Below is basically the letter I wrote for my brother in law, a great kid, still in High School who really inspired me this last week by his desire to give gifts for his family, earning and spending his own money to get gifts, real gifts, for his family, and his new brothers in law.

A little about this gift…

It is a portion of a letter tray, used for holding type, I love trying to figure out how to design and create in small spaces and it allows for there to be more than one thing being said at a time…like our lives, but we are also beyond compartmentalizing ourselves.

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Your initials, mine too, and I was glad to share the few letters I had to make you a gift.

The first little jar has the phrenology head you like, sorry I don’t have a spare one I can part with right now, but if I did, you would have it.  But the image is powerful to me because it is a great example of humanity’s attempts to understand ourselves, our behaviors and our souls.  It is a scientific attempt but it ultimately fails.  The jar contains withered grass and a pinch of dust; both from a graveyard, reminders of our mortality and that there is a terminal limit on searching for self knowledge.

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You are one of the few people I talk with who both enjoys political discussion and also sees limits to our system the way it is.  I did a piece called “Neither Ballots NOR Bullets,” you saw it and this little piece is based upon it.  Christianity and the Bible are above politics though they have political relevance, Jesus didn’t come to setup a political system or support a political party.  The bullet I found in a parking lot and the Rockefeller campaign “pin” is from either his 1960, 64 or 68 presidential bid and it is the kind of “pin” that you would fold the back over the top of your shirt pocket to clasp it.  I had Goldwater too, but thought you’d appreciate the Rockefeller pin more; money, moderate social stances, fiscally sounds, etc.

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Key holes to me represent mystery, we don’t know everything, nor can we…it’s not wrong to ask questions as long as you can handle not everything has an answer or more accurately we may not understand the answer. 

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.”

Light bulb, because you are very bright, as in, intelligent, but the bulb also must be connected to the source to shed light to others. We are at our best when connected to the source,  and we also, despite our understanding and intelligence must also be ok being next to mystery.

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Family Curse Jar

You are the first to receive or even see this piece (besides my close confidant, your sister).  I am working on a new piece that is about curses, and family curses, but it isn’t about our immediate or even distant ancestors, it is about Adam and Eve and their fall and the curse we all bear now.  It is based upon hoo doo (African American folk religion/magic)  of the mojo bags and conjure men and women)  So the jar collects symbols of the curses…cursed earth, from the graveyard, snake skin, tears/sweat from child labor and hard work, thorns and thistles from a ground no longer easy to work, a “nation bag,” used by women in Memphis to allure and dominate men, symbol of Eve’s struggle and fig leaf stamps, exiled from the garden in our nakedness…­

“Remember you will die” 

Like a broken record, the Preacher in the book of Ecclesiastics repeats the phrase “under the sun” over and over as he contemplates the human condition.  His earthly perspective and questions and experiential basis for answering predates and anticipates the Greek philosophical tradition by almost 500 years.  Here is a man seeking to understand life below a heavenly perspective and seek what is the best way we should live…and the answer is in recognition that we will die. 

Rich, poor, wise, foolish, sinner and saint, we will all die.

Just as in Plato’s dialogues, where Socrates stated that philosophy is about preparing to die, learning how to live in light of our own mortality, the Preacher calls us to consider how we should live.

However in the midst of this grim perspective, in the context of God’s wisdom we see what our great blessing is during all the days of our lives.  Ecc 9:7-9 stands out to me, “Eat..with happiness, drink…with a cheerful heart.  God has already approved your works…Enjoy life with the woman you love all the days of your fleeting life…”

Influenced by Biblical texts such as the Book of Ecclesiastes and historical events such as the Black Plague and the 100 Years War, the people of late medival Europe were constantly facing death and remined to be prepared for it.

As with my exploration of other elements of the art of dying, this piece doesn’t offer a solution or even suggest morality is the key.  Of course it doesn’t also suggest a childish “seize the day” impulse in the face the our own mortality. I simply hoped to create pieces that would remind us that we are in fact mortal, we will die, as I think we are prone to forget or deny that ugly, lonely truth.

