Mirrored in Mourning

by Jordan Lienhoop

I was standing before two alabaster statues in the Speed Art Museum: Hooded Mourner with Rosary and Hooded Mourner with Missal. Created in the mid-1400s at the School of Jean Cambrai in France, the sculptures are encased behind glass, standing no more than two feet high. Their faces are somber, heads bent, covered by heavily draped cloaks.

These two statues were created to mourn over the tomb of a lost loved one far beyond the life of the person who commissioned them. Past my reflection in the glass encasement, six hundred years later, I found myself mirrored in their mourning. 

Hooded Mourner with Rosary, School of Jean Cambrai (French, active 1420-1435). Alabaster. Bequest from the Preston Pope Satterwhite Collection, Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY.

Seven weeks earlier, my sister Kait and I sat in our grandparents’ living room, visiting with them before our drive up to Chicago O’Hare. We were about to embark on a two and a half week trip throughout Europe—five countries, Kait’s graduation tour. 

Just before leaving their house, Grandma got a call from the hospital: would she please come in to meet with the radiologist. As my sister and I left for the airport, Grandma and Grandpa left for the hospital. 

It was in Naples, Italy, after a day trip to Pompeii, that we found out about the large mass on her pancreas; that’s all Mom would tell us, as she and Grandma had been avoiding most of our questions, not wanting to worry us. The next day, though, my brother texted me that it was cancerous, untreatable. 

Over the course of one week, Grandma had been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. 

Sitting in the Chiesa di Santo Stefano on the Isle of Capri, I prayed: Lord, please heal her. 

In the Basilica of Santa Maria del Mar in Barcelona: Lord, please heal her. 

In the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris: Lord, please heal her. 

Back from Europe, sitting once again in our grandparents’ living room, everything had changed. After a horse and pony show of photos, stories, and souvenirs, we began to talk about her cancer and what chemotherapy would look like. In the rawness of processing the diagnosis, Grandma’s voice was unsteady, crying as she talked about it and trusting Jesus. 

After that long weekend, Kait returned to Indianapolis, Indiana, and I went back to Louisville, Kentucky, where a month later I got a second part-time job at the Speed Art Museum as a security guard, a position that involved hours of walking, looking, and thinking. 

Within the careful shaping of the figures, within the graceful draping of the fabric, I saw a beauty in the midst of sorrow; a beauty I experienced, too, in the weeks before Grandma’s passing. Some of the sweetest moments with her were wrapped in the deepest sorrow, as the preciousness of the time we had left together met the ache of the physical reminders of her lessening days. 

Tucking her into bed at night. Watching the ginkgo tree drop its fruit. Reading the cards sent to her. Feeling October’s sun on my face. Seeing a new depth to my grandparents’ marriage. 

Hooded Mourner with Missal, School of Jean Cambrai (French, active 1420-1435). Alabaster. Bequest from the Preston Pope Satterwhite Collection, Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY.

Seven weeks after her diagnosis, around one o’clock in the morning, Grandma died in her sleep. Though Mom had messaged me early in the morning, I still went into work at the Speed, thinking I would just get through the day, that her death wouldn’t be real if I barely acknowledged it. Before the shift had even started I was in tears, and my coworkers, though they had only known me for two weeks, gave me some of the first comfort I was to receive. 

In the weeks after her death, during my shifts at the museum, I would think about Grandma, endlessly walking circles around the galleries, endlessly walking circles around her in my mind. It was in the tapestry room—a gallery filled with floor to ceiling tapestries of battle victories and parables, with illuminated books of hours and gold reliquaries—that I would stop before the cream-colored statues. 

Though no one in Louisville was affected by the death of my grandma, those statues gave testament to my grief; I did not grieve alone. In front of me was the weight of sorrow carved out of stone, an attempt to honor the life lost, to say, “I will not forget.”

These works of art began a process of grieving my grandma’s death. They led to reflections and revelations, to the working out of my faith, as I questioned God’s power to heal diseases, as I sought hope in the promise of resurrection. 

Three years later, as I look at the statues in the photo, I know that I’m not cast in a permanent state of grief. I have the hope that one day I will see my grandma again when I see my Savior face-to-face—a hope that she clung to as well in the midst of suffering. 

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As a visual artist, Jordan Lienhoop is interested in themes of memory, loss, and redemption. After graduating from DePauw University, she moved to Louisville and has been on staff with Sojourn Arts for the past four years. Jordan loves working with artists and encouraging them in their creative and spiritual walks.

This post is part of an ongoing series where we ask artists and arts professionals to share artwork that has significantly impacted their formation as a Christian. 

In a Small Boat

by Holly Graham

Fondly I remember

the process of finishing special puzzles as a child. My mother would oh so gently turn them over and tape them. Then we would frame them for my room. This didn't happen to all puzzles, only ones that, to us, were true art that we wanted to see always. The act of building the puzzle was rewarding but the real reward was being able to see it every day on the wall.  

This happened a handful of times. All were puzzles created from the work of a single artist: James Christensen. To an anxious but creative child, Christensen's paintings provided a wealth of visual treasures. Each image featured an abundance of detail and imagination. For others, it may have been easy to glance at these images and move on. Not for me. I spent a lot of time peeking into a world that I knew nothing about. I was a spectator in a land not my own. These fantastical  places and characters, the shapes their faces made, the lines their fingers created, became familiar, comforting.  

"Fantasies of the Sea" by James Christensen

Detail of "Once Upon a Time" by James Christensen

Fondly I remember  

seeing my children's faces for the first time. The road to starting a family had not been an easy  one. Seeing their faces for the first time I was certain miracles were not taken captive by the Old and New Testaments, but could still blaze into our everyday lives.  

I became a stay-at-home mom, something I am sure there must be a better name for, as we do not stay at home, and there are surely far more dignified ways we can describe that role. As they grew we decided homeschooling would be the best for them. So the sinew that formed between my children and I became stronger and stronger. Merriam-Webster suggests sinew is “the tissue that ties muscle to bone... a stabilizing unit.” That's exactly what had taken shape.  

Fondly I remember  

my grandmother sleeping beside me as I lay in her bed as a child. Her and my grandaddy would  watch me sometimes. My grandaddy would sleep on the couch and I would sleep in their bed. After I had been asleep for a while I would hear her little feet shuffle in and she would lay gently  beside me. And I felt peace.  

After 67 years of marriage, precious Grandaddy went to glory. His fight with pancreatic cancer  was more than his body could endure. Near the end I called Grandma on the phone, across the  states that divided us, every day, to hear how he was. When he left us, I continued to pick up that phone. Each and every day I got to hear her voice. Each and every day I got to learn more about her. Her past, her present, her opinions, her friendships, her stories, her... everything.  

Dementia. Like many things that are a product of a broken world, it is hard to understand why it  has to be a reality. But it hit my grandmother and it hit her hard. For her protection and for her to have the best care, she had to be moved to a wonderful care facility designed just for memory loss. In the transition, I simply could not talk to her on the phone as regularly as I liked. My heart ached. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to know how she was feeling. I wanted to know how the world seemed to her, how she felt about all this. I longed to hear what her birds and squirrels had done that day. I longed to hear how her favorite baseball team had done on that day's game. I just... longed.  

