A Trip to NYC

Last week I got to go to New York with a friend. We went for the express purpose of seeing the Kandinsky retrospective at the Guggenheim and the O’Keeffe abstracts at the Whitney. We also visited the Museum of Biblical Arts (MOBIA) without knowing what might be there. What a great confluence of paintings!

Wassily Kandinsky, Accompanied Contrast

Like most people, I suppose, I have had to work at understanding non-objective art – art with no immediate reference to natural objects – because it seemed to be without content, without a story to tell. Abstract art – the altering of recognizable images – is easier. But when I first saw reproductions of Kandinsky’s paintings, I just smiled. They made me happy. He pulled me in. So it was at the Guggenheim. I smiled all the way up the long spiral ramp as Kandinsky moved from abstraction to non-objectivism and developed his skill in making art that reflected his emotions and spirituality. Kandinsky made religious art. And being surrounded by nearly 100 of his paintings powerfully communicated to me both his spirit and His Spirit to mine.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Grey Blue and Black, Pink Circle

On to O’Keeffe. She was playing around with similar ideas in her art as Kandinsky, at about the same time. Her abstract and non-objective work uses curves and has a sensuous, soft, integrated look, whereas his are full of triangles and brightly colored blotches that seem almost antagonistic to each other. But they both were playing with color and form as expressions of their inner lives.

Tobi Kahn, Svirh

The work of Tobi Kahn was on exhibit at MOBIA. While not (yet) in the league of Kandinsky and O’Keeffe as a painter, still I saw more of the same – an exploration of the spiritual hidden in the material. MOBIA was a friendlier environment – no crowds to peer around, a smaller room, a place to sit and gaze. There I could imagine Kahn’s work surrounding me in a church (it was actually made for a synagogue) and living with it week in, week out, like those stained glass windows from my childhood.

These exhibits were all, to me, an “aroma of Christ,” even a feast. The art and its artful placement created holy places, sanctuaries from the American "real world" that no place represents better than New York.

That's why I care so much about bringing the visual arts into the church.

A Failed Collaboration

HopeArts has been marked by exhibits where visual artists were asked to collaborate with artists working in different disciplines, with nonartists, or with a text. One of the least successful collaborative exhibits was one where we asked artists to create a piece for a hurting person, family, or institution that served people. The idea was to encourage the receiver through a piece of visual art. We asked through our email list for suggested places that would appreciate donated art, and then provided artists with a list of those and other possibilities -- the battered women’s center, the state hospital for the indigent mentally ill, a veteran’s center, nursing homes. The artist was to exhibit the piece during Lent and give it away for Easter.

We received very few works for this exhibit, and none for any institution, except the artist who cleared out his studio to give an unsold work to “whoever we thought would like it.” What went wrong? Did the artists think it was a gloomy idea to make work for a sad place or person? Did they have no relationship to such a place or person, and therefore no personal incentive? Were they embarrassed to offer work because it wasn’t skilled enough or because it was unsolicited? My best art always has always been art I made for a particular person that I loved or on a subject that I cared deeply about. Am I different from most artists or was the idea not communicated well?

Does anyone out there have an insight?

Laity Lodge

Last weekend I attended a very special retreat at Laity Lodge for the third year. Stephen Purcell, formerly of a retreat center in Austria called Schloss Mittersill, is now the director. Each year he has brought together Christian artists from around the world for four days of discussion and artistry in the most hospitable setting I know. This year singer-songwriter David Wilcox and cellist Jozef Luptak were guest musicians, David Dark the speaker, and Melissa Hawkins performed a one-person play. And that was just the beginnning. Many attendees read, sang, and contributed to the impromptu art exhibit.

As entertaining and thought-provoking as all this is, it is only a backdrop for the community that springs up, two or three people at a time.

The first person I met there was Doug -- he sat next to me at dinner the first evening. Doug had lovely long silver hair, and asked me almost immediately, "What's the best thing your church ever did for artists?" He was very intent, and I desperately wanted to say the right thing. "Hiring David Taylor" was all I could think of. Not the answer he was looking for, I'm sure. Over the course of the retreat, I kept thinking about his question and sitting next to him now and then, to see if we could talk more. He was pretty quiet.

