The Beauty in Desiring God

Creativity as Spiritual Longing

"It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; And your sons and daughters will prophesy, Your old men will dream dreams, Your young men will see visions. Joel 2:28

The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt. Bono

It’s been said that thoughts are the ultimate pilgrims. Something within us leans into the horizon, yearns for a larger story, a more expansive tale in which our hearts are welcomed towards a homecoming. As though from beyond, beauty beckons us. All the parts of our life that appear in exile intuitively honor this presence we call beauty and await its visitation.

The truly beautiful will always be a mediating metaphor. It will never replace God or seek to make Him an object. In fact, real beauty will continually flee the need to domesticate and capture God. When this spiritual longing is allowed to manifest itself in my heart of hearts I sense my inner most parts formed for eternal kinship with the Father.

As Saint John of the Cross said...

I did not have to ask my heart what it wanted

Because of all the desires I have ever known,

Just one did I cling to

For it was the essence of all desire:

To know beauty

To know beauty. This is the vocation of some. In a time of great ugliness and darkness beauty often eludes my heart. Its glimmering shafts of light are lost in my hurried harried pace. I demand it reveal itself in the shallowness of my habits, the attachment of my heart to sin, the pettiness of my soul towards God’s creation. Occasionally in dreams beauty appears like a doe in the dusk of nightfall. Veiled in its presence but powerfully near in its enchantment, I capture a glimpse. I know such delight in its revealing. But just as quickly it is spirited away & I am left with this longing. I am sad. How would I have known that this journey home meant relinquishing over and over again the very place in my heart that was meant for habitation? He will not allow me to schedule His disclosure. I can only hold it momentarily and then my heart mourns its loss and I begin the entire process over and over again.

But alas, I cannot confine nor take into custody this grand eternal calling. This heavenly sighting serves as a nudge into the urgent arena of creativity according to O’Donohue. What my dreams imagined forth into the visible realm where indeed only gifts of the imagination and creativity that liberated my heart from attachment. Beauty allowed me to sit in the invisible nature of what my mind sees as concrete. At this point I am left with the Holy Spirit's reminder that my very being is eternally sustained and ordered by a Beauty much more overwhelming than the doe. I am being pulled into the very heart of my Father’s love for me. It is this love that all my imaginings have envisioned. All the seemingly poetic make believe or artistic meanderings, all the deposits of awakened humanity, now find a home in the Father’s heart.

O’Donohue says this so magnificently when he poets, “The beauty of God is the warmth of the divine affection. You did not invent yourself or bring yourself here. In terms of human time, the mystery of your individuality was dreamed for millions of years. Your strange and restless uniqueness is an intimate expression of God and who you are says something of who God is.”

And so this sacred hunger, the deep caring, and the unrelenting desire satiated only in the beatific vision of my welcoming makes all so luminous. In the seemingly limitless alone the inconceivable is made intimate and I sing the transcendent. No abstract anonymous force or essence, this desire and longing is for a person. It is not “What is beauty?…but Who is beauty? And so in innumerable apparitions beauty appears and my heart is illuminated and my holy aspirations find refuge and are as our friend C.S. Lewis said so well, surprised by joy.

The Beautiful Tedium of Suspended Disbelief

Enchantment as Faith

Tell them more fairy tales! Bruno Bettelheim

A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough... It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again," to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again," to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
G.K. Chesterton Orthodoxy

This is My Father’s World – Maltbie Babcock
This is my Father's world,
And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres.
This is my Father's world:
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.

My Back Pages -Bob Dylan
Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin' high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
"We'll meet on edges, soon," said I
Proud 'neath heated brow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

What does creation whisper daily to our hungry heart? What messages are deeply planted within the sunrise, the first morning song of wind & birds, the crowning of midday radiance or the impending wispy dusk of welcoming twilight? There is an apparent monotony to the steady and seemingly endless replication of the story of our days. I arise each morning out of routine only to regard the display of the unexplained as intrusions and reminders of my world weary soul. I tire of meeting myself continually broken and invariably suspicious of life’s exquisite richness. Like a youth beginning to question the certainty of Christmas and its enchantment, I offer up my misgivings as prayer and quell any restless anticipation of the lovely, the astonishing, the utterly charming in lieu of skepticism, certainty & the immediately tangible.

