Losing One's Mind to FInd One's Voice

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted
Martin Luther King Jr.

I have always been formed by the big questions. A product of the age of doubt and skepticism, I tend to embrace all experience with a degree of aloofness, distance, and separation. This has done me well in the area of academics and the mind as I have aspired to teach and be a part of an intellectual community. However, I found that I also sought to answer the “big questions” with the power and intensity of artistic expression. This posture often seemed at odds with my clinical engagement of experience and my tendencies to deconstruct and analyze. I began to discover that the creative process involved in art making was often opposed or deterred by this purposely detached sense of observation. In fact, it was the very act of theoretical observation that often kept me out of the serendipity of creativity and the growth and nurturing of my imagination.

George Steiner, in his book Real Presences, offers with graceful eloquence, the idea of art making as being rooted in a transcendent posture that removes creativity from the world of the scientific or therapeutic impulse. It is in the disciplined worlds of science, psychotherapy as well as post modern deconstructionism which attempt to render art making mere chemical responses to stimuli, objective observations or even nihilistic meanderings about nothing. Steiner contends it is the very act of meaning seeking in art that roots its formative power in the likeness of God's creative urgings. It is when we imbue ultimate meaning to our endeavors that the very process of art making takes us out of this distanced critique into the very presence of a created world. In this pose we are acting like our Creator. In this bearing we are truly present.

This blog is for individuals who have chosen the arts as a vocation or avocation and who also see that act through the lense of faith and spirituality. As a Christian, my lense has taken on a distinctly Orthodox coloring in recent years and for that I do not apologize. In fact, it is out of my faith positions that the bigger questions find a home and place out of which to grow and be manifest. It is under the canopy of faith that my aesthetic draws its purpose and epistemology. It is in this knowing that my personhood begins to find a story and destiny much larger than my isolated self can manifest. I find my self in relation to something larger than myself.

It appears that the nature of self is fluid and highly permeable. This porous nature is part of the wonder inherent in our humanness. However, like flowers, there are particular genus and species. There are roses and there are particular kinds of roses. Not all roses of the same genus and species are alike. Difference is written into our nature as well as similarity. In our early years we often play at difference and adopt the highly formed expressions of differentiation as a badge of honor. We work hard at creating distinction and variance so as to heighten our supposed points of view. But these adoptions are borrowed. Yet these excursions into the aesthetics and machinations of others are not ultimately lost. Much like a child in his or her grade school years, we are learning through rote memorization and repetition. Many musicians first learn their craft in a cover band learning the music of others. The more music one learns the deeper and wider the nuanced lexicon of choices and expressions becomes. Each nuance offers a unique perspective thus adding depth and breadth to our unconsciously submerged perspective. Still, we have only borrowed a view or voice. We are not speaking for ourselves as much as we are repeating what we deem worth repeating. We are learning the grammar of our imagination, the mother tongue of art making.
To begin to speak for ourselves can involve spiritual change. As in the case of all growth and maturity, pain often accompanies the growing awareness of being in our own body, living out of our own history and saga. We continue to speak of life in general, however, we now begin to slow our tendencies to borrow a voice or story from others and allow ourselves to sit inside our own expression and turn of a phrase. For the believer pain, suffering and prayer usually accompany this process. This is due to the fact that speaking our own story is our birthright. Our life is a gift thus our sharing of that life is the return of that gift as stewardship. To steward one’s gift is to steward one’s life. To guard and nurture one’s life is to listen to the heart of God as He knits Himself into the very fibers of our consciousness. The discovery of Him on each page of our life, the sighting of Him in each painting, the naming of Him in each poem, the joy of Him in each dance ushers in the season of speaking in our own voice. Now we begin to speak not merely for ourselves.

This can sound like an isolated engagement and possibly over spiritualized. When one’s true voice is emerging it may feel like everything else but spiritual. This breakthrough is often a breakdown. This experience is an infiltration of an authentic vision and is a sighting only known through the experience of suffering. Why suffering? Affliction and anguish frame our days inside the reality of our death. This imposes an awareness of our creatureliness upon us. This limiting encounter with eternity breaks open our delusion about the drama and grandiosity we can play around in rather than get down to the certainty of life’s limits and our place in that actuality.

