The Moment We Fall

From December 2004
I’ve been thinking about the Fall. No, not as in autumn leaves, but the Fall of Humanity. Which led me to start thinking about the categorical question: what is the nature of evil? And then it struck me how little I think about it. How that for me the problem of evil has largely slipped out of my consciousness except as it relates to physical evil – sickness, suffering as a result of natural disaster, etc. But in looking at the history of art and thinking about how the nature of evil has been portrayed in art through the centuries, I’ve been struck at how seriously evil was once viewed.

To think about calling a thing – a behavior – evil is enough to strike terror into the hearts of the postmodern person. Accusations of evil abound these days, fundamentalists accusing liberals, liberals accusing fundamentalists, but somewhere in the guts of all of us, the whole idea of whether or not there really is an Evil that might be identified and rooted out so that humanity would absolutely be better off if it were eradicated…well, that notion hasn’t got much traction in our world. I fear the discussion of the nature of evil tends more toward whatever gets in the way of power, for there is nothing – read no person – outside humanity to reveal what the metaphysical nature of Evil might finally be. And if we can”t know, then we must fight it out as best we can.

Such is the world without God.

§

Here’s an interesting exercise. In asking a few of my friends about picking a movie moment which symbolizes the fall of Adam and Eve, most hover around moments of deep violence, choices in which evil is embraced, evil that is understood and executed.

But it seems to me that the Fall is more subtle, more about small disobedience leading to loss of innocence, and the tragic gaining of knowledge, the opening of the eyes for the first time as to what evil is. The Fall was an innocuous little moment, the small bite of a piece of fruit. How could such a thing hurt anyone? There is flavor, and beauty in it, and a bit of wisdom to be gained as well. The fact that I have now lost touch with the very heart of existence, the very source of all that is good and true and beautiful will not dawn on the fallen for some time. Something is changed, for sure (where’s my fig leaf?), but the full nature of destruction is some ways off.

It is telling that when we think evil, we have to think mass murder, genocide, and whatever horror lies outside the bounds of what we think is normal. In our willingness to spend enormous amounts of time reminding our selves of the small goods in life, do we miss the fact that each small “bad” is a marker as well? Perhaps in thought-life, we don’t want to dwell on the negative…fair enough. But if we dismiss the notion of evil in the human heart, aren’t we cutting off the full nature of God’s world in half?

So, let me rephrase my question for my friends…what I need is a movie moment in which innocence is lost as a result of a willful choice that one did not intend to be evil, but one in which they were cognizant they were moving against the benevolent authority figure (is that an oxymoron?) in their life.

Have you got one? If you do, let me know…

Vows of Stability II

The call to stability contests the primal impulse often induced by the long, deep middle of a piece of work; the impulse to cut and run. Just now I am immersed in four long, deep middles, and the urge to cut and run is a river out of its banks.

SIDE NOTE: One of the more interesting tensions between the creative life and spiritual formation is the notion of “impulse control.” Artists nurture, encourage, and protect their ability to respond to impulse in the heat of the creative moment, especially in the moment-to-moment creation of performance – actors, musicians, dancers, etc. To stay alive to the moment, after weeks of careful preparation, is paramount in getting to the riches of spirit artists long for. But the one of the chief notions of character development (read spiritual formation) in the human – wisdom literature from everywhere talks about this – is the notion of impulse control. I haven’t seen much writing about this tension, except in the notion of the interplay between the creative and editing functions of the mind in the actual making of art. If someone knows of a writer who deals with this specifically, I’d love to see it.

There’s nothing new about this, nothing that is particularly special about this impulse in regard to art. “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” so they say. But I wonder if our current preoccupation with, and passion for, intensity of experience somehow feeds this impulse to give things up when they’re just not working. Images of failure creep up with regularity when you’re slogging it out on the page: poor reviews, that weird look on the faces of friends when they can’t tell you what they really thought, jokes delivered to silence. In short, images that feel lousy, something far from the peaceful presence of God true spirituality is said to invoke, and certainly not “organic.” The organic feelings of confusion, anger, frustration…these are not terribly helpful in pushing a story forward. It’s an interesting dance.

So the resolve to continue on a particular project to its end is imperative, difficult, and ultimately, an act of faith. With clear knowledge of how much I’ve not heeded this wisdom, I post this just to remind us.

§

The second: I vow to cultivate stability. Today, I will remain where I am, looking for the work in this spot. Though I may travel long distances through space, in my heart I will sit quietly, working, waiting. I will work on this project: this one alone.

Could temptation be any more familiar?

