Balthasar, Barzun, and the British hams on art

The two quotes below come from my reading of Edward T. Oakes' essay, "The Apologetics of Beauty," in The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts. The video clip comes courtesy of a group of British thespians who play the most wondermous jest on unsuspecting travelers at Stansted Airport, London.

Balthasar's comments, though arriving from a mid-20th century German Catholic, ought give us evangelicals great pause, and beyond that, Americans in general. Barzun nails one of the worst habits in the contemporary art world. The thespians make me jealous that a) I didn't think of it first, and b) they didn't invite me to join in!

Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (Ignatius, 1982, p. 152).

"For the moment the essential thing is to realize that, without aesthetic knowledge, neither theoretical nor practical reason can attain to their total completion. If the verum lacks the splendor which for Thomas is the distinctive mark of the beautiful, then the knowledge of truth remains both pragmatic and formalistic. The only concern of such knowledge will then merely be the verification of correct facts and laws, whether the latter are laws of being or laws of thought, categories and ideas.

"But if the bonum lacks the voluptas, which for Augustine is the mark of its beauty, then the relationship to the good remains both utilitarian and hedonistic: in this case the good will involve merely the satisfaction of a need by means of some value or object, whether it is founded objectively on the thing itself giving satisfaction or subjectively on the person seeking it."

The key words to pay attention to are: pragmatic and formalistic, utilitarian and hedonistic. That's what he claims our lived and taught gospel will become if it is devoid of Beauty, its apperception, appreciation and application.

In short: not a good thing. Nor true.

Jacques Barzun, The Use and Abuse of Art (Princeton Press, 1974, 17):

"Nowadays anything put up for seeing or hearing is only meant to be taken in casually. If it holds your eye and focuses your wits for even a minute, it justifies itself and there's an end of it. . . .

"The Interesting has replaced the Beautiful, the Profound, and the Moving. [But] if modern man's most sophisticated relation to art is to be casual and humorous, [if it] is to resemble the attitude of the vacationer at the fair grounds, then the conception of Art as an all-important institution, as a supreme activity of man, is quite destroyed. One cannot have it both ways--art as a sense-tickler and a joke is not the same art that geniuses and critics have asked us to cherish and support. Nor is it the same art that revolutionists call for in aid of the Revolution."

And now for the British hams at the Stansted airport. . .

And now for something a little different...

It's 98 degrees in Austin, TX. Winds are SSW running at 1 MPH. Summer is saying hi today, loudly.

It's T-minus 12 days to June 1, my last day on the job as arts pastor.

I have poison ivy. I hate poison ivy, hate it with a maniacal passion. Seven years ago I climbed a tree spun like a scarf with "leaves of three" and I came away with a virulent reaction that left my arms, legs and stomach looking like a boil-infested wasteland. And it wasn't so much the burning, itching, pussing, physical irritation that left me messed up. It broke me emotionally. The boils kept breaking out. I was paranoid. My right leg swelled to twice its size. I leaked pus all through the night for two weeks straight.

Poison ivy freaks me out. And now I have it again and I've no idea where the toxic oils still are. Are they on the door of my car? On my golf bag? On my baseball cap? On my shoelaces? It's life inside an M. Night Shyamalan movie: they could be anywhere.

My sermon this last Sunday was "A Disciple of Jesus is thankful and contented." My text: Colossians. Not a few people pointed out the irony--the providence?--of the timing. I called it "method" preaching. I declared in my opening statement:

"For those who plunge into Jesus' cruciform, resurrected life, there is the sure knowledge that we live under the provision of God’s bountiful hand, extended always in grace towards us. Because of this we are able to live deeply grateful, deeply contented, whether in plenty or in want, in suffering or in strength, abased or abounding."

Poison ivy has abased me. My photographer friend Erin Farmer photographed my episode seven years ago and put it in the Lenten art exhibit.

Art redeems all things.

Phaedra and I went to the ballet last Friday evening. Gorsky's "Don Quixote" was playing. We're suckers for the classical pomp of ballet, and Austin Ballet did a fantastic job, even if it only faintly resembled Cervantes' voluminous masterpiece.

We're about to finish season of three of our latest addiction, Project Runway.

A childhood friend from my Austrian school days has tracked me down through my blog: Rodolfo "Chofo" Caceres. We-ird. I haven't spoken to him in over 18 years. He and I used to ride the same school bus home, 45 minutes long. We'd trade belts and shoes and shirts and see if our mothers noticed. We wore uniforms. It was a private school. I spent an entire week on vacation with his extended family. That's the way things worked in Guatemalan culture. Families did stuff together.

I'm headed to Nashville the second weekend of August. I'll be speaking at the conference sponsored by Artists in Christian Testimony. It'll be great to connect with the artist community in Nashville. Dolly Parton, here we come.

We saw Prince Caspian on Sunday night. It was entertaining but far from enchanting--woefully unenchanting. Phaedra and I feel the Harry Potter movies do such a better job of provoking magical wonder; the good kind of magic of course, the kind that Tolkien and Lewis rattled on about and which surely Adam and Eve felt daily wandering around the first Eden. What a shame. I feel like these movies are being squandered.

Jeffrey Overstreet has performed us a huge favor by summarizing the discussion amongst believer film critics: here. That boy is a machine of a blogger.

The greatest crime of the Narnia movies so far: They don't make me want to live in Narnia, and Narnia is where it's happening; the country of Narnia is what will hold the cinematic series together. Andrew Adamson has completely missed not just the boat but the entire ocean on that one. Let's ask IHOP to intercede night and day for Michael Apted.

And check out this wacky piece of Keith Green nostalgia: a boy wonder at age 11.

The latest book delivery courtesy of Amazon Books to the mailbox ye ole arts pastor:

1. The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts, edited by Daniel J. Treier, Mark Husbands and Roger Lundin
2. The Arts of the Beautiful, by Etienne Gilson
3. Theology and the Arts: Encountering God through Music, Art and Rhetoric, by Richard Viladesau
4. Religious Aesthetics: A Theological Study of Making and Meaning, by Frank Burch Brown

My latest favoritest word: dumb. I'm saying it eight or nine times per day. A lot of traffic lights around Austin are dumb. The Fantastic Four movie was very dumb. Buying lots of books and never reading them is dumb; my occupational hazzard. I'm not afraid of calling myself dumb. Poison ivy is dumb.