Thus we must locate ourselves in a community (not just a local one but a global- i.e. Christian) Out of what tradition do we create? Many have thought that art traditions had more to do with particular styles rather than particular ways in which the imagination is formed. Style it appears is a preference that can change at will. Even one’s sense of being formed out of a tradition can be as well. We are, however, always planted in some tradition, some way of knowing and imagining. When we acknowledge this over arching story we can then work within that canopy of narratives and truly find ourselves inside this larger picture.

Ultimately, the creative act is rooted in a communal act of meaning making. The best art always comes from community. Today, much of art making is done in isolation of a larger task. That considerable undertaking at this point in our human history may very well be the salvation of the earth. Artists are now being called upon to join hearts and hands with the Creator to assemble enclaves of beauty that craft not merely materials in a particular medium, but as Steiner asserts, root us in something truly transcendent. This is art making in a first order presence. This is being there to see and know and speak the beauty while it pours over our souls pointing past the moon to something beyond. This may only take place when we lose the detached distance of a post modern cynicism (lose our minds) and discover the power of our innocent declaration (find our voice).

Evidential Power of Poetry

Poems are moments of clarity the soul offers up for guidance. They are the faces of a thousand submerged beings unable to offer up their voice in daily conversation. They speak in the reverent moments when we allow them voice.

I am child of the modern. My soul races after meaning even in the midst of ecstasy and worship. I am disconnected, dismantled, strewn all over the formulas and theories of my father and his father. This journey has made me the ultimate personality, the cloud of knowing of everything but the most needed.

Who would have known that I was truly loved? Could anyone speaking the language of proof and boundaries recognize the holy imagination quietly walking in the front gate of my heart and taking up residence? Who would have known God would take up His residence in my heart and love me. Ravish me in those places dark and hidden?

Now years later I am a child again. I look forward to death, to life, to this day to this moment. Life is a journey seeking the restless, pondering and wandering of an orphan’s heart. The very frame work of my soul has been formed in the hollow idealism and the hedonism of the age. I hate what I want but still desire. I see myself with clarity and wish for blindness. I long for more but am too cynical to walk into its possibility. Thus. I am deconstructing. I am collapsing in on myself.

Poems, rants, and essays represent that implosion. Their darkness is my voice; their hopefulness is submerged but ever present. But, in truth, the overall emotionality of these poems speaks of the end of a person. For me, this person is Raymond Webb. This was my original name before I was adopted. Although fairly unaware of my heritage and genealogy, I do mythically realize the nature-nurture hold on my soul. Much of my journey has been the releasing of a sacred self who speaks with a deeper sense of knowing. It is my prayer that these poems will name the countless ruminations of a soul colliding with its many selves. These collisions are gifts of sorts. May the naming bring forth life from death.

Influenza

Under the influence
I raise my hand to my mouth
In hopes to lessen the radiant power of words
Words held back for ions
Words held hostage through possession
Words now in collusion with some psychic filter
In this moment
After years of mute exile
These words
That occupy entire terrains of my soul
Throwing moods left and right
Peaking into the dark
Swooning like a drunken lover
Feigning love as illness
Reveal to me
That which shines ever so brightly in the lunatic dark
More often than not owns my very soul

MIles Davis Once Said

A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

For me, music and life are all about style.

I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.

I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it.

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

You can dominate a game if you dominate on the line... We're just going to have to go out there and work hard and blow people off the ball, and let our runners do what they do best.

