I know no advice for you save this: go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise: at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside.
Seen through the eyes of a Gospel Artist, and one who is called to change, this is a great quote. I actually we believe we are all called to create a gospel-shaped life. We take the destiny of Christ-likeness (or at least we do, if we choose), and begin our pilgrim path of change and evolution.
Have you ever considered that change is possible? That you are called to create (along with God through the Holy Spirit) a life that is shaped by God?
What would it look like if you were called? What could your life look like if you decided to create something wonderful and beautiful?
What would it look like if you chose to be an artist?
Yesterday, I took part in a panel discussion at church about “resetting” for the New Year. We talked about some of the rituals and systems we use to try and get ourselves for the New Year.
It was fun to talk about my journals and such, and some of my approach to this season of the year, but I was left wondering if anyone “got it”.
At one point I said from the stage, “If you don’t expect anything more out of 2014 than what you did in 2014, I’d challenge you to examine what you expect out of your faith.”
Do people really believe in transformation?
Do you?
Do you believe you can change?
Do you believe you’re called to?
I think it actually boils down to some very basic beliefs, so let me ask you:
In John 4, Jesus says that he offers water that will become a spring of water that bubbles up (inside us) into eternal life…
In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul says that we have the mind of Christ…
Were they liars?
Were they only talking to “super-Christians”?
As one of my spiritual mentors says, “Either it is, or it isn’t.”
So, if Jesus and Paul knew something about life; if they really meant what they said, then we are left to wrestle with their statements.
The burden is on us.
Question 1: Do you want to have the mind of Christ? to have a constant stream of living water inside you?
Question 2: What are you prepared to surrender in order to gain it?
This is the point where many of us get snagged, if for no reason than this: we have our lives, our systems of existence, and we don’t like to think that they maybe aren’t working.
So where do we start?
We start with humility. We start with the admission that we actually don’t know what’s best for us. We declare as best we can, “I believe that there’s something more for me, but my life isn’t set up to obtain it. God help me.”
He wants to.
Someone asked a desert hermit once, “What is the way to make progress?” The hermit answered, “Humility. The more we bend ourselves to humility, the more we are lifted up to make progress.”
Humility declares, “I don’t know the way.”
Humility opens the door to learning. To growth.
Humility says, “There must be more, and I am open to it.”
Humility says, “I cannot save myself.”
(By the way, humility is not merely self-deprecating or a way for us to belittle ourselves; it is a way to open ourselves up to growth and change. Feeling sorry for ourselves can actually merely be another way to be arrogant and self-centered. True humility is accompanied by a desire and willingness to change, to move, to reconsider.)
So, as 2013 begins, where are you with humility? Have you figured it all out, or are you still willing to acknowledge that you need to make more “progress”?
If you’re still learning, still growing, still changing, what are you doing to continue to learn and grow this year?
I like new things. Curiosity is pretty hard-wired into my being, and I like it; it drives me to new subjects, to new perspectives, to a broader understanding of God’s world.
But there’s a point at which “new” starts working against you, particularly in regards to growing.
Over my years of following God, I have dabbled in charismatic faith, liturgical faith, post-modern worship, and more recently centering prayer and Eastern Orthodoxy.
Some of these movements—the more ancient ones in particular—are particularly attractive to me because they seem so alien. They use a language that I’m unused to, and that wakes me up and draws me in. The way monks and Orthodox folks refer to the spiritual world is compelling to me, and I respond by buying books and beginning to experiment.
Historically, however, I get bored; after a time the newness wears off. The words don’t seem as fresh anymore.
This is when curiosity becomes a problem.
I’m learning lately to work through the “boredom”, to stop looking for new words and language and concepts, and to merely accept the forms that God has given me (and millions of others) to find Him.
It’s really not that exciting, in the end. Words can’t stay new forever. Eventually you have to get to the thing-behind-the-words. That’s the thing that really matters.
Don’t get me wrong: Manning, Merton, Keating, John of the Cross can certainly turn a phrase. I will always appreciate that part of their gifting.
But the hard lesson I’m learning is that even when the phrases have been emptied of their “magic”, even when they are less poetic and more pragmatic, I still have to grow.
Ultimately, it’s not the poetry that makes me grow. It’s the Spirit behind the poetry that is the real thing.
What about you? Anyone else out there struggle with always pursuing the new? What have you sought out?
“Mountaintop spiritualilty has perhaps been one of the most destructive things in my spiritual life.”
The words were really out before I had a thought about them. They emerged in a morning devotion with a group of people high up (ironically) in the Guatemalan hills, at a morning devotion time before we went out to build houses.