Phaedra and I have had so much fun hanging out the last two days. We're laughing often and it's really quite nice.

Andy Crouch has graciously invited me to contribute an essay to The Christian Vision project. This year's question is: "Is our gospel too small?" I'm really looking forward to working on this. I think I have a good idea of what my answer will be. Now it's a matter of finding the right words.

Speaking of wacky, every once and a while a spirit of absurdity comes over me. I get a voice in my head. I feel it in my mouth, forming into a persona, and I start talking in that voice over and over as I walk around the house folding my laundered clothes, eating a snack out of the pantry, sitting down in my window chair to stare out at the squirrels digging up our garden, talking to no one in particular, savoring the sounds in my ear.

This time it was a German university student from the mid 1980s; likely the University of Tubingen. He's just discovered the novels of David Maine. His English is broken. But no matter, he has teutonic, if also odd-duck because he's been stuck in a library too long, conviction. He has new wave hair. He's wearing my glasses circa 1987.

TCS Audio Sales: Part 1

Folks, it's been a dog to get these CD recordings in place for sale; more specifically, it's been a dog to get both CD and MP3s ready for sale simultaneously. I sincerely apologize for the delay. Our webmistress is moving inter-state and packing up her computer, web files and all. Our initial efforts to get things into motion have been derailed by the weirdest obstacles.

So here we are. This will be an official announcement that if you wish to purchase a CD of any of the main talks you may currently do so by writing the TCS at the following address:

P.O. Box 1664 Austin, TX 78767-1664

This will be the "quick and dirty" means to get copies of the CD. Soon--and very soon--we'll have swifter ways to get these to you. But if you wish to hold the recordings in your hands and re-live all the glory of Andy Crouch, Eugene Peterson, John Witvliet, David Taylor, Barbara "Habanero Spice Girl" Nicolosi, and Jeremy Begbie, please keep reading.

All sales need to be paid for by check. Please make check out to "Hill Country Institute." Each CD is $6.00. Please add $1.00 shipping per CD. For individual orders of 12 or more CDs, we will waive shipping.

Orders will be processed upon receipt of a check.

Please include in your note to us the address you wish us to send the CDs to, how many of which talks, and contact info in case we need to get ahold of you. Email us with any question at: info(AT)transformingculture(DOT).org.

This, at the very least, will get things rolling for those of you who wish to own a very excellent collection of talks on CD. Hopefully very, very soon we will have the capacity for people to download MP3s. They'll be $4.99 each.

About the DVDs, we had an awful technical snafu and none of the audio recorded onto the video. We are going to have go through the laborious process of dubbing the separate audio recordings onto the video files. But that'll take time. There's hope. All is not lost. We shall not be overcome. But this will take some gracious perseverance to accomplish.

And we thank you in advance for your patience, interest and prayers.

A Prayer for the Artists

This is a prayer we used as a collect at the end of each worship session during TC symposium. It was something Bryan Brown, our fearless worship leader, adapted from Herbert Whittaker's "Prayer for the Artists" (1987).

For those of you who've inquired into audio copies of the main talks I so appreciate your patience. God-willing we will have something ready to go by the end of this week. Please pray for us that all will go well.

A PRAYER FOR THE ARTISTS

Lord, remember your artists.
Have mercy upon them and remember with compassion all those that reflect the good, the ill, the strengths and the weaknesses of the human spirit.
Remember those who raise their voices in unending song,
those who pour their souls into music loud and soft.
Remember those who put pigment to surface,
carve wood and stone and marble,
who work base metals into beauty,
those building upwards from the earth toward heaven.
Remember those who put thought to paper by computer and by pen;
the poets who delve,
the playwrights who analyze and proclaim,
the dreamers-up of narrative,
all those who work with the light and shadows of film.
Remember the actors moved by Spirit and dancers moving through space.

Remember all these artists whom you have placed among us, for are they not, O Lord, the fellows of your inspiration?
Do they not, Lord God, bring to your people great proof of your divinity and our part in it?
Remember your artists and show them mercy and compassion that they may do the same and so uplift all your people.
That they may cry forth your praises, as we do here.
Amen! Amen! Amen!

(PHOTO: Worshiping together and Bryan Brown standing next to Luci Shaw while we speak this very collect.)

Portland and Imago Dei: A Top Ten

Brief prologue to actual entry:

Phaedra and I have sent out our support letter today. We're 1 month to RD: Resignation Day, June 1. Hoo-ha. I met with David Cassidy for lunch today. He's top dog over at Redeemer Presbyterian here in town. Good guy, he. Great lunch. I talked over the phone yesterday with the boys over in Talhahassee who are working on the The Door Post Film Project. Nice opening vid, boys. Nice. I also hung out with Melinda Carter and her Fireseed Anthology girls. And I may be headed to Nashvillian Landia (i.e. Nashville: Home of Music from Ear to Shining Ear) the second week of August.

Ok, back to our regularly scheduled program. Portland. Imago Dei. Artists retreat this past weekend. It rocked. They rocked. Big green coniferous trees rock.

Phaedra and I had a fantastic time with the artists from Imago Dei Community Church. Here is a Top Ten reasons to retreat with imago-dei-licious artists from Portland.

10. You get to see magical mushrooms (non-hallucinogenic) and funky flowers--like this:

9. You meet ancient of days people like Anneli nee Holmgren. Anneli had written me back on April 13, 2003. This is an excerpt from her email. . .

Hi David -- My name is Anneli Holmgren... I live here in Portland... and well, I was perusing the internet recently looking up all the sights on arts ministries. . . I am a graphic designer/artist and my church here, Imago Dei Community Church, has asked me to be director of the arts ministry. We are just getting going, in fact just this afternoon, I was sitting with a friend writing out our own values, vision, and goals.... So why am I emailing you? hmmm... I guess I have a ton of questions about directing such a ministry, just starting out, and open to any advice about leading a group of artists to do anything! :) My church is full of all sorts of highly creative people who are anxious to be unified as a community. And the leadership is fully supportive of incorporating the arts into worship and such. It is an exciting place to be... and a bit overwhelming too.