Musings on The Beatles "She's Leaving Home"

Sweetest Sensation

The universe stopped and said
“She’s Leaving Home”
Pay attention to the harmony in the chorus
It will settle once and for all this sadness
This is the sound
You have been longing for
The exact replica of eternity’s lamentation
This is the echo
That has resonated down through the ages
This is the Father’s declaration
The clatter and jingle of divine vamping
Let it fashion your desire
Let it enlighten your mourning
Deem it beautiful
Sing the harmony
Enlist all melancholy
And form a Gospel choir
One that preaches the truth of sadness & woe
One that exalts the darker shades
The shadows of distress
Redeemed by song
Restored by the loveliness of heaven’s racket
The heart aflame in stunningly creature like rhyme
And then reconcile the entire history of human trouble
With one harmonic response
Synchronize your soul
And let it rip

The Age of Beauty

Giving Direction to the Next Epochal Shift

This is the age of self consciousness. It is therefore appropriate that we sense with great existential angst the turning now taking place in our cultural mythos. It is as if all things are suspended and we are suspicious of even doubt itself. Our ways of engaging have turned on us and like a dog tethered to at leash we are finally too tired to try and run away.Call it the grand humbling but few get to see the collapse of such a powerful meta narrative as modernism and live to be involved in the creation of a new language and way of knowing.

On the other side we find a few degrees of true reflection give us this invigorated sense that the "real is returning." We can now let pretense and cynicism fall by the wayside and breath deep the very air of God's imagination. What a wonder this world is. What a wonder the very act of experience is. We can be grateful, We can attribute to Him glory and honor and even resonate with Him on a strange level as a "creator" of sorts. Not the isolated exalted Creator that mocks the brokenness of humankind but the Creative Mind that sees redemption flowing through it all.

This day I will acknowledge the beauty that comes from embracing the dailiness of my life. The sweet soap smell upon my hands. The amazing connectedness of blogging. The comfort of a warm house with books and remnants of a party strewn every which way. The awareness of God's tender touch in my acknowledgment of my inability to understand hardly anything. I am not an expert. I await this new age where God's beauty is pre-Imminent.

What Does the Gospel Look Like?

Developing a Biblical Aesthetic

Art as Embodied Obedience

What does repentance look like? I have heard that statement countless times in my men's group. The query is to reveal to the penitent a vision of what his repentance will look like in terms of behavior. If I forgive, what bodily activity reveals & manifests that heart condition? If I am grateful, what actual embodiment will be manifest such that others will see and recognize gratefulness? Is it possible that character and discipleship are also involved in what the Gospel will look like on any given Sunday in our worship gathering? Does our worship demand a deeper grasp of embodied obedience and its artistic outworking?

I would contend that aesthetics (art making) needs to come under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. I would also put forth that our penchant for music (with lyrics) over the visual, theatrical and performance arts reflects a tendency to make obedience internal, private, and cerebral at the expense of bodily obedience. By bodily obedience I mean that real discipleship looks like something. Real worship looks like something. What does it look like to obey God with our creative talents and why is the Church by in large void of symbolizing artifacts and rituals that are specifically Christian? How is the Gospel displayed or embodied in our worship gatherings?

Is it possible that the emergence of a biblical aesthetic (Christianly way of doing and making art) will only happen when we experience and embrace an ecclesiological redefinition of culture, community, character, and virtue? Why should the church care about the arts? What kind of art would an obedient Christian create? How does that relate to our worship gathering? The convergence of interpretive communities fosters much of the dialogue surrounding the role and biblical use of the arts in our worship gatherings. From the modern church growth movement to the neo orthodox ancient future enclave, many are clamoring for a renewed sense of the arts and their role in the Church. Those with Protestant roots feel much more comfortable with music as one of the arts used in faith formation while our orthodox brothers and sisters seem to feel much more confident with a sacramental view of the arts. Once again, the convergence is generating some great dialogue as to the strengths and weaknesses of certain art forms and why certain traditions feel more comfortable with one than the others.

Current State of Aesthetics in the Church

First of all, we do have art in our churches. Semiotics, the study of the ideological nature of objects, signs and codes, has revealed that meaning making appears to be what humans do. There is no such thing as a bare wall, and empty platform, a plain sanctuary. Semiotics goes on to tell us that through the study called proxemics, one can determine the values and ideological intentions of a people from their architecture and spatial organization. In other words, our churches, homes, and office buildings do tell us what we value and how we value. Is the housing boom in America directly proportionate to our need to make our homes a sanctuary rather than our sacred worship spaces? Thus, the idea that we have yet (especially in Protestant circles) to utilize the arts is a misnomer. We have utilized a formal sensibility (all be it unconsciously) regarding what we call our sanctuary or sacred space. I would contend that most of our engagement with the arts and symbols in the modern Protestant church has been borrowed from pagan cultures. "How can we sing our song in a strange land"?

