...or The Transformation from Art to Divinity:
The Other “Sweet Science”
I woke up this morning and had already lived the day. I knew exactly what to do. A certainty that has everything to do with you in my life and with the breath of the Sabbath when dawn comes.
My blog, of course, is personal revelations and realizations and musings and so on. But it is also far more private thoughts (despite being in the public arena) than I have ever shared with anyone before, let own with several thousand subscribers. Is this the comfortable anonymity of the Internet? Of course it is. But it is also the decades-long metamorphosis of the human condition, of ministering, and of the art of communication.
Welcome to the new day. Same as the old day. Nothing like the old day at all. Welcome to the beginning of the End (of) Times when everything will emerge and adapt. It is no longer the time for go-along-to-get-along, coasting by with the comfortable traditions of church and community. Now is the time for change. Organized religion likes to think that it corners the market on divinity. But there are too many yet to step into the living light. Too many to reach with the passive (-aggressive) modes of yesteryear. Now is the time for action.
How do we do it? Here’s how we do it:
You be where it is. You wade in. You go to the people. You learn the language, immersive study, without personal compromise. “Until you are of one man’s doctrine, you will never know it.” And you know exactly where I’m at, don’t you?
I am a visual thinker. I believe in the power of the written word. I do not believe that it takes a physical touch to fall in love. I do not believe that salvation comes from a pulpit. I believe in baptism by rain.
A friend writes to me: “Lovers, admirers, imitators, wanna-bes, will all come and go over the course of our lives, but the one relationship that remains constant is our relationship to our own art.”
Because our art lives inside us. It is the seed planted by God’s own hand and left to grow in that place where Christ resides. It is a place that can feel empty until we open our eyes to His living light but, in truth, it is never empty. He is always there and so is our art. Writing black words on paper or a white screen. Touching brush to wet paint to canvas. Holding you in the wee hours that mark the start of a new day with young bird song and poetry. Oh, snap ;) That’s the place where art has breath. That’s when we realize that art is the universal language.
Because art is transcendent and transformative. Art is what lifts us above the animals. Art is you walking across the room to stand in my arms, to gaze intently, to whisper hello and say nothing else for five minutes or ten until you know I’m breathing again, having climbed out onto the fire escape to stand in the cold midnight beneath the celestial eyes of Christ. Because if He can see the flush across my cheeks and chest, if He can hear my pounding heart, if He can experience the joyous tears that spill down my face... than I know that you can too.
Two dozen strangers in my inbox:
“I read your blog. I had to write to you because you’re the first to understand my:
passion
sadness
earning
desire
searching
wanting
life
The first to be like me, speak to me, walk with me, tell me I have never walked alone... and for the first time, I believe it.”
To be a New Testament Christian is to be without the stain glass windows that inspire and awe. Without the intelligent pastors that guide and shape. Without the help of concrete, tangible, undeniables. It is called “organized religion” for a reason. God is chaos theory and fractal geometry, limitless, nonlinear, noncorporeal, and immortal. We are limited, linear, corporeal and mortal! It isn’t easy to grasp God. The lesson taught by forty-two pages of churches in the Yellow Pages is that it takes at least thirty-eight pews of people to grasp God. I like to grasp God by *letting go.* By letting Him speak to me. Direct. One-on-one. He’s got my number on speed dial. Got every number on speed dial. Just let go, and let God. Just do it!
Another friend sips coffee while chatting with me online. She talks about the first time she ever sat in an art class. The first time she ever worked with a nude model. She remembers looking at him. He had a textbook perfect body. A gentle demeanor. A quiet presence. She remembers thinking, “If I saw him on the street -- fully clothed, of course -- he would turn my head. If I had him in my bed, he would turn me on. Yet, there in that class, staring at him for three hours, I felt only respect for him. Absolute respect.” Because art is transcendent.
And what is transcendent is transformative.
I’m talking about ministry by way of painting, dancing, music, writing. I’m talking about ministry by way of comment box poetry and VR environments that bring disparate people together. I’m talking about falling in love to prove that anything is possible. Because with Him the impossible becomes commonplace. And if you don’t truly believe that, without conditions, without justifications, without applying man’s filter... then I suggest you ditch your pocket scripture and go sit on a mountaintop for a while because God needs to have words with you. Don’t be surprised if shrubbery bursts into flames.
“While general culture contains a great deal of material that demeans the human body, you may wish to help your student understand that since before the time of ancient Greece and Rome, many outstanding artists have tried, in a variety of works, both secular and religious, to show the beauty, strength, and dignity of the unclothed human form.”
Art is the human heart laid bare. When I paint you, I am speaking to you, and to everyone else who sees that canvas. Cherry blossoms (did you get the connection?) fall from slim new branches. You are looking up and out. You are, of course, gazing at angels.
Anyone who dislikes the arguably overexposed “La Gioconda” (The Mona Lisa) has never heard the story of Leonardo in love with the composed Lisa Gherardini that he took sixteen years to paint. The one painting he carried with him from Italy to France and never sold. His love was endless, nonphysical, transcendent and divine. He loved her like endless summer skies. Full of possibilities.
Rock ‘n’ roll is dangerous. The Internet is dangerous. Sexuality? *Really* dangerous. The living force of human desire as it fuels art...? Oh, that’s the worst. That’s like super duper dangerous! Anything that they can’t wrap their minds around, is devious, deceptive and, oh yes, very dangerous. But you know what? So is a spork.
In the right hands – in the hands of someone who is no one who is only what Christ demands – the medium of art becomes that thing that can travel anywhere. That judges no one. That brings people to Christ.
Go back with me to that street corner in Seattle and ask again:
How many lives have you saved today?
Comic books, genre novels, websites, flash fiction, forums, 3D environs... how many lives have you saved, baby? Dozens. How many hearts have you opened? Far more. How many times do you reach out, reach up, and reach a breaking point? Every day. How many times must someone repeat, “You have value. You have worth. You will *not* call yourself an idiot.” The world is full of idiots who strip away the self-esteem of young people on mission. Who tear away our assurance in Christ with their abject inability to comprehend what is outside their tunnel vision. Who will not accept that their means are ineffectual.
(And it took me forty minutes to take your name out of that paragraph.)
I called a third friend today. I was feeling a blue sadness in my heart. She answered (I’d prayed she would) and I said without preamble: “Lift my spirits.” She silently put the telephone on the window sill.
Music is an art. Fine harp plays from my iPod today. It is flawed and original music made on Mother’s Day. It is mesmerizing and personal as all art is personal. It makes me cry with memories. It makes me feel something. It brings me closer to God.
You said, “Stop giving me so many outs. Stop saying anything is okay. Stop telling me that tomorrow I may change everything and that’s fine with you. Start making it hard for me to leave.”
The sound of birds and frogs and three children playing, drift up and over that window sill and fill the receiver with a beautiful spring day in the Pacific Northwest. There is something, I think that weird flowering holly thing, brushing against the window screen with a scritch-scritch sound and so I know there must be breeze.
There is the voice of a man and a woman, and someone I know. There is the sound of tension, of worlds colliding. There is the sound of angels. There is the sound of joy. There is the sound of your voice which breaks my heart and lifts it up simultaneously.
And that symphony of sound was art. Because it closed my eyes and touched my heart and filled that space where my seed of creation and Christ reside. It was real. It was meaningful.
Because art is always meaningful.
Take everything else, Lord. In times of cold terror, in panic and depression, in an age of unknowns and things unknowable, the two things that never leave us are Christ and art. And, in the end of our moments and at the beginning of this love for you, those two things are all that matter.
Ever forward. Despite the odds. Past the barriers. This ministry is shared.
E.J.