There is a cost to the soul when the story of life has been written and no reading of its pages brings soulfulness or illumination. G.K. Chesterton must have stumbled upon this soul numbing encounter when he remarked, “The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.” So what attenuates this posture of expectancy and eagerness so evident in children and the emotionally challenged?

Bruno Bettelheim in his ground breaking work “The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales” tells us over and over again of the importance of storytelling and its formative power in the creation of humanness. For Bettelheim, the impartation of poetic & narrative accounts of life’s struggles and challenges serves to build into the child a resilience rather than a fragile character. Children are formed through these accounts such that they are more readily willing to sit in the realness of life instead of seeking an escape from the inevitable. It should be noted that much of the contemporary stories for children avoid some of the life’s real terrors and offer up instead saccharine & inane replacements.

As an adult I am confronted daily with the vagaries and realities of living in a fallen world. I discover, however, that I am often unable to find symbols and signs from which to draw meaning and purpose. I am unwilling and frequently powerless to grasp the veiled and buried riches concealed in the magnificent rendering of life’s unfolding scenario. What inner opposition renders the grand revealing? What dullness and hesitation turn my heart to disbelief and suspicion?

In recent years there has been a reemergence of the art of storytelling as well as poetry readings and poetry slams. To the delight of many, a new tradition of story tellers is surfacing and much of its energy and value are being supported by local gatherings at bookstores, churches, and community centers. Very young children are of course needful of oral readings as they are preliterate. It is, however, really challenging to find a great story teller. Creative and animated story tellers thicken and empower the imaginative expression of stories in our inner life. We see, know, and experience our being reflective of the penetration and intensity of the stories. Their intrinsic weightiness and force over and in our descriptive engagement with life satiate our imagination allowing us to truly occupy the space in which we live. We are indeed a storied people.

It is interesting to note that Jesus never wrote a book and primarily used stories or parables as his preferred means of expression. Likewise, it is also historically evident that much of the first century remembrances of Christ and His message were also shared through the medium of storytelling, letters, and public speeches. Yet today we talk of the mysteries of life as though they were mere math problems to be solved. We take the parables and Christ’s sermons and scrutinize each word and phrase to the point where our spiritual dialect is more grammatical than conversational. We know how to exegete a verse but fail to sense the utter sway and authority of the words we say are divinely inspired. Just as children ask for us to “read it again” each reading renders up a fresh and original version of what for many of us has become predictable and small. Few of us really experience the life of the story and yet we often walk away with the impression we “know” the story.

Why did our preliterate ancestors seem to grasp with such verve and wonder the power of these stores? Why do children squeeze joy and wonder from each reading? What fascination and enthrallment overtakes the trusting, uncluttered and unencumbered soul?

There is a part of us that is charmed and delighted by the apparent monotony of life. This deeper self is that part of our being that clings to creation’s collusion with the Father. This space within is a divinely implanted need to collaboratively improvise the unfolding of life. We need the story read aloud so we can respond with amen, hallelujah, prayer or silence? If a yawn is a silent shout, as Chesterton asserts, then much of our dullness and ennui towards realities’ performance is endeavoring to articulate and verbalize our genuine impressions. When willing and able we say, “Read it again, read it again!”

Healing the Wounded Imagination

The Creativity of Hope

It is the task of art to undo the work of our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits…making us travel back in the direction from which we have come to the depths where what has really existed lies unknown within us. Marcel Proust

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death. Robert Fulghum

But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Romans 8:25

Ideology is said to be the beliefs and symbols that serve to interpret social reality. Those energies motivate everything from spiritual renewal & political action to artistic expression. We are currently experiencing the shift from one ideology to another and the differences in narrative symbols and beliefs represents a revolutionary time for artists. The collective imagination is often captured by a dominant ideology to the point where much of life and its fullness becomes attenuated or deadened.

What brings back to life the wounded imagination and inspiration such that life’s challenges and setbacks are met with innovation and inventiveness? What can rekindle ingenuity and original thinking and begin to articulate a dream of the future?

