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.

Artistic Vision / Divine Revelation

by Michael Winters

"38” oil on paper, by Cameron Alexander Lawrence, now on view at Sojourn Arts through April 11, 2021.

After the recommendation from  How You Create Podcast host Ben Terry, I recently began reading The Death of the Artist by William Deresiewicz. It’s mostly about contemporary difficulties surrounding art and money (a great resource for an aspiring professional), but early in the book he also tells a story about his introduction to seeing the world like an artist, even if he’s not an artist himself. In a dance criticism class, he came to experience a new way of seeing when his professor gave an assignment:

“She sent us into the world, to simply look at people move. Look, and describe. That course changed my life. I learned that I had never seen the world before, because I’d never bothered to, and I also learned that that is what art and loving art are about: not being a snob, not distracting yourself, but seeing what’s in front of you. Finding out the truth.”

Learning how to see and finding out the truth is a lifelong occupation. The work is never done. Looking at the surface of things, like the way people move out on the street, reveals a treasure trove of information about the true nature of things. This is God’s world and he’s made it incredibly interesting and worthy of attention. Through learning to see things as they are we get glimpses into not just surface-level truth, but even deeper meaning. As Deresiewicz outlines the history of art though, he seems to understand the revelatory quality of artistic seeing, not as a compliment to divine revelation, but as a replacement of it.

“As traditional beliefs were broken down across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—by modern science, by the skeptical critique of the Enlightenment—art inherited the role of faith, becoming a kind of secular religion for the progressive classes, the place where people went to meet their spiritual needs: for meaning, for guidance, for transcendence.”

I believe he describes the general movement of history accurately. I don’t mean to argue with that. (Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton and others lay out a similar understanding.) But for someone committed both to Christianity and to art, what are we to make of this?

As Christians, we believe the divine revelation of God in Christ, known through the Holy Bible. When Amazing Grace sings, “I once was lost, but now I’m found / Was blind, but now I see”, this gift of vision is credited to the amazing grace of God, not merely to a transformative artistic experience.

But just as artistic vision doesn’t replace and cancel out divine revelation, divine revelation doesn’t replace and cancel out artistic vision (or general revelation). We can experience both. Both are real. And when the scriptural revelation of God is combined with the revelations of his creation experienced through our senses, we’re really onto something. I believe accepting both the divine revelation of God in Christ and the revelations available through artistic seeing grant the most fully wakeful vision.

I appreciate William Deresiewicz’s understanding that art is about learning to see and finding out the truth. These are noble aims and like him, I also believe art is a compelling discipline to get us there. In the end though, art is a limited discipline, as is science or politics. Each offer valuable lenses to extend our vision, but they can’t replace divine revelation. We’re dependent on the amazing grace of God.

Until I Can See You: Cameron Alexander Lawrence

by Jordan Lienhoop

As a painter and poet, Cameron Alexander Lawrence's creative rhythms have led to abundance—he created 35 new works in just two months!—and connection, as his artistic practice helps him be more present to himself and others. His solo exhibition Until I Can See You is a meditation on and a search for that connection between self and others. Cameron’s work offers an opportunity for viewers to look more closely, even beyond the paint into their interior world and that of those around them.

See more of Cameron’s work on Instagram @cameronlawrence, and visit his online storefront to purchase works from the show.

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“The Distance Between Two Fires” (2021) by Cameron Alexander Lawrence. Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches.

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“Watchers” (2021) by Cameron Alexander Lawrence. Acrylic on wood panel, 12 x 9 inches.

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“More Than We Knew” (2021) by Cameron Alexander Lawrence. Acrylic on wood panel, 12 x 9 inches.

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“Veiled Landscape” (2021) by Cameron Alexander Lawrence. Acrylic, spray paint, and oil pastel on canvas, 48 x 36 inches.

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“38” (2020) by Cameron Alexander Lawrence. Oil on paper, 16 x 12 inches.

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“Nocturne” (2021) by Cameron Alexander Lawrence. Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 inches.

This post is part of a series featuring artists involved in our ministry and community in Louisville, Kentucky.

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi: A Faith in Fiction Discussion Guide

SYNOPSIS (via Penguin Random House)

Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family’s loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.

Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief–a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi’s phenomenal debut.

PERSONAL REFLECTION by Michael Winters

When I was younger I somehow picked up the idea that faith wasn’t supposed to change. You were supposed to place your faith in Jesus and then you were just supposed to always “believe.” More recently I heard someone teach that Christian maturity requires that your ideas about God will change and this strikes me as true. In church-based ministry over the years I’ve seen many people come to a place where their faith needed to change in order to mature, but instead they just cast aside belief and tried to ignore eternal questions. In reading of Gifty’s childhood faith and what happens as it’s confronted by tragedy and time, we read a testimony of how a life of faith can go. It’s not a triumphant or idealized story, and though it’s fictional, there’s much truth in it.

Transcendent Kingdom was a perfect pick for our Faith in Fiction reading group. Like the name of the group says, we pick books where faith plays an important role in the story, placing faith in the power of fiction to help us better understand life and our place in it. In addition to the themes directly related to faith, Transcendent Kingdom also has so many insights into how relationships work or don’t work, the state of the American dream, and the crisis of addiction and mental health disorders. The book includes some difficult topics and doesn’t shy away from harsh language, but provides a story well worth considering. I, and others in our discussion group, felt the book evoked a lot of empathy, but I also felt judgment toward some of the characters. That’s one of my takeaways—maximize and act on the empathy, and let the judgment fade away. The story makes clear that our words and actions have consequences in others’ faith journeys.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. In Gifty’s early childhood, she has a sweet and honest child-like faith in God. What did you notice about her beliefs before her brother’s death?