Is There Such a Thing as Christian Art?

Is Christian art intrinsically different that pagan art? The emerging church (postmodern) movement borrows heavily from pagan sensibilities and contends that even the fallen world gives God glory and can be redeemed and sanctified. John Howard Yoder's critique of Neihbur's Christ and Culture may shed some light here. Have we allowed the church to be subsumed by pagan cultures in the assumption that culture is really "Culture?" Have we unwittingly offered up the meaning making activities involved in artistic endeavors to those "outside" our borders? Do we have a conceptualization of culture that unwittingly takes away the power of the Church as a meaning making enclave in its own right? In other words, do we use the term "Culture" as if it is monolithic, all pervasive, and autonomous? Do we believe the Church and Christians actually exist in this atmosphere called "Culture" and work out their salvation under the purview of this overarching all pervasive force? Much of the Church's response to modernity in recent years has been deeply influenced by Neihbur's transformationlist approach. His template for the engagement and interaction with culture has unwittingly imbued the secularized understanding of values, beliefs, attitudes, aesthetics, artifacts, etc. to be subsumed under the umbrella, if you will, of "Culture" as defined by years of enlightenment thought.

Modernism's Legacy

The pagan worlds I speak of are those art-making communities that exist in numerous locations from the elite Avant Garde art world and Hollywood to the worlds of capitalism and advertising. By controlling the manner in which art is done and discussed, they frame the argument and force all that enter to accept certain axioms about the nature of creativity and culture. I would offer up that the symbolization of consciousness has been primarily formed by modernists who see suspicion and doubt as much more trustworthy in the search for ultimate reality. They also see tradition as suspect and see the "new" as a natural outworking of humankind's march towards progress. Their view of the sacred is highly therapeutic (Jungian) and disembodied.

Art and the Local Church

So how do we bring the discussion of art making back under the Lordship of Christ and become much more intentional and conscious of our aesthetic responsibilities? The ultimate responsibility of symbolizing our worship gatherings falls on local leadership. There is a great danger in the age of commoditized worship materials that communities default their symbol making responsibilities to "professionals" and performers, and para church organizations. Pagan cultures often set the sonic standards for our musical presentations. Theatrical and drama offerings often draw their vignettes from TV and film characters. Artistic renderings are either tremendously dated or pulled down from the Internet and contextually defined for optimal use. The point here is that our sources for usable symbols are often initially formed with intentions and motivations that are far from Christ like. Can they be sanctified? Certainly. Is all art done outside Christian circles unworthy of engagement? No. The issue here, however, is localized obedience to the challenge of having our worship look like something that springs from obedience and the ongoing story within our midst. What paintings, songs, sculptings spring from a desire locally to tell the story of our redemption?. God is speaking in history and in time. Our story is being told every day of the week as we engage the family of God, non believers, and then when we gather on Sunday for corporate worship. What does this redemption look like? Is it truthfully displayed? Is it beautiful? Is it worthy of the God we serve? Is it offered up as a gift to those in which we walk this sojourn?

For Christians, issues of worth and beauty are attributional. "Worship is about assigning and recognizing worthiness-and ultimate worthiness at that," according to Rodney Clapp in Peculiar People. Thus, we must redeem the act of creativity and the development of a Christian imagination from modernism's attempt to find an all-pervasive definition for beauty. Postmodernism has assisted us in the understanding that aesthetics are locally developed and sustained. Is Howard Finster better than Piccaso? Is Bob Dylan better than Beethoven? Is there such a thing as a classically trained saw player? Regardless of our own personal tastes and the canons with which we honor, it is clear that what and why Christians deem something beautiful has more to do with the person doing it and his or her motivation than some set standard that all people under all circumstances will be able to grasp and identify. This is not to rule out issues of craftsmanship and skill. But even those issues are locally defined and arbitrated. Thus, a part of the redemption of the arts will be to rescue aesthetics from modernism's tendency to abstract art from community and give it meaning as an essence. This is why discussions about art as the sublime tend to disengage the act of art making from community and make it some esoteric endeavor by a genius or "gifted" individual. For Christians, who makes art and why is as important as the assessment of its worth on a personal taste level.

