Day 6 of Lent {...process > product...}
In art circles there is a popular hashtag: #doitfortheprocess
Do it for the process. Not the product.
I think this process-oriented mindset is such freedom for artists because it originated in the heart of the First Artist. God does everything for the process. I mean, consider it: Christ was the plan of God from before the foundation of the world.
“God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake.”
God waited a really long time to “get to the point”! Why?! Because He was painting a picture. All through creation, the Noahic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, and the Covenant of the Law, all the way up and until Christ, He was painting a picture.
And He is still painting pictures. He is still longsuffering, still delighting in process. Instead of fast forwarding all of human history to the end goal of a glorified Jesus, God is still relishing the details in His unfolding of His masterpiece!
My friend and fellow creative, He is pleased, fascinated, and gratified in the process He is using with you. How can I say that? How can I know?
Because the Lord binds Himself to His own word. We can take what we learn about His character and nature in the Scripture, put it through the lens of the New Covenant, and realize that He is the only being that is never bored, He is endlessly creating, doesn’t get frustrated with us when we don’t get it. If the Lord tells us to “count it all joy” when we encounter various troubles - how much more does He count it all joy in His process of loving His own?
It helps me to quietly meditate on the processes of God. The degree to which He involves Himself in a human life is beyond profound. He is perfectly patient, and He feels happy in the process, because He is patient (not the irritated kind of “patience-with-a-sigh”)…
…He is endlessly interested in the works of His hands, He knows the outcome, because it all is His artwork anyway. He began the masterpiece, He sustains it, He works on it throughout the course of our collective lifetimes, and He will complete it. He knows exactly what He is doing, and where He is going with all His designs.
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below - does any of this feel like a challenge? Does it sort of “mess” with your church-y ideas of God? Have you known these things all along, and thus you’ve experienced great freedom in your processes?
It has taken time for me. I need to preach to my own soul, and right often, at that! So here I am, in the school of Christ. For me, it is both art school and seminary. I am in this school theologically, practically, relationally, and in my art practice. The goal is the learning…not a certain outcome. The goal is the learning to become as passionate about the process as Jesus is.
Because of this learning, this letting sound doctrine get tangled up with my practice of free-wheeling art, I can no longer put God in neat theological boxes labeled "judgement" and "mercy". Justice and Mercy hang out together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other, you see. They’re close companions, if not lovers. Much in the same way, my Bible study and art have become much more than disinterested associates. They are much more than friends. They have this degree of intimacy. Now, each one defers safely to the other.
Day 5 of Lent {...growing in your practice of what already is...}
When I was in third grade, I painted a picture of a lighthouse. I clearly remember painting a blue sea with waves, the sky, the sun, and a lighthouse, with rays of light coming from it. My teacher entered that painting into a competition of sorts, and it was chosen to represent my county’s whole school system in an exhibit in Nashville.
Then, I never voluntarily painted again. I wanted to, but I didn’t. I didn’t even take art in high school. Again, I wanted to, but at my school in the ‘80’s, art was considered an elective for losers. (Looking back, this makes me really sad. I think things are very different today, thankfully). Because I cared far too much about what everyone else thought about me, I never took a single art class.
Yet all along, Spirit was nurturing that homely little 3rd grader inside me, the one who secretly was so proud that her picture got chosen - the one who secretly wanted to paint so many more.
After that, I tried viola lessons. Fail.
I tried dance lessons when I was 16, so that I could participate in the group dance number for a (of all things!) beauty pageant I was part of. I did great in the beauty pageant, but was an epic fail at dance.
Two years out of high school, I got married. We started our family 9 months and 20 minutes after our ceremony…honeymoon twins. It was then that I began writing in the margins of my time. I remember sending my first manuscript to a magazine.
After months of waiting, my words were returned to me, in that large, brown, self addressed stamped envelope that I had gone to all the extra trouble to load up two babies and drive to the post office to purchase only those supplies, with no money left over to purchase anything else.
Declined. The publishing industry didn’t care about my hard work, or my special trip to the post office, or the fact that I had withheld however many dollars from our grocery budget to buy a large brown envelope and special postage.
But other people in my life were asking me to write! I wrote church announcements, brochures for businesses, curricula for children’s ministry. Everything connected to writing became something that others sought me out for. I was asked to edit book manuscripts for several authors.
The whole time, my original design kept expressing itself in the way I lived my life. We had no money (I can’t begin to make you understand how we had no. money. ) but I still somehow managed to create an atmosphere and a home that I loved and others admired.
Beauty in all its varied forms pulled me like nothing else. I craved beauty. I wanted to create it any way that I could. My fundamentalist upbringing caused me to mis-name my desire for beauty. I called it “discontentment”.
I was so wrong.
But my original design was relentless, because God made me that way, and God never changed His mind about me. Even though I stuffed my creativity in a box, I mis-named it, I ignored it, I starved it, I thought I was too busy to indulge it, it was determined to come out of me, even if the expression was a bit side-ways.
Not one of us can suddenly become who we are not. I wish I could make you understand how hard I tried to be a woman who sang (before I knew better, I inflicted that “ability” so. many. times. on the hundreds of people in my large church). I tried to be a woman who played the autoharp (really!) and who ran a gift basket business. I tried to be a woman who could head up ministries in my then-quite-large church. (Looking back, I was in charge of a group of women in our church’s “Compassion Ministry” that added up to more people than who are in my whole entire church, today!)
I tried to be someone who cooked elaborately healthy meals, and who knew all there was to know about health and healthy food.
I could seriously bore you to tears with the list of all the women I tried to be.
When who I was, was a communicator who was seriously starved for beauty. Nothing more, nothing less.
Out of everything I tried, the writing stuck. The painting stuck, even though I had only expressed it one time, in third grade! And the gift to communicate with an audience stuck. And that is all that stuck - but that is enough, because that pretty much describes the sum total of who I was made to be.
Had I had the wisdom to simply ask trusted wise people, “How do you see me? How am I a blessing to you?”, perhaps I could have cut many years off of my process. Because I believe they would have told me, “When you have something to say, I somehow want to listen. And when you write something, I want to read it. And when I come to your house, I look around and I see beauty - even if there are few resources for it.”
We all bear the fruit of who we are. Apple trees do not strain to bear apples.
Friend. From now to Easter and until the Kingdom comes, I will be right here. Declaring to you the works of the Lord, and admonishing you to grow in your practice of what already is - because there is already something there, that has been there all along.
Serve your family, and then serve others with that very thing.