It was such a sweet thing to get to meet her in person, five years after the fact. And what a great work God has done in their community. How He weaves his wacky-wondrous web, connecting us in the strangest, most delightful ways. Her husband is pretty swanky too.

8. We jammed out with the mongolian-irish-japanese-grunge-bluegrass-electronic poetry minstrels. I really have no other idea how to adequately describe one of the most satisfying spoken word-music experiences of the past decade.

Here is a sound clip. Dude in dreadlocks was a latter day Dick Van Dyke. They called him Ben. He slew that banjo into submission.

7. We sowed.

We inked. We made postcards. We ate food artistically. I did yoga with Jesus.

6. We took pictures up against very cool red barn walls.

5. I had a great time speaking to about hundred artists coming principally from Imago, but a few traveling further distances from Oregon, Washington and even British Columbia.

(No seriously, people, I get the whhh-ii-llii-ees when I sit down to make art.)

What a great group of artists. Phaedra and I were very impressed with their desire to grow spiritually and artistically and communally. We love you guys!

4. Josh "the Butler" and Jan "the Jan" were two awesome pastors to artists.

Josh, a local, Jan, an import from Ireland, impressed us thoroughly. Their mission? To help believer artists become mature in all aspects of their life. What a great mission. Their arts website is comprehensive and their reading list excellent. Read away, my friends, read away. Josh and Jan treated us royally and we now feel we have dear friends on the oregonian coast.

3. We stayed the night in an elementary school. We slept in the counting room. We drew our names on our own personal chalkboard. They call it The McMenamins Kennedy School: a school converted into a hotel. To-tally cool. The "hotel" not only has the (not so) usual restaurant and bar, it has a movie theater, a soaking pool and a working brewery. And if you care, you can enjoy a whiskey and a cigar in the "detention" room. Not your grandpa's grammar school.

2. Did we mention the beautiful woods? Yep, we loved them. We wanted to eat them and put them in our suitcases. Sigh.

(I am lord of this path. I am. For this picture. I wave my stick at insects. Shoo, insects.)

1. The toilets. We think Austin is progressive. Nope. The Portland airport's toilet's provide you with environmentally friendly flushing experiences. See for yourself:

All in all we had a very rich, very encouraging time. At the end on Sunday the artists gathered around Phaedra and me and prayed for us. They sent us out, west coast-style, into this new season of our life. We loved it, what a gift. And we can't wait to see what God will be doing in and through this blessed community to transform the artistic highways and biways of Portland.

Off to the Land of Steve Prefontaine

Tomorrow early Phaedra and I leave for Portland, Oregon. I'll be speaking at a retreat for artists from Imago Dei Community. We're really excited to be going. It's not only getting hot in Austin and so a chance to drench our heads in cold mist air, it's a chance for us to visit the signpost of the new kingdom of used books: Powell's.

It was only this morning as I lay in bed in that liminal state between dreaming and waking that the little legos of my 3 retreat talks came together. I'll be using St. Augustine's alleged pronouncement, "Love God and do whatever you want," as base camp.

Easier said than done, of course. But for the time being I'll launch off in three directions: Loving God for His sake; Loving God for your sake; Loving God for your neighbor's sake. We love God for His sake by living as His beloved. We love God for our sake by being faithful to the calling on our life. We love God for our neighbor's sake by encouraging him or her as if they were going to give up on their calling any moment now.

Of course we love God for so many other reasons, but as with all artistic projects it's not a matter of what you could say but of what you will--and should--say. And that's what I sense the Holy Spirit guiding me with this group. I hope to stay flexible. You never know. The wind blows however it wills. But I love retreats. They're their own little creatureliness with opportunities for deeper connection with friends and acquaintances that sometimes you plum run out of time to connect in any meaningful during the normal run of your life.

We're happy to be going together. It's fun. Josh and Jan, our Imago Dei arts pastorly hosts, have been great so far. We're really looking forward to getting to know new artistic brothers and sisters in westcoastlandia.

If I have the time, I'd like to tip my hat to fellow runner Prefontaine's resting place.

(PHOTO: Part of my family jumping with zest on Easter Sunday in our backyard.)

The Good City & The Alternate City

A BOOK REVIEW
Here is the book review I wrote for Books & Culture. It's a review of two books: Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architecture, Urbanism and the Sacred by Philip Bess and An Architecture of Immanence: Architecture for Worship and Ministry Today by Mark Torgerson. It goes without saying that I learned a good deal about two subjects that lie beyond the range of my usual reading habits: urban design and architecture.

AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM
Here is an article that came out in the Austin American Statesman on the Saturday after the Transforming Culture Symposium.

A STRANGE DEAL: "THE EVIL STRANGER"
I honestly don't know what to do with this, not so much critically but pastorally and relationally. See here a news bit about the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival. They've managed to raise the biggest first prize money for a film festival in the world: $101,000. I know how I'd respond theologically to the following statement by the director:

Christians who think Hollywood is softening toward their views should not be swayed by corporate attempts to “Christianize” movies, Phillips warned, citing the 2005 release of The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe and upcoming Prince Caspian – both based on books in the Chronicles of Narnia series written by C.S. Lewis.

“Prince Caspian and The Dawn Treader (the third book/movie in the series) are becoming increasingly darker, more 21st Century teen rebellion and the occult,” Phillips said, explaining that the mission and maxim of the SAICFF is that “every frame be captive to being obedient to Christ.”

But I'm not so clear what my pastoral responsibility is to my brother down the road. Do I ignore? Do I confront? Do I say, I'll see you on the other side of the veil? At what point do you let a brother do his own thing and at what point do you say, Brother, what you're doing is wrong--theologically, aesthetically, missionally, hermeneutically, pastorally? Is he my neighbor? He is. He's nearby geographically. He's nearby missionally: his "product" is art and culture. But what's my responsibility to my neighbor?

Maybe the answer is simple. Maybe I pray and if the Spirit says yea or nay, I do accordingly. Or maybe I keep from replying to everything that's out there at the risk of distracting myself and not staying focused or faithful to my calling here in Austin, and that's that.

