art, incarnation and artifact
Emergent Gathering reflections 5 (and final)
I participated in a conversation at the Gathering about art and creativity and all that “stuff”. Needless to say it was a very popular discussion. We sat on the little “pier” that extends out into the pond at the conference center. David attended a discussion about cohorts and I had the girls. Aliyah slept in the stroller most of the time and Shayel played nearby.
I rarely get the opportunity to talk to such deep thinking creative people. It was FANTASTIC!
Instead of trying to summarize the discussion for you, I’m going to share a few nuggets I took away including some thoughts I shared with the group. I probably talked way too much but it was just so stimulating being there I was like a hyper kid in a candy store.
Troy started us off by tossing out some metaphors - church as artist, church as art, church as curator and then beyond to explore the idea of artifact. He encouraged us to play with these metaphors in our conversation. Honestly, I was skeptical - if I had done something like that with our group people would have looked at me like I was speaking another language…not this group. After a few moments of pause for reflection people just dove right in.
There was just too much said to really relay any of it but I’d love to hear you all’s thoughts related to creativity and art using these metaphors. I loved the talk about artifact - what are we leaving that is lasting. But what was the most profound for me was our discussion about artifact as not only that which we are “leaving behind” but that which speaks from the future into the present.
I have always thought of artists as prophetic voices but it didn’t really strike me as something so powerful and relevant until this discussion - not just in the church but into culture at large. As a prophetic voice, artists have started and stopped revolutions, they have been the first to speak of what is coming and in like fashion, they are often either completely ignored, misunderstood or persecuted for it. How do we, as church leaders, and as Christians who (should) live “in the world” (i.e. outside our church world) not only recognize art as curators but create space and voice for the prophetic component of the creative?
I believe, as a “mystic”, that we have the light of Christ radiating from us as we live the mission. It’s not something we can stop except when we stop living the mission (namely, when we hole ourselves up inside our safe Christian homes and churches and worlds) and it’s not something we have to force. For a light to shine it just needs to be turned on and then it cannot help but shine. There is often a very forced feeling I get from art created by Christians. And I think much of that is because we want our faith, our message, to be understood. And there is a time for explicit “preaching” through words or visual communication. But there is also a light present in our art and all we have to do is release it and trust - - probably the hardest part of all.
The final major point I took away from our conversation was reclaiming the lament, the absurd, the dark. I’ve always found something so beautiful and powerful about the Psalms and Lamentations and Ecclesiastes and Job…and all the other cries of the heart screamed out onto the pages of the Bible. We MUST, ABSOLUTELY MUST, get away from exclusively happy clappy songs and cheery artwork. There is a time for weeping, there is a time for mourning, there is a time for lament and the grotesque and absurd and we need to create safe space for that and give it voice.
So there you have it folks, the Gathering in 5 parts - wish you could have been there!
Previous Installments in this Series:
Part 1 How I lost at Pac-Man and defeated big Bible hill
Part 2 Sprouted bagels, knit caps and communities called Seven
Part 3 Tony Jones is a real person…I think
Part 4 Emergent incarnates hope and dangerous dreams
[tags]emergent gathering[/tags]
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I can see why you feel at a loss to convey such a rich discussion; your post prompts so many thoughts I’m at a loss for what to write in response. Have you read Tolkien on the Christian artist as sub-creator? Madeleine L’Engle’s “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art?” Those are two places I always return to as touchstones when these kind of discussions come up. Are you familiar with “Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion”? Lots of good reflection on these topics there, also. They have a website with some resources available.
Blessings
Some art is so full of light it blinds. Some art is so full of darkness, it makes you turn away. Some art contains both, sometimes together in an unresolved contradiction - as do we humans, simul iustus et peccator all. While my own preference is music, I find the visual arts (film and photography more than painting, although some modernists such as Pollock, De Koonig, and Mondrian do speak to me) occasionally so arresting I find myself not breathing when gazing in wonder at what is said without words.
I loved the part at the end about recapturing the lament. The absurd is with us every day, so perhaps it isn’t so much recapturing it as it is remembering the vocabulary of the absurd, to give voice to our reality as it is.
I would also add that we need to restore the vocabulary and the imagery of the demonic. Evil is something people talk about in whispers, occasionally referring to it obliquely. As Christians, we need to remember that radical evil is the enemy - not we mere humans, who are only its victims. If that means we restore, at some level, talk of a personal Devil, so be it. If nothing else, I have been recently reminded that evil is more than just the personal foibles of an individual, or the collective madness of nations and peoples. Unless Christians, especially American Christians (whose exposure to radical evil on a historical level is minimal), can recapture the depth and breadth of the language of evil as a personal and social force bent on destruction, then I believe our vocabulary is incomplete. I think that only in artistic endeavors can that reclaiming begin; I also think it will take an extraordinary effort of courage to do this.
Man, I’ve been on my soapbox for a while. Sorry, Makeesha.
not at all, thank you for your rich thoughts Geoffrey.
I agree with you about everything you said. I think when I said “recapturing” I meant more “giving voice” in a way that is both expressive of reality and redemptive
I also like what you said about evil and the demonic. I think that the creative as the prophetic is a very important place for this to be communicated. - visual, musical, and didactic art.
thank you karl, I need to read those.
Here’s a bit of Tolkien on subcreation, a poem he wrote for C.S. Lewis:
Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons–’twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we’re made.
You inspired me! I would really appreciate it if you could click over to my blog, read the top two posts, and, if you have any after reading them, share your thoughts with me.
yay! I love it when I do that. I sure will jog over there.
lameting art sounds a very good thing!