I started this piece in August, after finishing the Memento Mori devotion cover, and it draws on much of the same imagery and symbolism.  It was also began just as I started to look into the Art of Dying and Dance Macabre movements in Europe. It is mostly how I envisioned it but I considered many directions along the way and ultimately I am not as satisfied with it as I would have been had I finished it in September. Having created a few other pieces that I have learned from and been stretched by, this piece feels very direct, making an obvious statement, at least it feels that way to me, and because of that it isn’t as engaging to me, but I thought I would share in honesty rather than hide it away.

Notes from Jeremy Begbie’s Address at Asbury College, Nov 12th 2009

Keying off a piece of music written in the 1930’s, that was trying to capture the “music of the future enjoyed in the present.” Dr. Begbie explored the nature and central role of hope in our faith and how that informs our lives and artmaking.

We often hope from the present for a better future, but the New Testament employs what Dr. Begbie called a “Reverse Imagination” where our real future hope is to play out in our present, not hoping for the future but hoping from the future.

Looking at Revelation chapter 21 and the city of God, the New Jerusalem, he outlined five features of our subversive hope.

1. Enriching Difference

The diversity of the New Jerusalem that will be home to all nations, or peoples, demonstrates that differences and distinctions among people groups are ok, but we are not to make those distinctions into values or hierarchies of cultures.

 Throughout his lecture he used music pieces as ways to demonstrate how these concepts can inform our art making.  For diversity he used a piece demonstrating polyrhythm and the richness, musically, built upon it.

2. Insane Inversion

The first shall be last, the humble exalted and the Lamb on the Throne, all are clear examples of how God will reverse our cultural norms and expectations.  It was a reminder of the great counter cultural nature of our faith. 

Power is radically redefined based upon our hope from the future.

He noted how Nietzsche is the Church’s best critic, for he saw clearly the cross shaped offense and how “ridiculous” it was, we can learn from him because he often got the implications of our counter culture faith better than we as the church have.

3. Piercing Exposure

Our hope is not sentimental, but reveals the root and depth of evil.  The Lamb who was slain will be central in the New Jerusalem, not covering up the ugliness of sin, but it’s cost to God ever before us.

Our condition is unveiled and God’s response is greater than we can imagine, canceling the sentimentality of our own day. 

He noted how we can’t skip over the Cross as though the Resurrection is just a happy ending, the Cross is central to our faith, the reversal of the Resurrection doesn’t diminish the ugliness of the Cross and our sinfulness in a sentimental way.

4. Divine Excess

The fullness of our Future Hope, its full expression is excessive, “subverting our closed equilibrium.” There is an abundance demonstrated in the extreme fruitfulness of the Tree of Life, its fruits and even its leaves that are for the healing of the nations. 

There is novelty, not trite, but over and above what it “necessary.”

“Art can say more than can be told.”

5. Nominal Order

Dr. Begbie called the “non-order,” the Jazz Factor, it is the unpredictable.  The improvisation, playing between the space between order and non order, not order and chaos. 

Untidiness is not a mark of chaos or disorder, just irregularities.

This is seen in the new creation, and can come forth in art making. 

I was encouraged especially by the idea of piercing exposure as my own artmaking has recently focused on the unsentimental truth about our own mortality.  I have been exploring ideas in the art of dying to try to place before myself the “unpretty” truth that death comes for us all and we may ignore it but we are better served by facing it and preparing it.  I have wrestled theologically on focusing on the bad news when I know the rest of the story and our great hope, but I found comfort in the idea that our hope is open faced and wide eyed and takes full account of the bad news first before the good news can break through.

My notes are of course incomplete and don’t do Dr. Begbie’s lecture justice, please don’t consider them as a word for word transcript, they are just the topics discussed and the notes I made.  I do certainly recommend hearing him speak if you are given the chance, he masterful blend of musicianship, theology and public speaking are insightful and encouraging beyond what I have reviewed here. 

Looking forward to getting him speak at the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship’s Calvin Symposium on Worship, January 28-30, 2010 in Grand Rapids MI.