One afternoon I wandered into the main lodge and happened upon a group of 5 or 6 guys passing around a guitar, taking turns playing their own songs. The retreat’s guest musician David Wilcox was among them. In fact, I recognized most of them as professional musicians. And there sat Doug. I hung around for bit watching this spontaneous community of artists enjoying each other. When the guitar came to Doug, he took it, and we all cracked up at his great little ditty about sighting Elvis.

On the last day of the retreat, at a time set aside for sharing, this quiet, humble guy choked up while telling us how healing these few days had been. He revealed that although he was an integral part of his church's worship and taught in a church-sponsored performing arts center, no fellow Christian had ever invited him to play a single song of his own. He vowed to move his guitar from the closet to a stand in the living room and start playing, not just working, again.

I remembered that the best thing our church did for artists was to invite us to play our own songs.

Why art in church?

I was recently asked why I care so much about bringing arts into the church. The question took me by surprise.

Raised an Episcopalian, as a child I attended a beautiful tall stone church set in a plain of one-story brick and cinder-block buildings. I was entranced by the brilliant reds and blues of the stained glass windows. I walked and knelt on a plush red carpet to take communion out of a polished silver plate and gold-lined chalice. I learned to read music from my own white leather-bound hymnbook, and reveled in the huge sound of the pipe organ that could vibrate my very bones with a joyful noise. I knew by heart the Shakespearean language of God! How on earth could anyone not care about bringing arts into the earnest asceticism of the Bible church where I found myself as a newly reborn adult believer?

One of the first things I did when I decided to follow Christ was to take a Bible study class. The intense young pastor of my small congregation of former hippies taught us well, and the final assignment was to write a paper. I dove in, wrote passionately, and then did something that to me seemed so right – I drew a picture for the cover of my paper. It was not a terribly skillful or original drawing, but also not at all morally challenging. During the last lesson everyone read their papers. My drawing garnered puzzlement from my pastor. He obviously did not understand why I would do such a thing and also seemed to be trying to figure out if he needed to admonish me. I don’t remember him saying anything negative, but was he worrying for my soul over a drawing?

As a new believer, I also looked for books about contemporary Christians and art. Back in 1979, there weren’t many. The only ones I found were Franky Shaeffer’s Addiction to Mediocrity, which was pretty discouraging, and a little gem by Elizabeth O’Connor, Eighth Day of Creation. O’Connor’s book is more about creativity in the context of community than about art or artists, but it kept a hope alive in me that the stained glass and hymns of my childhood had birthed.

I understand the historical forces in Luther’s and Calvin’s time that rejected a beauty corrupted. I too rejected the beautiful church that did not help my family grieve a divorce and later our mother’s death. I too found God again only through a stripped-bare gospel. But I was never meant to remain naked. God takes away so as to restore.

So I believe it is time for the Church to put on the garments of praise in a new way. No doubt whatever we do will get corrupted again, historically speaking. But now is a time for creativity and imagination and beauty to be restored.

Practices for the Christian Writer

On the question of being a Christian writer, Jane talked about ways of thinking. I want to talk about ways of doing.

(The usual qualifications apply to these ways of doing. They are suggestions, not rules. There are no doubt other ways. But these are ways I have found enjoyable and fruitful.)

Jane talked about the compartmentalizing of our lives. We all do it. Jane talked about putting God in a box, but we also separate parts of ourselves from each other. We wall off our inner and outer selves from each other. This kind of compartmentalizing inhibits truthfulness, with ourselves and with others and in our art.

I wish to suggest three ways I have found, as a writer, to bring my inner life and my outer life together; hence increase my honesty. These ways are journaling, lectio divina, and community.

Journaling

“If you want to work on your art, work on your life.”
Anton Chekhov, physician & writer

Some people assume that all writers keep a personal journal, and probably most do, at least sometimes. Why is it important? Journals are unplanned, disorganized, of the moment. They can record all aspects of the inner life – moods, prayers, ideas, states of relationships, passions, and above all, secrets. A journal is the one place you need not wear any mask and you can hurt no one’s feelings. Here you can and must write your truth, however temporary and subjective, however hurtful, however heretical. A private journal can keep you honest.

