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Faith Life

Art As A Work Of Life

A l’oevre on reconnâit l’artisan. You can tell an artist by his handiwork. ~French proverb

“You can make art or make a product. The two are very different.”

Edouard Vuillard, The Artist's Paint Box and Moss Roses, French, 1868 - 1940, 1898, oil on cardboard, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection
Edouard Vuillard, The Artist’s Paint Box and Moss Roses, French, 1868 – 1940, 1898, oil on cardboard, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection

My art teacher, Randy Blasquez, shared the quote on her blog. The context was art and love. “Why doesn’t love come across when you look at a painting? Because it wasn’t put into the painting! The artist was pleasing the gallery or trying to sell.”

How much of your life is spent trying to please the gallery?

The books on writing, the books on art, the books on living life to the full, all agree: Skill matters, but love is essential in any work of art.

I think you would like my writer’s group. Around the word-slinging circle you’ll find a Whitman’s Sampler of styles. We take turns being the discouraged, remind me why I am doing this member, or, less often, the poster child for astounded success. I’ve learned by watching these women wrestle with their art. Things like,

  • A good writer is generous. They bleed their fears, doubts and delights all over the page, with nothing held back for later.
  • A good writer refreshes. They peer into the fog and refuse to blink until they notice a reason for hope.
  • A good writer lights the way. With words gripped by ink-stained fingers they draw us from the dark.

Bad writing may sell books, but readers are left in shadow. A bad life may look successful, but the world is left just as dim.

Art As A Work Of Life

For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Ephesians 2:10

Together, we are God’s handiwork. Does your story prove that it’s true? Generous, refreshing, bearer of light, are we changed by the reading of you?

Every day, we’re given a choice–to be just another product, shaped by the world, or let God shape his image in us.

Where have you noticed God’s artistry at work in your life?

 

 

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Faith Life

Looking For Value

Art is collaboration between God and the artist. ~Andre Gide

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In composing a picture, I’ve been told to “attribute a value” to each space. Light and shadow, highlight and color, your eye will be drawn to what the artist wants you to notice.

Five minutes into the art lesson, and I’m stuck on the question, how do we know what to value? Are we born with a bias toward treasure over trash?

There are some who would claim we learn by artistic interference: By art we are taught what to value, the artist teaches us to see.

Is it true? Do we love a sunflower more because Van Gogh captured its beauty? Would we be indifferent to bird-song if no poem or flute tried to capture its tone? Would a cup of hot tea with lemon seem pointless if British mysteries weren’t solved in its proper company?

Maybe not. But few would deny that scriptwriters and story tellers, pundits and pop-singers influence our values, and not always for good. Yet, yielded and humble, as tools in the hands of the Creator, the same artistry can open our sin-blinded eyes.

For how does God communicate truth to us, but by image, and story and song?

  • The Image of God? Every human being.
  • The Story of God? Redemption through his Son.
  • The Song of God? Joy-filled delight in all he has made.

These are the values the original Artist has assigned, and he calls us to sing, write, labor and dance to what matters to him.

A Vessel Of  Value

Recently a friend turned to me with a puzzled look and said, “I’m surprised! In spite of your being a glass-is-half-empty person, your writing is filled with hope!” I know, I’m startled too. There’s no way I can fake it, no artificial hope-flavor can mask woeful sighs. But every time I wade in gloom, hope bobs to the surface and invites me to play.

Maybe this is a divine side-effect: The vessel will absorb what it carries to others. When we,

  • by pencil or piano,
  • by hammer-stroke or brush-stroke,
  • by conversation or keyboard,
  • by gardening or grading papers,

carry love and redemption, carry beauty and hope, carry truth and trust into the world God loves, we stain our own hands and hearts with our gifts.

How has art pointed you to what God values? Where is he using you as his instrument?