Anxiety is a dark spirit that has plagued me since a young age. I was taken to the doctor for tests  at age eight because I was having physical issues. My diagnosis was a manifestation of complications of stress. The doctor asked “why is an eight year old so stressed?” Throughout  life, it would find ways to insert itself. When I was sixteen driving meant freedom, but later in life, anxiety had wrapped its fingers around that as well. Driving alone long distances or to  somewhere I had never been had become something so fearful it was debilitating. I also did not  like driving in heavy rain which left me feeling claustrophobic. Anxiety also wove its web in the thought of leaving my children. The sinew mentioned before was well-formed and I was just as dependent upon them as they were upon me. It had been so hard to have them, I never wanted to be separated from them.  

But then there was the longing. The longing to just be in the same room as my dear friend and  grandmother. Which was met with anxiety's response: “You would have to leave your children. You can't be without them. You would have to drive a very long distance. Alone. It's impossible.”  

And then I decided I had missed enough in life at the hands of anxiety. Events and opportunities  I can never get back and often regretted. I had to break this cycle.  

The first sight my eyes saw as I left the driveway was my children in the glass door waving goodbye. I started shaking, feeling like I couldn't breathe. I just started saying “Jesus, Jesus,  Jesus.” I traveled down the road and as I turned to get on the interstate, a tall dark ominous cloudy sky met me. Like a bully the enemy was pulling out every tried and true tool to get me to fail. I said “Jesus help me!” He said to me “Your comfort is not in your family. Your comfort is  not in your circumstances. Your comfort is in Me.” The rain began to pour. It was thick, I couldn't see in front of me, and it stayed for my whole trip. My enemy was all around me, trying to suffocate me. But in my car, I petitioned for God to stay near and He, as always, was faithful.  

I emerged from the experience victorious. It was the sweetest kind of victory—the kind that we cannot create ourselves but the kind that is handed to us by a gracious and merciful Savior. A  Savior who sees our weight that we carry and says “let me exchange that for lightness of spirit.” 

I had been marked from this experience. As a visual thinker I wanted an image to represent this  triumph, this death of captivity, and He brought it right to mind. It had been present in my room as a child. I had studied it at great length. Frantically I tried to find it to see if it would apply.  Surely as He is good, it was perfect.  

"Afternoon Outing in a Small Boat with Owl" by James Christensen

A girl, with love on her sleeve, traveling downstream. The water and wood surrounding her are dark. Her umbrella is up. She feels like a fish out of water, but there is One right there beside her who represents wisdom. Honestly He is bigger than the vessel allows, but He has made himself fit in order to be with her. I understood that at the helm was wine and a snail. But I liked to think of it as communion. Right in her view as she travels is a reminder of the blood and the body that  had been given on her behalf, so that fear couldn't touch her.  

I had this tattooed to my leg. Then a year or so later, I found a button in an old bag of mine that  my husband must've made for me years ago that I hadn't remembered. It featured the exact same  painting. It was like God, my Creator and Friend, was saying, “Hey, remember our road trip?” I  set it up in my office as an altar to the idea that no giant can stand up to His power. They can threaten but they cannot sustain the might of a Father who's child has called out for help. 

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Holly Graham is a Virginia native who earned a BFA from Longwood University. She has held professional appointments in the photographic, curatorial, and art management fields. Four books have been published featuring Holly’s illustrations and one book featuring her “New Life Doll Project” photographic series. Holly is a multidisciplinary exhibiting artist, creating work with a goal of bringing joy, comfort and/or encouragement to others. She currently lives in Kentucky with her husband and two children, whom she homeschools while making art.

You can view her work by visiting hollymgraham.com.

This post is part of an ongoing series where we ask artists and arts professionals to share artwork that has significantly impacted their formation as a Christian. 

Arvo Pärt’s Fratres

by Brittany Anne Jarboe Jennings

A tall elderly man walks through a wooden glen. He smiles often, having a child like joy for the things around him. He stops often, meandering. Active in his slowness. Still in his activity. He listens often. He is listening to the silence in between nature’s composition. This elderly man is Estonian musical composer Arvo Pärt. To him: “Silence is always more perfect than music. You must simply learn to hear it. Silence is utterly full. The fewer the measures, the more genuine the whole—spiritual abundance in the desert. Where the holy men fled.”

Please listen to this recording of “Fratres” by Arvo Pärt before or during reading. It will help what I write make sense.

It was around 2006 when an uncle introduced to me Arvo Pärt’s music. I was at a state university studying cello performance and visual art. I had hit a bit of a wall mentally. Studying classical music felt forced. I was disillusioned with the current American Christian music scene. I was questioning if someone in our present time could be a true artist and a true Christian. I wanted discipleship in this. Looking to past artists, when the Catholic Church was a patron, seemed lifeless. I craved a more intimate view of God, a wider view of His saving grace, and a bigger scope of what an artistic Christian life could be.

My uncle, who is an artist and a Christian, probably gave me the CD of Arvo Pärt’s Fratres during one of our many art chats at his house near campus. After I listened, I knew Mr. Pärt was who I had been searching for. I was searching for music that rang true to my experience as a child of God. I say to my experience because each believers’ journey is uniquely intimate with our everlasting God. I had been in church praise bands for around five years by that point. I had grown up in a Christian and artistic environment. I played church music since childhood and knew the way some older hymns felt true. Experiencing church music from different cultures felt real. However, I was increasingly numb to the four chord, jumping up and down, praise music that currently surrounded me. Not to say this style of music doesn’t have a place; at that past juncture I was searching and it just wasn’t helping.

Arvo Pärt’s music and writings gave me a renewed sense of awe at our Creator God. This someone, who comes across as a wise, gentle giant, had his own rebellious and experimental streak that caused the birth of a new musical movement; an exile from the Soviet Union, who once accidentally set a violin on fire on stage. His rebellion and innovation was rooted in his Christian faith, more specifically the Orthodox Church and early medieval church music. 

So I decided to try and play his music.

Illustration of Arvo Pärt by Brittany Anne Jarboe Jennings

I have only played two out of his vast amount of pieces. Spiegel im Spiegel and Fratres, both originally written for violin and piano, then later rewritten for cello and piano. There is a great BBC Soul Music podcast episode about his Spiegel im Spiegel; I encourage you to listen to the episode, as I will not talk about that one and am going to write briefly about his Fratres. No heavy musical language. No music theory. There are ingenious theoretical reasons why Arvo Pärt is one of the most performed living composers of today. There are reasons why his works embody the sound of transcendence. I am not going to write about those because I do not fully understand them and there are great articles and books already on the subject. 

Remember the solitary woods in which we found the elderly man? Please imagine it again. If you haven’t listened to the piece yet, now would be a good time.

This was my experience with Fratres: Playing the opening segment is like sprinting. I am sprinting into this wood trying to catch up with Arvo Pärt. The cello is sounding the afternoon light filtering in narrow bands of warmth through statuesque trees. The light kaleidoscopes as I run past. But I never catch him. As soon as I reach the clearing where he rests, he is gone. I listen to the lonely chords on the piano and pizzicato of my cello. Alone. The whole piece for me is a search. Running followed by the stillness of opening my eyes to all that surrounds me in this afternoon wood. I search through each movement. A slow searching of the clearing’s edges. The lonely piano chords and cello pizzicato, I see him again. I slowly walk towards him. Then disappears. I step in water. Music is good for portraying running water. I search around the stream. It is so freezing my breath is stolen. Partial glimpses of the creator obscured by shadows which move on the opposite bank. Alone again. Then I run. Careful searching followed by running.

