degree of risk and survival skills. Some Christians and others offer food and shelter to those fainthearted who attend the event for the first time and are unaware of just how hot the desert sun can become and how much a few days of celebration can deplete the body and soul. Now that is evangelism!
I am a part of a community that honors but does not worship art. To a few it is evident that something transformational is taking place in the act of creation at Burning Man. Liberation, empowerment, even atonement are concepts that emerge in the living art pieces that are offered up at the event. Creativity brings empowerment. Our community holds artistic expression with a high degree of respect and sees over and over again the healing that art and creativity can bring to those making art as well as those experiencing the expression. Cultural studies have informed of us how important symbols are to any community’s sense of belonging. That is why the indigenous non-commercial nature of Burning Man’s display is vital to the attendee’s sense of empowerment. They are sharing themselves. They are not buying someone else's sense of self or offering up someone else's reflections on life. These are gifts from the tribe. These are the aromas of real soul food. Limits of expression are surely stretched and hedonism may indeed be manifest but deeper into the matrix of this creative orgy one finds delight, abandonment and an unabashed sense of the sacredness of the self. I use the word sacred lightly here but indeed when people offer themselves without desire for fame, power, reimbursement, something can begin to happen. Those receiving the gifts now see them as divine offerings of the glory of the human.
For people to feel a sense of belonging, a hidden deeper part of themselves must be allowed voice. For people to feel welcomed in our community and empowered, we must quickly offer them a place where who and what they perceive themselves to be has a place of expression. To belong is to feel the release of one’s voice without shame. Could it be that some of what some may consider hedonism and paganism is really a yearning for a sacred place where one can break open into something beautiful? Do we in the Church truly see humankind as beautiful or do we first see them as sinners flawed and broken. I suggest that gatherings like Burning Man appeal to the part in many of us who wonder if people would accept us if they knew our real feelings on sexuality, on politics, on family, on money, on power even on one another. Real dialogue will only come when our love of God’s creation in others transcends are need or desire to share some message of truth. Living the truth leads with love and an open door particularly on weirdness, brokenness, and oddities of all kinds. Just how beautiful might the world appear when we give a place for these "wild" expressions of God's creation?
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