But to keep things interesting and to not fall into cowardly brotherly love, I'll say that Doug Phillips' writing about horror movies is naive, encumbered by sloppy research, and plagued by highly emotional over-statement. Here was my attempt to make sense of horror movies. Let the neighborly parley go wherever it may.

(PHOTO: The first pic that came up on the world wide web of googledom when I typed in New Jerusalem. I poked around and found the painting described as a dispensational premillenialist vision of the future.)

It's my Birthday today!

"Do you feel you've accomplished enough in life?"

Ask your average male this question and, as sure as B16 (aka Pope Benedict of Rome) will say the word "sex" at least once today, you'll get a spirited no. Ask your average male in his 30s and all of Mt. Olympus will laugh its head off, roaring and cackling with the obviousness of the answer till a god accidentally falls off a nearby cliff and then capriciously punishes humans for making him suffer so; and we, unsure whether we're being punished with a worser version of spring, summer, fall or winter, will call it global warming for the time being.

That's the question I was asking myself this morning as I lugged my 1970s golf bag down the fairway of hole six. Do I feel I've accomplished enough in my life now that I've turned 36?

I was playing my birthday round of 9 at the Hancock public golf course. I had behind me a black dude that reminded me of Bagger Vance--who played like Bagger Vance--breathing down my neck. I couldn't go faster because of two, golf cart-riding dudes poking in front of me. And we were the only four people on the whole course on this wind-swishing and swirling morning.

I didn't want to stress. I hate stressing on the golf course. I wanted to relax, chill, hang. Mosey. I wanted to meditate about life, in particular mine. And now I couldn't meditate because Bagger-Tiger-Otherworldly-Old-Guy black dude was hitting the green off of every tee. (I have no idea how to write correct golf syntax?!)

Then I thought, WWETWD?

What Would Eldrick Tiger Woods Do? He would ignore everybody. He would go zen deep inside. He would play the game he always wanted to play. So I did what Tiger would do.

The Bagger-stunt-man actually dropped out after hole 5. When I saw he packed it up for real I breathed a full-lunged sigh of relief. Ahhhh. Silence. Solitude.

And now the questions of life.

So, David, you're 36 today. What have you accomplished in life?

I really hate that question. The voice in my head asks it every year; every year since I was 19, every year always the same: Have you accomplished enough? Have you accomplished enough to feel satisfied--satisfied that you're not wasting your time? Are you doing enough to feel vindicated, validated? I think it's a satanic voice. The answer is pretty much: no. "No, I'm not doing enough. It isn't enough, it's never enough. I need to have done more."

Of course I haven't accomplished enough. But by what standards? Mine. My infinitely unsatisfied standard.

I'm also an emotionally drunken bumper car these days. I oscillate between elation and disappointment with the symposium. I married only three months ago this Sunday and I'm still adjusting to this together life. I end my tenure as arts pastor in five weeks; five weeks out of 12 years. And I'm not sure it's ending how I thought or imagined it would end.

This Sunday I preach on "Putting off the old man" and I've yet to decide what illustration from my life, what vice of mine I'm going to enlist. I'm really bummed that I'm no longer going to be preaching on a regular basis. It's taken me so long to learn how to do it well there's a melancholy sadness now that its abruptly ending.

Phaedra and I go on full-time support starting June 1 and we need to raise it by then. I'm not sure what the fat I'm actually going to do about Ph.D. studies now that Jeremy has translated, to use King James Language, to Duke. Our hearts ache to live overseas. Both of us grew up as expats (Guatemala and Scotland respectively) and we feel this is a rare window of opportunity to get out for a season.

I'm tired, and I'm tired of being tired, and there comes this question again: "Do you feel you've accomplished enough?"

No.

I decided that I would bogey hole 6. Par for this hole is four strokes, so I aimed to click it in five, one over. I needed a concrete goal. I needed one thing I could accomplish.

I drove the ball off the tee straight, not great but not bad either. With an 8-iron I hit into the wind, forty yards to the right of the green. With my third stroke I pitched it onto the green. And then I had to decide: Do I go for par or do I stick with my goal? I was close enough to attempt par. I stuck with my goal. I two-putted into the hole. A bogey.

I climbed the tee mound on hole 7. Behind me lay 38th street with its mid-morning, buzzing, up and down travail of cars. My hair was matted with sweat under my cap. I stretched my sore fingers, out and in. A swirling breeze under partly cloudy skies, temperatures lying low in the 70s, kept things cool. I was quiet now. A gentleness settled in my spirit.

I pulled out a 2-iron. Head down, still, forearm straight, knees slightly bent, torso hovering over the long bronze angle of iron, mentally envisioning the line of flight, I cocked back, then swung fluidly down, rushing through and up and over, right ankle twisting, grinding into the ground, iron now lying over my left shoulder, resting, its work done, watching, waiting, eyes squinting, my spirit quiet.

I had clocked ball to within 25 yards of the green. Amazing. I couldn't believe it. From there I pitched it onto the green within 3 inches of the hole. I laughed out loud. Rock n roll! I hoisted my pitching wedge up high to acknowledge all the applause, heads nodding, lips pursed, saying, "That was a good shot, Taylor, that was a very good shot." Thank you, thank you. I tipped my hat to the invisible crowd. I waved it at the passing cars. I had almost eagled hole 7.

Where were Mike Akel and Jeffrey Travis to behold such talent, to know that I had almost accomplished an eagle on hole 7? They were in Los Angeles, far, far away.

I parred hole 8 and then, with no one behind or before me, in the everlasting pleasure of my all-encompassing solitude, heart happy and full from my early morning birthday golf, I played four balls off of tea #9, each in turn, rocketing left, slicing and sailing right, screaming wildly away from me, pooching and choking chunks of earth, all the way eventually down into one little hole 264 yards away. I bogeyed and double bogeyed and wacked a line-drive with jet force into an oak tree thirty yards to the other side of the green and scraped my Top-Flite1 out of the pond and cheated by kicking my ball off a patch of rocky soil and then, before raising my hat to thank all my amazing invisible fans, I rummaged through the woods by the creek for extra balls to replace the two that I'd lost along the way. I found none.

It's my birthday today and I'm 36.