Journaling is also valuable because it reveals your patterns. One of the best discoveries I made from writing the “morning pages” recommended in The Artist’s Way was the pattern of my whining. When I realized I was complaining about the same things over and over, I knew how to pray. A private journal can keep you humble.

Lectio Divina

“Lectio divina is a pilgrimage of words towards the Mystery of the Word.”
Bernardo Olivera, Trappist abbot

Lectio divina is an ancient technique for reading scripture. Its structure consists of four steps: reading and rereading a short scripture, meditating or chewing on it, praying about what the meditation brings up, and contemplating or resting in God’s presence without words. Once you try lectio divina, you will realize that it is not a linear, step-by-step process but a weaving together of all four steps.

Writers create and discover meaning by writing, so writing through these steps rather than merely thinking them (as is the usual method) can be very much more satisfying. Like journaling, lectio divina is a private pursuit.

Here are a few ways to write within this practice. You will no doubt come up with others.

· Rewrite the scripture in your own words.

· Write the story from the point of view of one of the characters in it.

· Rewrite it as a poem or a satire or a children’s story or a mystery, and so on.

· Imagine and write a conversation or an interview with one of the characters.

Scriptures to start with: Mark 10:46-52 or any story of Jesus interacting with people; Psalm 23 or any psalm you love; any scripture you are drawn to understand better.

Community

“Listening is an ethical task.”
Daniel Taylor, professor & writer

It’s easy enough to say that we need community; it is harder to find and create a community that both challenges and nurtures. This kind of community offers blessings we can’t find in solitude: A place to tell our stories and listen to those of others. A place to work out those insights God gives through journaling, lectio divina, and other writing we do. A place to practice merging the inner and outer lives.

Writers are natural community-formers, even if they are introverts. How is that? Writers love words and stories. Words and stories are powerful to heal (or destroy), but they have no power outside of a speaker and a listener. So even the most reclusive writer is drawn to find someone to share her stories with or there is no use telling them. In fact, the give and take of sharing true stories has a power to bind that is the essence of community.

Communities can form around common interests, so writers join or create book discussion groups, critique groups, and Bible study groups; however, a group is not inevitably a community. Only when the structure of the meetings allows time for telling and listening to personal stories, as well as the group’s stated purpose, will community arise.

Journaling and lectio divina are especially rewarding ways for us as writers to discover our own stories and God’s stories. These practices then lay the groundwork for participating in communities where we listen to and speak ancient and new stories that bind and heal. Healing of a cut or a broken bone involves the closing up of two separate parts into one whole seamless piece. Healing of the soul works the same way. We clean out the wounds as we practice becoming truthful, humble, and compassionate, and God mends them.

Teaching Writing, part 2

One thing teachers know is to plan more than you can actually accomplish for a class, just in case the first activities flop. I knew we might not get to my plan to print out and bind a book, and we didn't. But for such great reasons. On day one, Jane's 15-minute presentation about thinking like a Christian writer turned into a 45-minute discussion that we finally just stopped so we could get back to writing. On day two, the group critiques paid off with great encouragement to the writers and each finished a story. They then got to read them aloud at lunch to the larger group of students in all three Creativity Circus workshops.

Another bit that fell away was my presentation on the second day. So I wrote it up to send to the students and will post it here as well.

Teaching Writing

I was asked to team-teach a writing class for Hope Chapel's Creativity Circus this summer. The idea is to stimulate, in two short sessions, lots of ideas for beginners who have stories to tell but no fomal training. It's interesting planning for it, as I have more teaching experience (in visual art) and the other person has more creative writing experience. We are starting with a series of prompts, which seem a lot like the studies I did in life drawing classes. We hope they will be good warm-ups and icebreakers before the students dig into stories of their own choosing.

I may be overreaching, but I want people to take home something concrete, since writing is so cerebral. I am trying to organize a way to print out their final stories and help them make a simple stapled book with a decorative cover. That involves creating a template and bringing a printer or finding a way to use one in one of the offices. It will only work for students who bring a laptop to the workshop. Stay tuned to find out the end of this story!