Im reading “Blue Pastures,” by Mary Oliver, and this quote jumps off the page, grabs me by my reluctant neck, and says “Pay attention!” I hope it will grab your neck as well.

“…the most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to
creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and
uprising, and gave it neither power nor time.”

What permission do you need to set aside time? I have one suggestion! Set aside June 5-9, 2009 for the Next Via Affirmativa Gathering in Colorado Springs …

Gary Bradley

Permission Granted!

by Christy Tenant

If I paint more excellently than any other, but I do not communicate love in my painting, I am nothing more than an offensive noise; like Pavarotti accompanied by an out-of-tune piano: a mockery of the beautiful.

If I possess divine insights and wisdom, and even if I have strong spiritual fortitude, but I cannot speak the truth in love, I am nothing to boast about.

If I am generous with my art, my talents, and my creativity – exhausting myself for the sake of my craft – but the people around me do not feel loved or served in humility, I have accomplished nothing to speak of.

An excellent artist can wait for her moment, though years in the making, because she understands that recognition does not equal excellence; Van Gogh never sold a painting.

An excellent artist is kind; he makes his gift accessible and available to all who love and appreciate beauty.

An artist devoted to true excellence does not envy those who are more accomplished than she is, nor does she boast to those who have not accomplished as much as she has.

An artist of excellence does not reek of arrogance, nor does he have a reputation for being rude.

A truly excellent artist works well with others, appreciating the unique gifts and insights they bring to the table, rather than immediately assuming her way is the only way. (And she doesn’t get an attitude if the team decides to go in a different creative direction!)

An artist who is excellent does not secretly get a charge out of others’ failures, but rather encourages those who have tried and failed to try again. By the same token, he does not offer false compliments or patronizing feedback. He finds a way to be gently honest and constructively critical, because he values truth.

An artist or creative catalyst devoted to excellence in his craft sticks with it to the end. She doesn’t give up out of ego or pride or frustration or failure, but keeps hoping and believing in the source of creativity, turning frequently to that source for sustaining inspiration and grace.

Finally, an artist committed to excellence understands that creativity does not happen in a vacuum. Rather, it flows from a deep, rushing river, created by God and fed and filled by others who have been given the creative gift as well. The artist who stays close to the river and drinks often from it, by looking to and appreciating the beauty reflected in others, grows in ever-increasing excellence.

This artist is truly excellent.

One might say each artist is connected to the river from which all creativity flows, sometimes as a spring and sometimes as a tributary, and through this connection we have access to an ever-flowing source of inspiration, grace and hope, available to all who come to drink.

Christy Tennant, of the International Arts Movement

Colorado Springs, June 6, 2008
VAF Gathering

Post a comment for Christy here  and see the IAM website at www.internationalartsmovement.com

by Elizabeth Webb 

I was asked a question recently: how does someone feel or act when they do not believe that they are loved?  I work with these kids in New York City. Some of them come from broken homes, financially struggling homes or homes dealing with drug use or neglect.  Others seem to have a fairly good home life and stable parents in their lives.  When we work with these kids, many of them act out by picking fights, ignoring authority, disobeying, and lying, while others listen well, obey and are generally easy to watch over.  When I was asked this question, I thought of these kids.

It would seem that each child acts out of an automatic response to how much they feel or do not feel loved.  For example, if a 12 year old girl is belligerent, tough, picks fights a lot, is not very responsive to co-operating with others or simply shuts down around others, would it be so hard to imagine that this girl may not feel loved?  What if her parents do not act like they care or are addicted to drugs or alcohol, forcing her into a situation where she feels completely on her own, unloved, unnoticed, forgotten and neglected?  I think that, if I felt forgotten and that no one cared about me, it might make me a little mad sometimes and defensive and untrusting and definitely more than a little irritated at others who I perceived to have what I didn’t have.

I compared and contrasted two ideas in my mind: A child who believes he or she is loved has a calmness about them, they have an ability to simply trust, they can love freely, they feel safe and know that they deserve love and that it is completely normal to need and want love.  A child who does not believe that he or she is loved, however, seems to be full of fear, is distrustful of everything, is afraid to love freely for fear of being hurt or having their love rejected, feels constantly insecure and has no assurance that they deserve to be loved.  Their acting out or shutting down, their arguing and fighting or their lack of responsiveness is all a reaction to these feelings which are rooted in a belief that they are not loved.