2. Nana’s death is a turning point in Gifty’s life and in her faith in God. What happens to Gifty after her brother’s death? How does she try to cope with this tragedy?

3. During her PhD studies with mice, Gifty realizes she thinks of the work as holy.

   “The collaboration that the mice and I have going in this lab is, if not holy, then at least sacrosanct. I have never, will never, tell anyone that I sometimes think this way, because I’m aware that the Christians in my life would find it blasphemous and the scientists would find it embarrassing, but the more I do this work the more I believe in a kind of holiness in our connection to everything on Earth. Holy is the mouse. Holy is the grain the mouse eats. Holy is the seed. Holy are we.”

   What do you make of this?

4. Pastor John and the Pentecostal church he leads in Alabama are helpful to Gifty’s family in some ways, but they are also revealed to be deeply flawed. How did you feel toward the characters from the church?

5. On page 44, Gifty describes the scientific question she’s trying to answer: “Could optogenetics be used to identify the neural mechanisms involved in psychiatric illnesses where there are issues with reward seeking, like in depression, where there is too much restraint in seeking pleasure, or drug addiction, where there is not enough?”

   She seems to see her mom’s deep depression and her brother’s addiction as two sides of the same coin. Her experiences with them definitely seem to drive her work. What else do you think contributes to her choice of work and the high level at which she desires to perform?

6. Gifty’s family doesn’t overtly display affection through words or touch. How do they relate emotionally? What’s the style of their communication? And how do you think these ways of relating contributed to the outcomes they experienced?

7. There are many examples of overt racism described in the book. How did racism affect Gifty and her family?

8. Gifty says, “I used to believe that God never gives us more than we can handle, but then my brother died and my mother and I were left with so much more; it crushed us. It took me many years to realize that it’s hard to live in this world...But to be alive in the world, every day, as we are given more and more and more, as the nature of “what we can handle” changes and our methods for how we handle it change, too, that’s something of a miracle.”

   Toward the end of the book, Gifty retains some sense of her religious upbringing, and the end of the book sees her sitting in an empty church with eyes open, not praying. Do you think there’s been some resolution for Gifty? How did you feel at the end of the book?

9. Are there any takeaways for you? Any one thing you want to remember from reading this book?
   

...some other force (the Spirit??) is leading

by Michael Winters

We’ve got a new exhibit going up here in the Sojourn Gallery this week. It’s a series of paintings by Cameron Alexander Lawrence gathered under the title Until I Can See You. I’ve really enjoyed talking and emailing with Cameron while the work has been developing. Recently he wrote:

“…I can't really explain it—there's this momentum behind the work that feels very, very right, but it's different from what I've done before. In a way, it almost feels like what I paint is out of my hands and some other force (the Spirit??) is leading.”

“The Distance Between Two Fires” by Cameron A. Lawrence. Acrylic on canvas. 48 x 48 inches

I’m wondering how many others have had a similar experience. Over the years I’ve heard many people express a similar feeling. Very rarely I think I’ve felt it myself. You get to a stopping point and look at what you’ve made. You know you made it and yet it feels like it wasn’t totally you that made it.

Cameron wondered with question marks whether it could be the Holy Spirit and others have suggested the same with more or less certainty. For example, our current intern McKenna O’Hare’s website homepage quotes André Gide: “Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.”

Or, for another example, on the Cultivated podcast’s excellent recent episode with Makoto Fujimura, Mako says, “If there’s one thing I know for sure, God creates through us.”

How can he be so certain? Our co-creation with God can’t be proven, but by faith, we can lean into it. In our lives and in our work, we can pray and hope to live our lives in tune with the Spirit. Maybe our artistic practice can even be time to practice listening for the voice of the Spirit. It’s incredibly mysterious. Jesus himself seems to admit the mysterious nature of the Spirit. In John 3, after blowing the mind of Nicodemus by telling him no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again, he elaborates: 

“Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

May this be true of your life. May you be like one born again and like one blown to and fro, not by waves of uncertainty, but by gusts of the Spirit.

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.

Mary Oliver's Devotions

by Michael Winters

For Christmas, I received a copy of Mary Oliver’s poetry collection, Devotions. I’d like to share here what is probably her most famous poem, “The Summer Day.” I bet you’ve heard the last two lines even if you didn’t know from where they came.

“The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver:

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

There’s so much to reflect on here. Between her first question about the Creator to her last question posed to the reader, the poet is paying attention to the world at hand. She asks who made the grasshopper, but clarifies this grasshopper. Like any good artist, she’s interested in the particulars of what she finds in front of her.

She says, “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. / I do know how to pay attention.” In this contrast of prayer and paying attention, might she be suggesting that the two have much to do with each other?

And when she comes to that last striking question, “what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?", my mind goes into business mode. I think of making plans and resolutions. I assess. But surely, in the context of the poem, this is not what she has in mind. She’s celebrating a decidedly unproductive day and then confronting us: “Tell me, what else should I have done?”