 

Photograph: Claude Monet, Woman With A Parasol–Madam Monet and Her Son, 1875

 

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A Beginner Once Again

The beginnings of all things are small. ~Cicero

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I’m getting used to swimming in the beginner end of the pool.

A year ago, I pushed the Publish button, sending my first blog post flailing into the water, nose-plugs in place, ears ringing with my plea, “Just do your best, that’s all anyone expects!”

This is what I wrote:

“Life is filled with firsts. First days, first attempts, first drafts. And wherever firsts are found, failure lurks nearby.

Most of us don’t like the beginnings of things because competence makes us feel secure. We crave accomplishment, or at least the appearance of having arrived. But few of us get there with the first attempt.”

I had recently attended a Writer’s Conference and came away both terrified and jazzed by the potential of the Internet–that wild, surreal, bazaar of ideas both wretched and redemptive. Could my typing fingers be used by God to offer hope and healing and challenge in such a crowded marketplace?

With little idea of what I would encounter I jumped into the murky water anyway.

An expert told me, “You will only begin to know what you are doing after you’ve written one hundred posts.” This is post number 155 and nothing is easier. But it’s different–I have changed. I don’t dread failure or crave competence in the way I did a year ago. Instead, I fear the fences my cowardice may create, the doors I slam shut that may never re-open.

So, just in time, I’m a beginner again.

A Beginner Once Again

I received an unexpected gift from God’s generous hand. In six weeks I travel to Southern France for a two-week plein air oil painting workshop. This learning curve is steeper than last year’s. I daubed my first oil paint to canvas a few days ago. I’m told I will know what I’m doing after one hundred paintings are complete…

In case you are wondering, the painting above is my teacher’s work-in-progress. My first effort is this far more modest one.IMG_1049

Learning is more fun when it’s shared so I’m taking you, my accommodating readers, along with me on this journey.

Lesson One: It’s safe to be a trembling beginner when you’re held by an unshakeable hand.

“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago” (Ephesians 2:10).

I’d love to hear where you’ve become a beginner again? How is it going?

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So Much To Learn When Learning Is Despised

No one has ever completed their apprenticeship. ~ Goethe

Learning

I love to learn. I’m a glutton at a never depleted feast.

It can’t be helped–I come from a family of learners. Tattered library cards, museum memberships and Time/Life book series were the playthings of my childhood.

Trees, wildflowers, tide-pools, music and books—I enjoyed a casual education in an era when children were benignly ignored, and no afterschool activities or frenetic attempts to polish a child’s resume choked off the creativity of young minds.

The message I was given was unmistakable: It’s good to question. It’s good to test assumptions. It’s good to explore new ideas. It’s good to change your mind.

Of this I am convinced: The desire to learn is God-implanted. The decision to stop learning is sin.

“The illiteracy of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn,” Alvin Toffler wrote over forty years ago. How prophetic he turned out to be.

When we cling to past conclusions, or dig in our heels against the threat of new input, when we put a period next to a person, or a circumstance, or next to life itself and declare we’ve learned all we need to know, we start to die.

So Much To Learn

Life is engraved with the invitation to turn our periods into ellipses and with grace and humility examine our certainty as if there were other opinions besides our own….as if there are worlds we’ll never conquer….as if our dogma will always demand a fresh look.

What are you called to unlearn? Where is God inviting you

  • to rewrite an ending,
  • to re-look at a relationship,
  • to question an assumption,
  • to say out loud, “I may be wrong,”

to embrace a life of learning once more?

 

Photograph by Melanie Hunt

 

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Finding Today: A Guest Post By Robert Rife

Lone surfer

Today.

It is surprising how much time one can spend yearning for an unknown future or pining after a rose-colored past. I for one have lived too much in this unhealthy and unnecessary tension.

The healthy version of the already but not yet is the glowing embers of a faith in what has already happened, what is presently happening and what is still to happen. That is a tension worth exploring.

