The Reason for the Light

Posted from The Ruminate Magazine blog, 9 June 2016

Photo by Judith Deem Dupree

We are artists, of one genre or another, at one stage or another. Our leanings and yearnings are all somehow touched by this reality—which may be a lodestar, or still a flicker on our horizon. But yes, something within us takes shape and form and word because it must. Because it cannot be denied without losing our balance in life.

But it comes with a certain caution, a yes-but that hinges on that word balance. Something has been nibbling at my overloaded psyche, and left me with serious thoughts about an arts-exclusivefocus: Life in the “real world”—the multiple issues that press upon us day by day, and the escalation of national and world problems.

Artists and writers, and all sorts of people who celebrate art and writing, are deeply concerned about the hard issues that life in today’s world imposes. There is an unending interplay between expressing creativity and handling the ordinary and inevitable hard realities of living. We cannot worship creativity at the expense of entering the fray. Art is not a retreat.

This leads us to a slight but obvious shift in focus. A way of stepping outside our normal boundaries and busy-ness, to join others who are affected (perhaps unconsciously) or afflicted (quite consciously) by the rigors of our national life—indeed, global life—and want to better understand and withstand and respond to it as creative people.

We often feel torn between our unmet need for creative expression and the rude facts of living in a sometimes “hostile” world. Admittedly, we may feel guilty at times for wanting to run away to a quiet place. (And yes, our artsy self needs tending!) Growing national and universal distress is the elephant in everyone’s living room. Climate change, global unrest, and societal upheaval confront us each morning. They shape everything by their looming presence before us.

How do we live in light of this encroaching darkness? How do we respond as writers and artists? How does it invade, inform, shape what we do? What do we bring to it that is redemptive?Where might it take us creatively? This may be an entry to new life for us. We would do well to bring our intuitive natures into a larger context—into a heart-full and mindful and authentic response to the problems of today’s very fragile world. We need to step out beyond our comfort zone if we are called to be comforters. I believe this is the prior and priority call upon us each—to gather up our Giftings and offer them as Gifts. No, not “freebies.” Bigger than that.

As people who believe in the value of arts, the practice and enjoyment of them, and their soul-necessity, we can move in small, incremental ways—as people who are not “consumed by consumerism,” or defeated by despair, or captivated by the masks of things simplistic. Or dumbfounded by the endless stream of dark chatter that invades us daily.

How do we “tend” each other and care for those beyond us, in a toughening world? How do we build or join in a supportive community? We can come into it all, become insiders—bearing Light, wearing Light, sharing it. Art in the trenches is a bridge to higher ground. Small steps toward inventive living in times of crisis, a buoy in the flood of crises. We can gather hope from our inner resources, from those around us, and from the wisdom of the past, to create hope for the future.

Does this sound like a healthy challenge? I believe it is. I hold onto this, daily. This is Fine Art.

Come join the adventure. Bring your viewpoint and ideas. Say it with passion and tenderness and hope that defies the shredding darkness. Listen to what our readers, your “neighbors,” have to say. Weave something sturdy, something plain-spoken and beautifully simple into the fabric of life around us all. This is redemptive art . . . the reason for the Light within us.

Cleaning Out the Clutter

Image from the public domain

Originally Posted on The Ruminate Magazine Blog 20 September 2014

We’re cleaning out the garage. Not only this day, but the days and weeks ahead. Step by laborious step.

I am a saver, a re-user, a make-do mama―part of the world-war-raised generation that learned as young children to find a new use for anything usable, for whatever might be spruced up, re-purposed or recombined imaginatively, somehow, any how.

It is a secret and semi-legit and often passionate game I have played for much of a lifetime. And, guess what: not infrequently, it really, really works. An old-new thingamajig to live with once again! A transformation! A victory against planned obsolescence, against humanity’s dreadful, casual waste. Reshaping as art—yes, even that!

And sometimes it truly becomes “yes, even that”: a recreated entity, useful and well-used or imaginative―either by its re-purposing or a heightened, expanded “sameness.” It offers testimony to a sort of, umm, resurrection. Sometimes it is the clay pot―mended, ready for holy water, or perhaps a muddle of shards gathered, sorted and shifted, chinked into mosaic that would never have become.