For me, it was a typically melodramatic overstatement, but in this case it was also pretty true.
Everest North Face toward Base Camp Tibet Luca Galuzzi 2006 (via Creative Commons)
I am certainly no mountain climber, but I’d spent a season reading and learning a lot about climbing Mount Everest through books like Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and a Discover Channel series called, “Beyond the Limit”, about a professional guide at Everest who helped people with their final ascent.
It is an absolutely brutal and a very real you-can-really-die-in-an-instance type of experience. The altitude and brutal conditions take a horrendous toll on your body, making taking even ONE step an excruciating experience. Some people end up being able to put one foot in front of the other about once every thirty minutes. In the last couple of ascents (it takes many days to get from “base camp” at Everest up to the top), the oxygen is so thin that your body is literally incapable of getting enough nourishment, so it begins to essentially “eat itself.” The caloric requirement is so huge, that your body goes into hunger mode, and starts devouring muscle protein in order to survive.
Every move, every stop must be highly scheduled and coordinated or you will literally die on the mountain (many bodies are left frozen on the mountain; you can see them as you climb).
All for thirty minutes.
Due to oxygen requirements (and the schedule that keeps you alive), you can only spend about 30 minutes at the top of Everest.
Now, that thirty minutes may be wonderful; the experience is absolutely magical and unmatched; the time there may even be transformative; but it does not last.
You have to descend.
THAT, essentially, is how I lived my spiritual life for decades: a quest to get from “mountaintop” to “mountaintop”, fixing on spiritual highs like a drug. I would climb the mountain, dwell in the heights for a time, and descend like Moses, full of optimism and reflecting the Glory of God.
But it always faded. It always does.
And so I’d climb again.
And again.
And again.
Is this what Jesus meant by a stream of living water, welling up inside me to eternal life?
This didn’t feel like abundant life to me; it felt like experience addiction.
Lately I have decided to “come down the mountain”, and approach my spiritual life with a different metaphor.
Sinai Desert, via Creative Commons
The desert is not like the mountain. Where the mountain apexes into a specific peak, the desert drones on and on in a sort of monotony. There is a definite sameness to the landscape (though it’s certainly no less dangerous than climbing; the desert can just as easily kill you with thirst or a rattlesnake).
The desert leaves you alone with yourself. It forces you to face our most difficult challenge: OURSELVES.
On the surface, the desert is the same, day after day, but if you look more closely and have eyes to see and ears to hear, you can encounter amazing life and variety.
But it’s not easy.
You have to be attentive.
You have to watch and listen.
You have to be silent.
For me, this is the way I have to live in order to stay sane in this world. Mountaintop spirituality was simply turning me into a “religion junky”, and the fix NEVER seemed to hang around long enough. The desert, on the other hand, is a consistent, day-to-day walk that continually forces me to find beauty in the apparent normalcy of my life. It makes me work out my salvation in a very consistent, low key manner.
I don’t think it’s any accident that after the “light show” of Mount Sinai took place in the midst of Israel’s long desert experience. It’s as if God wanted to emphasize the fact that the occasional mountain may show up (though you may not even get to ascend; you may just get to watch Moses walk up), MOST—if not ALL—of your life is going to be spent walking through the desert. You have to get the desert right in order to keep the mountain in perspective.
Keep on walking.
+e
Perry and Jane’s gets it… (WARNING: If you know Jane’s Addiction, you know that this video is probably, well, CRAZY, and even a bit NSFW)
I know I was supposed to start this series on Jesus today, but I decided to wait another day or two…
So today, I lost my center. I’d been a little a over the place all day, but what sent me (at least briefly) over the edge was a simple text from a good friend in Chicago. He just asked me how I was doing, and caught me up in his life (including this totally unfair shot from his boat on Lake Michigan).
Almost in an instant I was swamped with the practically physical pain of loss from my life in Chicago. It’s a pain I knew really well for about two years, from 2006 to 2008. During that time, I thought of my life in terms of some kind of giant joke that God was playing on me. So much of who I thought I appeared to be taken from me, and very little was given back.
It took years to work through those feelings; to begin to accept my life in Tallahassee for what it was/is, and to begin to see good things grow up around me.
But in that instant, those things were shaken, and I was transported back to that place 4-5 years ago.
It wasn’t pleasant; in fact it was almost strange and surreal to feel the (once normal) feelings of pain, loss, regret and hopelessness.
But some things have changed since then.
After a lengthy battle with those demons, I gradually developed some healthy spiritual practices that remind me of the truth of my life.