For me, playing Fratres is constantly searching for this creator of Light’s sound, while never being in step with him. At least not until the end. Once silence has wrapped the performers and audience in awe, then we all have caught up with the composer. The silence that had flowed in between the running and searching has led us to a final peace. After the music stops, we bask with Pärt in the warmth of the light which now lives in memory. We are all smiling.

Fratres sheet music and Brittany’s cello.

No recording exists of me playing this piece. I graduated before I remembered to ask for a copy, and I even lost the sheet music in a move. I have recently bought the music, but cannot reach the point where I can proficiently play it. When I hear professional recordings I can imagine playing it again. It’s probably for the best I don’t actually remember how I sounded. Only the memory of the experience is left. Maybe that is all I need.  

God has used Arvo Pärt’s demeanor about art to open my eyes to the quiet joy of God. To quiet myself and know that though God is far mightier and more awe inspiring than all human minds throughout history can collectively imagine, He is also gentle. He is a lover. He delights in creating. That He loves His creations. That He is a still small voice in whirlwinds. A contented smile. Content to smile at me and my smallness. 

A funny thing for musicians is that silence and rests are the hardest to get right. Running is easy. Waiting is not. The space between the notes is equally important. Utmost patience is needed to play this music correctly. Just being with the music is needed to understand it. Presence. Continual presence. Pärt’s music contains the breath of human suffering, sorrow, bliss, and satisfaction. It also reminds me of how our God is empathic to us. Our Triune God knows the range of human thought and emotions. Jesus lived this. To me, Arvo Pärt uses music to emote the human condition. But through the silences, Arvo Pärt emotes the presence of Divine empathy. 

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Brittany Anne is a visual artist and cellist in Louisville, KY. She has shown in various shows around the Ohio River Valley since 2009. Currently she is working on a series of meditative graphite drawings focusing on how the passage of time shows in our changing natural environments. Find updates on Instagram @brittandthecello.

For further information on Arvo Pärt, visit Arvo Pärt Centre.

This post is part of an ongoing series where we ask artists and arts professionals to share a piece of artwork that has significantly impacted their formation as a Christian.

The Essence of Prayer

by McKenna O’Hare

During my time in school, I took a course called Meditation and Drawing. The idea was a bit foreign to me and even somewhat frightening. I had come to understand meditation as this weird new age practice of emptying one’s mind, and this passage from Luke 11 always came to mind where an evil spirit leaves a person, returns to find “the house” clean and orderly, and therefore, invites seven more evil spirits to join, leaving the person worse off than before. As a newer believer at the time, this made me especially skeptical.

Afraid of what might happen if I achieved this mental clarity/cleansing that meditation seemed designed for, I prayed. I prayed through our guided meditations, and I prayed while drawing. I always had an ongoing stream of internal thoughts flowing because if I allowed my mind to be blank, swept and put in order, I obviously was doomed for destruction. However, what I failed to recognize at the time was that my fear of emptiness negated the reality of the Holy Spirit already dwelling within me. An unclean spirit couldn’t return to its house along with others because it no longer has ownership of the house. As Christians, we house the Holy Spirit; He is who we’ll find at the door.

Amid detangling that revelation, I now had to frame a final project around a personal practice of meditation with the guidance of any resource of choice. With the creative freedom at hand and the lingering caution I felt in regards to meditation, I sought to find a biblically sound, prayerful meditation guide. In my digging, I came across Prayer: 40 Days of Practice by Justin McRoberts and Scott Erickson. This small, devotional-like book consisted of short, guided prayers and meditations partnered with contemplative imagery, and a few suggested practices; that’s it, but it changed my prayer life in such a simple, yet radical way. Justin McRoberts offers profound grace filled one liners, while Scott Erickson invites deep contemplation, an “excavation of the soul” if you will, through his corresponding visual work.

Illustration by Scott Erickson and prayer by Justin McRoberts

Within the first pages of the book’s introduction, the reader is encouraged to respond, meditate, excavate, and contemplate. I had been given permission to meditate as a Christian. This immediately shifted my understanding of meditation. It didn’t have to include gongs, mundra hand positions, and hums.  It could simply be a practice of focusing, thinking deeply, and reflecting on our own lives, the lives of those around us, and the presence of God in, through and surrounding it all. Stillness isn’t something to be feared, but instead pursued, for it allows God space to be. In this way, meditation can be an avenue to commune with God himself—a form of prayer. 

So, I am now invited also into unfamiliar territory of prayer. If meditation and contemplating good art can be ways to pray, what else could be? This stirred in me a sense of both curiosity and freedom. We have the ability to train our mind and hearts to the inclination of God in everything we do. This is a simple concept, but a hard thing to implement. However, this idea reoriented what I had previously thought prayer to be. Prayer became more than mere conversation, but rich communion—a practice of abiding and cultivating fellowship with God. We can filter life through the lens of prayer with a heightened awareness of the Lord’s presence among us. In doing so, nearly anything can be prayerful.

Where people once had to travel, sacrifice, and cleanse to access God, we have immediate access to the Father through the Holy Spirit because of the cross of Christ Jesus. God is closer to us than we could imagine; the commute exists within us. Thus, communion is readily available whether it be by means of bowed heads and folded hands or thoughtful words and brilliant images. Ultimately, prayer is less about the mechanics and more about the essence. God is not bound to our human traditions and limitations. He is not put off by our contemplation or even our silence; I have come to understand that He just might even delight in it.

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McKenna O’Hare is a contemporary mixed-media visual artist. Her work explores connections within oneself and between others, our surroundings, and the Divine. Working from intuition and using non-objective expression, her work results in final pieces that engage the viewer and provoke contemplation.

Upon graduating with her BFA from Fort Hays State University in Hays, KS, she moved to Louisville, KY, where she currently interns at Sojourn Arts. You can view McKenna’s work at www.mckennaohare.weebly.com and by following her on Instagram @mckennaohare.

This post is part of an ongoing series where we ask artists and arts professionals to share a piece of artwork that has significantly impacted their formation as a Christian.

Human Complexity in Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archives

by Kathleen Childs

"I just had my long-held assumptions about someone shattered in a brief moment. I'm wondering if every person I pass has similar depths, and if there's any way to avoid the mistake of judging them so shallowly that I'm shocked when they show their true complexity." — Brandon Sanderson, Bands of Mourning.

Kathleen’s copies of Book One and Book Three of The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

I discovered the author Brandon Sanderson my junior year of high school. In hindsight I’d known about him for a while, as I had multiple friends recommend a couple of his series to me, but I’d ignored them. It took my best friend, of now ten years, revealing that her favorite book of all time was Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson for me to actually pick up one of his books. It was love at first sentence. His eloquent storytelling never left a dull moment, and I was brought into a world of beautiful writing that I had previously thought impossible. The themes I found playing out in his writing were magnificent and struck a chord inside of me. I was hooked. I needed more of his writing; thus I found his magnum opus: The Stormlight Archives. 