The Gift Of Today

I am speaking in more general terms. Today is like no other before it and unlike anything to come. It is absolutely unique in every way. Of course, it will have many features seemingly identical to those previously experienced that will give it a certain…predictability, at times ennui. But, for anyone seeking to practice life with God, it is anything but.

Life can be routine but hardly predictable and never dull.

Therefore, it pays to be consistently grateful and regularly hopeful.

I entered this day with old, familiar fears, recognizable yearnings and comfortable proclivities; the stuff that is my warp, woof and wake. God is not unfamiliar with these things in me. Nor is God particularly vexed by them since, to quote G.K. Chesterton, “sin [read all that doesn’t quite make the grade in life’s terms] is the least interesting thing about us to God.” Good thing because I’m especially gifted at it and have a few spectacular ones to my credit. Viewed through the wrong lens, they might easily be misconstrued as a jaunty tip of the hat to the devil (who or whatever that is).

To live life perched atop the twin cliffs of unfulfilled longing and unrealized dreams is to lean precariously over a bubbling cauldron of self-pity and willful blindness. That is an ugly, unwelcome concoction to be sure. It smells bad. It’s dangerous and never very fortifying.

God brings so many people into my life. Some want someone to hear them laugh and rejoice. Others are hurting, needing the Jesus touch, which, at that exact moment, can only be brought by me. God is both willing and fully capable of doing so without me. But why, when I’ve been given the gift of inclusion in the secret schemes of heaven while living on earth?

The fact is that I/we, have been given life, physically and spiritually. I do not want to waste such a precious gift trying to foist upon the world the unwieldy clubs of self-pity, regret, self-doubt, self…anything. In seeking to be healed, I must seek instead to become an agent of healing. And I can only do that as I open my eyes to what my eyes first see.

In the days and months that drift lazily past like a prairie stream, things have changed. My mind has changed on stuff. I think differently about who I am and who I am not. I feel differently. I no longer feel the need to grope desperately in the darkness for any shred of passing light but, in the waning dark, revel in the growing light. As they say, “it’s a God thing.” Instead of grasping for things over which I have no control, I am striving to submit honestly and readily to things as they are; the life I am currently living.

The life I have is the one I embrace. Regardless of what may still be lacking, I lean into all that is and hope for what can be; for what is yet to come.

I am finding today.

Are you learning to live in “today?”

Robert Rife, a music and worship minister in Washington state, is a poet, writer, singer/songwriter and holds an MA in Spiritual Formation and Leadership. Check out Robert’s Blogs, Innerwoven and Rob’s Lit-Bits.

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Sabbath Quiet: Holy Discontent

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. ~ Jesus Christ

Early spring trees

Holy Discontent

Let us in all the troubles of life remember that our one lack is life–that what we need is more life–more of the life-making presence in us making us more, and more largely, alive.

When most oppressed, when most weary of “life,” as our unbelief would phrase it, let us remember that it is, in truth, the inroad and presence of death we are weary of.

When most inclined to sleep, let us rouse ourselves to live.

Of all things, let us avoid the false refuge of a weary collapse, a hopeless yielding to things as they are. It is the life in us that is discontented. We need more of what is discontented, not more of the cause of its discontent.

Discontent, I repeat, is the life in us that has not enough of itself, is not enough to itself, so calls for more.

He has the victory who, in the midst of pain and weakness, cries out, not for death, not for the repose of forgetfulness, but for strength to fight, for more power, more consciousness of being, more God in him.

The true man trusts in a strength which is not his, which he does not feel, does not even always desire. He believes in a power that seems far from him, that is yet at the root of his fatigue itself and his need of rest–rest as far from death as is labor.

To trust in the strength of God in our weakness; to say, “I am weak; so let me be. God is strong”; to seek from him who is our life, as the natural, simple cure of all that is amiss with us, power to do and be and live, even when we are weary–this is the victory that overcomes the world.

~George MacDonald (1824-1905)

Have you listened to the voice of your discontent?