(It’s much, much too easy to believe the lies…)
Centering, contemplative prayer (I’m still a novice, believe me), meditation and praying the Daily Office have slowly begun to transform me; it’s easier now to remember that those feelings of homesickness for Chicago may be valid, but are simply not the whole truth of who I am.
There is a deeper truth to my being (and to yours as well). That truth is mostly covered up and obscured by a lifetime of lies and pain and mistakes, but it is still there.
However, most of the time it won’t influence our lives unless we do some kind of work to get out of its way. We layer our own false selves—Brennan Manning’s “Impostor”—on top of that truth and bury its life-giving breath underneath the heavy fabric of pride and arrogance.
We need, as I’ve discovered, practices that silence those unhealthy, false voices and let the voice of God, of Love, of Jesus whisper through.
And over time, day-to-day, minute-to-minute, moment-by-moment, we begin to recover that true self that is centered and rooted in God’s love and power.
I’ve been really blessed this week to see and hangout with some really gifted artists like DJ Promote and Propaganda, a really great hip hop artist. Tuesday night DJ Promote was doing a set before a big rock band played, and the kids were just going crazy. Propaganda was talking to me and another guy and said, “You know, I’ve been all around the world with this guy (the DJ), and no matter where he goes, within ten minutes the room is just going crazy. He always wins.”
I replied, “I think I know why; it’s because I can feel the joy in his mixing. I can sense the emotion behind what he does.”
Ever met someone who somehow was giving and generous the moment they shook your hand?
I’d met Promote backstage before I even knew what he did, and even then he was gushing with joy and wonder.
Ever felt blessed by just being introduced to someone? You don’t even know how it worked, but you turned away and felt richer and better for just having said “Hello” to them?
That’s the way it was with both Promote and Propaganda. (He did some spoken word stuff that was just so legit, it was amazing.)
Though I have no doubt that they both put in their “10,000 hours”, the thing that set them both apart was the joy and wonder that they put into their art.
Have you ever considered the fact that joy and wonder can be translated by technology? That emotion comes through bits and bytes, electricity and wires? I have not idea how it’s even possible, but I am blown away that repeatedly this is the case. You can hear it. You can feel it.
Great art is, in fact, a gift, but the gift that’s being given in these cases are emotional and spiritual, not merely musical. It transcends craft.
… I would almost venture to say that joy precedes craft.
Keeping in mind that “our art” may involve the crafting of our gospel-shaped lives, or a specific artistic endeavor; remembering that “calling” exists at the intersection of our deepest needs and the world’s deepest joy…
What kind of joy are you putting into your art today? What wonder are you bringing to your calling?
In the meantime… enjoy some great mixing and spoken word.
This week I’m playing guitar with some friends at a youth conference, so I’ve asked a friend to write a piece regarding creativity and spirituality.
David is a “slash guy”, meaning: singer/songwriter/guitar player/Jesus follower/creative guy. He is a dear friend and one of the best people that I know. Please follow him, and buy, lots, and lots of music from him.
But enough from me… Dave?
——————————————–
confession time: i’m a creative type (whatever that means). it’s likely that the handful of stereotypes that just went through your head are true about me. it’s a fact that i don’t have what we’d call “a steady job.” it’s been scientifically verified that i’m running no less than 30 minutes behind schedule precisely 97% of the time. you’ll find (over the course of reading this blog post, maybe) that i most certainly lack the tools to maintain a linear conversation. it’s all true. and even though it greatly resembles chaos, i’ve found myself thriving in it.
i’m of the belief that creativity isn’t a state of mind, but more a state of being. in other words, it’s not the way in which i’ve been made as much as it’s the way i’ve made my life work: in choosing to allow as much room as possible for that unpredictable and mysterious friend called inspiration–a friend who almost always shows up unannounced, at the most inconvenient times. the only predictable thing about inspiration, as far as i can tell, is that, if one gets comfortable ignoring it, it’ll return the favor by showing up less frequently until infrequently becomes not at all.
the main outlet of creativity for me these days is writing songs. in this pursuit, i’ve learned to make sure inspiration feels welcome at all times, which means i’m regularly waking up in the middle of the night to hum a melody into my iphone or sketch a design for the next album cover (two examples from this week). making inspiration feel welcome also means i may pull over on my way to an appointment because, while en route, a journal-worthy idea finds me, resulting in an inspired me showing up late to get his teeth cleaned.
it’s certainly not more convenient to be a creative type. i’ll even admit that, at times, it borders on inconsideracy to those around me–especially my wife (sorry, hon). and it’s not the road to stability, that’s for sure. that’s why every poet has parents telling them to get a business degree to fall back on. okay. truth be told, a creative life, in and of itself, is at best a foolish pursuit, and more often just a huge narcissistic “look-at-me” spectacle… but what if a creative life is necessarily bundled with eternity? wouldn’t that make it all worth while?