Many in the arts community see the act of creativity as a necessity for life’s journey. Real transformation, be it societal or personal, needs a driving energy and resilience to conceive and fashion a world where truth and goodness go hand in hand with beauty. We need the joy of the Twyla Tharp’s dance but we need a world where there is a decent job for everyone willing to work. We need the power of words and poetry be it street rimes of Common or The Roots as well as the melodious sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning or William Wordsworth. But we also need adequate health care for the elderly and the children. We need the sensual exuberance of Frida Kahlo or the Cirque de Soleil, but we also need a clean and healthy environment.

As we move from a time of seeming toxic messages and images to a new page or canvas, there is a spiritual audacity needed to enter this new space. Some say that hope is a core resonance of creativity. It is out of this space that regressive dogmas are returned to transcendent narrative myths which then become life giving rather than death inducing. These legends and symbols expand the world and enliven dialogue and conversation as well as redemption. This re- imaginative act offers hope as an artistic healing force. Although seemingly fragile to the pragmatist and realist, this response to the foundational beauty in creation and one another honors the transformation that is fostered and engender in the creative act. Far from fragile, the force and vigor of imaginative hope swallow up mere optimism and go straight after meaninglessness and depression. This kind of potent conviction redeems the impoverished world of ideas and symbols to new possibilities and a dynamic spiritual life.

As the imagination becomes restored to its rightful exuberance, aspirations become common place. Great anticipation sits with the elders in the town square. Desire is rekindled in the hearts of lovers. Dreams once again reveal the prophetic and the expectation of even the old is to faith and the possibilities of what many deem the original blessing – the ability to create.

When Beauty Gets Silenced

Art as a Voice

The recent downturns in the economy have fostered a mind numbing litany of accusations, pontifications and shear wonderment. The airwaves are filled with the rattle & hum of fear as the American and now global dream of the future takes daily hits. So much at stake and so little reliable declarations made at a time when everyone is waiting for prophecy. Someone please tell us how to get out of this mess, through this calamity with some semblance of life as we thought we knew it. Spoken, written or sung, painted with the tongue or brush, someone please step forward and tell us who we are.

Barak Obama enters the national and international scene during a period unprecedented in my life time. Even his detractors are secretly hoping he knows how to turn this titanic around or at least plug the hole in the ship and allow us to limp into port. It is evident that the man has significant gifts and he very well may prove to be one of the better leaders our nation has ever known. However, in the meantime, the story of life will not be silenced and epic tales are awaiting the poets pondering.

As the nation broods over the next step regarding the economy, harsh sacrificial measures are being offered as the only way forward. We are an age who has emptied our coffers just before a drought. We have leveraged the seed intended for next year’s crop and are now looking for someone or something to sacrifice at the altar of our presumption. Yearend bonuses and record breaking profits of companies like Exxon remind us that in the midst of all the downward spiral something unjust and unsettling remains. More than ever, we long for the resolve of a more powerful explanation. All the cacophony can unfortunately make life seem as if it is about nothing. Just a series of unrelated, unconnected voices all calling out for a hearing but at the moment sounding like noise. Who helps draw these desperate sounds, symbols and images together? Who brings nobility to the suffering, justice to the pitiable, healing to the ailing, and a home to the vagabond? Are there parts of the human condition that can only be awakened through the balm of creatives willing to listen?


In many ways there is a violent struggle right now for power over the who gets to form the story. From the partisan battles of Republicans and Democrats to the terrorist and peace niks, many contingencies are lining up at the soap box that is the media and offering up their reflection on this screen play in the making. Oddly enough, at a time when all are experiencing such great loss, more than ever we need those committed to listening to and for the healing & hopeful stories needed for the naming.

“The future may depend on our remembering that everything has in it a dream of itself,” Rachel Naomi Remen once said. Could this be the genius of creativity and the imagination? Out of these dark spaces and places, could a more hopeful mythos emerge? Ironically, it appears the arts have once again been marginalized and silenced.