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Without Fail: Save Worry For Another Day

All occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons. ~John Donne

The sun

The sun rises this morning, as it has every day without fail.

When the first slanted rays tease me awake, my heart is still beating, sending oxygen-laden cells to brain and brawn alike.

Gravity still works, the furniture isn’t floating; when I throw off warm covers and plant a foot on the floor, it stays.

The hot water is both hot and wet.  The coffee pot perks and the smoky aroma hasn’t changed.

I open the back door and step outside, the ground remains solid beneath my slippers. The azaleas are in showy bloom, Spring following Winter following Autumn

…without fail.

I breath in cool air, the same cocktail of oxygen and nitrogen (with a few flavorings added) I breathed yesterday. Birds chatter their familiar morning agenda. One of the 920,000+ varieties of Creator-cared-for insects buzzes by.

Water is still clear as it sprinkles the grass. The dog, ever predictable, disdains the lawn’s paw-dampening threat.

Back inside, I find my coffee mug intact, it hasn’t unbaked back to clammy clay. With the first cautious sip, a surge of dependable dopamine courses through my brain.

The sofa squats comfortably where I left it. There, my book lays open, a still-sharpened pencil holds my place, words fill the pages in the same orderly lines as before.

I sit in silence, close my eyes and listen.

I am here, without fail. I haven’t changed, your life is held in my hands. Trust me with your worries. Trust me with each moment. My mercies are new every morning.

Save Worry For Another Day

What worries you? What drags your thoughts into dungeons of dread and concern? How deep are the ruts from pacing the floor of your mind, what if, how long, why not? Is it your:

  • Growing prayer list
  • Long deferred dreams
  • Terrified glance into the future’s crystal ball?

We try to figure life out from the muddled middle, and soon begin to sink. We forget that this morning the sun rose, and will rise again tomorrow, and the next day…

…without fail.

God's faithfulness

Without fail, are you keeping your eyes on the Faithful One?

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If You’re Not In The Game Don’t Blame

We desire to have others perfect, and yet we do not correct our own faults. We would allow others to be severely corrected, and will not be corrected ourselves. We will have others kept under by strict laws, but in no case do we want to be restrained. And so it appears that we seldom weigh our neighbor in the same balance with ourselves. ~Thomas a Kempis

Basketball gameFor many years, my husband part-timed as a high school basketball referee. I learned early on not to tell anyone.

One game I remember with a shudder. The stands were packed. Two rival teams, two sets of crowded risers faced off across the gym.

I was trapped in the parent section, my ears ringing from the groans and shrieks and screamed suggestions. As I glanced down the row of rolled up sleeved shirts stained with perspiring school pride, I marveled at the venom. Shrill advice splattered over anyone in motion below.

Unfortunately, positive reinforcement wasn’t on the program.

Bored with the limited, though colorful, vocabulary, I closed my eyes and imagined Jesus walking out at half-time and drawing something with his finger on the squeaky gym floor…

Maybe I exaggerate. I confess, I’ve done my share of shouting. That’s what spectators are supposed to do, right?

It’s Easy To Blame When You’re Not In The Game

A common caricature of Christians today: we sit in our padded auditorium seats, bemoaning the score and shouting our cranky conclusions to the world, while refusing to get in the game.

Not playing, not coaching, not refereeing. Not sweaty and tired from dribbling drills and wind sprints and late night free-throw practice in the driveway. Not pasta feeding or car washing or ankle-taping. Not jolting for hours on aging school buses, or shouting encouragement from a stone-hard bench.

Instead, we specialize in self-satisfied critique from the safety of the stands, waving our Bibles at the players below, certain we would do better.

Maybe that viewpoint is grossly unfair, but what are you doing to correct it?

“But the wisdom that comes from above is first of all pure. It is also peace-loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and good deeds. It shows no partiality and is always sincere. And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of goodness.” 

James 3:17-18 NLT

Where is God nudging you get out of the stands and into the game?