Confession: More often, I admire and set this gizmo-wonder aside for when I might need it, or someone else might need it . . . and it dies, unseen, forgotten, shelved perhaps for years, a space-robber for the essential―for the freshness of the new new. At what point do these re-creations or salvagings become simply debris? The answer, which I’ve long suspected and often avoided, may be that anything that doesn’t have a viable application is suspect.

But wait; there’s a deeper layer to all this clutter-mutter. My garage is a visible metaphor for the crowded chasm of my mind. The head-cargo is of another sort, but no less wedged and dredged.

Do I really want to rummage my thought-life, unravel my theses for remnants patched together over a lifework of processing the whole of it? Do I even know if I habitually do this―feed upon leftovers gone stale with their keeping? Do they, my patterns of response, become too comfortable/comforting, from years of shoeing them into tight assumptions and new juxtapositions and “Aha!”ing the way I patch my old disparities together? Do my alterations and altercations look suspiciously like rationalizations? Place-holders? Are they that?

Life must be more than a convoluted word game, a scrabble of shifting shapes―runes that might fit somewhere, deciphered somehow. It is self-deception, even arrogance, to assume that our cupboardful of suppositions, profess-ings, rationales, can be lifted from their dusty contexts and cross-stitched into a covering that serves the need.

Consider, oh my soul: Have I played God with all my toying and tinkering in response to life? Is this neuronal closet atop my shoulders likely my storehouse, the Ark I’ve toted place to place to place―my Holy of Holies? ? A crammed repository of symbolism and syllogism that I “need”. . .

. . .to shape the need I need to shape, to shape the house that Judith built?

My real need? To sift through the dust and find out what anchors me, what lies at bedrock. What have I shelved in there― behind, beneath the swift or stuttering articulation that is real life? That absolutely begs to be recycled, refurbished . . . rethought. Reshaped without losing some core identity. Redeemed. Perception that becomes bread, that bestows breath.

The Kingdom of God is surety―a clearinghouse for every cluttered mind or closet. It is time to unload. Time to stand before that disheveled mountain of the unknown, unremembered, unusable, and whittle it down to rock. There, and then, I need only stand. Stand and wait.

A Prayer for Artists

Photo by Judith Deem Dupree

Originally posted on the Ruminate Magazine Blog on 20 December 2013

Dear Father Creator, you have created within us a yearning that is never fully satisfied, a longing that leaves us ever hungry. A spaciousness that is often cramped by life. Sorrow unhealed and joy beyond describing. It is You, oh Holy One, author and crafter of Life, Whom we seek—Whom we forever hide from and always search for beyond our heart’s own rubble and the world’s afflictions.

Find us, where we hide. Coax our wizened souls out of the half-dark of our own thoughts. Grant us that inner Sabbath which was wrapped in the flesh and timeless consciousness of Your beloved Son.

Teach us, oh Holy One, with the fine probe of Your Thought, that our very neurons will hum with the inner Life that Your Spirit solely bestows. In Him Who came in Your Name, solely for Your purpose, we see the fluidity, the audacity, the precocity of that hidden Life! Truly, we are meant to stand in the flow of such a steady and illimitable understanding. This is Your promise . . . genesis and fulfillment.

This, this is our Genesis—to live in that endless Creation which flows from your heart. To be wrapped in the warp and weave, the seamless robe of Your Son. To lay our smallness against His brokenness, and grow large with His humility, great with His passion and compassion, timeless with His understanding. When we see more wholly, the gifts of Your imagining will become—will engender and struggle up within our own soul’s soil. We will not be afraid of life, nor death. Our pulse will hum with Your artistry and purpose.

Here, Father—hear my own plea for my own completion: Oh, grasp my reluctant hand, and draw me into Rest! I pledge to forfeit all my heap of sin and sorrow, and to become a part of the Word spoken, an image of the Image of the Living Christ. Draw my portrait as You see it. Out of this great bestowal I choose to live and move and have my being. Cloaked in this comprehension, I will to walk into the world again, readied for life. Readied for giving more than is mine, purposed to evolve and evoke and to recreate Life in His Image, and yearning with your Father-heart over the broken earth.

Amen.