A couple weeks ago in Sojourn Midtown’s “Planted” sermon series, Pastor Nathan preached on Christian meditation, encouraging us to root ourselves in the scriptures this coming year. He encouraged us to pay attention to the Bible and let that attention lead us into prayer. For me, I think I’ll plant myself in Psalm 16 and the Gospel of John. But I also want to plant myself in the particulars of the world in front of me. Like Mary Oliver I want to know “how to be idle and blessed.”

Whether paying attention to a grasshopper or the scriptures, time spent meditating on beauty, truth, and goodness before God is no waste.

Jesus, the most creative person who ever lived

by Michael Winters

What did Jesus make during his earthly ministry?

I like to ask this question in a group context and see what answers come to the surface. People usually first think of the most tangible or art-like expressions of making. Someone will point out he was a carpenter (Mark 6:3). Someone will remember that he scribbled in the sand before saving the woman caught in adultery with his words, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” People will think of the miracles. Jesus turned water into wine. Jesus made the blind see, the lame walk. He made fish and loaves of bread multiply to feed thousands. People will think of his famous parables and so many phrases that have become part of our everyday speech.

“A Place at the Table”, charcoal on paper by Craig Hawkins, part of his series “Emmaus Road”

Then people will think of salvation. Jesus made the way to be reunited with God the Father. And finally, people will think of the kingdom of God. Jesus made the kingdom of God come near and grow like a mustard seed.

In The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard writes, “Saying Jesus is Lord can mean little in practice for anyone who has to hesitate in saying Jesus is smart…He is not just nice, he is brilliant. He is the smartest man who has ever lived.”

Similarly, we can also say Jesus is the most creative person who has ever lived. The effects of his creative work have reverberated through the centuries and have spread across the entire globe.

Jesus’ work while living an incarnate life 2000 years ago—his words and his actions—created a revolution larger and more pervasive than any other in history. Many in his own time wanted him to create a different kind of revolution. They wanted him to create a fast-acting attack on Roman rule. He instead made a peaceful revolution that worked more like yeast working through dough. Jesus’ words and actions spread through Israel and the Roman empire, and they continue working their way through all the religious and political powers today, altering the course of history forever.

Jesus not only lived a perfectly creative life in his time on Earth, but he is also Creator of the universe together with God the Father and the Holy Spirit. Colossians 1:15-17 ecstatically celebrates this:

“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Jesus. All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Our life is held together by the most creative person who ever lived.

Generosity From Artists, Generosity To Artists

by Michael Winters

In my experience, artists are some of the most generous people on the planet.

I recently received an unexpected small box in the mail. I love receiving mail and when the return address told me it was from Gene Schmidt, my excitement doubled. Gene was the first artist we showed in our current gallery space when we opened in 2012. It was an exhibit documenting his project Lovetown, PA.

And now here was this generous gift of a box in my mailbox waiting to be opened. As I unwrapped cardboard and tissue paper, a curious small object emerged.

It’s an old fabric measuring tape wound around some unknown core, in total larger than an egg, smaller than a baseball. The measuring tape is aged, and I wonder where it has been and what it has measured. For some reason it reminds me of my grandfather. The tape lies surprisingly flat to itself. It’s tight and seems to have no chance of unraveling. It seems like it must have been glued down but there’s no evidence of glue. And, I think meaningfully, there seems to be no chance of this object functioning to measure anything again. It has left the world of simple utility and now lives in the realm of art, where there’s generally no standard unit of measure.

Mini-Measurement by Gene Schmidt, gifted to the author.

Gene started his art career measuring pretty precisely, though poetically, in his first major project, Manhattan Measure. Manhattan Measure was what it sounds like: Gene measured Manhattan. He walked the length and width of Manhattan with thousands of red yard sticks, laying down one yard stick at a time, never using the same yard stick twice. Since then he’s continued the measurement theme, but moved towards things impossible to measure.

Documentation of Manhattan Measure, 2006-2008. Photograph by Alicia Hansen.

In Lovetown, PA, completed in 2010, Gene laser cut hundreds of floor tiles to spell out the entire text of 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient. Love is kind…”. With just one letter on each tile, he laid the tiles out as he walked through the city. When he got to the end of the passage, he’d pick them up and start again. Coming after Manhattan Measure, his project Lovetown, PA can also be viewed as a city-wide measurement, though the means of measuring is no longer bound to the clear calculations of yardsticks. In Lovetown, PA the unit of measure becomes a letter, which becomes a word, and then a full declaration of love, or at least a declaration of what love is.

Documentation of Lovetown, PA by Gene Schmidt. Photograph by Alicia Hansen.

Installation view of Lovetown PA by Gene Schmidt at Sojourn Arts, 2012.

Now that Gene is making these Measurements sculptures, of which my gift was a mini-measurement, what does it mean that these measuring devices can no longer fulfill their function? I’m not sure exactly, but it makes me think of things that can not be measured precisely—the true value of art, generosity, grace, gifts.

And there are things better left un-measured. 1 Corinthians 13:5 tells us love “keeps no record of wrongs.” Love doesn’t keep the score on wrongs. It’s not worried about measuring.