Today, new ideas will lure me. Thoughts of brilliance, success, and financial gain will gather around me, dropping new ideas into my awareness with the regularity and refreshment of rain. I will make note of them as I can, hold them for another day, seeing them for what they are: mistresses flashing false promises, thinking a bit of skin will turn my eye from the one to whom I’ve sworn faithfulness.

Yes – I have stumbled here. Knowing this fault in me, today I renew my resolve to remain firm, with the Lord’s help, firm in my work on the work at hand. I will stay with today’s work as God gives me strength. And let today’s work begin with what was done yesterday, and let it point toward what will be tomorrow. Let me walk away from a project only when it is finished with me, or I with it, recognizing that times will come when a work, flawed and broken and beyond repair, will have to be laid to rest without completion.

Let incompletion be rare.

When incompletion comes, I will approach the laying down of a work with prayer, sadness, and resolution. I will swiftly move on, completely, until such time in a far future when suddenly the solution to the problem that killed the project appears to me. And on the solution’s appearing, I will not then abandon the current work, but wait until the current work is finished before turning my eye again to that piece asking to be reconsidered.

I will work on the work for today…today…

Vow of Stability

From December 2004 

Some time ago, when I was in a particularly deep hole, needing to hold my life and work together, I began to do some reading in Benedictine Spirtuality, and the whole notion of “stability” struck me. To somehow see that God is present in all the places of our lives, and that to simply get up and move when things get disastrous is to yield to the illusion that God is “over there” somewhere, and not here. Not now. Not in this place.

So I wrote a few things, wondering what it might be like for a reluctant writer, having wandered through various other disciplines looking for God only knows what, to sit down and write a few words that would help him stay the course, simply not quit. I came across the results in my files this morning, and thankfully, in another period of panic inducing entropy, they were helpful.

Maybe they will be for you. Substitute whatever you do for “write” and speak as needed.

The first: I vow to attend.

Attend: to be present, to take care of, to watch over, and in an archaic listing, to wait for, or expect.

I vow to come to the work, to show up, to attend my appointments. The work is my charge, my call, my talent given by the Master, and I will attend to it. This morning, this very morning, I will take up that charge and nurture it, cultivate it, send it into the world with care. I will recognize its nature, its unhurried pace of arrival, and I will wait quietly, diligently, persistently. Whether the work knocks on my door, or I knock at its door, I will hover near a door that opens both ways, and wait.

In waiting, I will apply muscular force. I will put one word, then another, pushing one sentence forward, then another. Unafraid of the inevitable end of writing, cessation, I will press on, emptying my reservoir of words. I will daily drain the well, begging God to fill it again tomorrow. It is on his watch I write, on his nickel, his talent.

If he does not fill me here, I will be empty.

But then, I will attend the emptiness,

…and write one more word.

The Twelve Artists

From November 2004

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The title from this post comes from a simple hypothetical: if Jesus sat down in a room of twelve artists, all of them gathered for the express purpose of hearing what he might tell them about life, truth, beauty, and the things that concerned them, what would he say, and would it be any different than what he might tell anyone else?

If we say no, that he would tell artists the same thing he would tell anyone, then I wonder if we really believe God cares about the details of our lives, the fully human details of what it means to be alive in the world, working in the particular bone and muscle situations we find ourselves in. Surely we pray to God about the concerns we have on this day, this moment, this project, this physical malady, and this particular spiritual problem. (That is, of course, if you believe in prayer, which is a different conversation, to some degree.)

Would Jesus be willing to answer their questions about beauty, which would probably be one of their primary concerns? What about the nature of integrity in artistic work, and the balance of commercial demands against family needs? What about the difficulty of choosing one particular idea over another when multiple paths are suggesting themselves? What about what subject matter is off limits, or are there any? What about the ongoing battle between idealism and realism, whether art is to have a pastoral or prophetic voice, and how to discern the Holy Spirit’s leading in one of those two directions?

Would Jesus be willing to speak to the particulars of these questions, or would he just set them aside to address what we consider “spiritual” questions?

§

My post a couple of days ago suggesting there may be a need for a support ministry for artists other than what is the norm at evangelical churches – most often ministries that ask the arts to freely give their gifts for the work of the church – caused at least a bit of conversation among friends. Largely there has been an affirmation of the idea, but at least for a couple of people, there is the question of whether or not an artist’s spiritual needs are any different than anyone else’s. Why shouldn’t there be support ministries to work with surgeons, plumbers, bankers, or any other particular vocation? Why pay special attention to painters, musicians, or actors? Isn’t that an elitist notion, one of the primary attitudes Christians working in the arts should be fighting against?