My parents gave me an 1829 edition of John Wesley's journal. My awesome gardner-artist wife, Phaedra, whom I love now more than the day I married her, gave me an illustrated book of Russian Orthodox icons (14th-17th century) and a travel-size icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov. My nephews and nieces hollered a raucous, discordant happy birthday into my voice mail. I have beautiful alstroemeria and Hawaiian pincushion flowers brightening up my reading nook. Tonight we attend a performance of Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance.

It's my birthday today and it's my first as a married man.

As I was praying on the fairway of hole 6, asking God if there was another way of thinking about the passing of the years, I sensed that the Holy Spirit was with me, listening to me, listening to my heart, wobbly as it was under the pressure of this question: "Have you accomplished enough in your life?" And I felt like He answered me, right there, on the golf course. He gave me a little gift. He offered me, not an answer, but a different question.

"Do you feel like you are leaning more fully--more fully this year than last year--into your calling?"

"That's a great question," I thought to myself, suddenly very happy.

And I felt a great levity blowing into my soul, both in the sense of lightness, countering heaviness, and laughter, countering despair. I felt relieved! I can do this. I can learn to be free from this omnipresent pressure on men in their 30s to be incontestably and publicly successful, if not already, then certainly on their way to such success. But that first question is poison. It has nothing to do with Jesus' world. Nothing. Nothing at all. It accuses and perpetually finds us guilty: No, I haven't accomplished enough to feel good about myself.

But this second question, this one I can answer joyfully: Yes. Yes, I think I am, as best as I can tell. For as much as can be reasonably expected of any 36-year old man I am leaning more fully, more weightily into my calling. I've more to go, but that's the thrill of it all! There's always more solidness ahead of me, always more life. There's always an eternally filling, expanding, weighty but not burdensome, light but not flimsy or flacky, true David-ness to be had, an "ever filling up of the always fullness of God."

I'm at home now. It's raining outside, by the sound of it pretty hard. It's 12:01 am. It's April 18, the day after my birthday. Phaedra is sitting in her favorite black chair reading Ron Hansen's Atticus. I have more life to live tomorrow morning.

(PHOTO: That's me sitting as golf lord of my back yard. My fig tree is hallowing me. And this here below is Phaedra and me, giving expression to how we felt about a rather cheesy, corny, over-the-top Michael Flatley, Irish-riverdancy, Las Vegas-meets-Branson, Missouri, LORD OF THE FLASHY PANTS DANCE.)

Un Petite summary of the symposium: Second course

(Rory Noland, former chief music man at Willow Creek Community Church, now author of two wonderful books for artists, speaking to a room-full of people in his breakout session. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he looks just a little like Billy Crystal; and Rory, if you read this, I mean it as a compliment! My guess at what he's saying: "Artists. . . hm. . . well. . . they're funny people, you know. I've seen a few in my days. . . but very fu-nn-y people.")

Here is part deux of Rosie's fine summary of the symposium happenings.

THE DANGERS
David talked about his passion to see artists as fully integrated persons, mature, and alive to God. To that end, he discussed six dangers of artistic activity in the church: bad art (e.g., cliché, melodrama, impersonal), super-saturation (too much of a good thing), the stubborn ossification of tradition (which he called "estancandose tercamente" -- Spanish for "getting stuck stubbornly"; also known as "the dead faith of the living"), the utilitarian subjugation of art (to worship or evangelism), art as a form of distraction (escape into feeling, entertainment), and immaturity (lack of self-control, manipulation, being ruled by fear).

David gave us three qualities of healthy artistic growth: it is relationally ordered (pastors relating to artists, older to newer generations, home culture to distant cultures), contextually relative (artistic excellence is when a work accomplishes the purpose for which it was created, as Nicholas Wolterstorff said), and organically rhythmed (seasonal, balancing "festal muchness" with "cleansing simplicity").

THE FUTURE
Finally, Jeremy was charged with predicting what the next 50 years of art in the church would look like. He treated us to an amazing tour-de-force in his typical style, a combination of lecture and performance (he's a fine concert pianist, in addition to sharing initials with J.S. Bach). Using the final movement from Prokofiev's 7th Piano Sonata, and bits of other works, Jeremy demonstrated "hopeful subversion," starting not with where we are now, but rather with a vision of God's future and working backward from there.

His main points were: 1. The Spirit unites the unlike (e.g., people hearing one another in their own tongues at Pentecost). 2. The Spirit generates excess (the same "festal muchness" David talked about; the New Creation is not merely a restoration of balance to the world but vastly exceeds the Garden of Eden). 3. The Spirit inverts (the rich become poor, and the poor rich). 4. The Spirit exposes the depths to which Christ has gone and the depths of who we are (as opposed to sentimental solipsism which avoids darkness). 5. The Spirit recreates (the Resurrection was the first day of the New Creation) 6. The Spirit improvises (the new heaven & new earth is surprisingly, endlessly new).

For many, God is dull because he seems so "ordered" -- all word/logos and no spirit. Jeremy invited us to embrace "non-order" (as distinct from disorder), which is the realm of laughter and the Spirit.

OUR CORPORATE WORSHIP
Bryan Brown and his team led us in worship that reinforced the principles being espoused in the conference. There was beauty, simplicity, and honest grappling with darkness. The unifying theme was the colors of the rainbow (a work of art by the triune Creator). Each day of the symposium, the lighting was changed to highlight two different colors from the spectrum. We sang some very Regent-ish songs, including Eugene's favorite "St. Patrick's Breastplate" (complete with all the weird rhythms and versification). Visual art, music, dance, and drama were all interwoven with excellence.

In between the keynote lectures and worship times, there were testimonies by practicing artists. There was also a cornucopia of breakout sessions covering everything from The Care of Artists, to Drama, Architecture, Cross-Cultural Mission, Forming an Arts Ministry in the Church, etc. (Recordings of all the plenary lectures and many of the breakout sessions will be available on the conference website at some point in the future.)

IN THE END
As David clarified during one of the Q&A sessions, the title of the symposium meant not that we aim to transform the culture by our art, but that God is in the business of transforming culture, and we are blessed and called to participate in that. What an awesome privilege it was to participate in what I truly believe will be looked back on in generations to come as a key moment in the growing renewal of the arts in the evangelical church that God is in the midst of accomplishing.