Measurement by Gene Schmidt

In my work with artists over the years, I’ve been impressed over and over again with the generosity of artists. Gene’s a good example, but there have been literally hundreds of other generous artists pass through our community too. They don’t seem concerned about keeping record of all they’ve given. After over a dozen years of arts ministry at Sojourn, the generosity from artists has been one of the biggest encouragements and one of the most common observations.

One of my hopes for the coming year is that we would witness as much (or more!) generosity going to artists as coming from artists.

Below are some ways you might consider being generous towards an artist whose work you admire:

1. Buy art. An artist needs to make money in order to keep producing their work. The pricing of art is notoriously obscure, and often wildly fluctuates, but to support an artist don’t just wait until you can get a steal of a deal. Buying directly from an artist is great, but galleries or other retailers selling for an artist are part of the support system and are worthy of support as well.

2. Send an artist a gift card or buy them lunch. If it’s someone you know or have a mailing address for, send them something to say thank you for the benefit you’ve already received from their work.

3. Ask what supplies they need and provide them. Making art is often expensive. If you’d be willing to front some cost for an artist to make something, that would blow their mind.

4. Give a monthly contribution. Some artists, like Andy Cenci and Kelly Kruse, have Patreon accounts so you can support them in a small dollar amount each month and receive perks for doing so. But even if an artist doesn’t have a Patreon account, you could suggest giving a particular dollar amount monthly and agree upon some sort of arrangement where you receive an artwork at the end of 12 months.

5. Be generous with encouragement. If you like an artist’s work, find out how to get ahold of them and tell them!

6. And tell others. Online or in person, be a fan and share what you appreciate about their work.

Embedded in Story: Mandy Cano Villalobos

by Jordan Lienhoop

According to her mother, multidisciplinary artist Mandy Cano Villalobos “popped out of the womb drawing,” creating galleries of her work down the hallway of their apartment building as a child. Even her material choices, which range from pomegranate seeds to human hair to old family clothing, have been shaped by her childhood experiences and interests, forming an artistic vision and practice embedded in story.

Artwork from her series Magnificat and Cor are currently in the sanctuary for our Advent series Wrapped in Flesh. You can view the installation photos here.

See more of Mandy’s work, including her site installations, on her website and on her Instagram @mandy_cano_villalobos.

“Magnificat XV” (2019) by Mandy Cano Villalobos. Cloth, string, and imitation gold.

“Magnificat X” (2019) by Mandy Cano Villalobos. Cloth, string, and imitation gold.

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“Solace in Blue” (2019) by Mandy Cano Villalobos. Imitation gold on wine stained paper, 7 x 9 inches.

“Cor Aurum I” (2019) by Mandy Cano Villalobos. Cloth, wood, metal and imitation gold.

“Cor Aurum II” by Mandy Cano Villalobos, 2019. Cloth, wood, metal and imitation gold.

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“Prince of Holes” (2018) by Mandy Cano Villalobos. Imitation gold on hand scorched rag, 9 x 12 inches.

This post is part of a series featuring artists involved in our ministry and community.

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.

Creative Work Under the Creator

by Michael Winters

In a wonderful 2015 talk, “Three Visions Necessary for the Christian Artist,” pastor and musician Vito Aiuto argues a Christian artist needs vision regarding three crucial questions:

1. Who is the world?

2. Who is God?

3. Who am I?

In this post, we want to consider that second question, “Who is God?”

Obviously this is a gigantic question. Here we just want to scratch the surface, hoping to open up some new ways of considering what a vision of God might mean for artists. Christians believe in the triune God, the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For this post, we’ll focus on God the Father as Creator and in future posts we’ll consider what it means to be an artist in light of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

There are two basic ways we can know something about God - The Bible (special revelation), and God’s creation (general revelation). Here, we’ll briefly look at both of these approaches to consider how a deepening relationship to God the Creator may change us and our art.

God revealed through the Bible

Below are a selection of direct quotes taken from the Old and New Testaments, direct statements describing who God is…

God is God; He is the faithful God.

God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

God is the one who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire.

God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.

God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.

God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.

God is with us; He is our leader. 

God is greater than any mortal.

God is exalted in His power. Who is a teacher like Him?

God is a righteous judge, a God who displays His wrath every day.

God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.

God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me.

God is a God who saves.

God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

God is a sun and shield.

God is in heaven; He does whatever pleases Him.

God is full of compassion.

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.

God is the builder of everything.

God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all.

God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

All of these statements describing who God is come after the Bible’s first revelation of who God is in Genesis 1 and 2. These first chapters of the Bible reveal God as Creator. The Bible begins, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” God speaks the cosmos into existence. He says, “Let there be light,” and there was light. He spoke all of it into being and called it good. God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.” God proceeds to do just that, to make mankind in God’s “image,” in some important sense, like God.

If humans are created like God, what does this mean? Among other things that could be said, it must mean that we, like God, also have creative capacity.

According to this foundational biblical story, every human being is God’s creation. All the earth and all the universe is God’s creation. This understanding gives us humans an honored place in the created order. We are not merely a happenstance of biological function. We are God’s creatures. God made each of us and knows us intimately. As Psalm 139:13-14 says,

“For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.”

“The Temptation and Fall of Eve” by William Blake, 1808.

The creation account puts humans in an honored position, but also a humble position. Genesis makes it clear who is in charge. According to this view, we are not God. God is God. God has created humankind and given us responsibility (Genesis 1:26-28). This responsibility we can call “creative power.”