I’m not suggesting that artists are special people, at least not in a fashion that puts them in an elitist class, elevating them above those good surgeons, plumbers and bankers. Actually, I think ministries targeting the particular professional demands of various fields might not be a bad idea. Each domain of human activity has spiritual aspects it shares with all human activity, but each domain also births spiritual challenges that are particular to that field. In much the same way that recovery groups gather to address the particular spiritual battles involved with overcoming addiction, or men and women gather to address the spiritual shape of the particularities of gender, there may well be value in getting all the carpenters together, or the doctors, or the artists.

Given that none of us are more special than the others (in fact, we are to count others as better than ourselves, right?), my thinking about artists simply seeks to address some shared aspects of creative life most churches never address.

Artists are “different,” which, can be a good or bad thing depending on your experiences with such people. They seem to have a certain sensitivity to sensory material (sounds, colors, textures, other aesthetic properties) that excites them, makes them want to enter into the creation of things in an impulse connected over a thousand generations (or more, who’s counting) all the way back to the initial impulse of God to say, “Let there be light.” It’s a genetic something, an infusion of intangible personal energy, a series of urges to make seemingly useless things for “beauty and glory” only.

In terms of artist’s being “different” we could go on and on.

All I’m suggesting is that churches begin to pay attention to this particular part of the body, because right now, this particular part of the body goes elsewhere for its spiritual leading and support: writer’s groups, artist’s groups, national and regional para-church organizations (CITA, CIVA, and many others), even non-Christian writers and programs that seem to deal more honestly and helpfully with the particular shape of the artistic life.

I used to grumble about this sort of thing…a lot. I hope that’s not what you hear me doing. I do think this is a blind spot for most churches, but I’m not so much complaining as thinking…

wouldn’t it be cool if…

Minister to the artist…

From November 2004

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Here’s what I’m thinking. I’ve been to many churches, and seen ministries for artists to participate in, to contribute to, ministries wherein, it is said, they can “use their gifts.” But most of these ministries, strictly speaking, are utilitarian ministries built to serve the larger goals of the church, whether those goals be evangelism, edification, instruction, or others. Most of the ministries have little, if anything, to do with the true nature of art making.

What I’ve never seen is a ministry that simply offers a hand to those people trying to write, sing, act, dance, or make films, not asking them to do gives their gifts to the ministry of the church, but simply providing a very specific set of resources designed to comfort, empower, and encourage their spiritual journey. To walk next to them as Jesus might, offering his insight, power, and assurance that he is interested in the work of their hands and hearts.

I’m thinking of the work of various 12-step ministries, all targeting a particular spiritual difficulty, and the fact that when people struggling with those issues need help, they know where to go to get it.

When the spiritual forces set up shop in the studios of painters, musicians, or theatre compaies, hammering them with doubt, discouragement, distraction, or even a critic’s damning reviews, where do these people go for help?

Where do artists go when they become convinced the work they do is no good, and nobody cares anyway, including God? Is there any ongoing conversation where they might drop in and listen to people engaging in relevant conversation about the spiritual nature of art-making?

I know lots of people talk about this–nothing new here–but I’ve never seen a church just pray and minister to people like this. No agenda, not trying to maneuver them into coming to church, but instead simply offering the hand of Christ, knowing that the spiritual battles artists go through to get to the work that is in them (through the gifting of God, by the way) are real, of a particular nature, and often ignored.

Not a ministry of the church for the artists to serve the church–there’s lots of those. But a ministry of the church to the artists, the church serving them.

Is there a need for this?

Just thinking…

Tell it slant…

From November 2004

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• Emily Dickinson

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant–
Success in Cirrcuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

Another time, I’ll blog about the Milton Center Writer’s Group that I’m taking part in, meeting on Friday afternoons at Seattle Pacific University, which is where I heard this little phrase, Tell it slant.

Some describe life as a process of remembering what you didn’t know you forgot, and when I heard tell it slant, it was as if a bell rang in my head, alerting me once again to the power of metaphor and storytelling. We were discussing a writer’s first chapter of a new novel, wondering if her subject matter might be better served with an indirect approach. And that’s when Greg Wolfe mentioned the Dickinson phrase that I’ve been ruminating on ever since.

Tell it slant.

I also like the Truth must dazzle gradually. Reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ phrase the weight of glory.

At Act One: Writing for Hollywood, we were constantly reminded that writing is about telling the truth. Sportswriter Red Smith said “Writing is easy–all you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” Actors hear the same thing, and I wondered for years what that really meant. If art–writing, acting, singing–is not the equivalent of life, but a reordered something else, then it must by definition approach truth obliquely, circuitously, slant.