The Stormlight Archives is currently a four book series of gargantuan page counts. It details the lives and thoughts of multiple key players as the world of Roshar comes to what appears to be a climactic end. Sanderson drives his story through beautifully written prose that forms characters who are unique and broken and human. Each book in the series thus far has focused on a different character’s specific journey as they deal with and overcome past trauma and how that affects them as they move forward. We are allowed to intimately know the characters we are following, while also learning to invest in the events happening around them—this style of character driven plot fascinated me. 

At the time of reading these books I was coming out of three years of depression and was struggling to relate to and invest in the people I had blown off for many years. One of the things that I began to realize was that for basically my entire life I had failed to grasp one simple truth: the inherent complexity of every human. It is easy to forget I’m not the only person on the planet.

Our tendency, or at least mine, is to think that all of the people around me are just robots who power off when I’m not in the room. I forget that the person sharing the studio with me also has a life after work. She has a family I haven’t met and problems I’ve never even seen. She has joys and fears and loves and hates that I may never know. Her thoughts in her head are just as complicated and convoluted as mine. But it's not just her—it’s everyone I could ever interact with. 

The random man I pass on the street, the woman bagging my groceries, my parents, everyone. Even with the reminder of seeing people every day, how easy it is to forget that God has created everyone to be His image bearer and each is uniquely and wonderfully made. Sanderson's The Stormlight Archives, as well as his other writings, was one of the final blows of the hammer to nail this truth into my head. 

Kathleen’s copy of Book Four of The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

The first book in the series, The Way of Kings, focuses on Kaladin Stormblessed. He isn’t the only character we follow but we get a much more in depth character study of him. We watch as he starts overcoming prejudices and learns to trust in himself and hope again. We see his story from childhood to adulthood. By the end of the book we know him in a very intimate way and have learned to sympathize with his problems and ideals. 

The truly interesting bit begins when we start Book Two, Words of Radiance, and realize that Kaladin is no longer the focus character. He remains a key character and has a significant number of chapters dedicated to his perspective, but the focus of the book is a character named Shallan Davar. Sanderson introduces her in the first book, following her viewpoint a few times, but in Words of Radiance her importance is emphasized. We get to know her in the same intimate way that we got to know Kaladin in Book One. It produces a new perspective and gives us a whole new realm of understanding of her decisions and the events happening in the world of Roshar. 

The focus character shifts again in Book Three, Oathbringer, and again in Book Four, Rhythm of War. The continual shift in character forces readers to view the story from a variety of perspectives, leading us to love and respect those characters in an intimate way and making sure we fully understand their differing perspectives. It drives home that everyone has a life and a story that I know nothing about. I don’t know what past events are influencing the decisions people are making right now. I don’t know what has colored the lenses that they are seeing the world through. Reading these wonderful books opened my eyes to the complexity of humanity. 

Once I realize and accept this complexity in humans, I am forced to examine God and recognize that the complexity of a human is nothing in comparison to how complex He is. He created everything and He can fully comprehend me, fully comprehend my roommates, and even fully comprehend the nine other girls living in my house. Not only that, He fully knows and understands every single person on the planet, all at the same time. I struggle to remember the complexity of the person standing right next to me, but God doesn’t even bat an eye at being able to intimately understand all 7.7 billion people on the planet. He is so vast and infinite that we can barely hope to start to understand a sliver of Him. 

Yet He has let us have just that: a sliver, found in the person next to me, marred and clouded though it may be by sin. In every person I will ever interact with—from the small child to the wizened old woman—there is a sliver of our Majestic Creator peeking out through their unique complexity. Every day I try to remind myself of this simple truth, and Brandon Sanderson’s writing has played a huge role in helping me understand it. 

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After graduating from Rosslyn Academy in Nairobi, Kenya, Kathleen moved to Louisville to serve with Love Thy Neighborhood for a year with Sojourn Arts. In the Fall she hopes to attend North Greenville University to study Production Design. As an artist, Kathleen loves creating detailed graphite portraits and playing with paint.

You can view her work by following her on Instagram @step.one.art.

This post is part of an ongoing series where we ask artists and arts professionals to share a piece of artwork that has significantly impacted their formation as a Christian.

Real or Merely Communal: Arthur Miller's The Crucible

by Savannah Hart

There’s just nothing quite like live theatre. I don’t think anything can be a good enough stand-in for the experience.

The university from which I graduated last year hosts annual trips to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Canada. Being in the theatre crowd, I joined my friends on the trip my senior year, and witnessed a magical level of quality in storytelling. The talent of those actors was breathtaking. My friends and I vowed to make our own trips even after graduation, since it was only about an 8-hour drive away. 

Last fall in 2019, a few of us made that happen. We saved up our own money, chose the two shows that were must-sees for us, and blew some well-spent cash on the tickets.

Stratford brings the Bard’s stories to life, but also many other renowned plays. The pair we chose thematically went hand in hand: Shakespeare’s Othello, and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. And that pairing ended up wrecking me a bit.

For those of you who are familiar with The Crucible, you will easily understand the rest of my thoughts. For those of you who aren’t, you need to know that the play, similar to Othello, is about the truth—about an entire village in Salem, Massachusetts in the 1600’s miserably attempting to get to the truth, about the seemingly rampant presence of witchcraft among the villagers. I won’t describe the plot any further, for Miller weaves such a brilliant narrative with articulate complexity that the script is absolutely worth the read. But the uncertainty, the manipulation, the stubborn blindness, characters striving to denounce the lies of other characters—the struggle taking place on the stage stirred deep pockets of my mind.

Photography by Cylla von Tiedemann

I left the theatre with tears still in my eyes, exiting in silence with my friends through the sea of people. Like a good art piece should evoke, I had to process my thoughts on paper when I got back to my hotel room that night. Here’s what I wrote in my journal, next to some leafless trees I scribbled that mimicked the set design:

“Evidence. Proofs. Reverend Hale [a primary character] believed in the witchcraft and demonic presence in Salem because of the ‘far too many proofs.’ . . . Hale was already persuaded before he arrived. He believed as he thought, and he interpreted the evidence the way he’d decided and desired. Evidence can support that which it is coaxed to support. Where do we do this, God? . . . Here in Salem was a Scripture-originating community, blended with the norms of their time, their stacked books of added knowledge, their social constructs of authority . . . Can I ask for You to be proven without already desiring You to be so?”

My experience with that work of art was one in a chain of events constituting a long wrestling journey with epistemology, or how we know what we know. My move to college was a move from one Christian circle to another, however the Christian circle of college encompassed a lot more: a few thousand people coming from their own subcultures of Christianity to an environment that strongly pushed its own Christian subculture. I was introduced to several more interpretations of the truth than I had previously known were allowed to be considered credible. I was suffering from a deficiency in awareness of other denominations—of other microcosms of believing—of other cultures of knowing. I remember finishing my last theology class of college and thinking, “Wow…there’s a lot less consensus than I thought there was.”

This, of course, was disheartening, at times exasperating. Why do there seem to be so many ‘versions’ of the truth? And while many of my friends were responding to this frustration by giving up and fabricating their own preferred ideas, I was determined to hold to the truth that there is such a thing, and that perhaps our aim is to find ‘the truest version of the truth.’