God revealed through God’s creation

Our creative power, used for good or evil, happens in the context of God’s creation and always in relationship to the Creator. Our day-to-day life on planet Earth is where we relate to God. God is not a “character” in the Bible. He’s the God of creation, God of planet Earth. The earth is creation, not merely “nature.” All of us—whether Christian or atheist or otherwise—growing up in the 20th or 21st century have inherited a worldview that doesn’t really line up easily with this truth. Modern thought has tended to reduce creation to its composite parts. It has often failed to see the interconnectedness within creation itself and even more crucially creation’s connection to the Creator. We’ve inherited a way of thinking that doesn’t actually expect to experience God in the world. Yet “the earth is the Lord’s and all the fullness thereof” (from Psalm 24). This is the only world we now have in which to relate to and experience God. If we’re going to consciously relate to God within our lifetimes, it must happen here.

Once this reality sinks in, we enter a re-enchanted world where soil and seeds, water, bread and wine are themselves and yet transcend themselves. In short, we develop a sacramental vision. A sacramental vision is a way of seeing that integrates the visible and invisible, the divine and the human. A sacramental vision sees God’s grace active within physical reality.

Similar to how we can know something of an artist by getting to know what the artist has made, we can know something of God by considering what God has made. In Romans 1, Paul makes it sound obvious: “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” If this is true, what can we infer about God based on the vastness of the universe? And can we infer anything about God based on the existence of octopuses?

What does this mean for us as artists?

When we grow in our knowledge of God, either through the scriptures or through our life experience in God’s creation, we grow an overflow from which we ourselves can create. For artists, this inevitably makes its way into our work, directly or indirectly. Our understanding of God will always be terribly incomplete, but with attention, it will continue to change and grow. Our understanding of our own place in creation will also change and grow. Our art is a space to work out these understandings. We seek to know God and God’s creation as wholly and clearly as we can and attempt to give witness to that vision.

As our knowledge and trust of God the Creator grows, and as our ability to see the creation as God’s world grows, these benefits for artists may develop as well…

• We experience more wonder and awe. These are key ingredients for a creative life and lead us to valuable artistic vision.

• We find our life is a great gift as God has given it to us, including even the hardships. This gratitude makes us more generous in sharing our art with the world.

• We realize our identity is found in who God has made us to be. Our identity becomes less dependent on success and the approval of others. We are more free to make the art that we feel should be made.

• We are humbled, knowing our smallness before God. But we are honored, knowing we are known and loved.

In summary, a growing knowledge and trust of God the Creator gives us an incredible spiritual foundation for living whole-hearted lives, as men and women, but also as artists.

Creative Response

1. List 10 things God has created. List 10 more. Follow up question: What characterizes His creation? If we think of God as the ultimate artist, what is His style?

2. Read Tamisha Tyler’s poem “Who is God?” Read it at least two times slowly. Then, using the format of her poem as a template, create your own poem based on your own experience of relating to God.

Learning to Breathe (Creative Input)

by Michael Winters

Recently, I began learning how to breathe. It seems like something I should have had down pat by age 38, I know, but somehow when I was young I started bad breathing habits. I wasn’t aware, but under heavy exercise or heavy stress it would get worse and this would lead to migraines, fatigue, and a host of other unpleasant symptoms. For the exercise-induced migraines I’d gone to a neurologist and had an MRI and blood work and the whole deal. None of the specialists thought to ask me if I knew how to breathe. 

Artist Jason Leith, the director of Saddleback Visual Arts, once told me, “You have to breathe in to breathe out.” 

Vessel no. 2 by Jason Leith

This is undebatable truth, yet I had never thought of it in the literal sense or in the metaphorical sense in which Jason intended it. We were talking about creative output and the difficulties of consistently producing good work. To consistently have good creative output, you consistently need good creative input. So what is good creative input?

It could be a book or a movie, an album or a waterfall. Good creative input is the stuff that opens you up to new ways of seeing and hearing and thinking. This certainly includes spiritual disciplines like prayer, reading scripture, and meditating, as well as meaningful conversation. Experiences of inspiration and wonder feed your soul, and your creative output is the overflow of these combined experiences. Jeff Tweedy, the lead singer of Wilco, considers it his life’s work:

“Sometimes I think it’s my job to be inspired. I work at it. That’s what I do that most resembles work. It seems to me that the only wrong thing I could do with whatever gifts I’ve been given as a musician or an artist would be to let curiosity die. So I try to keep up with other people’s creative output. I read and I listen. I’m lucky that’s what I get to do with my time—keeping myself excited about the world and not being discouraged when it loses its spark.”

As artists busy with other responsibilities, it can feel selfish to dedicate time to creative input. You might feel that your limited time needs to be used to make your art rather than consider other people’s art. It also takes money to really experience other people’s art. Aspiring musicians and actors need to go to as many live shows as possible. Aspiring visual artists need to travel to museums and galleries. This is a necessary investment. It may seem selfish, but if you suspect creating art might be an important part of who God made you to be, the dedication of time and money to your creative health is merely faithfulness. Breathing in the inspirations of other people’s work is key to breathing out your own. To get there, you might consider instituting a weekly, or at least monthly, creative discipline, like an artist date. If you can get over inhibition towards pursuing inspiration, then the journey becomes a pleasure and a joy.