(aaaand the point…)
creativity has been the entry point to my life’s most spiritual and holy moments. i think that’s because God, who in just being, poured out the very idea of creativity and lavished it on His masterpiece (that’s you and me, friends). He’s waiting to meet us through beauty that doesn’t exist yet–at least not until we breathe life into it. God, who spoke the word, “sunset” and saw that it was good, reflects His magnificent beauty in each of us (regardless of whether we credit Him or not, i believe) whenever we choose to imitate that characteristic to make something beautiful out of a blank canvas or an empty stage or wood and strings or an adobe program or some spices and a particular cut of meat or…. (and the list goes on).
so, you wanna meet with God? create something beautiful. wanna worship God? notice and give credit to beauty’s inventor. wanna make space for that? allow yourself to be late to a meeting every now and again because you didn’t dismiss inspiration when it found you.
david greco is not a licensed blogger. he doesn’t even really read any blogs. wait. does 30 rock count as a blog? well, he doesn’t technically read that anyway. he just watches. mindlessly watches.
For two summers, when I was 18 and 19, I worked for the steel company that employed my father. I did random sales and marketing stuff for them: customer satisfaction surveys and inventories with the various state and local transportation departments that used their products. Driving around — Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida, and California — by myself in a rental car with an expense account was pretty happening for a skinny college kid who wanted to spend as much money as he could on guitar gear.
One day I was riding around with some guys in central Pennsylvania when we came to a town called Centralia. It stank. Smelled like sulfur. When I asked, they just shook their heads and said, “wait.” When we got closer to the town, they told me to get out and put my hand on the pavement. Even though it was a cool day, the pavement was warm; really warm.
Sulfur; heat.
Was this hell?
They finally told me what was going on. You see, Centralia is in coal mining country, and one day a fire started burning in the mine at Centralia…
Once the fire got started, there was seemingly nothing anyone could do. All attempts to extinguish it had failed, and it essentially was smoldering for over 30 years.
You can smell the sulfur, and you can feel the heat. The slowly became toxic, houses slowly being evacuated before it got too risky, health-wise, to remain.
Eventually the fire killed the town, and Centralia doesn’t really exist anymore.
Sometimes I wonder about the stuff we carry around in our spirits, in our hearts. Are there things that gnaw at you? Things that you’ve done or seen? Things that were done to you? When there is significant pain in our lives it is tempting to “get on with it”, and try to shut things away, but when we do that we often find that those things are like the mine fire at Centralia: even though we see no destruction on the surface, deep down we are being destroyed, and eventually what’s going on underneath will be displayed on the surface of our lives.
When there is pain, we need to do our best to bring things into redemptive time — to allow them to see the light of day, to exist in the oxygen, so that we can deal with them.
Burying them won’t kill them. It only gives them places to smolder and burn.
Jonathan was born unable to hear. He was unable to hear the words of love from his parents. The comfort that they spoke, the songs that they would sing. No matter how they shouted, how they wept for him, how they sang him lullabies, he would not hear.
His world was an ocean of silence.
But then…
The moment when his face lights up, and he hears the voice — the overture of love — from his parent, is a priceless moment of grace, love and beauty.
It also teaches.
So many of us have either never heard the song and voice of Love. Others of us have heard it, but then have allowed it to fade into the background of clanging traffic, of playlists, of work and the corporate ladder.
But guess what: The Voice is still speaking. It’s still singing. There’s a song out there, singing all of our names, waiting for that moment when our ears and eyes are opened up and we recognize the Voice for ourselves.
What song(s) are you missing? Do you still hear the Voice? Do you still light up with the soft light of grace when you hear it?
This is not mine; it was given to me by an African pastor I heard once at a retreat. He passed it on in written form to me, credited only as, “A Zimbabwe Covenant”. I stumbled across it today in a stack of papers, and thought I’d just throw it up here. Enjoy.
“I am part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have Holy Spirit power. The die is cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I am a disciple of Jesus. I will not look back, let up, slow down, back away or be still.
“My past is redeemed. My present makes sense. My future is secure. I am finished and done with low-living, sight-walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, worldly talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals.
“I no longer need pre-eminence, propserity, position, promotion, or popularity. I don not have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean on God’s presence, walk by patience, am uplifted by prayer, and labor by power.
“My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven. My road is narrow, my way rough, my Guide reliable, my mission clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded or delayed. I will not give up, shut up or let up. I will go on until Christ comes, and work until Christ stops me. I am a disciple of Jesus.”
this is eric case 