Photography by Cylla von Tiedemann

Seeing The Crucible a few months after graduating reminded me not only of this journey, but of my own inability to be fully rid of preconceptions. Entangled in our contexts, unavoidably influenced by our communities, we are all (myself included) broken comprehenders. The story made me face the question, “Can I fully embrace the conclusions I have come to, if I know I can’t possibly come to them objectively? Can I fully be at peace with submitting to You, God, if I know my journey to You began with a bias?”

Without giving away the play’s ending, protagonist John Proctor finally and sacrificially surrenders for the one thing he knows to be true, even though the audience will be left with a Salem still in a horrendous state of upheaval. The absence of resolution does not mean the absence of resolve. 

Arthur Miller didn’t give me answers. He gave me extremely good and crucial questions for living as a broken comprehender.

How is this belief or idea influenced by my context?
What do I treat as proof that I should rather treat as evidence?
Though I cannot eliminate presuppositions, can I name them?

Why do we believe what we believe.

I must finish, for now, where I currently am with the question that the Stratford stage and its players gave me to face: 

Our journeys of belief and epistemology are far more experiential and relational—less intellectual—than we like to admit, because that is the nature of our creaturehood. Inescapably. It is the way we were designed. And God—the truth that is a Person, that is an Incarnate Gospel—continues to reveal Himself through experiential, relational, and intellectual evidence better than anything else I’ve experienced the world offering.

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Savannah Hart is an emerging mixed-media sculptor living in Louisville, Kentucky. She collects and repurposes discarded material or objects and assembles them into sculptural diagrams of thought to explore the spiritual questions she ponders. The most continual question in her work is, "How does the finite interact with the Infinite?" She finds that altering reclaimed objects pre-packed with narrative lends itself best to this both objective and non-objective focus.

Savannah seeks out ways to use art as social activism and healing for the community in which she lives, working at the cross-section of art and ministry. She is currently an intern with Love Thy Neighborhood and Sojourn Arts.

You can view her work by following her on Instagram @savannahhartwork.

This post is part of an ongoing series where we ask artists and arts professionals to share a piece of artwork that has significantly impacted their formation as a Christian.

Jesus as Dancer: Jyoti Sahi’s “Lord of Creation”

by Victoria Emily Jones

Last November I visited the artist Jyoti Sahi, who lives in Silvepura Village near Bangalore in southern India. A self-identified “nonconformist Catholic,” Jyoti has been active for the past fifty years as a painter and printmaker, developing images of Jesus as Indian and opening up dialogue between Christianity, Hinduism, and Adivasi (tribal) cultures.

Dance, which is at the heart of almost all culture in India, figures prominently in Jyoti’s art. He shows Jesus dancing at creation, on the Sea of Galilee, on Mount Tabor, on the cross, in resurrection. 

One of the paintings of his I bought while I was there is a gouache that shows Christ as cosmic drummer, beating out the rhythms of creation, and opposite him, a human figure emerging from a lotus. It’s a design for a stained glass window that was intended for the chapel at the Vidyajyoti College of Theology in New Delhi but was never realized.

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“Lord of Creation” (1982) by Jyoti Sahi

On the back of the paper, in Jyoti’s hand, is written, “Theme: Man inspired and drawn into the dance of God.”

This dynamic image, with its organic, swirling forms in green and yellow, celebrates the creative activity of Christ: at the foundation of the universe, in his ongoing re-creation of human hearts, and in his bringing about a total world transformation at the end of time. The figures are near mirrors of each other, with one foot on the ground and the other lifted in a dancelike pose, balanced between heaven and earth. The blossoming man is at once Christ leaping up out of his tomb—the firstfruits of the resurrection—and humanity being reborn, opening up to her true design, to life in God. As with the water lotus, life emerges from the dark and muddy depths.

In his book Stepping Stones: Reflections on the Theology of Indian Christian Culture, Jyoti writes how mission is sometimes thought of “in rather dead and dreary terms.” But, he continues,

the mission of Jesus, as I have tried to picture it, has been like a joyous dance. It is as though the Lord by saying “Go and proclaim My Gospel to all nations” sent his troupe of dancers out to the ends of the world. Mission must be filled with joy and beauty, it must reveal the Glory of God, which is the beauty and radiance of the Most High, and must invite all people to the festival, and dance, of a new creation.

Everywhere in Indian art we see the forms of dancing figures. The very essence of art, according to Indian aesthetics, is Anandam, or Joy. It is this joyful, liberating aspect of the Gospel which Christian art should proclaim. The dancing body is the liberated body. Those who are sad and oppressed do not feel like dancing. One might suggest that the most important symbol of inspiration and freedom in Indian art is the form of the ecstatic dancer. (75–76)

Robert Farrar Capon says something similar in The Mystery of Christ . . . And Why We Don’t Get It: “The dance of the Mystery of Christ is always going on: the band playing the music of forgiveness never takes a break. . . . The real job of Christians . . . is simply to dance to the hidden music—and to try, by the joy of their dancing, to wake the world up to the party it is already at” (170).

Also on the back of the gouache, besides Psalm 29:5–6, Jyoti quotes a set of lines by the eighteenth-century Bengali poet Ramprasad Sen:

Because you love the burning-grounds,
I have made one of my heart,
that you may dance therein your eternal dance.

This is from a hymn to Kali, destroyer of evil, whose dance burns away that which prevents us from being free. Jyoti sees in it a resonance with the work Christ does in destroying sin. From that destruction proceeds creation.

Full of vibrancy and play, Lord of Creation opens my eyes to the joy at the heart of the gospel, where Jesus leads the dance of new creation. Through the Spirit and through his church, Jesus is ever-active in drawing the whole cosmos into this dance, and Jyoti’s painting renews my excitement about that work, summoning me back in step.

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Victoria Emily Jones is a freelance editor and a writer on Christianity and the arts, blogging at ArtandTheology.org. She serves on the board of the Eliot Society, a Baltimore-Washington-area nonprofit that promotes spiritual formation through the arts, and is a contributor to ArtWay and to the Visual Commentary on Scripture, an online biblical art project spearheaded by King’s College London. Follow her on Twitter @artandtheology or on Instagram @art_and_theology.

This post is part of an ongoing series where we ask artists and arts professionals to share a piece of artwork that has significantly impacted their formation as a Christian. 

Kelly Kruse on Brahms Requiem

by Kelly Kruse

Composed in 1868, the Brahms Requiem was the first work of its kind in German. A Requiem is a traditional Mass for the dead, but this liturgical form became a musical genre in its own right, and one that many composers sought to master, for sacred or secular reasons. What makes the Brahms Requiem unique is the absence of traditional Latin liturgical texts and the use, instead, of texts from the Luther Bible. Brahms also never makes direct mention of Jesus, which became a point of contention for many people when the work premiered. Brahms, finding himself situated in a post-enlightenment world, could be quite ambiguous and even evasive when discussing his religious beliefs. Some historians believe he was an agnostic, and therefore the Brahms Requiem, though set to biblical texts, has often been viewed as a humanist rather than religious work. As a visual artist, my first body of work, All Flesh is Grass, was inspired by the biblical texts and structures chosen by Brahms for this work. The following essay integrates material adapted from previous writing I have done on my experience with the work. I have written extensively on the Requiem here, including background on Brahms and a movement by movement meditation on the work. 

