Artistic Visions for 2009

“He that dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose.” –Annie Bronte

Pentecostals (like most 21st Century believers) have no vocabulary for artists, while most artists have no vocabulary for belief, except for the barest Catholic cliches. (Oops. I was wrong. Pentecostals do have a vocabulary for artists—“music minister.” Yes, that’s a joke. I think.) So, if we’re called to create, we must craft the vocabulary ourselves. No matter our calling and/or medium, we must be willing to show others how a Pentecostal artist writes a novel, paints a painting, conjures a play or music or a musical. We haven’t the academic sub-structure to define and encourage this work—which makes it so exciting. No one can tell us we’re doing it wrong by pointing out successful examples. We get the unique chance to create the parameters others are seeking.


Theoretical Underpinnings
If you’re eager to turn this new year into the year you better fulfill your creative calling (because that’s what it is, a calling, just like preaching or teaching), then it’s important to balance it with well-focused theory. Screenwriter Barbara Nicolosi brilliantly discloses the necessary touchstones for an artistic work in this (transcribed) talk she gave, as well as what doesn’t make a religious artist. It includes this gem:

“In a study I've done on artists geniuses, I've learned that when God sends a gift of genius He usually sends at least one person who gets that genius. It's like Theo with Van Gogh and Susan Gilbert with Emily Dickinson. You can see this over and over. Somebody was given this gift to save this artist for the rest of us. That might be you. I encourage you then to take that vocation seriously.”

If we don’t understand our focal points (beauty, radiance, wholeness, harmony), we’ll never fulfill our mission.


Practical Underpinnings
Writing is often an individual, lonely task, so the only way for me to be successful in 2009 is to enact the following:

Release Weights: Weights are often harder to discern than sins as they once might’ve been positive habits, old friends, or familiar ministries where the passion has flickered out. Weights might be social activities that devour time without compensating you with the necessary refreshment. They might be books by familiar authors that no longer challenge or music that no longer feeds. Frankly, they’re disabling instead of enabling your calling.

Stay Fresh: One reason we start out passionately every January, but lose it by February is because we haven’t figured out how to keep ourselves healthy—spiritually (personal devotions, church), physically (exercise, sleep, eating healthy), mentally and imaginatively (books that feed, people that surprise, experiences that enlarge), socially (community that challenges and keeps us accountable).

Goals: What do you want to write and when do you want to get it done? If it’s a longer project, then break it into regular (weekly, monthly) segments so you can monitor yourself. Then find someone you can trust to aid and abet your progress. Great story: Paul Elie is a father, husband, and full-time book editor, yet he completed the award-winning, 534 page The Life You Save May Be Your Own by insisting to himself that he write every day. So he’d come home at lunch to write. In an interview he said that some days he only finished one paragraph. But he kept writing. So should we.

Theoretical + Practical = 2009
So how are you going to pursue your calling this year? More importantly, what will you show the Lord at year’s end? Remember: A small something is always better than a giant nothing.