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.

So I was really excited about the Day of the Dead exhibit at 21C, I just didn’t realize what I expected to see was last year’s exhibit!  I don’t remember how I even found the webpage, but I never realized the exhibit was located in the past exhibits section of the site.  So I did not actually see the past event.

At first I was disappointed about the outdoor installation for the current exhibit, Going Home, but I got over it quickly as this is an amazing work, featuring over 10,000 hand cut butterflies designed with Day of the Dead colors and images.  The monarch butterflies these paper ones portray migrate between the US and Mexico and so it was a fitting image for remembering the 14 Mexican immigrants, the “Yuma 14,” who died crossing the Arizona desert. 

The full description and story of Going Home is here. 

I had to go back today to get pictures that would at least attempt to do this installation some justice.  Hope you get a chance to go downto 7th and Main to catch a glance.

I am totally excited about the new Dias de los Muertos exhibit being held at 21c Nov 1st to Nov 9th, 2009. 

Definitely an inspiration behind my own exploration of the Art of Dying. 

Hope you can make it out.

Through our recent road trip and a DVD I borrowed, I  found out about a three men that have inspired me to continue attempting to make art and find a place of service and blessing to others in it.

Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain, in Niland CA, Horace Burgess’ tree house in Crossville, TN and H. Harrison Mayes’ roadsigns everywhere, are striking examples to me of how faith informs our lives, including making art.  From what I have read, all three were motivated by their faith and devotion and never tried to make more out of their actions than they did their faith.  No business, no catchy marketing, just living as they felt led.  No explanation and no fanfare.

Some can see it as odd or ecentric, misguided or benign, but I have been blessed justing knowing these men have it in their hearts to obey God and try with their lives to see others come to know that love and salvation offered to us through His Son.

Stirred in my own attempts and blessed by these works, I just wanted to share them with you.

Also check out Austin White’s site.  They were gracious and open to me using his photo.  And they personally have met Leonard and confirmed he is just an amazing person.

Does art have the power to change us? 

Art can confront us with bold images, subtle visual puns, shocking or mundane images, new forms and old concepts revisited, often turned on their head.

But can it change us?  Can my contemplation of a work of art, because of the nature of that art, bring change in me?  Greater still, can a group of people be encountered with the power of art and find new perspectives that endure?

The same could be asked of song lyrics, pieces of music, plays, films, dance, and all forms of creativity. 

The best I can come up with is “No.”

But a thing a beauty, a visual pun, a symbol, the creative act expressed or shared as an act of kindness might create a space in time and place where we are open to God’s kindness, love and word which do bring change that endure.

I came across this idea reading Michael Card’s book, Scribbling in the Sand, and it was lost upon me.  I was reading the book, mining out the link between art and faith in general, and the powerful lesson in the first chapter didn’t resonate with me until this last week as I pondered anew the question about the role and nature of art bringing change.

Artisans creating place

Artisans called by name, constructed the tent of meeting in the book of Exodus and in their obedience and creativity they created a place where God intended to meet with His people.  It was a place consecrated, set apart.  A place of refuge, a place of contemplation, a place of renewal. 

It was a place, made through the creative activity of artisans, where God was manifest and could be encountered.  He commanded the place to be built, to His specifications and He intended to dwell there, to encounter people there.

The same is true of the tent King David set up to worship God with music before the Ark of the Covenant.  Also the Temple, built later under Solomon was a beautifully and extravagantly created place where God intended to draw near.

The Artisan creates space.

The religious leaders of the Temple had brought a woman “caught in the very act of adultery” to Jesus to try to trap Him.  Moses commanded such to be stoned by the community.  Would Jesus set Himself above Moses?  Would He defy the occupying Roman law that forbade death by stoning?

Jesus “stooped down” and with His finger wrote in the sand.  The religious leaders demanded a response, so Jesus stands and answers “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” And then he stooped back down to write in the sand.  One by one, the accusers all left, until it was only the woman there, and Jesus, creating something in the sand.

When He stood up and saw no one there, He asked if no one had condemned her, and when no one did, He said He also did not condemn her and charged her to go and sin no more.

In the eighth chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus through creative activity, scribbling in the sand, created a space. 

A space between the accused woman and her accusers. 

A space between the accusers and Jesus. 

But most importantly a space where God’s wisdom, God’s holiness and God’s kindness could be encountered. 

His creative act also, paradoxically, created tension, an angry religious crowd awaited, demanding an answer, He answered and went back to the sand and in that space God’s wisdom and mercy and truth prevailed.

Our only hope and our challenge.

Then for any who would express themselves creatively, there is the realization that our art can’t bring change, that our art isn’t the source for change.  But also there is the challenge to create beautifully, intelligently, with such passion, such deliberation, such obedience that we may create a space, a physical space or a pause in time, in which God can draw us and draw near to us.

“Art for art’s sake,” the oft quoted, bohemian creed of sophisticated, individual freedom of expression for the sole purpose of expression itself, ain’t half wrong.

Let me explain.

Foundational to an understanding of this thing we call humanity, is that we were created in God’s image, Imago Dei in Latin.  And we first encounter God in scriptures as eternal, self existing, all powerful and creating. 

Therefore being creative (not creating out of nothing, ex nihilo, as God created) is to express that Image that we bear.

And what better case could be made for creating for the sake of creating (or for making abstract art) than the giraffe.  What purpose does it serve?  Does it have to?  Simply striking and unlike other land mammals but still enough like them to be recognized, the giraffe, just fun to look at. 

There is much in this world that could be given as examples of beauty for beauty’s sake, created because it may in fact just be fun to create.

But I have experienced taking what is meant for good and abusing it and often destroying it in my own life. So while it is not intrinsically evil or wrong, I suspect that to subscribe to “art for art’s sake” as the only rationale I can make for creating, there is a fair chance I would idolize my creation, my ability, my freedom, etc and make a mess out of something that was meant to be a blessing.

Philip Graham Ryken’s book Art for God’s Sake is insightful and encouraging.  He sets forth biblical examples of God mandating artistry of all kinds, calling artisans by name and preparing them.  One of the interesting insights was that the first men to mentioned as filled with God’s Spirit are the artisans called to create the tabernacle.  Not preachers, not scholars, not healers or apostles, but artisans.

The book looks at the rocky relationship between the church and art, the art as a Christian vocation, the biblical evidence that supports all kinds of art forms and biblical standards of quality for the arts; goodness, beauty, truth, and finally art that glorifies God.

He is also clear that to “God’s glory” doesn’t mean it has to be evangelistic or didactic.  It is an expression of love and doesn’t have to have a utilitarian function to glorify God; our own encounter with creation echoes that truth.

Beyond laying out a biblical support of and mandate to do art, the best summary of insight of this great little book for me comes from Ryken himself,

Thus the true purpose of art is the same as the true purpose of anything: it is not for ourselves or for our own self-expression, but for the service of others and the glory of God. Or to put all of this another way, making art is an expression of our love—love for God and love for our neighbor.