A tasty morsel indeed!

(Colin Harbinson, chief attaché for the newly formed Stoneworks group, here giving a biblical basis for the arts.)

(Travis Reed, bald dude on the far left and main boss at The Work of The People, and Matt Patterson, Gateway Church's Creative Arts Director on the far right, talking to peeps about video and film and their place, function and effect upon corporate worship et al.)

(Phaedra speaking in betwixt activities with Chris Mitchell, Director of the Wade Center at Wheaton College. Chris got his Ph.D. at St. Andrews and said we could be blood brothers forever if I did likewise, which, God bless me, I hope happens somehow, someway.)

(Jennifer Cumberbatch, all-around delightful, sharp-as-a-tack, who's-who woman here in Austin, and the ever-elegant co-director of the Trinity Arts Conference, Kim Alexander, taking a rest after having spoken in the "Arts & Evangelism" breakout.)

(Double trouble pastors, Gideon Tsang (Vox Veniae) and Don Vanderslice (Mosaic), shooting the fat on "Art and the non-traditional church." Guess of what Don is saying: "Ok, folks, here's the key to success. Listen very carefully: You give artists a big hug. That's it. Yep. I know, you'd think it'd be more complicated than that, but it isn't. But it needs to be a very big hug--like this." Gideon thinking to himself: "Hmmm. . . I don't know if I'd say it needs to be that big. Maybe a little smaller." These guys are great, I love them, and I'm so glad they were a part of it all.)

Podcasts from the Symposium

Kevin Gibson, who's with the pastoral staff of First Baptist Church of North Kansas City, Missouri, attended the symposium and ended up creating 7 podcasts (that I'm aware of so far). He has a website called worshippodcast.com, with the subtitle "conversation about the stuff of Christian worship." His categories include: arts, church sound, dance, drama, lament, missional, multi-site churches, music, preaching, psalms, Sally Morgenthaler, technology, video, visual arts, worship. Looks like a lot of good material there.

Here are the podcasts he collected from meandering the halls of the symposium:

1. Worship and the Arts: John Witvliet.

2. Visual Arts and the Church: Sandra Bowden.

3. Drama and Worship: Alison Siewert.

4. Church Art Galleries: Tim High.

5. Video and Worship: Travis Reed.

6. Music and Worship: Greg Scheer.

7. Dance, Movement and Worship: Sandra Organ-Solis.

Thanks, Kevin, for doing the good work and I look forward to hearing them!

(PHOTO: That's John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture, saying, if I recall correctly: "I don't get it people. What's going on here? Don't you like books!? Seriously. Books are awesome!" Ok, I'm making that up, but I bet it's a good guess. Click on the pic to see what books he recommended the class. FYI: His breakout session gets my vote for most artistic title: “The Contemporary Culture of Books, Literature and Ideas: Or What the Heck People are Writing About These Days and How All These Ideas Are Shaping the Imagination of Christians, Consciously or Unconsciously, Immediately or Eventually ... and Why This Matters to Churches”.)

Un Petite summary of the symposium: First course

My friend the globe-trotting Rosie Perera has written a very fine summary of the symposium, sent originally to the chefs at Regent College. She has kindly allowed me to reproduce it here. For those of you attended, this will be a reminder of things said and done. For those who couldn't join us, this will become hopefully an amuse-bouche, a pleasant bite to whet your appetite for the main course: all the forthcoming audio recordings.

This is part one of her summary.

Regent Alumni Enjoy a Great Banquet at the Transforming Culture Symposium in Austin by Rosie Perera (MCS '04)

Perhaps it was the lure of seeing and hearing Eugene Peterson and Jeremy Begbie again, or the desire to support our fellow alum David Taylor (ThM '00) whose brainchild this conference was, or simply the need to get away from the unusually long winter of 2008 in Vancouver. Whatever the reason, 25 Regent alumni and current faculty/staff/students congregated in Austin, Texas, making up about 4% of the 600+ attending the Transforming Culture Symposium from April 1-3, 2008.

The conference -- aimed at pastors, church leaders, and artists, and led by David and his collaborator Larry Linenschmidt -- put forth a "vision of a relationship between the church and the arts that is theologically informed, biblically grounded, liturgically sensitive, artistically alive, and missionally shrewd."

It sought to address six key themes and questions: 1. THE GOSPEL: In what way is art a gift, a calling, and an obedience? 2. THE PASTOR: How is the pastor an artist and the artist, a pastor? 3. THE WORSHIP: How can our actions and spaces be artfully shaped? 4. THE ARTIST: What is an artist and how do we shepherd these strange creatures? 5. THE DANGERS: What are the dangers of artistic activity? 6. THE FUTURE: What is a vision of the evangelical Church in the year 2058?

Food metaphors were in plentiful supply.

We were treated to a tasty smorgasbord of talks on these questions by the six plenary speakers:

Andy Crouch (author, editorial director for The Christian Vision Project at Christianity Today), Eugene Peterson (author, pastor, Regent professor emeritus), John Witvliet (director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, former Regent Summer School professor), Barbara Nicolosi (screen-writer, consultant, film critic), David Taylor (writer, arts pastor extraordinaire), and Jeremy Begbie (musician-theologian, founder of Theology Through the Arts, former Regent Summer School professor).

THE GOSPEL
Andy talked about art as those aspects of culture that cannot be reduced to utility. Art is a free response to grace; it is play. Like play, pain is also useless. They both must come together in art. Play that doesn't acknowledge pain can become escapism. Pain without play and grace can lead to sadism. Only in Christ can we make art with full awareness of the pain that exists. Andy also pointed out that art cannot be done alone; it requires community.

THE PASTOR
Eugene was quintessentially Eugene. He told us stories. Stories of three artists who had shaped his pastoral identity by teaching him the difference between a vocation and a job description. There was Willy, the painter, who made a prophetic portrait of Eugene looking gaunt and grim, as he might look in 20 years if he insisted on being a pastor; Willy said "the church will suck the soul out of you" (Eugene didn't take his advice, but kept the portrait as a cautious reminder).

There was Gerard, the architect who came and worshiped for a year with the newly forming church community in Eugene's basement, so that he could listen to who they were and what they needed in a new church building (simple, honest, beautiful).