As the bailout turned into TARP and TARP into Obama’s new plan, special interests once again lined up at the governmental troughs not convinced this was really a crisis. Lobbyists came out of the closet and knew from past experiences that something this large would certainly allow for millions of dollars to be designated for their causes and interests. Even as we speak, it is clear that a crisis of this magnitude cannot cure the illness of special interests. If we get ours, that is enough.

In so many of the discussion by politicians and media pundits, it appeared that one group or endowment was certainly unworthy of any assistance. After all, we are in times where people need jobs, companies need capital, and the consumer needs confidence. It was odd as time after time the Endowment of the Arts would be first or second line item to cut on the list of groups that certainly did not need any funding or help during this kind of crisis. From pro-lifers upset at family planning clinics birth control perks to parks and wildlife groups who stand to lose their assistance, everyone seemed to dismiss the arts as a coterie worth mentioning. Why? Because the art community is an easy weak victim. They have little collective voice in the circus that is politics and media.

History has told us over and over again what happens when the arts are silenced. In the twentieth century, writers like Alexander Solzhenitsyn cried out from the Gulags warning us of a world of the horror taking place in the Soviet Republic. Even African American artists in the 50’s & 60’s like Miles David revealed the darkened heart of a nation caught up in racism. When will we learn that the voice of the artist gives pathos to the sorrow? When will we learn that creativity is often unleashed most powerfully during times when the human soul seems defeated and nearly destroyed?

There is a voice that is the arts. From the dance of Twila Tharp to the comedic social commentary of Lennie Bruce to the ecstatic offerings of Paul Klee, we are enriched by the extravagance of beauty in the midst of loss and exile. More than ever, the arts need to be supported and sustained even sacrificially. Whose voice will frame this current age? Will it be the Wall Street tycoon full of himself and his leveraged world? Will it be the politician convinced his occasional nod to the common man makes him a man of the people? Will it be the angry religious zealots from numerous religions hoping this is the apocalypse so there end times story trumps the world?

Who will offer up a gentler naming? Who will supply us with laughter when our tears have been emptied in full? Who will draw us towards the dance floor for one more round of twirls and spins that can only feed our childlike hearts? The artist will. So I am writing letters. I am sounding off. I am angry at the seeming dismissal of the arts as not only expendable but not even worthy of a discussion. Sing out in protest. Dance a silly dance when everyone is telling you to get serious. Paint your face, hum aloud in a library, and finally lay for an hour gazing at nothing but the canopy of splendor that is our sky. It is our sky. Before it gets sold at auction, let’s enjoy the everlasting. This story is not over. Thank you Jesus.

The Cry of Our Times

The Global Crisis and the Violation of Beauty

All the contemporary crises can be reduced to a crisis about the nature of beauty. John O’Donohue

For what does the human soul long? Sex? Power? Money? Beauty? In recent months the shroud of greed has been removed and the entire world has seen avarice with spiritual clarity. Unregulated markets run by individuals and groups whose only pursuit was acquisitiveness finally devoured their own off spring (as in the case of Madoff) and confessed their ponzie schemes. Their admissions have of course lacked contrition and are only due to their powerlessness to animate the cadaver. Countless economic institutions and their real intent are daily being disclosed and made public and the ugliness of it all nearly overpowers the average person on the street.

The media that months ago was complicit in their generation of “relentless images of mediocrity & ugliness” have now turned on their bosses and a coup is in the works. Even the media are shocked at the daily revelations. What has happened to our sensibilities in these last few months that what is truly ugly is now most visible?

How does a world fall into such chaos? How do political, religious, and economic institutions find themselves thrown into postures of extreme anxiety and uncertainty? There are and will be many declarations and assertions as to how we arrived at this juncture, what it means and what we are to do to put right the planet. I will speculate that beauty will not be pronounced as the foremost antidote for our planet’s woes but I believe it is only beauty that can reconcile and atone for the dangerous state of soul that animates our consciousness.

What happens to a world that represses or ignores the hunger of the soul for beauty? What transpires in the wake of such a lack of attention? In recent weeks it is as if the mask of our collective soul has been removed and we see in each other’s fear, the images to which we have bowed down and worshiped. We have mistaken glamour for the magnificent, Hollywood for our deepest most profound dreams, and technological fancy for the real imagination.

