jeffberryman.com

the mission…

“To cultivate and nurture the presence of God and His beauty in the world, through family, service and art.”

That’s the mission.

From my earliest days, there has been an sense of presence in my life that I have always identified clearly as God. I have always been moved by His presense and love in the world, and remain astonished that life as we know it exists. The wonder of being a free standing, free creative agent is both miraculous and normal, an overwhelming reality that must be ascribed to something, whether it be a notion of time plus chance plus nothing, or the notion of a personal God who is there and who is not silent. (To use the words of Francis Schaeffer.)

Beauty is a chief means by which God enters the world, and by beauty I mean a vast assortment of things. I am not a careful philosopher, though I’d like to be, and most readings in philosophical aesthetics leave me grasping for the edges of meaning, and when I’m done, I’m not sure I know more than I did when I started. But beauty is to be found throughout life, throughout the full experience of the birth to death journey, in all parts of the world, in all cultures, all relationships. I continue to believe that there is spiritual beauty and physical beauty, each pointing toward the other, in a kind of metaphoric symbiosis, each real in it’s own right, each embodying the truth about the other.

So beauty can be cultivated and nurtured in many ways, always with a hands-in-the-dirt approach, both in art and in relationships. As a follower of Jesus, and as an artist, this is what I am trying to learn to do, albeit in my broken and limping fashion.

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August 2009.   The words above are still true, though written years ago.  I am currently serving as the Interim Preaching Minister for the Northwest Church in Shoreline, Washington, though my stint as a preacher comes to an end at the end of this month.   Two years of standing in a pulpit has taught me a lot of things, much fodder for blog posts, no doubt.  But the call on my life remains the same: to cultivate and nurture the presence of God and His beauty in the world.  Acting work is ramping back up, what I need to be writing is clarifying itself, and after turning 50, my sense of time is different than it used to be.   Got a note this morning from an old friend who I haven’t seen in over 30 years.  She said that she was “still attacking life with gusto and committed to leaving this earth with no regrets – nothing left unlived and nothing left unsaid to those I love!” This kind of living makes more sense to me every day, and frankly, I hear her joy as a kind of word from God.   Commit, and go.   Live the “With-God Life” with passion, hope, and love.

Here is a recent bio:

Jeff Berryman, a writer/actor from Seattle, Washington, has been touring his solo performance of Leaving Ruin for nearly a decade, performing throughout the United States, as well as in Canada and Germany. The play is based on Jeff’s published novel of the same name, and he hopes to finish rewrites on a second novel–Hunting Grace–soon. As a playwright, he continues work his Arthur cycle: Arthur: The Begetting, and Arthur: The Hunt, the first two plays in the projected seven-play project, have both been professionally produced in Seattle, and in 2005, Arthur: The Begetting was featured as part of the Jean Cocteau Theatre’s New Classics Series in New York. His other plays include The Catacombs of Texas, The Carrolls of Queen Anne, The Crèche Collector, The Question of Bethlehem, When Comes the Way, Postmodern Art, and The Little Guy. Favorite acting roles include C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands, Robert Falcon Scott in Terra Nova, and Jerry Mears in God’s Man in Texas. He is an associate member of the Dramatist’s Guild, a visiting professor at Abilene Christian University, and received his MFA in directing from the University of Texas at Austin.