I recommend you create your own system to keep track of the inspirations you find. I keep a pocket size journal on me so I can jot down anything that inspires me or makes me feel a strong emotion. You might do a daily sketchbook, or you might keep a blog. To get the inspirations working into your own output will mean taking time to not only feel inspiration, but also to take note and ask yourself why the thing inspired you. If reading Peace Like a River really got your imagination going, what was it exactly about the book that inspired you? In words or sketches, try to get to the center of the inspiration. Was it the family relationships, maybe specifically the sibling relationships? Which scene in the story stuck with you most? Usually when inspiration occurs, there’s a strong connection to your personal history. This is worth exploring and will help inform your own future work. (I’m making a note to write a future post about this.)

So, you have to breathe in to breathe out. However, the breathing lesson that really improved my health and has kept the migraines and fatigue away is the inverse truth: You also have to breathe out to breathe in. In the literal sense, this is important because if you don’t fully exhale, carbon dioxide builds up, your body tries to get more oxygen, but your lungs are already partially filled with carbon dioxide. This creates a cycle of shallow breathing, or holding your breath, leading to oxygen depletion. 

Related to creativity, it’s important to “breathe out” creative output, because that’s what creates the space for “breathing in” new inspiration. Like holding your breath, if you find yourself not getting inspired and not creating anything new, you’ll get blocked. When the rhythm of input and output gets off, it can be really hard to get back in sync. Starting by just making one small thing might help open up the space to seek out new inspiration.

Sojourn Arts Feedback Group participant Tim Robertson once shared a metaphor for culture with me. He said culture is like a lake. The lake is always evaporating and there are no streams naturally flowing into it. Artists must constantly fill the lake with new buckets of work. This is a never-ending task completed by generation after generation. This is a high and laborious calling and we need all the inspiration we can get.

Quote by Sherrie Rabinowitz. Sign: “Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy” by Lauren Bon. Neon, edition of 12.

A fulfilling and fruitful creative life is built on a healthy rhythm of input and output, breathing out and breathing in.

Questions for Reflection

Think about the relationship between your creative input and your creative output. To which do you usually give more attention? 

In the coming season, do you want to devote more time to creative input or creative output?

Creative Response

Make a list of the artists or other individuals who have inspired you most.

Further Reading: Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon

Heaven From a Different Angle

by Savannah Hart

Julie Baldyga’s Heavenly People on view at KMAC through November 8, 2020.

“This collection showcases Baldyga’s work over different periods of her life and is a poignant reminder of what is possible when we refuse to write people off.”
- Carrie Neumayer, in the introduction to In Heaven Everyone Will Shake Your Hand.

I visited KMAC a couple Thursdays ago, and the work on the walls unearthed some memories I have from a few years back:

My high school friend Murrin had been imploring me for a few summers to join her at JAF Family Retreat, an event at which she and her family serve every year. Finally I found myself with her at Shawnee Lodge in southern Ohio, people of all ages bustling around us. Lots of lanyards, lots of color-coded t-shirts, the usual camp-y things. Also, lots of textured, sensory objects. Lots of unshaven legs and armpits, lots of running, climbing, and crawling. Lots of sound.

I remember one of my earliest interactions there as I walked past a man sitting in a chair. “Hey, hey, hey!” he called after me. “Josephine and...?” He repeated it a couple times, eagerly waiting for me to finish his sentence. 

“Aw, Josephine? I don’t think I know a Josephine! Who do you mean?”

Then he said another phrase, a line from the movie. He threw in the names Meg and Marmie.

“Wait!... do you mean Josephine and Laurie?”

“YES, LAURIE!” he vigorously clapped his hands and began to dance in his seat. “Ok, here’s another one . . .”

One of his most active forms of communication, and clearly the one that brought him the most joy, was speaking in movie quotes. Especially Little Women.

I was serving at a week-long event put on by Joni and Friends, a retreat and vacation provided for families impacted by disability. When the families arrive at the lodge, the scene becomes one like a red carpet—we’re told to exuberantly celebrate these people who often walk into other public places and are “written off.” They come here entirely to receive, to party, to rest, and to have space to fully be themselves. One family comes every year with a son who loves to walk. He would walk all day if he could. But at Family Retreat he can—and he does. The minute they arrive, his team of buddies join him on his continuous meander of the grounds. We’d see them pass by on occasion throughout the week. 

“David and Beverly Having Fun at the Prom” by Julie Baldyga. Oil pastel on masonite.

The experience was beautifully unconventional. All social norms were tossed out the window. It was a setting like I hadn’t found myself in before, with a profoundly refreshing freedom. It reminded me of Heaven:

No standards to fit.
A complete, blissful acceptance and safety.
Unadulterated expression.

Heaven reflected from a different angle.

KMAC is currently exhibiting through the end of this week (Nov. 8) the work of Julie Baldyga, a Louisvillian of StudioWorks by Zoom Group. The angle from which Julie views the world is vividly put on display: pastel drawings with impressive technique, ceramic models, and life-size sculptural figures all of the people and things she loves. You’ll pick up on the things she loves best: big hands, complex machinery, close friends.

The name of the show is Heavenly People, as the world that Julie gives us is her own life, and the people in it, perfected and made whole. This is Heaven to her.

