” …we have to awaken, to think thoughts beyond the thoughts we have already thought. To get back, we have to get this, to get now: to receive the present activity of God in our midst. To get this is to take all we can know of the past and hold it out in contrast to this moment. Then we can begin to sew together what is essential of who we have always been with what will connect in the present.”
This is a pull quote from an article I wrote for the September/October issue of Immerse Journal. I developed some themes I have spoken about previously for the article around the idea of the cruciform journey of an artist.
Artist, broadly conceived, of course. I pastor a church, but I learned most of what I know about being a pastor from being an artist first; and in a way I think pastors are the truest artists we have left in our culture. In a larger sense, every human is an artist, a creative being made in the image of the Creator. And if you begin to engage life, work, and relationships as art, you may soon learn what artists know, that there are forces at work in the process that will stifle, derail, and distract you from ever making great art.
I hope my article can provoke you (as it does me) to consider the process of recovering not only an artist’s approach to life, but a pathway for dwelling richly in the deep down things.
It was a pleasure and honor to write for Immerse Journal. I urge you to subscribe. I’m grateful to Mike King for the invitation to write. And as usual, I learned more in the writing than you will in the reading. So read my article, then write yours.
You can (for not much longer) still preview my article in full at the Immerse site. There are also a couple great reflections to the article in the “culture” section of site.