But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much like these children I am in my response to how much I believe, or don’t believe, that I am loved.  It’s as if we all live somewhere either on the extreme ends of these beliefs or somewhere in between and our actions, like the actions of these children, reveal how much we really believe we are, or are not, loved.  I may believe that I am loved at about an 80% level so, while I can love freely, I still fight a fear in my heart that I am not loveable.  Or, I may believe I am only 30% loved so, while I can’t trust anyone, I still have so much love to give.

I never really looked at life through this lens before.  Honestly.  I believe in love.  I believe love is the most powerful thing in this world! I am a die-hard romantic.  I LOVE love!  But I still never thought to look at the world around me through a lens of “how do we live our lives out of how much we each believe we are truly loved?”  If I really believed, deep, deep down in my soul believed, that I was loved, that I was so unconditionally loved that I could never, ever lose that love, how would I live out my life?

I try to imagine it and it’s almost like trying to imagine walking on air.  Life would be so easy and so full of richness and depth.  I would be able to breathe through every day and just enjoy everything around me without being so caught up in myself and my fears.  Fear would fall away!  And yet I would feel my deepest desires with more clarity and understanding.  I would be able to add to others’ lives and they to mine.  The ego would fall away!  It’s not as if I wouldn’t feel pain or grief or anger but it would be full of healing instead of injury to myself and others and it would be full of wisdom rising up in wave after wave.  It would feel like wounds actually healing instead of being simply bandaged if I knew, through my entire being, that I was loved.  Forever.

I do not know if anything or anyone on this earth could ever, being as selfish as we all can be even on our good days, make me feel this loved.  100% loved.  Could I look to myself for this love?  But, then, how could I? What about the deep desire in my heart to have this love from someone outside of myself? I am sometimes the LEAST unconditional toward myself and my self-love has hurt others around me so, it does not feel possible that I could provide 100% love for, well, myself.  And I’ve learned the hard way that any success in my career or my craft or in my relationships can never make me feel this loved because I am never good enough even for myself much less a fickle public or a frustrated partner.

The bible is full of images of God as a father and humanity as God’s children.  I think this is a positive statement on how loved we are and how loved we can come to believe we are. Little children, little babies, are so automatically open to love, so quick to assume that love is theirs, should be theirs, simply for the having! It’s as if unconditional love is an absolutely natural thing to expect in this life and should be an absolutely natural part of it.  But it is only over time, as love is built up or chipped away, that they, that WE, respond and act out accordingly.

The beauty of the freedom offered through love is extraordinary but this world lets us down, people let us down, we let ourselves down.  Every day.  All of our lives.  We know perfect, unconditional love HAS to be true!  We know it in our guts.  Little babies just KNOW it!  We NEED perfect love!  Something inside of us knows that this idea CANNOT be a fairy tale.  Because we yearn for it.  Every day.  All of our lives.

The apostle Paul writes constantly in the new testament about love and famously states that “love never fails”. Could it be possible that the reason belief in love or lack of it affects us so deeply is that perfect, unconditional love really DOES exist?  A love that never fails?   Could it be possible that we’ve just been looking for it in places and people that will only let us down?  I say, keep looking for it.  Be open to it.  Lift up your eyes to the sky and ask for it if you want and maybe that frightened, angry, acting-out child in you will understand how loved we really are and will finally be able to be still and rest.

by Elizabeth Webb…

I am filled with an anxiety that alludes me.  Why am I so nervous right now?  It’s some general sense of fear that is making my stomach tight and filling me with discomfort.  But I don’t know why I feel fearful.  Usually, I know specifically why I’m afraid or nervous but sometimes there is this: this anxiousness that creeps over me and, even if I realize that it is simply “fear.” I still cannot for the life of me figure out why I am so afraid.

What am I afraid of?  Or is this just something that happens as we age?  These moments of general fear with no seeming object of that fear?  I am 35 years old.  I am single, I still have a roommate and I am not sure whether I will ever have what this world defines as success in my career.  Is this why I am full of fear?  Simply because the clock, it would seem, is ticking?  But ticking toward what?

It would seem that something in me expects there to be a time in my life when I “settle down,” have a home, a family or, at least, a loved one to share my life with.  Isn’t this something we all want in one way or another?  I live in a big city . Most people are single and living as I am well into their middle years.  I know two women who did not have their first child until the age of 42 and I know men and women of the same age who are still single, still dating, still living with a roommate and still pursuing a career not yet blossomed with that job on the side that “pays the bills.”