The Outworking of a Biblical Aesthetic

Questions for leaders may look like this. Who are the artists in our community? Even more concretely, who are the painters, the poets, the sculptors, the dancers, the musicians, and the graphic artists? Are they being discipled? Are they seeing their lives as gifts? Does the church make a place for their obedience to be manifest? Does the church recognize beauty as a character trait of God? Does the church desire to empower the community to symbolize itself through its gifts and talents? Is our worship gathering the ultimate vortex where obedience is seen and embodied? So on any given Sunday in any given church those in leadership are struggling to inform and form the experience of worshipping God. More than words, more than songs, more than pictures, more than symbols, this process is a Godly calling wrought with perilous heights and depths. Let us step out of our comfort zones with certain artistic expressions and forms and begin to redeem all things and bring them under His Lordship. The Church can once again become a benefactor of the arts. The Church can once again see a renewal or renaissance of the arts that celebrate God's benevolence in that He allows His creatures to join with Him in the act of restoring His world and people back to Himself.

You are worthy, O Lord to receive glory and honor and power; for you created all things, and by your will they exist and were created. Revelation 4:11.

Artists as Aliens in the Church

A number of my friends have access and speak into some of the mega church communities around the country. In our passing conversations it is clear that many of the mega churches (over 2,000 people) have a real challenge in keeping artists on staff and in long term volunteering roles. Why does the Church have such difficulty coalescing an artist’s enclave in their community? Here are some of the difficulties and challenges.

A lack of a biblical aesthetic on the part of the Church

Because we have seen the arts (and especially modern art) as frivolous, esoteric, narcissistic, avant garde and therefore often confrontive and critical, eschewing of tradition, and ultimately a bit unruly (the practitioners that is), it has been easier to find what I would call artist doubles. Much like Saddam Hussein had a double, we want someone to look like an artist, act like an artist, talk like an artist, but at the end of the day not “create” like an artist. Many in the role of “Church” artists are theoretically trained but lacking in the vernacular and dialect of the creative. They can ask for wine and cheese and the train station in creative (the language of creative that is –like French or German) but in truth, they do not know the nuances of speaking “creative.” One conversation with a true artist and their faux status emerges.

Example of disenfranchisement:

I have noticed from my stint with contemporary Christian music, REX and Storyville (small labels I was involved in that birthed Sixpence and a lot of very cool music), and later Grassroots, that many college aged kids (especially) will not even dawn the doors of certain Christian events and conferences. Why?

They perceive it as a propagandistic tool of the entrenched middle class evangelical community.

Now they may not articulate it like that but their reticence to sign up for some GMA competition or attend a Christian festival is that they see CCM as a genre of music that is inherently schmaltzy, saccharine, light on authenticity, and non progressive. Their critique has merit. That is another article.

The Church does not have a biblical theology for the early adaption of art and experience. In the Tipping Point, the fact that certain individuals in a society adapt to some trend or happening sooner than others needs to be factored into the Church’s mission and message. Let me say that being a slave to the “shock of the new” is just as misaligned. But the Church is still denying the struggle to embody the Gospel in real time. I will comment later on the church's fatal attempt to be “relevant” or follow trends” because I think that is still some strange capitulation to modernity, but in truth, early adaption when done biblically is really just being missiologically aware of the culture(s) in which the Gospel is being lived out. Because there are a multitude of different cultures out there, there is no “one size fits all.” This is the danger of the mega church franchise model. It is repeating what denominations did in the past. It may have actually worked somewhat in the past as society was much more unilaterally common in their worldviews but I believe that there have always been enough diverse cultural differences from even the North to the South that the parochial “one size fits all “template for the Church ended up dulling the real process of working out the message of the Church in time and space. In other words, by taking something that works in Ohio and trying to get it to work in Alaska, is in some ways denying the fact that God wants to speak in time and space to people and not just give them a manual. Part of obeying Christ’s mandate is the actual outworking of the Holy Spirit in time and space. Once again, moderns have disembodied the Gospel from its actual outworking in the flesh (meaning: in and through human activity and involvement). I have written in another blog about how developing a biblical aesthetic that is empowering local musicians is PARAMOUNT. They are in our midst. Can we see them? Do we honor them? Do we speak CREATIVE?”