Throughout this essay, I will refer to things that are happening in Movement Two of the Brahms Requiem. Here’s a great recording if you’d like to listen. I highly recommend headphones or speakers cranked up. There are intense louds and softs in classical music, often more so than other genres.

I provide specific timings and comments in the endnotes for you if you’d like to know exactly where I am when I’m discussing musical moments. 

I first heard Ein Deutsches Requiem, the monumental choral and orchestral work by Romantic composer Johannes Brahms, when I was twenty-five years old. I was in the last year of my graduate study at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. I had been studying music intensively for eleven years at that point, and I was no stranger to Brahms. Despite all of my semesters of Music History and my love of Brahms, at that point in my life I only knew a handful of his solo piano works, his art songs, his violin concerto, and his four magnificent symphonies. I had heard of his Requiem, but I had never experienced it firsthand.

In retrospect, I’m grateful I walked into the experience without having heard any of the music before. I did not know God personally at this point in my life, although I felt there was most certainly a God. Even the act of listening to music seemed to connect me to an unseen, invisible source in the universe. Performing music, at its best, meant I could be a vehicle for this unseen beauty. To this day, my experience of music remains heady and complex in an intellectual and emotional way that is utterly unlike any other art form. 

Many artists I’ve met describe a connection to the unseen that is visceral. I have come to describe this sensation with a single word, Sehnsucht. Sehnsucht is a German word that translates to longing, but what it really describes is a homesickness for a place we’ve never been. C.S. Lewis describes this sensation beautifully in The Weight of Glory. For me, the experience of listening to Brahms is filled with Sehnsucht. 

I attended that performance of the Brahms Requiem at IU with my best friend and studiomate, Laura. Laura’s faith defined her life, her ambition, her longings, and her art. She and I had many formative conversations while we were in graduate school. She sat with me in my doubts and unbelief and helped me to know God. My first evening with the Brahms Requiem, sitting next to the woman who would baptize me a few years later, was electrifying. 

Like many people, I have vivid memories of the time and place in my life when I first heard a piece of music. On my seventeenth birthday, I heard the Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis for the first time, a piece that is seventeen minutes of unadulterated Sehnsucht, filled with cavernous expanses of darkness, light, and beauty. I used to lay on the floor in the orchestra room in high school with headphones during my study hall, closing my eyes and disappearing from all reality into that auditory world.  I was warned by mentors and older musicians that I could become numb to that electrifying sensation of music the more I studied it and intellectualized it. They said I would have less tearful responses, less goosebumps, and less wonder. While in some ways, there could be some truth to that idea, I think I was talking to the wrong people.  

The moment I heard the first bars of the Brahms Requiem that evening, I lit up inside. The second movement, in particular, took me on an emotional rollercoaster. I was captivated, haunted, and elated. It reduced me to tears. I didn’t read any of the translations of the German text that evening. There was no intellectual grasp of a spiritual message, no deeper meaning, just a pure sensation of the invisible made auditory. The music overtook me. I spent weeks afterward in the music library listening to recordings of the second movement in particular, trying to integrate that experience of the music into my body.

Not long after this experience, I graduated and grappled with the direction I would take in my life. Like many young artists, I felt pulled in many directions, unsure of how to make a life out of art. I moved from Indiana to Kansas City. I went months without listening to classical music during some of my early years in Kansas City, too distracted trying to make ends meet to sit saturated in beauty. I began to seek God more deeply, and eventually, his Spirit came alive in me. I began to understand that Sehnsucht was a longing for him, for the far off country of perfect relationship with him. It was like my entire life my sight had been out of focus, like the experience of being at the eye doctor with the wrong lens. The doctor snaps the right lens into place, and suddenly what was fuzzy and indistinct has sharp edges and a shape. God’s presence in my life gave these powerful, indistinct forces of beauty a shape. His shape. 

The Brahms Requiem changed forever for me when I woke up one morning in the summer of 2014 after a gut-wrenching nightmare about the death of a close family member. It was one of those dreams where I woke up and felt the physical weight of grief and stress because my brain experienced the same neurological effects as I would in waking life. I made myself get out of bed to go for my morning walk on a trail near my home, eyes straining in the darkness of late summer dawn. That summer I spent most of my four-mile walks listening to sermons, podcasts, and Proverbs, but on this particular day I was still shaken by the grief of my subconscious, and melancholy lingered. I skimmed my music playlists and saw the Brahms Requiem, unlistened to for several years. I was overcome by the desire to press into the feeling of melancholy, so I clicked on it. The shuffle feature pulled up movement two, the same movement I had been obsessed with years before.

Despite my powerful experiences with this music before, it was like I heard that movement for the first time that day. I looked up the translation of the biblical text and read it as I walked. I let the power of the music overtake me like I used to, but I was a different woman than I was the first time I had heard it. I had stood in the valley of the shadow of death at the funerals of friends too young to die. I had made a transition from a spiritual seeker to a woman captivated by God. I had battled deep depression, crippling anxiety, and disillusionment with my life. I had walked with those close to me through battles with mental health and addiction. I had watched friends divorce, have miscarriages, die of cancer, and bury their children, and I had yet to turn thirty. My eyes were wide open to the brokenness of a world that is not functioning the way it was meant to. One of the best biographies on Brahms, written by Jan Swafford, says that he wrote the opening theme for the second movement (intended for a symphony) the day that one of his best friends, Robert Schumann, jumped from a bridge and attempted to end his life (1). Brahms was living with the Schumanns at the time, and he was a witness to the pain of Schumann’s decline and eventual death from mental illness. Schumann left behind his wife, Clara, also a famous musician, and eight children. 

That morning on the trail, I was disarmed and vulnerable from my dream. I felt the tears well up as the choir began its muted declaration of Isaiah 40:6 (2).

“All flesh is grass,  
     and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades…”

By the time it reached its first great and terrible climax (3), my tears flowed freely. It was the only reaction I could have to the powerful reality of death that Brahms had covered with his thick, powerful harmonic voice. The music creates a very real sense of the relentless force of death in the listener, to create an irresistible wave of sound that you are powerless to stop. It gave me the ability to see the world through a clear lens as a thing whose most shimmering pinnacles will inevitably be overcome by the ash of death. Though our beauty is as delicate and matchless as the most precious flower, we are ultimately just like that flower and will wither, all color will drain from us, and we will eventually be returned to the dust. Thankfully, Brahms gives us a glimpse into the hope that God provides us in his choice of the next text for the second movement, James 5:7 (4).

Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains.

The music lightens and lilts, as though to let sunlight through the clouds. At the ends of the two musical sections of this interlude, the underlying music pulls at the ends of this hope, attempting to unravel it. Brahms does successfully unravel it eventually, dragging us back into the dark beauty of his setting of Isaiah’s words once again (5). That morning, it became clear to me that this musical theme, though I had already heard it, seemed to sting more, and it almost felt cruel. I thought of Lazarus, raised from the dead. I couldn’t help but think about the fact that though Lazarus was raised, he still died a physical death again. If he didn’t outlive his sisters, they had to mourn him again. And if we are healed from sickness, eventually we will have to mourn the loss of our health again. So where is the hope that endures forever?

