We're having a Dandelion Seed gathering at our house this coming weekend. Friends from TX, NC and IN are coming to visit. The floors will be crowded; there will be fun, music, prayer and lots of discussion. We're talking about this question: "Is Christianity optional?"
Obviously it is optional (not everyone is a part of it). But is it optional for us? Who is us? This got me thinking about the Dandelion Seed Company (DSC) and what it is.
We've called it "an informal gathering of artists," "an artists' network," "a gathering of people committed to follow Jesus, build
community and make art that is honest, excellent and true."
So why do non-artists come? Why do so many of us wonder if we're really artists?
Why have we spent so much time over the years talking about church? (What church is, isn't, should be, could be?)
Why have so many of us come away from Dandelion Seed gatherings saying "We felt more at home with that group of people than about anywhere we've been?"
As the guy who first called us together I've been thinking about this a lot recently.
I have some ideas:
Maybe God brought us together.
Maybe we didn't know why and still don't.
Maybe that's ok.
Maybe we need to discover it together.
Maybe that will emerge as we think, talk, create, listen, pray and live life together.
Maybe it's been emerging but we haven't noticed it.
Our culture is changing. Artists are usually at the forefront cultural shifts.
What if this "artists" group is actually a group of people with a certain cultural perspective and identity that's so unformed it's hard to identify clearly?
What if the DSC is less about art and more about a way of thinking, living, seeing the world and relating? What if God wanted to incubate something that would grow in this emerging culture? What if God grabbed a group of artists and misfits and dropped seeds of vision in them? What if God drew them together and they felt it but couldn't quite understand it?
More on this next week.
Jonathan
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Thanks for this, Jonathan. Well said (and asked).
I'm sorry I can't be there on the weekend. Looking forward to hearing about what happens.
I love that our statement of identity is a bunch of questions. Maybe I hate that my own identity is so often just a question, but these questions here, my brother, they are questions of hope and possibility; they are bold and slightly unsettling but joyful.
Thanks for doing what you do and being who you be.
And for all you've said here: so may it come to pass.
Looking forward to this weekend. It's raining here at the airport and the wind is blowing. Maybe that's a little inconvenient; maybe it looks like delay. But I like to think it's prophetic.
100% yes from me.
I've always felt like the DSC can and should stretch beyond just art (although that's a great common thread), but I agree with Joel that it's good not to have pressure to define what all that might mean yet.
I'm looking forward to exploring that with all of you!
"What if this "artists" group is actually a group of people with a certain cultural perspective and identity that's so unformed it's hard to identify clearly?"
I think you really hit the nail on the head here. Art is, and will like be for the foreseeable future, a part of DSC, but will it be the organizing factor that it started as?
Another perspective on this is that Art is something broader and deeper than the thing we typically denote with that label.
Among other things, it is, as Jonathan has said, a "cultural perspective" and one that is comfortable in the unformed places. Some things I like about Art (at least as I see it) as a unifying principle:
. . . it entails the craft and the doing
. . . it is intrinsically visionary, seeing even in the same apparent substance what others have not yet imagined
. . . it's not content to leave "well enough alone"
. . . it is all about the transformation
. . . diversity and the juxtaposition of the seemingly contradictory are inherent in its worldview
. . . there is perpetual newness and singularity in its form
. . . while not necessarily denying (indeed, often encompassing) them, it goes beyond the merely scientific, logical, phenomenological, philosophical, legal, martial, financial, moral, etc. paradigms that tend to bind us
. . . it embraces mystery
. . . it finds a place of value for the disenfranchised and discarded
. . . metaphor
Those are just a few off the top of my head.
Again, as I see it, this isn't a contradiction of the idea that we go beyond "art" traditionally understood. It's just another way of organizing the same thought into a different expression.
You've certainly given me something to thing about, Joel. I've heard of doing art as worship, prayer, etc., but the idea that you seem to be hitting on is worship and prayer as art forms. That's an interesting concept that could probably use more exploration.
Labels and words. ". . . worms, Roxanne! Worms!" I love words but I'm sometimes to varying degrees afraid of them and sometimes simply irritated. Which is to say, some might call it "mere semantics," and I might otherwise agree but I loathe that expression, so I won't.
But, with the understanding that it's a somewhat arbitrary classification, I am a big fan of unifying under Art v., for instance, Religion, Ritual, Commerce, Morality, Philosophy, etc. Perhaps that's partly because it seems heretical and it's definitely unchurchy (but not un-Church-y). The affinity for heresy isn't just rebelliousness, btw, but a belief that people are fundamentally uncomfortable with the Truth and they will label as taboo whatever they cannot contain or understand. Yes, God Himself is one of those. And the point isn't that I understand Him but that I think it's silly to think I could or must.
I owe a lot of my perspective and language for the whole Art thing to William Blake, to whom I was introduced as my heart longed for a better articulation of, well, everything. Of course, as it turns out, he's a bit enigmatic (which works internally but doesn't necessarily make him the best or easiest avatar when trying to reach others) and, like those of Scripture, his words are subject to a diversity of wild interpretations. His Laocoön is one rather direct working out of the Art issue. I'm not too familiar with the backstory on the original "Laocoön" but that's okay, because, as is his way, Blake completely appropriates it. I hate saying this but, obviously, I don't fall entirely in line with his world view--interestingly, Blake wouldn't have approved of that kind of acquiesence anyway.
Post a Comment