Back to issues of the Church’s estrangement of the “creatives.”

Why would the “creatives” be so leery of the Church?

There is a highly romanticized view (allude to in my article on developing a biblical aesthetic) on what creativity and an artist is. I even think C.S. Lewis may have perpetuated this myth regarding the engagement of beauty and art. However, this is in many ways a response to the Church’s narrow, diminished, perfunctory view of the arts. Because the Enlightenment has fostered so much dualism (i.e. sacred secular split) the Church has perpetuated the idea that liturgical art is superior to what I might call life art. By remaining in the dualistic grid of secular versus sacred, they have made much of life off limits for the Christian artist. Think about it, when is the last time you saw someone paint a picture of Christ that you thought was a really great painter. In other words, the creatives eschew liturgical art as being propagandistic. Artists have left liturgical art to the artist doubles. This is sad. We (the Church) have inadvertently fostered this dualism and told our best and brightest (inadvertently), unless and until you are willing to do art as curriculum, we are not interested. This tendency for the Church to make faith technical and theoretical is another by product of the Enlightenment. We have made the Gospel information and drained it of its visceral mystical dimension. We (the Church) are not truly sacramentalists. We do not even believe in the power of the symbol. It’s all in the explaining. It is all in a second order posture of critique and observation. This is not the disposition of an artist. He/she cannot create from this space. Artists will not ultimately bow down to this perception and mandate.

Artists want to see all of life as imbued with the power and presence of God.

This of course enlivens and broadens immensely the potential subject matter. It sanctifies all of life. Early adapters are helping others see God’s glory through creation. As the secularization of life has become so intrusive via media and such, the Church must spend much of its time dialogically doing a Mars Hill on experience. In many ways the Church needs to draw its artist to Mars Hill and not Josh McDowell’s conference on the rational (note Evidence that Demand’s a Verdict). The Church has wanted evidence; the artist has wanted experience and beauty. Beauty…hum. Now there is a word you do not hear mentioned in the Church much do you? You will note that Mars Hill was a place away from the Church. Paul had to go to them. Where in our neighborhoods do artists hang, jam, and interact. GO THERE!!! GO THERE!!!!! We need more portals of entry into our communities that are fluid, porous, and revelatory of the public Face of God. He has one. Do those outside the faith see it? What do we do with our faith in those settings? We do not explain. That is not the language of this tribe. No….we

DISPLAY - DISPLAY – DISPLAY!!!!!

Creativity appears to be a skill that would come under the moniker of common or prevenient grace. Non believers as well as believers have it and we can see it in them. What is it? Simply put for the sake of this diatribe: it is the ability to interpret, fuse, and offer up experience such that our humanness is enhanced. As a believer I see this as bringing God glory. He made me to do this.

As a practical mystic, I do not want to make any part of being human un-spiritual. So….. artists are doing their art. They are namers. The Church needs namers. We need those who have entered the world of metaphor and realize that all of life is symbolized. There is no part that is purely self-evident. God, from Adam on, has empowered humankind with the task of naming. That is what art is. Great artists appear to be able to name things more accurately, noticing the nuances, the subtleties, seeing the connection between experience and knowing.

How do we know we are human? This of course is an epistemological issue but it is relevant to this discussion. Younger kids have a different epistemology than we older folks have. They desire a theology and an epistemology if you will, that is mystical, beautiful, encompassing, and holistic.

I attend way to many conferences and most of them are excursions into more abstract theological theory. I recently attended a conference where more time was spent setting up the art (i.e. explaining) than displaying. I would also contend that much of the explaining was a deep seeded fear that literalists (those who want all experience to be statically undynamic and unchangeable thus definable once and for all for all) would somehow miss the biblical truth “ behind” the art and disavow its appropriateness thus alienating it from the existing tribe.