It shouldn’t need to be said that many societies and cultures function very differently.  I recently visited the Dominican Republic and had the opportunity to spend some time drinking cervezas with a few locals and two other American women who were vacationing as well.  When the local men were told that these two American women were in their early 40’s, still single, not married, no children, they practically fell out of their chairs saying, “We have grandmothers that age!”

In many parts of the U.S., building a family and a solid career starts right out of college or soon thereafter; and even in New York, one of the biggest cities in the world, there are small clusters of inner-city culture that, like the locals in the D.R. would say that they have grandparents in their early 40’s, marriages and families started in the early 20’s, and aunties who are 10.

Could it simply be that big cities with big artistic cultures draw artists who, historically, have a hard time building a career with their art?  The “poor starving artist,” right?  But, in New York alone, there are many artists earning a very good living from their craft.  And what about all of the other people—those in finance, business, production, magazine publication, fashion, or teaching?

Maybe it isn’t about what you “do,” or about your career but a habit that is part of this culture.  A habit of “holding out for the next best thing.”  Holding out for the next better job, the next better boyfriend or girlfriend, the next better apartment or the next better group of friends, the next better body or spiritual fulfillment—waiting for your real life to begin or waiting for everything to be perfect before you settle down somewhere or with someone or just simply waiting to be able to say, “NOW everything is just perfect with my life.  NOW I am complete.”

But what is this “real life?”  And, for that matter, what is “perfect?”  Maybe this general fear that I am feeling at 35 years of age is simply a growing awareness that if I keep “holding out,” I may just miss out.  Could it be that if I could accept that I am living my life NOW, that my life could possibly, just possibly be “perfect” right NOW, that my career is successful NOW, no matter what stage it is in, then I would actually find myself settling down inside of myself even if things don’t appear to be settled on the outside.

Holding out for what is best and necessary for ourselves is a good, good thing but holding out and not being open to what is available and offered right now may be trapping us in a never-ending cycle of thinking that satisfaction in this life will only come when we find that “next best thing.”

I want to hold out for true love and a fulfilling career and a beautiful home but what if I already have it or could have it if I just open my eyes and lived my life RIGHT NOW and not in the future?  Maybe, if I could be open to that possibility, I would have riches beyond comprehension in all areas of my life and maybe, just maybe, I could live without fear.

by Caleb Seeling

Newsweek did a cover story on Billy Graham last year. I thought it was an excellent treatment of one of the most influential men in the last 2000 years. You can read the full article here.

I came away from the story with two thoughts. The first thing that struck me was the arc of Billy’s story. The picture above shows his youthful fire. He was friend and confidante to presidents and world business leaders. He was on a nickname basis with Martin Luther King, Jr., “Mike” to Billy. He got involved in the political scene and became a type of spokesman for political figureheads - a career move that got him written off by most of the press and social critics, something that he eventually was able to reverse. He preached the gospel to more people in the world than anyone else in the history of Christianity.

Now, he is consistently lionized by the press. Time did a story about him 13 years ago:

Then he made the top 100 most influential people of the 20th Century list. Then this latest article by Newsweek. “When’s he going to die?” seems to be the underlying question. And the one that is even deeper is, “Is there anyone in the current generations who can fill the void he will leave?” That is the second thought I had and the one that leaves me troubled.

Compare the two pictures. Look at the eyes. He’s been tempered over the years. That gives me some hope for our present. There are lots of fiery young folk (by young I mean 50 years and younger) around who are in the process of being tempered. But I’m not sure I see any really cut from the same stock as Billy or Mother Theresa. Most likely there are a lot of saints like them - perhaps they’re just diluted in the over publicized era we live in. Perhaps they aren’t recognized as such because of our post-Christian society.

But the case doesn’t seem much different in other religions. We are witnessing the twilight of other “saints” - His Holiness The Dalai Lama is no young buck, Thich Nhat Hanh is also in his latter years. Have there been any recent Buddhas? Not to my knowledge. Certainly Imams and Clerics all have black marks by their names, whether they deserve it or not. Maybe what we’re really living in is not just a post-Christian society, but a post-religious world - a world of “spirituality” and secularism. A world where atheism is trying to scrape and claw its way back into favor after being deemed passé, if not anachronistic.