There was Judith, the weaver, who felt "lucky" to hear the story of King David preached for the first time in her life (she had a "beginner's mind, a child mind" as the Buddhists say). She would weave Eugene tapestries of things she'd heard him say. She eventually became a Christian, but none of her artist friends could understand what she saw in it.

THE WORSHIP
With many beautiful projected images, John introduced us to three spiritually nourishing and culturally crucial constraints on art for use in public worship assemblies. 1. It must be corporate, resisting isolation and elitism. 2. It must help people pray, resisting both sentimentality and the temptation to make the art an end in itself. 3. It must aid in perceiving the glory and beauty of the triune God, resisting idolatry.

THE ARTIST
Barbara, the only Catholic on the panel, and by all accounts the "spiciest" (she had us in stitches with her hilarious and sometimes irreverent quips), spoke first of some of the functions of beauty: its wholeness brings rest, its harmony brings joy, and its radiance brings fulfillment. The beautiful makes us feel small and humble.

We have a responsibility as the church to provide art so that people can get in touch with their creatureliness and be okay with it. Barbara told us how to recognize real artists: their artistic talent shows up early; their work has emotional power; they connect personally to the audience/viewers; their work has a freshness, a prophetic voice; and they are obsessed with details of form. She countered the common misperceptions that artists are crazy or lazy.

Finally, she outlined the "crosses" artists have to bear: loneliness, rejection, instability, entrepreneurism, having to collaborate with people, and the burden of success.

A few PICS from the TCS

NB: sale of MP3s of the TCS main talks will be up on the TCS website soon. Please stay tuned. In the meanwhile here are a few pics from the three day extravaganza, not the best necessarily, just the ones I have so far.

Larry and I blessing everyone on the last day of the symposium.

Jeremy Begbie ripping it up on the piano.

Jeremy through a glass darkly.

Bryan Brown and company leading everyone in worship. Check it out. We're singing St. Patrick's gymanstic hymn. That's good stuff.

Brie Walker and Tim Jones performing Ps. 8. The lovely Alison Siewert directed.

Dal Schindell of Regent College and Bobby Gross of CIVA are deep in thought. "Is visual art good? Is it not good? Is it good? Is it not good? . . ." Sandra Bowden in background is saying, "Oh come off it, boys, it's good!"

The virtuoso Paul Finely tearing it up on la guitara.

Me talking to the Operation Mobilization boys in the hallway where all the art was hung. "No seriously, guys, the iguana I caught was this big. Seriously!"

John Witvliet commenting, Jeremy getting over jet lag.

The delightful Barbara Nicolosi explaining Aristotle's concept of beauty.

That dude is bold.

Andy Crouch being a little playful himself.

Six speakers in panel mode on the big screen. I wonder if you could psycho-analyze us by our body postures.

Luci Shaw praying during worship on Thursday morning.

Todd Garza and Amanda Davidson performing on Wednesday morning.

Eugene Peterson giving the benediction on Tuesday evening.

The cool dudes from Colorado. Michael Jordan is third from left. No joke.

Annette Christopher and Ceci Proeger dancing as the first thing that happens to open the symposium Tuesday at 10:30 am.

Two days after

I played golf today. 18 rounds. I needed it. Jeffrey Travis, Mike Akel and I stopped after nine and grabbed a burger and fries in the dodgy snack shop off the driving range. It was 70 degrees and sunny today in Austin, Texas. I stood on the ambrosial green grass in the middle of the fairway on hole 16, birds cooing, a breeze skating in between an oblong pond on one side and a skirt of woods on the other, a 7 iron in hand, Helly Hansen baseball cap low on the eyes, sweating, hands beginning to blister, reminding myself for the fiftieth time to keep my head down--and then I stopped. I stopped and looked up from the pock-faced white ball. I relaxed my body. I took in a deep breath. I exhaled it out. I took note of life quietly happening around me. For a fleetingest moment I experienced a holy zen, the restful peace of Christ, the pleasure of God over the work of his hands. All was well. It was going to be ok. I'm going to make it.

And then I wacked that ball and followed it with my eyes till it landed in the woods.

This entry is harder to write than I imagined. As an organizer I see everything that went right about the symposium and everything that went wrong. How do I write about it without sounding triumphalist or self-pitying?

My brain is still in a partial state of cream-of-wheat. I can't remember half the things that were said—from the stage, in casual conversation, even from my own mouth. My emotions are fickle. Symposia are hazardous to your health.

Phaedra and I are OCBs. OCBs are different from OCDs, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. OCBs are the kind of people who like their homes Orderly, Clean and Beautiful, not in any OCD way, mind you, just in a pleasant enjoyment of things being in their place, dust dusted away, fresh-cut flowers, Mexican-tiled mirrors, bookshelves with books whose bindings are all the color blue, a wooden-carved statue of Don Quixote, textiles from Indonesia and Guatemala draped this way and that around the house--everything in its place helping us to find our center. At home. This past week our home was crap!

Mostly, we just laughed at the mess. Sometimes we'd come home late at night, knowing that dawn was only a few hours around the corner, and we’d make the bed before getting into it just so we'd feel like sanity had not completely escaped the premises.

I'm truly sorry I didn't meet everybody who showed up for the symposium. I really am.

But we laughed a lot. I love laughing. Barbara Nicolosi was hilarious, and very, very spicy. I would meet people and think, "I know you. Where do I know you from?" I knew them from their registration. And they had a face! I loved meeting, for example, Tamara Murphy who didn't look anything like I imagined her from her emails and blog comments.

I walked around all three days like a pregnant woman. When the modern dancers, Annette and Ceci, took the stage for the opening of the symposium I almost started crying. It was all too beautiful. I've carried this thing inside me for eight years. Here finally it was happening--with real, live people who had paid mountains of money to come and I thought to myself "I can't do this. I don't think I can carry this thing. I'm not big enough, old enough, experienced enough, resourced enough, strong enough. Just don't blow it, David, just don't blow it."