Creativity is messy as is life. It involves jamming and improvisation. It involves dialogue and exchange. We want our art to fit tightly into some pre determined theological grid that will fit into the Church calendar rather than expand the homilies of the Church to see and acknowledge all of life.

If we want to bring artists into our midst we have to reverse the flow of knowing. By eschewing experience as untrustworthy (and it can be), we make the theoretical explanations of experience as our art double. That is what one of the mega church’s art conferences was to me. We unwittingly imply that art is for liturgical purposes only or primarily rather than sanctify the art artists are already doing.

Pastors who approach the Gospel from a position of objective proof and explanation will make the outworking of faith more about the explanations of the Gospel rather than a DISPLAY. We are called not primarily to explain but to live out, TO DISPLAY THE GOSPEL.

This is what art is. It is a display of humans coming under the Lordship of Christ and bringing all their thoughts, emotions, experiences (imagination?), etc. under His tutelage, under His mind, into His Kingdom. This submission has power. However, asking artists to submit their craft to an ill formed aesthetic, to persons that often feel threatened by the outworking of someone’s gift, is only to inadvertently communicate that God is skittish, that God is afraid, and small minded. Not so..He created the first nudes

This is why the Church does not get the “best” when it comes to the arts. We are not welcoming this enclave in a manner that allows their humanness to be honored. We have an agenda that is somehow more important than celebrating life, somehow more important than creating friendships and collaborations, somehow more important than seeing God in everyday experience. What is it?

THE SUNDAY SERVICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Church (and large churches mind you) inadvertently must come under an instrumentalist view of human consciousness and behavior. In other words:

~ We only have a few hours to do this.

~ Who only have a little money to do this?

~ Everybody get on board and dumb down the dialogue and collaboration or capitulate to some hierarchical structure that blankets creativity.

~ Therefore, let’s hurry up and get something on paper so we can have something for each Sunday service.

Why are many large churches run like businesses? They have to be. How do businesses treat and relate to humans: as machines. By that I mean in ways that organize human experience so it can be repeated and repeated for the sake of order.

ART DOES THE OPPOSITE

Art digs deep into the experience and sees it deleterious side. Art will often reveal the soul of humankind and show how easy it is to kill it through the “marketing” of human experience. This is of course so ironic seeing that I market for a living. However, I get how dangerous it is to have the marketers (art doubles) coming up with the creative side of the template. Marketers will make it

A spectacle
A necessity
An obvious choice

Art, as it has been configured in the last two to three hundred years, pushes all these boundaries. It says that there may be some inadvertent downsides to how we live out our lives. It tells us to see the beauty in things so common, the utter horror of the killing of the soul, the childlike joy in celebration and sensuality. These things are dangerous to the typical evangelical dualist who actually views much of life as being outside the purview of God’s grace.

Artists are in some ways early grace adapters. They go out like spies if you will and bring back experience and bring it under His Lordship.

More thoughts on a bit more philosophical and theological slant..........................

Much of this struggle George Lindbeck addresses in his writings. He might see the current view on art as a highly propositional approach towards hermeneutics that makes art and the church strange bedfellows.

If humanness is formed narratively and through metaphor, then would it not behoove theologians to foster an open dialogue with artists?

There is the death of modernity issues that artists need to confront while the Church needs to engage its faulty hermeneutic and epistemology regarding how humans know and how they are formed.

The artist may fault on the side of experience but he/she does so as part of the process of naming. Proper naming must take into account Church history, biblical language, and the real time involvement of the Holy Spirit in the local. However, the Church has configured this triumvirate through the lens of propositions. Thus, art as it has become accustomed to in the last 150 years, feels like a tool of the Church or state (much like those under Communist rule during the great purgings). In reality, we are all tools. However, the Church must reverse its epistemological flow and allow for metaphor to come from vital authentic communal naming and less from academic, esoteric, estranged, and distant naming via denominations, seminaries, and franchised church leaders.

Let the symbols flow liberally on a local basis and empower that engagement. Art nights should turn into prayer meetings into bible studies, into commentaries, into creeds.