Monthly Archives: March 2008

I am Peter.  Mixed Media on Canvas (2008)

Crosses to Bear.  Mixed Media on Canvas (2008) 

Stations of the Cross demanded I do something I haven’t done much of in the past. Creating visual art that is not a bridge into a theatre production was a new world for me. It’s quiet work, work that is by nature reflective, but the process of thinking about it is far different than reflecting on an idea.

Last year, Lent and Easter were all about photography. I spent hours looking at flowers, cities, shrubs, birds, cars–anything that would take me out of the reflective process, at least in terms of thinking about rational ideas. The effect was profound, and life hasn’t been the same since. This year, working on the visual art pieces for our Stations exhibit, I found much the same thing happening: a suspension of linear thinking, and a soft-focus intuitive openness to what was “suggesting” itself through the work. It was draining and exciting at the same time. I spent hours piddling around with this color or that, this structure or that, playing with this found object, then throwing it away. Having no idea what I was doing, I was just responding to the moment, in much the same way an actor does.

What did I come up with? A couple of pieces that I enjoyed, though I would hardly call them art, especially by my definition. “The skilled creation of form with metaphoric meaning.” Skilled creation? Nah…but what fun it is to try.

Go make something…

Good Friday.   What a beginning to a day.   At 7:00 a.m. this morning, I was at the church, opening the sanctuary for our annual Stations of the Cross experience.   This year, it’s pretty amazing.

The artists of the Northwest Church decided to create pieces for each of the stations, and I am both thrilled and humbled by the work they have created.   From sculpture to paintings to collage to pen and ink to to quilting…the result is an experience that is profound on many levels.  My fear was that the work would become about the artists themselves, rather than the Christ, but as it turns out, that’s not it at all.  The varying perspectives on Jesus’ journey of that day each help the viewer enter into that journey differently, and while the art does not “disappear”, it clearly points to the reality behind it.

I’m not sure we did as good a job as we could have done getting the word out, because now it strikes me a gift that people should experience.  If you have a chance, come by today, and take a slow walk into the holy.

At 7:00 p.m., there will be an hour-long Taize service of prayer–sung, spoken, and silent.   And after that, the building will be open until 10:00.

Jesus died on this day…

My life has been rearranged significantly since taking on the role of Interim Preaching Minister at the Northwest Church, and there are definitely things I miss about my former life. Don’t feel too sorry for me–Anjie thinks I’m happier than I’ve been for a long time. There is a focus to my days now, a focus that feels more direct than what was there before. Now I head to work to prep sermons, work on strategic plans, plan worship times, encourage leaders, and pray, among other things. In recent years, focus has sharpened in writing Hunting Grace (the follow-up to Leaving Ruin), and other plays, both long and short, but without doubt, the focus of rising each day and attacking the work was softer before.

What I miss most are some friends that I just haven’t had time to connect with. It’s funny–in my heart I’m still connected to them, but in one conversation the other day, I encouraged of these special people not to move away, and she laughed and said something like, “Why, we only see each other every four months.” I laughed, too, but it pained me to think I see these special friends of mine far less than I did.

And the work of writing, musing, engaging in long conversations concerning culture and art…this has changed as well. I’m not sure what the engagement with culture means as a professional minister, simply because the people I interact every day are not fictional or media constructs. Their lives demand attention, creativity, sacrifice, love, practical energy of the muscular kind. Art and film image the world for us, and that demands attention too, especially if we are to understand the unique nature of the people we seek to serve in our culture. But I’ve never been so clear about the simple idea that art is about life and not the other way around.

Still, I miss lingering and brooding. Like I said, don’t feel too badly for me…it’s not like I don’t linger or brood anymore at all. But it’s different now. Better, I think–more of my gifts are in play, and I have a distinct sense that I’m in the center of what I need to be doing just now. So, that’s good.

But if you’re one of those special friends I’m referring to (and most of you know who you are), forgive me for not hanging out as much. Know that I miss you, and I look forward to coffee again soon.

Facebook just doesn’t do it…

As I lingered over Isaiah this morning, thinking about the emergent and missional conversation going on among Christian churches, I drifted back and forth between the simplicity of life with God, and the complexity of what it means to be human in a life as rich and varied as centuries and continents allow.  The postmodern construct has us all stuck behind our eyes, experience ever-filtered through dense layers of ourselves, our upbringings, our culture, our inherited points-of-view.  We can never escape the frame, they say, so all our knowing is suspect, polluted, and perchance, wrong.  Yet, Jesus spoke, and his followers sought to capture his words, and so they wrote, recorded, shaped, and delivered gospels and letters–even a revelation.   Scripture says Jesus spoke in parables–in fact, he hardly taught except through parables.  We like to laud the power of story, so we love the parables, but Jesus told his disciples at least once that he told parables not because he was trying to make things clearer, but because he knew it would keep some from hearing, some from understanding.   Jesus was no salesman, but he spoke and lived God into the world with wit, brilliance, and crystalline simplicity.

Simplicity.  It is simple, I thought.  My spirit communing with God’s Spirit on a Tuesday morning.  A thought drops in that it really is simple.  What is complex about sitting with a man who has AIDS, talking to him, laughing with him, praying over him, listening to him as dementia clouds his thoughts?  What is complex about thinking others are better than you?  What’s so complex about compassion?   What is complex about trading hours of selfish pleasure for hours of redemptive service, taking time to notice the lives around us?  What is complex about being intentional about deep listening, or writing a check of benevolent support when there isn’t really enough to do it?  What is complex about saying to the world you walk in, “I am a disciple of Jesus?”

As I hear leaders often say, it’s not so complex–oh, there are ridiculously complex issues as we put social systems in place–but at the level of the human heart, it’s pretty straight-forward.   Love God, love neighbor, and use the whole of our being to do it.  Not complex–but hard.  The human heart is a maelstrom of thought, dreams, images, wants, emotions, hungers, rages, and lusts.  But what possibility lies in the heart that one day opens to the Spirit of God.  Eyes can change, muscular action can shift, money can flow in new directions, and suffering can ease.  Evil can be driven back–even the smallest increment is a win–and shame can fade and vanish.

Maybe I’m locked in my postmodern, cultural view, but I need not take myself as primary subject.

Looking out on the year of the Lord’s favor…