There is a key here to much Evangelical failure in the arts. We have no faith in the slant of metaphor, suspicious that slant means spin, watering down the gospel, being obtuse, or at worst, flat lying. But here Dickinson is talking about the brilliance of truth, pointing out what Jesus obviously demonstrated as he taught the people of Israel by parable. We are unable to accept glory all at once (Moses hid his face, everybody else just falls to the ground face first), but need to be brought round to it through a journey, a journey most often taken in art through metaphor and story.

Perhaps there is a key here to the postmodern mind and its lack of faith in linear thought: it’s not so much that truth can’t be known, but it’s knowing is best served by slant approaches.

So instead of “Get over yourself and stop sinning,” (sure, we need to do that, true enough), C.S. Lewis calls to us and says, “You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness.”

As we work, God help us do just that–weave the strongest spells of grace and faith, telling all the truth, but telling it slant…

—

One response: It seems to me that Jesus himself is a “slantwise” God. How are we to experience the ultimate, the eternal, the absolute? There’s only one way, through the flesh, through the bone, through the blood, through the sweat, through the laughter … of Jesus. He was God on the slant. Great post. Steve Menshenfriend

Thoughts on (the) Passion

From November 2004

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It’s a play on words, juxtaposing our current fixation with intense feeling and action on behalf of something we champion and the usage recently brought back to public consciousness by Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. I’ve been watching snatches of the film lately, trying to reflect on Jesus’ voluntary acceptance of the unjust suffering imposed on him by both his own people and the Romans. There is a moment during the flogging that moved me the first time I saw it, and it did again yesterday. When the soldiers have finished beating him to the ground with the rods, thinking they are done, Jesus gathers his strength and stands back up, apparently inviting more. Some have criticized this moment, calling it too “John Wayne,” too Clint Eastwood “make my day.” But it moves me not as a sort of macho rebuttal of the guards–or of Satan for that matter, though it could be that–but as a moment in which Jesus simply lets it be known that he takes on this brutal suffering willingly, without hate, without resentment. As the guards renew their vicious attacks, this time with barbed whips, his mother Mary walks away, wondering when and how Jesus will choose to lay this suffering down. Again, his choice, his willingness to become the lamb of God led to the slaughter.

I suppose I believe this compassion of Jesus for the ones to whom he brought the good news–the poor, the lame, the blind, the outcast–is a supernatural thing. A miraculous gift given by God. Truly, this compassion is holy, and driven by love.

There’s that love thing again, the one that never fails, that always hopes, always endures, always trusts. That, too…miraculous.

Confession time…in recent years, my passion has waned, driven underground by perhaps nothing more than an aversion to the other meaning of the word. Reading again in Merton’s Seeds of Contemplation is leading me again to think of the role willing suffering plays in the process of transformation. The mistake of the world is to think that the love of God would naturally lead to an erasure of suffering, and since suffering rages on unabated, there must be no God’s love, and therefore no God.

What we miss–what I miss–is that love and suffering are joined at the heart, that suffering is a primary means of transformation, especially when we take on the suffering of those unjustly wounded. Not to say God causes it, to change us, but no, he demonstrates his love by taking it on to himself, and we imitate him as we do the same.

Paul said, “I want to know Christ and the power of his rising, to share in his suffering…”

O Lord, make us willing to love as you do…

What does God want from the theatre?

From November 2004

Now there’s a question.

I met with the leadership of the local CITA (Christians in Theatre Arts) chapter last night. The major agenda item was to brainstorm various future events that might be attractive and helpful to Christians in the area who are working in various branches of theatre–professional and community theatres, academic settings, or in church drama. Planning events that can appeal to all the above can be a challenge given that many Christians working in professional theatre prefer to keep a healthy distance between themselves and anything that smacks of religious (or worse, church) drama, and academics, as teachers, researchers, and keepers of theory and crit, are sometimes an uneasy fit in the mix.

But the first major event, held (probably) in February or March 2005, is going to be centered around a pretty decent question, one that hits all us professionals, academics, and church drama folk square on our collective noses.

What does God want from the theatre?

It’s the kind of question that makes me tilt my head a little, the way dogs do, as if I’m not quite sure how to take the words in. Why would God want anything from the theatre? And what do you mean “the theatre?” Why refer to theatre as if were a living thing, capable of responding to what God might or might not want from it? It’s like anything else, isn’t it, not really capable of being Christian–only people can be Christian (strictly speaking).

What does God want from the theatre?

Any thoughts?

—

I got one reply, from a man named Keith Brenton:

Maybe God wants the same thing from theatre that he wants from us as performers on His daily stage: to reach out, touch minds and hearts with the most incredible drama ever acted out in the universe.