Eerie and weird and astonishing and happy and sad (that now that it had started it would come to an end before I was ready for it to end) and cranky and surprised and overwhelmed and thoroughly spent and marveling at the goodness of God and frightened for all the things that might go wrong and happy, happy, happy and anxious, anxious, anxious for all the things I knew we hadn't prepared or anticipated or that people would miss--and I would want to say, "I know, I know, trust me, I know and we tried, I promise," but to say those things on day one would be lame and disingenuous, so I kept my mouth shut and let the "art" speak for itself and let pleasure and disappointment happen of their own will and under Jesus' sovereign shepherding.

I also wore a polyester shirt my first day and stank like a pig by 2 o'clock.

Many speakings. I was thrilled with the way Andy Crouch and Jeremy Begbie began and ended the plenary talks. They so surpassed my hopes for the kind of framing I wanted to take place. Eugene Peterson was quintessentially Eugene, elliptically narrating his way to the truth. John Witvliet is one of the kindest and most broadly seeing scholars I know. The stuff they do at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship is fabulous. I felt bad for Barbara who had her talked eaten up by her Mac computer. But I was so glad she was there with all her spicyness and burlesque sense of humor. She's a Catholic Christian woman who feels the sting of artistic want and ache every day.

I was also glad to see people meeting each other, yucking it up in the hallways and the courtyard and the bathroom. I wanted so badly to be the Holy Spirit. Then I could be everywhere at once and eavesdrop on everyone's conversation--without being creepy.

I'm tired. I've got several hundred evaluations to read. The budget needs to be reconciled. I oversee communion tomorrow morning at church. Ed Tschoepe's having his goodbye picnic after church. Phaedra's weeding the garden right now. It's 7:52 pm in Austin, Texas. The house is darkening around me. And the symposium feels like a strange dream, a very strange dream.

I'm not sure what it means--what it means--but I'm glad I did it, with an incalculably blessed army of helpers.

Two days to go

It's hard to believe we're only two days away. I've been thinking about this symposium since the summer of 2000 when I pulled Laurel Gasque over in the hallways at Regent College and said, "Laurel, I've got this idea for a conference that would bring together artists, pastors, educators and theologians." That was the original idea. She said, "Great. I hope you do it."

And here we are, I'm doing it, and it's so much harder than anything I ever imagined back then. We're ooching toward the 600 mark when we start including the day-rate goers in the mix. It's frightening, really. But it's happening.

It's the eeriest feeling. I was standing outside Hope Chapel this morning, during the service, talking to Melinda Peinado. Off to the side was a cluster of three older women. They kept looking at me. Then one of them walked over to me and said, "Hi, I'm Kevin Delahunty's mother." "Oh my! It's so nice to meet you. I knew Kevin back in the mid '90s. I was just getting started with this whole arts pastor business." "Yes," she said, "and I'm here for your symposium." Oh wow. This funny feeling started wobbling around in my heart.

"Do you know what it means that you're standing in front of me?" I asked her. "No," she said with a bemused look. "It means I really have to do this symposium thing after all. Oh shoot!"

Folks at this moment are driving from Georgia, Mississippi, Colorado and around Texas. Barbara Nicolosi flew in this afternoon. The rest of the gang and hundreds of others descend upon Austin tomorrow.

It's 72 degrees in Austin tonight, 81% humidity. The skies are clear. I'm not done writing my talk on the dangers of artistic activity in the church. I'm beat.

And I've never done anything like this before.

YouTube: "art in the church" in Austin, TX

My good friend Taylor Martyn walked around the streets of Austin during South by Southwest asking people what they thought about art, church, religion, and other stuff. Very interesting responses. I love that man-on-the-street stuff.

The short version is: here.

The longer, more interesting version is: here.

Many thanks for getting this together, Mister Taylor.

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day. Phaedra and I completely, utterly forgot about it until we walked into Hyde Park Gym and muy suave, Jason-with-the-cool-yellow-jeep, reminded us. Then we felt like idiots because we realized one year ago, March 17, 2007, we got engaged at the old medieval masquerade party. Oh man. We were two tired punks.

We're adding an evening rate for the Transforming Culture sympo-ference. It's $25 bucks.

Very exciting, encouraging discovery: that we have, thus far, 51 churches from around Austin sending at least one person to the symposium. That thrills my heart. And it ranges from high Catholic to fervent Pentecostal to Lutheran to emergent to Baptist to Anglican to house church to five-point Presbyterian.

My totally rad gardner-wife built a compost pile heap-of-a-structure in the back yard. That was cool to come home to yesterday.

Went to see STEP UP 2 THE STREETS last night. Oh man, we totally missed our callings. We were so born in the wrong hood; way too tighty whitey. We left the theater thinking: "Baby, we are destined to hip-hop dance." The dancing was so awesome we couldn't stand it.

Today was a beast of a day, by the way, getting the program booklet to the printers. Hoochimama, I had emails rushing in like a viral Resident Evil sequel.

My little sister Stephanie is days, if not seconds, away from giving birth to her second boy child. She is a beautiful-looking woman. She came by yesterday with boy #1, William Speight. Sir William Speight, whom we affectionately call "dooties," is 1.5 years old. I gave him a stick and taught him how to beat the earth as hard as he could. We also demonstrated to the ladies the evolution of field hockey. That's me and Sir William Speight in the picture above. It's his younger days.

Hung out with the Wedgwood Circle guys last week. Met some neat people. Filmmaker David Cunningham (son of Loren Cunningham, founder of YWAM) who helmed "To End All Wars" and "The Seeker" and who is one grounded, right-on, humble dude. Also Josh Jackson, editor of PASTE magazine. Erwin McManus, the lead pastor at Mosaic, LA. The right-hand honcho to Philip Anschutz, all-around magnate and lord of Walden Media. Charlie Peacock, whom we had as guest artist at the 2003 HopeArts Festival. Santino from the NOOMA videos. Bobby Bailey from the "Invisible Children" project. And my old mate, the Great Gatsby himself, all-round rabble rouser Gordon Pennington.

I also talked with the folks from Culture House in Kansas City. That was good because Phaedra and I are headed in the direction of a similar arts center for Austin.

One of these days Phaedra and I are going to get around to blogging about our honeymoon. She turned to me the other day and said, "David, do you know what this symposium is?" I said, "What?" She said, "You're planning another wedding." She's dog right.

From a sopping wet, weird weather Austin, Texas, this is Drillbit Taylor.