disruptive grace

Paul posted a provocative quote from Dan Siedell this week. It offers a helpful continuation from my last post. The discipline of hidden-ness is important, but not to the extent of mediocrity, hidden-ness may be unseen, but it can still be a life will with love, passion, and compassion (‘to suffer alongside’) . The stories of old (and in fact all great art) stir our souls because they contain, as N.T. Wright puts it, ‘the echos of a Voice’ — echos that whisper of justice, relationship, spirituality, and beauty. Dan Siedell suggests this:

Let me suggest that neither “Christianity” nor “culture” per se make modern society uncomfortable. It is the self-sacrificial and uncompromising pursuit of greatness and quality in these practices, a life singularly devoted to them, which condemns the virtues of contemporary professional and personal life: compromise, mediocrity, and personal comfort that makes modern society uncomfortable.
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Are we now too sophisticated, too enlightened, too iconoclastic to believe in the myths of great art, great culture, even the possibility of a great life devoted to Christ? We’re not humble. We’re cowards.

We need courage in this journey of culture making, just as we need humility, for we are never fully aware of the implications of our actions or our artifacts. What we do may be noticed by thousands, or by only our closest friends. We must continue to have to courage to continue and create. Dan Siedell again:

The production of great culture, great art, cannot be separated from the risk of failure. Most writers, musicians, poets, and artists do not produce great art, great culture, even if they enjoy successful careers. And even those poets, artists, and musicians who have, do not produce it very often. Do we have the courage to fail, to push ourselves to the point of failure, to assume we probably will fail to produce great art, great culture and still try? … Do we have the courage to produce culture that transcends those rules, which perhaps even changes the rules of the game, or render conventions irrelevant?

Herman Melville died convinced that Moby-Dick was a failure. And most of the literary critics of his time agreed with him. As we curry the favor of contemporary critics and book reviewers, bristle at negative reviews or fawn over those who praise us, it would be a useful exercise to read those initial reviews of Moby-Dick.

“Herman Melville died convinced that Moby-Dick was a failure.” – Yet he produced and published and allowed his novel to exist. He died, (I speculate) with perhaps many believing he had “no great thing… only small things with great love.” We must live likewise.

On that line, I stumbled on this prayerful poem attributed to Sir Fancis Drake this morning:

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.

Here’s to dreaming. Here’s to failing. Here’s to being unnoticed. Here’s to continuing anyway. Here’s to hpoe. Here’s to courage. Here’s to love. Here;s to lying in gutters and looking at the stars.*

“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.” **

* – with thanks to Oscar Wilde.
** – from Philippians 3

Every so often you read a book that you just love, to the extent that it seems a waste to rush it, but all the same to chug through it. Then you tell everyone about it, and then even that’s not enough and you start to think of who you could buy copies for. Culture Making by Andy Crouch is such a book. It’s well research and also include plenty of the authors own wisdom and experience, it challenges mind, heart and body, and inspires new ways of thinking, being and acting.

The book starts with a sociological and anthropological take on culture before moving on to a narrative theological overview, both of these I found very helpful. Finally Crouch moves on to some practical outcomes, including some fantastic thoughts on power and grace. Crouch reflects on his time as a campus minister at Harvard. He note how he met students that fell roughly into 3 camps, i’ll briefly mention them here, before moving on to a prize quote. One group were the strives, or children of crisis (never fully at home, always working hard, never seeing a fully reward of their efforts), another were the children of privilege (walking about like they owned the place but achieving little), the last group were the children of grace, who walked around in wonder that they got to study at Harvard, quietly brilliant savoring every opportunity. But in reality: “Every student I met, anxious, confident, or otherwise, had been the recipient of a gift. Only few of them knew it.” Really I’d love you to read the whole book and this section makes more sense in light of that, however this section really moved me and I want to quote it here, and allow you to spend some time with it too.

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I’m going to rip this right off my eldest brother’s site, as I don’t think many people who read this site also read his (although you shoud consider it, he’s cleverer than me and conveyes knowledge in a more humble and gracious manner).

[Quoting Tony Campolo] “Sigmund Freud once commented that the Church socializes its youth to ask only those questions he Church is able to answer. Any questions it cannot adequately handle are made to seem ridiculous. By the time the children come of age, the Church seems to have the answer to all the important questions of life, because the Church has taught them which questions to ask and which questions should not be asked.
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[This] helps us to understand why people who are in the Church think it has all the answers to all the questions and problems that are important, while those outside the Church fell that it has nothing to say about the things that are really important.
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According to [Paul] Tillich, the place of the Church is not to raise questions, but to attempt to provide answers. the Church should step aside and let the people of the world raise questoins. The Church should be a listening body — sensitive to the deepest concerns of the world’s peoples, intently interested in their problems, struggling to provide solutions to their most troublesome inquiruesm, and endevoring always to serve as their servant. It’s all too easy for the people of the Church to say, “We’ve got all the answers,” without having first inquired as to what the questions might be.” Tony Campolo (from A Reasonable Faith)
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I’m not sure what an arts pastor is, but David Taylor is apparently one. I really like him, and not just for his great sideburns. This video will make it all clear. The subject is close to my heart — art — but the implications are wide ranging.

David Taylor-In His Own Words on Vimeo.

I know only one place and group of people doing what David describes in this video — a café-bar in the center of our city, run by friends of mine — local hero’s who get no fanfare or round of applause, and often misunderstood by many well intentioned believers. But, they are living ordinary lives of creative goodness for the sake of others, particularly the creative community.

I found this video encouraging, stimulating and provoking. Now, I must go now and do some drawing.