Why did God demand that there be no graven images to reflect His glory? Why were the Jews so prone towards creating idols that were proxies for the transcendent? Could it be that the presence of beauty is much like the Spirit? It goes where it will. Beauty is much like a mystical flame that burns only when stoked with love.

How one walks through the world, the endless small adjustments of balance, is affected by the shifting weight of beautiful things.
Elaine Scarry

When our being is governed by frenetic gratification, our inner ear grows deaf and the call of beauty is lost to the cacophony of the ugly. We have lost our sensibilities regarding what we really esteem as beautiful. From malls built with faux streams and trees to simulated neighborhoods created by nostalgic Disneyesque fantasies, we have smothered our sense of wonder with belongings and ignored what cannot be bought.

What might happen if we were to awaken to the call of beauty? Is it possible that we will hear and see beauty where we could not before? O’Donohue, in his treatise on beauty declares what happens to our deepest nature. “The wonder of the beautiful” now begins surprise us. “Because our present habit of mind is governed by the calculus of consumerism and busyness, we are less and less frequently available to the exuberance of beauty.” Beauty has been repressed by our acquisitiveness and now in the wake of its toppling our inner most yearnings are coming to the surface. Frederick Tuner said, “Beauty…is the highest integrative level of understanding and the most comprehensive capacity for effective action. It enables us to go with, rather than against, the deepest tendency of themes of the universe.”

I am a part of a community that speaks often of liminal space. I believe we are standing within the threshold of new dispensation. I have told many of my closest friends that we are in the throws of a revolution. This revolution is a divine revealing of what truly sustains and animates this world. We are living in exciting times where our creative nature and its empowered nurturance from the Father can be released on this world with courage and service. This is a call to all the “creatives” to become emboldened. Do not shrink back in fear. Now, more than ever, we need celebration. Now more than ever we need the frivolous and extravagant. Now more than ever we need the utterly silly and sublime.

Let us invite beauty into our midst with parties. Let us give our most prized possessions away to the poor. Let us empty our homes of anything that remains unused and unstewarded. Let us repent when we merely consume but do not replace with something beautiful and precious. Let us be reckless in our gift giving. Let us envision a future where there is no lack because there is no hoarding.
Let us look for the beautiful in our enemies. Let us rename the flaw and the broken with magnanimous names of lavishness. Let our only debt be that of love and may we be reckless and wasteful in our welcoming of the stranger.

Let the dance begin! To the emerging New Adam!

The Lure of the Local

Most educated people say,”Where is it written? Our people say where is it lived?
Steve Gonzales

We are in the epoch of simultaneity; we are in an epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of near and far, of the side by side, of the dispersed.
Michael Foucalt

How will we know it is us without our past.
John Steinbeck

Community is local life aware of itself
Wendell Berry

The White man’s words are no good. They don’t give pictures to your mind
Anonymous Apache

One could say that when an old man or women dies in the Hispanic world, a whole library dies with that person.
Carlos Fuentes

Lucy Lippard in her book The Lure of the Local goes on to say…

“Place is a locus of desire. Every time we enter a new place we become one of the ingredients of an existing hybridity which is what all “local places” exist of. By entering that hybrid, we change it; and in each situation we play a different roll. The lure of the local is a pull of a place that operates on each of us, exposing our politics and spiritual legacies. It is the geographical component of the psychological need to belong somewhere, one anecdote to a prevailing alienation. The lure of the local is that undertone to modern life that connects it to the past we know so little and the future we are aimlessly concocting. Every place’s name is a story, out outcropping of the shared tales that form the bedrock of community. Untold land is unknown land. Indigenous names tend to locate resources for common good-pointing out a place where a healing herb grows or the water is bad-or to say what happened there. "

This is why local art’s ultimate power is the chronicalizing of time such that the communal construction of humans can manifest itself in a sense of sacred place or space. Artists must root themselves in a place and consider that the one place out of which all time and space reveal themselves. In this space we discover the sacredness of our human longings, our deepest desire for meaning and purpose. In this particular place our creativity and artistic expression become a reflection of the really real. Root your creativity in a people and place. Know the names of beauty's location.

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).