And yet, it is a world that still loves a good redemption story. The romance of healing, peace, and love still grips the hearts of most everyone. Humans still long to “be complete,” to be at peace with ourselves, each other, and the material world. Now that “Man is dead,” as Foucault declared, now that the idol of human potential and accomplishment has been consumed in a mushroom cloud, maybe now we see that there is still hope in something more. We can almost glimpse the “white shores” and the “far green land” that Tolkein talks about. Will there be anyone in the present and near-future generations who can serve as beacons for the rest of us? Will all God’s children please stand up?

by Elizabeth Webb…

It’s overwhelming. I read the headlines in the news today and it’s overwhelming. Even in prosperous parts of the world like the U.S. and Europe, poverty, violence, kidnapping, child exploitation and the evil of selfishness thrive. It angers and frustrates me.

How can this world ever change? And yet, how can I, with my limited capabilities, do anything about any of this? I am an artist. In my short life I have been a ballerina, a fashion designer, an actor, a writer, a founding member of a theatre company and an amateur filmmaker. I am not famous. I am not rich. I am simply a creative person among all the other kinds of people on this earth. So, how can any of this that I am doing in my life help the world?

When I read the headlines in the morning I feel helpless. Better to give it all up, join the Peace Corp., found a non-profit or get into social work in order to make a difference, right? But what if the Peace Corp. is way out of my league? What if I wouldn’t know the first thing about starting a non-profit? What can I, little me, add to the sea of non-profitdom? And what about today? Right now? Things need to change RIGHT NOW.

I do not have much money to give, I do not have much time to give and my “art” is certainly not receiving much attention or I would be selling t-shirts that stated “Enough already world, stop killing yourself!” or doing public service announcements about something or other that needs awareness. But am I really still helpless if it is not in my power to do these things?

Or would it be possible to imagine that, simply by being myself and living my life immersed in this world, really participating in it, while resisting the urge to only be consumed with my own personal needs and desires, by simply creating what I am compelled to create, that this alone could be enough to cause a ripple of effect on the world around me to do the same? What about cause and effect? If I can live my life, as an artist or as a whatever-I-may-be, trying to remember that life is not all about me, then maybe others could be inspired to do the same.

I try to imagine a world where people try their best to keep their eyes lifted away from constantly staring at their own heart’s yearnings, their own life’s pleasures, and it is a very different world. To look away from yourself in order to see how someone else is doing, even for a moment, is to deny the selfishness that pervades our lives and to deny the cycle of violence remaining in it.

I am an artist but, first, I am a human being. What if it did not matter what I did with my life? Art, finance, business, law, accounting, motherhood, bartending, bus driving, anything! What if any of us could cause lasting change in this world by simply doing what we do each day and yet also practice lifting up our eyes to each other once awhile?

You never know, maybe this could give us new yearnings, new desires of things we want to do with our lives and, maybe, some of us WOULD join the Peace Corp. or found a great new non-profit, or become social workers. Or maybe we would just continue going about our daily lives doing whatever it is we each do but with hearts moving away from the selfishness that is destroying our world.

Now THAT is something I think I can do. Today. Right now. And that is a world I would like to see.

In the words of Donald McGilchrist…

Never was the apostle John more inspired than when he penned this astonishing statement: ‘the Word became flesh’. Redemption infused a fallen creation.

Making art is hardly easy. We struggle to express truth among the ruins of our culture, to bring beauty into disordered lives. Sometimes, circumstances just roll over us, flattening our creative energies.

What can we do? Much, because the Word became flesh.

At the beginning, our Triune God had worked with such joy and wisdom that his material world was drenched with goodness. Unalloyed goodness. Indeed, we were the pinnacle of his workmanship. But, we crashed…and shattered the relational intimacy for which he had designed us.

End of story? No, there is hope, because the Word became flesh. God’s goodness has graced us. In Jesus, he has freshly dignified our bodies and lifted up the material world. Brian Wren captures the outcome:

Good is the body for knowing the world,
sensing the sunlight, the tug of the ground,
feeling, perceiving, within and around,
Good is the body, from cradle to grave,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

The Word became flesh. Language became life. The unfathomable voice of our holy God became his healing, caressing touch, in Jesus. The material matters! Now, we can know that nothing we do need be insignificant, provided it is crafted before the face of God, shaped in the light of his presence.

Pastries, poems, packaging, payment systems…all that we create can, indeed should, express a loving obedience to our God who designed us to do good work, including good art!

“For we are God’s works of art, created in Christ Jesus to do good work which God prepared in advance for us to do”—Ephesians 2:10.