Sabbatical Work Update

Since my last blog I have been doing research, reading great books, attending plays, setting up and conducting interviews, pretending to be a glass blower, learning necessary computer programs, and working on music.

Glass blowing?  Marsha and I used Groupon coupons to take a glass blowing glass.  We now have two beautiful spinner plates but all we did was blow into a tube three times.  It was more like a magic trick played on us than creating art.

Dick Staub’s book, The Culturally Savvy Christian was a great read and spoke to what I am trying to explore with art and our spiritual journey.  Dick states that we are in an intellectually and aesthetically impoverished age of Christian-lite.  We are caught between a popular culture attempting to build art without God and a religious culture that believes in a God disinterested in art.  I am in total agreement with this.  He goes on to explain that what started out as a healthy church movement within culture before the 60’s has produced  several un-Biblical models.  He names three:

Cocooning - keeping ourselves protected and insulated from those Jesus calls us to reach

Combating - The ‘Us versus them’ mentality.  One of the plays we went to see with some 

                               close friends was Jesus Christ  Superstar.  Outside the theater I was hear two 

                              men telling all of us we were going to hell.  The reason?   The Bible’s stance 

                             on men with long hair.  Really? 

Conforming - I am afraid there is more of this than we realize.  Does God want us to run 

                             churches like businesses?  NT Times columnist Walter Kim wrote, “Christianity 

                            doesn’t compete with pop culture.  It is pop culture.”

I think Dick is really onto something when he refers to our need to become fully human in God.  These include being:  Creative, Spiritual, Intelligent, Relational, and Moral.

Dick suggests that we as Followers of Jesus, pursuing a fully human life through God, can have three roles in culture, instead of the unhealthy three previously mentioned ones.

Communicate in culture like an Ambassador

Counter culture like an Alien (we can be a winsome alternative)

Create culture like an Artist.

There is so much more in The Culturally Savvy Christian than I have time to share here, but here is Dick’s advice to Artists.  By the way, we are all artists in one form or another.

Be an artist who is deeply Christian, not a Christian artist

Produce art, not just religious art

Strive for the spiritual, intelligent, & inventive

Make art, don’t just appropriate art

Demand better art

Some years ago I read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.  This book has been a standard for artists and those exploring art since it came out in 1992.  Her 2002 sequel, Walking in This World, is a fantastic exploration into the creative process, the creative, and the Great Creator.  I am beginning to understand the magic of committing to something, such as this sabbatical, and having resources come to light.  I will never be able to do Julia’s book justice in this blog but here are a few impressions that I found enlightening:

I love her name for God - the Great Creator. 

The Great Creator loves the artist and is waiting as a lover waits to respond to our love 

                when we offer it.

  The moment we open ourselves to making art, we simultaneously open ourselves to our 

                Maker.

The act of making art is a direct path to contact with God.

Artist to artist, we can safely have faith in the Great Creator’s interest in our creative

         pursuits. 
        When we express our creativity, we are a conduit for the Great Creator to explore, express, 
                and expand His divine nature and our own.

We are made by the Great Creator and are meant to be creative ourselves.

Julia states that we are all creative and our truest self is creative. This is not exclusive to the ‘professional artist’ but all of us.  If we would just stop to consider what we do, we would find we are making creative decisions on a regular basis.

Here are a few more of Julia’s thoughts:

Art maybe the finest form of prayer.

Art is tonic and medicinal for us all.  As an artist, you are a cultural healer.

Arguably, we are all in the service of an artist greater than ourselves.

If you are an artist or would like to have a healthy inside look at what goes on in the creative process, you would benefit from reading Walking in This World.

Next blog:  Kindlingsfest