It’s 7:45 a.m. and I’m waiting for the first student to walk into my annual class. The Arts and Culture: A Christian Aesthetic begins today for the 10th year. And as it starts, I still struggle over how to go about teaching this thing I have in my heart.
Over the past ten years, I’ve written and thought and prayed and wept and exulted and despaired and felt much of what can be felt in the human experience, and I find I am still as open-mouthed dumb about it as I always was. Eloquence won’t save you in the moment of spiritual pressure when the world is begging you to attend to it, and all you can think about is the past and how this and that didn’t work out and what in the world have you got to offer the day? But then, a thought from God works its way down into your mind, like a worm burrowing into the deep rich soil, and finally something jostles free, and you can see again.
So finally, people trickle in, and its time to start. We start with context and glory and the heart and what it means to be spiritually formed. If you have a prayer, feel free to send it up. God is here already though.
Something always happens…
Beauty calls…then of course, there’s that abyss….
JEFF BERRYMAN 