When Julie thinks of Heaven, she’s not thinking of gold streets and biblical saints, but of the squirrels that run around there, the inventions we’ll still be exploring, the dances we’ll still dress up for. It’s filled with lots of car parts and busy hands, captured in a style that reminds me of early Picasso; people with ordinary names and plenty of body hair.

Heaven reflected from a different angle.

Also available at KMAC, the Louisville Story Program published a collection of Julie’s work over the years in a beautiful book, In Heaven Everyone Will Shake Your Hand: The Art of Julie Baldyga. The book also tells the story of parents, siblings, and teachers who ensured that someone whom society was ready to “write off” knew she was loved, safe, and accepted. They ensured her vision and skills were acknowledged, encouraged, and cultivated.

For unadulterated expression.

The world is far wider, far more glorious, if we let those who step outside the conventional lines take us with them.

On Voting: Zac Benson’s Sheep Among Wolves

By Michael Winters

I imagine artist Zac Benson bent over a table, emptying small bottles of holy water into a bowl, mixing the holy water with plaster, and forming little sculptural sheep, one after the other. Dozens of these little sheep are fit into a clear acrylic cross. On either side of the sheep-filled cross, we see two other clear acrylic crosses, one filled with 3-D printed donkeys and the other with elephants, symbols of Democrats and Republicans.

“Sheep Among Wolves” by Zac Benson (2018). 32” x 18” x 3” each. Acrylic glass, polyactide, plaster, holy water.

Zac Benson writes, “I have struggled with voting ever since I came of age. I always felt every candidate and every party used my faith, my morals, as a pawn. At first, much of what they said was appealing and I started to get swayed based solely on the fact of their attentiveness to my faith convictions.”

“Sheep Among Wolves” (detail) by Zac Benson (2018). 32” x 18” x 3” each. Acrylic glass, polyactide, plaster, holy water.

Zac Benson’s “Sheep Among Wolves” functions as a visual parable for Christians feeling politically homeless in our polarized times. His statement above stops abruptly, refusing use of words to reveal if he’s felt a sense of conclusion or resolution regarding how to vote. Like all parables, this visual parable is better left unexplained.

We are left with a central image of little toy sheep, handmade from plaster and holy water, piled together in a clear acrylic cross on a white wall. Let those who have eyes see.

Life as Given: Sam Cooney

by Jordan Lienhoop

Painting and working with his hands has been a part of Sam Cooney's life since childhood, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that he began to reflect on what was driving his work. He started to paint the scenes around him—what he found as beautiful—and the culmination of these efforts is his body of work Life as Given. The six large-scale paintings give testament to the abundance of everyday life and invite viewers to see their daily moments in a new way.

See more of Sam’s work on Instagram at @samcooney. Plus, check out a piece from his first exhibit with us in 2015, here.

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“Roly-Poly” by Sam Cooney. Oil paint on panel, 80”x45”

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“The Orange Kitchen” by Sam Cooney. Oil paint on panel, 80”x45”

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“Nephew” by Sam Cooney. Oil paint on panel, 36”x48”

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“Harry’s Market” by Sam Cooney. Oil paint on panel, 36”x48”

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“Family on Couch” by Sam Cooney. Oil paint on panel, 80”x45”

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“Thoughts & Feelings” by Sam Cooney. Oil paint on panel, 36”x48”

This post is part of a series featuring artists involved in our ministry and community in Louisville, Kentucky.

Three Creative Disciplines

by Michael Winters

‘Creative’ and ‘discipline’ might sound like an unusual combination if you’re not familiar with the idea, but really creativity needs discipline to thrive. A discipline is a practice, and so a set of creative disciplines provides a routine for regularly feeding and training your creative soul. 

Creative disciplines are like spiritual disciplines. They are habits chosen to slowly and quietly transform you. In Christian spiritual disciplines, like prayer, scripture reading, worship, and others, the Christian practicing these things is submitting him or herself to these habits in order to abide with Christ and thus become more like Jesus. We experience this as spiritual growth.

Creative disciplines similarly are meant to lead us toward creative growth. Hopefully, spiritual disciplines and creative disciplines will complement each other and together participate in your formation.

There are three creative disciplines each of our arts team members (staff and interns) complete weekly and which we tell each other about during our weekly meetings.

A collaged card for a gift and encouragement to an artist in our ministry.

1. Art as Gift

Each week make something for someone and give it to them. For our team, this is often a handmade postcard. Sometimes it’s a drawing torn out of a sketchbook, or a little sculpture pieced together and left on a friend’s porch.

This discipline has three primary goals:
1. Training yourself to understand art primarily as a mode of blessing and gift, rather than primarily as commercial product or as merely self-expression for private purposes. Over time, giving small art objects away habituates you to generosity and trains you to see that your art is for others.
2. Getting accustomed to creating quickly. If you’re going to give something to someone each week, you’ll need to work quickly. This is intentional. The speed of production is intended to grow your output and quiet your self-criticism, disciplining you to churn out work without overthinking it. You are becoming someone who makes art regularly and has a consistent flow of production.
3. Blessing others with your creative work. This discipline is designed to make you a better artist, but it’s also genuinely for the sake of those receiving your art. What could you make that will make their day better?