The crescendo into Brahms’ repeated climax of the death march theme was much more devastating to me the second time around. Still crying in the early dawn, I stopped walking, overcome by even deeper hopelessness. Not only was I feeling residual sadness from my dream, I was also flooded with real memories of burying loved ones. There was yet another layer of deeper mourning as the music exposed anticipatory grief in me. If I live long enough, I will one day bury my parents and countless others who are close to me. This is a cruel reality for all of humanity and a concept that we often hold at a distance, something our logical minds recognize but that is kept carefully walled off, inaccessible, so that it will not crush us.

It occurred to me that day that Brahms, through his chosen texts and the way he sets them, brutally and masterfully reveals the realities we face, whether in the past, present, or future. If art is only saccharin and sentimental, it feels flimsy and transparent in the face of life's difficult realities. If we buy into the conventionally beautiful and comfortable side of our faith only, denying the existence of death, when we are overcome with the unavoidable reality of it we may crumble irreparably. It is not uncommon for our faith to crumble in tandem. I'm not saying we should spend our time only dwelling on sin, brokenness, and death. Our fragile human souls are not built to carry that kind of weight. We must partake in the transforming joy that God offers us, or all we have left is the reality of this world’s passing, whether it is delayed, put off, or sentimentalized. No matter which of those three methods we choose, we aren’t really capable of dealing fully with the ramifications of death. We can attempt to numb the feelings of grief or anger by religious or irreligious means.

The fact remains: regardless of our individual belief systems or cultural constructs, we all must reckon with death. As the voices decrescendo and fade with the music at the end of this second statement of Isaiah 40, there is a sliver of silence and pause - just enough that you almost think it ends there, in death and despair (6). That morning I spent on the walking trail, my soul felt like it did end there. I had forgotten what came next. Brahms had yet to set the second half of verse eight.

 Aber des Herrn Wort bleibet in Ewigkeit. (But the word of the Lord endures forever.)

Brahms does not leave us with the heaviness of death crushing our hearts, because God doesn’t leave us there, either. A unison "ABER!" shattered the momentary silence through my earphones, and I heard something I hadn't heard before, though I had listened to this work literally hundreds of times (7). The new lens snapped into place and I found clarity. The gospel offers a 'but.' We all must suffer, and there will be death, but..! The Word of the Lord endures forever. 

Jesus is called the word made flesh. Jesus endured. His body was put in the tomb to rot. Aber—But!—he rose from the dead. He conquered death, not just for his own human body, but for mine, too.  According to scripture, Jesus lived the life that we should have lived, and in his human flesh, died the death that we should have died (completely forsaken by God, pained, humiliated, and alone). God entered the world to be what we could not be to do what we could not do. Suddenly I found myself crying for a different reason. Tears of joy were replacing the tears of sorrow, my very own Psalm 126 (a Psalm which Brahms sets in the first movement). He closes the second movement with a promise from Isaiah 35:10 (8).

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return
    and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
    they shall obtain gladness and joy,
    and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

If we cannot escape the penalty of death and brokenness by ourselves, then the only way we could do it is to be ransomed. The good news is that we have been ransomed. My weeping can truly be converted to songs of joy. That day on the trail, as Brahms' almost-fugue raced triumphantly to the close of movement two, I found myself weeping tears of joy. The words that Brahms stretches out and sets over and over again at the end of the work are Freude, ewige Freude, or Joy, eternal Joy! This is the power of music, for me. It softens and disarms me, and it leaves me open to the power and truth of God’s word, and then its unseen forces seem to enter my body, helping me to physically and emotionally process these complex theological concepts. As we grow and change in faith, our perceptions of art grow and change with us. The art waits, ever ripe fruit that God offers as ways to taste and see that He is good. 

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Kelly working on a piece for her series All Flesh Is Grass.

Kelly Kruse is a visual artist, singer, and arts educator living in Kansas City, Missouri. She uses her work to explore the painful, beautiful experience of human transience, longing, and suffering. She developed a visual devotional practice as a response to her battle with depression, through which she wrestles with beauty, history, and theology. Kruse describes her work as contemporary illumination. Like the medieval monks who perfected the art of illuminated manuscripts, she seeks to awake in the viewer a sense of spiritual contemplation. Her first exposure to the idea of illumination came when she studied Medieval and Renaissance music in Italy. Her background in classical music and opera puts her in a unique position to explore the intersections between scripture, poetry, musical works, and the visual arts.

She has exhibited her work at galleries and institutions across the country and her work is featured in collections around the world.

In addition to her painting practice, Kelly is an active classical musician and maintains a private studio as a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing. She has lectured in music history in addition to serving as a masterclass teacher and clinician. 

You can view Kelly’s artwork at www.kellykrusecreative.com and follow her on Instagram at @kellykrusecreative.

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Music Endnotes:

1. 0:00-0:45 - listen for the pedal timpani, a hallmark of Brahms’ style. Throughout the entire work, especially in movement three, you’ll hear pedal timpani that can serve as a reminder of the relentlessness of death. Timpani are pitched percussion instruments, and so using them as a pedal (continuous) tone causes them to clash occasionally with harmonies above them. 

2. 1:15-2:20 - This is the first statement of “Den alles fleisch est is wie Gras, or “For all flesh is like grass.” Listen for the “blooming” swells in the music, mimicking the beauty of flower opening.

3. 2:55-3:35 - By the end of this climactic moment, the music fades and falls alway, like the grass. 

4. 4:00-5:00+: Here, the textures thin and the music becomes more light and transparent, like the clearing of clouds. We’ve shifted from B-flat minor into G-flat major. Rhythmically, it is much more like a graceful dance than a death march. In a sense, this section feels more dreamlike than the first. 

5. 5:28-5:45: The happy melody of hope melts away and back into the death march. In a way, this repetitive form mimics the cyclical nature of life and death. The structure of this work is A(musical idea one), B (musical idea two), A (a return to the first idea), and then it has a fugue-like C section tacked on the end. 

6. 920-9:30  - the work sounds like it may be coming to an end here.

7. 9:30-9:57 -  a complete break in the texture and a jarring key change from B-flat minor to B-flat major. 

8. 9:58-end - a triumphal fugue-like ending featuring heroic soaring melodies and imitation between some vocal lines. There are subdued moments where it almost seems like it could collapse back into the darkness from the beginning, but joy always wins out. 

This post is part of an ongoing series where we ask artists and arts professionals to share a piece of artwork that has significantly impacted their formation as a Christian. 

Andy Goldsworthy: Rediscovering a Spirit of Freedom

by Jason Leith

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Sycamore patch, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, 31 October 1986. Andy Goldsworthy.

For much of my life I have wrestled with two sides of myself. One side loves to play and wonder and the other is stiff and suffocated by logic. This second part of me is not the truest part. I am thankful I have discovered ways to leave this part behind. One way is when I embrace the play and wonder inspired by other artists. At twenty years old, as I was still learning to embrace my liberated side, I am thankful someone introduced me to Andy Goldsworthy. 

Creating much of his artwork in surrounding nature of his hometown village of Penpoint Scotland, Goldsworthy’s process is wonderfully unfamiliar. Hands empty of tools of any kind, he steps out into nature and begins gathering elements of the created world to make site specific sculptures. Many of the works are planned in the moment and he uses no glue, no hammer, no machinery. 