 

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Sabbath Quiet: A Perfectionist’s Peace

I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. ~Anne Lamott

Piano Perfectionist

Raise your hand if you are a perfectionist.

J.B. Phillip’s, the famous Bible translator admitted, “this obsession for the perfect can make us arrogantly critical of other people and, in certain moods, desperately critical of ourselves.”

Sometimes I picture a tiny courtroom bench, with a toddler banging the gavel and pronouncing judgment on a row of unsuspecting stuffed animals, and then berating herself. The toddler is me. My patient heavenly Father leans against the door, biting his tongue…

Perfectionists may believe in God’s forgiveness. But it doesn’t matter, because it’s not God’s approval we are seeking, instead, “the tyrannical super-Me condemns and has no mercy on myself,” as Phillips sadly notes. Perfectionists assume we know better than God. Our own hearts condemn us.

A Perfectionist’s Peace

God is infinitely greater in wisdom and love than we are and, unlike us, knows all the factors involved in human behavior.

We are guilty of certain things, and these we must confess with all honesty, and make reparation where possible.

But there may be many factors in our lives for which we are not really to blame at all. We did not choose our heredity; we did not choose the bad, indifferent, or excellent way in which we were brought up.

This is naturally not to say that every wrong thing we do, or every fear or rage to which we are subject today, is due entirely to heredity, environment, and upbringing.

But it certainly does mean that we are in no position to judge ourselves; we simply must leave that to God, who is our Father and “is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”

It is almost as if 1 John 3: 18-20 is saying, “If God loves us, who are we to be so high and mighty as to refuse to love ourselves?”

J.B. Phillips (1906-1982)

How do you address the perfectionist tendencies in you?

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Sabbath Is Not A Suggestion

 We are part of the creation story, subject to all its laws and rhythms. ~Wayne Muller

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I flunk sabbath more often than not. I will work 24/7 if someone doesn’t hang a Closed For The Day sign around my neck.

Perhaps the Puritan work ethic still lingers in the New England water supply, and I drank my fill as a child.

It doesn’t help that I work out of my home–I see sticky notes wherever I turn. Even my sleep is ink-stained and thesaurus-haunted.

So, it’s easy to shrug off  God’s emphatic command, “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8), until I take a closer look at what God is saying:

Commandment #4: You have seven days in a week. Six are for getting your work done. One day is for rest–no work. This is the rhythm of life, composed at Creation, and you are a creature, remember?

Misunderstanding The Sabbath

There may be arrogance lurking behind my productivity–can the world still function if I stop? But something else makes me veer away from Sabbath-keeping: the legalism implied. Sabbath is about what you’re not allowed to do, and what you are required to do, right? Which makes “the day of rest” just another form of work.

Jesus encountered the same confusion, and got scolded more than once for not getting sabbath right. How did he respond?

The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath (Mark 2:27).

Recently I read Ruth Haley Barton’s book, Sacred Rhythms. In her chapter on sabbath I learned,

  • Sabbath reminds us we are finite, our strength is limited, and only God can be all things to all people.
  • The heart of sabbath is to cease work so we can rest and delight in God.
  • What do you do on Sabbath? “Whatever delights and replenishes you.”

Sabbath Experiment

So, with some trepidation, I tried it. I took a whole day of a busy week, and said no to work. I stayed away from my computer, and read only for fun. I took a long walk, I played the piano and sang hymns, I called a family member just to chat. I smiled at God and let myself see him smile at me. By the time I took the dog for her evening walk I felt rested, at peace, my spirit reoriented to simply being, a creature enjoying my Creator.

The world did fine without me.

The next morning I got back to the piles, expecting to feel the pressure of backlog. But instead I felt refreshed, and the work-load no greater.

Time is elastic when we delight in the God who invented it.

How are you at sabbath-keeping? What replenishes your spirit?

Photograph by Melanie Hunt
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