Imagine it: the Prince of Heaven wants to become a pauper on earth, not just to live and teach and die, but to live again by a secret plan (deus ex machination) so the rebellious, mortal subjects of the King can come and live in the palace in Heaven with Him … forever!

Will anyone believe it?

Maybe not … but what a great story!

And everybody has a role.

—-

I concur.

Deep Hunger

From October 2004

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Just so you get the quote again…

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC

C.S. Lewis was criticized for writing The Screwtape Letters during WWII, his critics hollering that he ought to be writing more serious fare during such dangerous times. These days, seems that most bloggers are going on about political fireworks, and I sit here pondering (some might say navel-gazing) over some vague sense of the world’s deep hunger, whatever that might be.

What is that deep hunger?

I love complexity, but today, it seems more simple. I want to say we’re all lonely, we’re all looking, we’re all on the hunt for something intangible, and we’re fairly convinced we’re not going to find it in the material world. Postmodernism questions the whole notion of civilization, wondering whether the riches of first world living is really any “better” than third world poverty. Sure, more comfortable, more peaceful, more sated, but in the end, does that material affluence bring us any closer to fulfilling whatever it is we humans are hungry for?

We hunger for connection, for shared experience, for that sensation that says we are not alone. I’m convinced we all share the knowledge that something is wrong with things. (Otherwise why the shouting?) We Christians call it sin, and it devastates us, breaks our backs, and once we’re lying there, though we tell ourselves otherwise, it is truly impossible to get back up without help. We’re hungry for relief, for a touch of comfort, for a literal and figurative piece of bread.

I’m going to follow Dallas Willard here: the ills of the world, both global and personal, begin with wrecked inner lives, the action choices we make. And by wrecked I mean damaged, broken incrementally over time, or perhaps all at once in a desperate assault. Some brokenness is easy to spot, some more difficult, but it is a condition we all share. We hide it, true enough, flash our best smiles at each other, and yet, at some point along the way, we face the mirror, see the years etching themseves onto our wrinkling skin, spirits haunted by intimations of what’s possible, what we might have been or might still be.

In this condition, who will love us? That is, I think, the deep hunger, the question that Buechner is calling us to respond to. Can’t anyone love? Can’t love be given whatever the deep gladness of your heart is? Whether you sit in a writer’s group, or in a creative meeting with clients, or in a sports bar, can’t you love?

Ahhhh…not that easy.

With each passing day, love becomes–in my mind–more miraculous. “The miracle of Love.” (Now there’s a tired phrase if ever there was one.) But the miraculous is truly that, the breaking in of some force into the world bringing a change, a transformation that is just not possible without it’s impetus, it’s wild energy.

Yep, that’s it. Dull, boring, mundane though it may be. What we’re hungry for is the love of God, and the touch of some human being through which it flows.

Buechner wants us to be that one…

…hungry for the bread of life…

Let There Be Light

From October 2004

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It begins in the beginning, the basic orientation toward creating, making things. Somebody (Abner Doubleday, Alexander Cartwright) made the rules of a game Red Sox Nation celebrates this morning, the light of day finally shining on a championship in Boston. Somebody took the steps I’ve been reading about in Mitchell Stephen’s The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word: the early cave paintings, the making of paper in China, the block type letters of the printing press. Even today, millions will live out what Nicolas Berdyaev (early 20th C. Russian philosopher) simply calls the creative act, taking what he calls “a way out, an exodus” into sacrificial living that is, at heart, “liberation and conquest,” an experience of power moving away from pride, selfishness, and depression.

Indeed, God saw the light, and called it good.

Did you see the Red Sox celebrating?

I guess I’m still thinking about the why of writing. Isn’t it close to the why of anything? Why make rules about balls and bats and outs? Why spend the money to ogle over Titan? Why make a film, or a law, or a decision? (or a blog…) What are we but “making” creatures? Yes, folks, it’s that time of year for me, when I begin to prepare for teaching my class in Faith and Art at Abilene Christian University, and I start ruminating on creativity. For me, it is at the heart of what it means to be human, connecting us deeply–in the realm of character–to the Maker who made us makers.

But truth is, God’s progeny or not, there are days when energy drains out of us, and we can barely make toast, much less art, or relationships, or love. On those days, it’s back to the deep, formless and void, the Spirit brooding there, waiting for the word to come to pour out the light again.

And God speaks it again, over and over. But we’ve evolved, haven’t we, since the original void first welcomed the light. Can you imagine the void speaking back, saying, “No, thanks…I like the darkness just fine?”

Yet that’s what we do…that’s what we do…

Let all creation praise him…