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by Andy Goldsworthy http://photovoltaicpoetry.com.au/about/place/andy-goldsworthy-ice/

I smile remembering how he arranged icicles to look as if they are weaving in and out of the trunk of a winter aspen. I find delight in the seamless color gradient of fall leaves he arranged on the ground like a Buddhist mandala. My heart jumps remembering the way he collected hundreds of reeds from a damp hillside and mended them into a tapestry suspended from a lone tree. 

One of his works takes hours, sometimes days, and the process is as important as the final vision. Every failure in the form of collapsing rock or melting ice is a way Goldsworthy finds reconnection with nature and with himself. Each collapse requires a moment for few deep breaths, but it provides a lesson about limits, physicality, and our relationship with creation. As we push and play in nature, it can teach us. When a sculpture is finished, he photographs the result and releases it to the mercy of time and the elements. Soon enough, every sculpture crumbles, melts, or blows away.

At my first introduction to Goldsworthy, I was simultaneously puzzled, frustrated, and delighted. How can you move into a project without a plan ahead of you? How could he let his work just crumble away like that? It must be saved! But slowly, I acclimated to realize the joy and freedom in his process. 

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Sycamore leaves stitched together with stalkshung from a tree, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, 1 November 1986. Andy Goldsworthy.

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Leaning into the Wind, a Magnolia Pictures release. © Thomas Riedelsheime, all rights reserved. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

I distinctly remember the intersection of Goldsworthy’s work and rediscovering the lighthearted side of my relationship with the Lord. My spiritual life was defined by duty, obedience, and mission. These things are not bad, however, I had lost sight of the truth that wherever the Spirit of God lives, “there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:16). I had forgotten how the Lord wants to enjoy, wonder, and just be with his kids—no agenda. One of the gifts he wants us to enjoy is the beauty and infinite discovery found in the created world.

The first time I tried to channel Andy Goldsworthy out in a southern California trail, my unhindered child-like spirit came leaping back. All the brooding weight of duty was lifted as I arranged geometric rocks into a puzzle and gathered dried flowers to make my sculpture. Looking back, I realize in moments like those, my friendship with the Lord was growing. 

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by Andy Goldsworthy https://vedantus.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/andy-goldsworthy-1.jpg

Goldsworthy’s work and process shows me how to leave weight and stiffness at the door when approaching my relationship with God. I do not have to have a grand plan for the future. There is no need to dwell on the past. I can just breathe in the moment. When things collapse, it’s okay. I take it as learning. 

Goldsworthy believes that our connection to nature is deeply linked to our connection with ourselves. If we are disconnected from nature, he believes our sense of self will suffer. There is no doubt that growing up, I had lost connection with vital parts of who God made me to be. But Goldsworthy’s encouragement to simply step out into nature and make something breathed life into me, reminding me of the lightness of God and how I have a standing invitation to reconnect with him whenever I choose. No weight, just wonder.

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Jason Leith is the Pastor of Visual Arts at Saddleback Church in Orange County, California. His work focuses on socially engagement through portraiture. His Sacred Streets project featured found object portraits of the homeless on Skid Row, Los Angeles. He graduated from Biola University with my BFA and is currently receiving his Masters in Global Leadership at Fuller Seminary with an emphasis in Art & Theology. See more of his work at www.sacredstreets.org/ and follow him on Instagram at @JasonLeithArt.

This post is part of an ongoing series where we ask artists and arts professionals to share a piece of artwork that has significantly impacted their formation as a Christian. 

Da' T.R.U.T.H.: A Medium for Mentorship

by Jason Stephens

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Music did not save my life. Jesus did. But God used music to serve me in ways no one else could in my early days of walking with Christ. In 2011, Da’ T.R.U.T.H.’s album, The Whole Truth taught me about the true character of Our Lord and how God can use someone’s gifts for His glory and kingdom. 

I gave my life to Jesus in September 2011. I had no church and I knew very few Christians. One month after giving my life to Christ, I started a Bible Study and by God’s grace, I didn’t lead the attenders astray. Before each Bible study, I would google the passage, questions, and answers. I really knew little about God and His Word as a new believer. I needed someone to come along side me to help lay the foundation of my faith. At the time, I didn’t think I had someone to place this role in my life. 

Before that September, I was a weed-smoking, Frat strolling, spoken-word artist. I was steeped in the campus’ black popular culture. Then, the gospel was shared with me through two separate InterVarsity members at the University of South Florida. The Lord then did something radical in my heart by convincing me that He saw me and He was demanding that I repent and follow Him. So one night, while alone in my home, I prayed to Jesus that He would save me. But as I entered the college ministry circles for fellowship, I felt I couldn’t relate to the Christians that were unfamiliar with my cultural experience. By doing this, I cut myself off from many of the opportunities to learn and grow as a Christian and embraced the pursuit of doing my own thing for the Lord. In hindsight, I would have approached community and discipleship differently. Despite this, God, in His great grace and mercy, still used me on the campus. In the meantime, He sent me someone I would listen to. Someone I would submit to. Someone I could relate to. His name was Da’ T.R.U.T.H. 

After I had emptied my entire iTunes library of all the music that embraced my old life, I replaced it with Christian rappers. Da’ T.R.U.T.H. was by far the one I listened to the most. The music was good, but the music was simply a medium for mentorship. He helped me to establish the essential doctrines of the Christian faith. In many ways, he equipped me to lead those Bible studies every week. The album itself, was a testament to God’s grace and power. 

Da’ T.R.U.T.H had committed infidelity in his marriage in the past. His affair was revealed publicly in 2009 and he took time off from music to repent and restore himself and his marriage. “The Whole Truth” was the first album following his restoration. The album chronicled his repentance. He spoke freely of his sin and how God had shown him grace. He expressed how his wife had forgiven him. He taught me that God really did forgive. Jesus really did redeem. 

What I needed in my life was for someone to affirm that what I was experiencing was real. I needed someone to tell me more of what Jesus accomplished when He rose from the dead. This album is filled with the simple truths that lead to eternal life. My favorite song on the album, is Freedom. I was listening to this song when I decided that I, like Da’ T.R.U.T.H., wanted to use my voice and gifts to proclaim the goodness of Christ for the rest of my life. I have been pursuing this calling since.

Verse 3 of “Freedom” by Da’ T.R.U.T.H.:

I'm here to offer you hope through all your highs and lows
Might I propose that with Jesus nothing is impossible
He can provide you with strength to get you through obstacles
He got the power to rescue and get you out the hole
There is a pot of gold, for all the pride that goes
Throw your hands up and surrender, know that the Father knows
You on the winding road, but you are not alone
Hand Him the keys, and move over so He can drive you home
And do more than just give directions, He got the blood that will cover up all your imperfections
He got the keys that'll set you free from your prison sentence
You can raise up cause He specializes in resurrections
So give Him praise, and give Him reverence
When sinners pray, it's in His presence
You find the joy and strength that you need to make a change.
And break the shackles, let Him break the chains. All you need is...Freedom

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Jason Stephens is a college ministry director at Sojourn Church Midtown and spoken word artist in Louisville, KY. He is currently working on an MDiv at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His passion for seeing people radically changed by the gospel drives his life and ministry. You can listen and subscribe to Jason’s spoken word here.

This post is part of an ongoing series where we ask artists and arts professionals to share a piece of artwork that has significantly impacted their formation as a Christian.