2. Write an Encouragement to an Artist

Each week write to another artist whose work you appreciate. Tell them you appreciate it and what it has meant to you. You can write artists who you already know, but I encourage you to write to artists you don’t know personally. Even many fairly well established artists don’t receive fan mail.

This writing could take a few different forms. You could send a message via social media, or you could send snail mail if you know the address. Or, you could write a “public letter” addressed to the artist, but posted on your own social media, sharing about the artist’s work and what it’s meant to you.

When sending your encouragement, you should do so without any expectation of a response, though it’s nice when a reply is returned. Many real life relationships have begun from this kind of simple encouragement. This discipline has the potential to greatly expand your web of creative relationships.

Of course, a purchase from an artist is an encouragement too, so a written encouragement paired with a purchase is even better!

3. Artist Dates

Viewing Julie Baldyga’s Heavenly People at KMAC.

Each week go by yourself on an outing that inspires you creatively. This idea comes from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. This might be a trip to the museum or the bookstore, the art supply store or a concert. Do something that feeds and fuels your creative soul. Don’t be afraid to do something that stretches you, too. Plan these outings a week or two ahead so that you have something to look forward to and so that your schedule doesn’t crowd out the time.

Hear Julia Cameron communicate the idea of an artist date in this video.

Summary

These three creative disciplines aren’t a conclusive list by any means. For example, studio time is a basic and necessary discipline for most artists. And some routine of creative community can also be incredibly important. Our Arts Feedback Group functions that way for many involved in our ministry. Having a few artist friends in regular conversation can invigorate your creative practice. Additionally, keeping a sketchbook, or different forms of journaling and list-making, can become vital creative disciplines.

It’s important to find 3-5 creative disciplines that work for you and stick with them. Like with spiritual disciplines, you may find yourself falling out of the habit, but there’s no benefit to beating yourself up about it. It’s okay to simply pick up where you left off. And it’s also okay to revise your chosen disciplines over time. Remember, the goal is creative growth.

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. 

Let Justice Roll Like a River

“But let justice roll on like a river,
    righteousness like a never-failing stream!” - Amos 5:24

2020 is rolling like a river, but it’s not a river of justice or righteousness. The big picture view we get from our small screen devices is injustice, polarization, violence, tragedy.

When we read the verses leading to Amos 5:24, the well known verse gains more potency. Amos describes the day of the Lord as a day of darkness, not light. He surprisingly says, “Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord.” Verse 19 sounds like someone from 2,700 years ago describing the vibe of 2020:

“It will be as though a man fled from a lion
    only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
    and rested his hand on the wall
    only to have a snake bite him.”

Around every turn is an unexpected danger. This is how Amos imagines God’s judgment for the religious people acting unjustly toward the poor. Amos is compelling people toward justice. Their religiosity and their “beliefs” aren’t cutting it.

How do we imagine justice? Can we imagine a just world?

Our ability to imagine a just world will determine how we act in the present. For Christians, who believe God is bringing history patiently toward a just fulfillment, the kingdom of God is that just world. Jesus taught us to imagine it. It’s like treasure hidden in a field. It’s like a mustard seed. It’s like yeast mixed into flour. Our imaginations must expand. Jesus’ teaching is consistently pushing beyond the merely legal to what is truly good. His gaze is focused further out beyond the religious laws of his day to a vision of the kingdom of God, where what God wants done gets done. We must be able to imagine a just world and then live according to that vision.

The community art project seen above invited church attenders to do that, to imagine a just world. People were given markers and asked to share their vision of a just world on the cut out letters. We don’t all imagine exactly the same thing. That’s to be expected, but may God grant us growing imaginations, more able to see Christ’s kingdom, and may God grant us courage to act boldly in pursuit of that vision.

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• Sojourn Midtown recently created a webpage full of resources following the recent sermon series, The Gospel, Race and Justice. Check it out here: https://sojournchurch.com/midtown/justice

• Hear Sojourn Music’s 2015 “Let Justice Roll”

Portrait of a Tree: Brittany Anne Jarboe Jennings

by Jordan Lienhoop

Art across a variety of mediums become a form of expression for Brittany Anne Jarboe Jennings. She’s a cellist, visual artist, and poet (though she doesn’t fully claim the last one yet). It’s as a visual artist, however, that she expresses and processes her emotions and reactions to the world around her, creating highly detailed portraits of trees, or, of herself.

See more of Brittany’s work on Instagram at @brittandthecello.

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Nursing Chair no. 2 by Brittany Anne Jarboe Jennings. Mixed media drawing. 11x14”

Brentwood Ave. corner Maple by Brittany Anne Jarboe Jennings. Graphite drawing. 14x17”

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Abstract sketch by Brittany Anne Jarboe Jennings. Mixed media drawing. 5.5x8.5”

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My Youngest Son is Precious by Brittany Anne Jarboe Jennings. Mixed media on yupo paper. 11”x14" Award winner in Made in the Belly of the Whale exhibit.

my youngest son is precious/ my youngest son is sweet,/ with kisses at an evening’s close/ and tiny giggles of glee./ my youngest son has eyes as blue as the frosted blues of a blueberry’s top./ but there are some moments I’d rather spend/ with pencil and paper than be/ the rock, the helper, the cook, or/ my youngest sons’ continual trapeze./ july 13.2020

This post is part of a series featuring artists involved in our ministry and community in Louisville, Kentucky.