So I have to start this with a disclaimer: I absolutely believe that we are all creative, that we are all designed to be artists, artistic, incarnational. We get this cognitively at least, but often wonder why we aren’t artists, right? I hear you. I have that feeling/thought/Inner Critic very, very often. It seems to me that our two greatest obstacles to finding our way into our artistic self are 1) not trusting that our expression is valid. For that, thank goodness, we have therapy and 2) being more in love with the idea of being an artist than actually being one. No doubt, we all know somebody like that. As George Bernard Shaw said, “Hell is full of amateur musicians.” My take on that – hell is full of people more down with others perceiving them as artists (it’s all about them) than actually being disciplined enough to work on music (it’s about the art). And, um, that’s just a joke, by the way.

All that being said, I also believe that some people come onto this earth with a certain insight, a unique intuition, a vision. And they see with such great breadth and depth into the tension of light and dark, redemption and decay that they can only speak of it through story, image, sculpture, theatre, dance, poetry, song. These people are Artists.

We look for light, but all is darkness;
for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows.
Like the blind we grope along the wall,
feeling our way like people without eyes
At midday we stumble as if it were twilight;
among the strong, we are like the dead.
We all growl like bears;
we moan mournfully like doves.
We look for justice, but find none;
for deliverance, but it is far away.

This poetry spills out over us. We know what this means, how this looks and feels. This was written by a poet who stood in the gap between the light and the dark, between all that is broken and all that is restored. He wrote books of poetry that gave voice to the human condition, to our search for what is True and beautiful, for the upside-downness of incarnation. And then, allegedly, he was sawn in half.

This poet was Isaiah, the prophet whose writing takes up that big chunk about two-thirds of the way into your Bible. Isaiah. Artist. Poet. Prophet.

Here’s the thing: I think the Artists, all of them regardless of their stated spiritual persuasion, are prophets and priests. This isn’t just my random speculation. If you have the patience and wherewithal to plow through the books that make up the Old Testament, you’ll see story after story about the Priests – the tribes set aside for pastoral acts – carrying out the role of artists, tradition preservers, craftsman. And you’ll read story after story about more powerful people moving in and wiping out the Israelites… except for the Artists who were carted away with the “goods” of the land. They were one of the precious commodities of the people.

The world has a love-hate relationship with the Artist, the Church even more so. On one hand, we want them to illuminate our own understanding. We love it when they put poetic words to our experience and immortalize it for us. We crave the thrill of story, the epiphany of an image, the sensuality of a truly remarkable artistic encounter. We applaud those creative endeavors that tell our story and remind us of our power or our redemption. But then the Artist must also tell the Truth. And that makes us uncomfortable. It makes us squirm. It makes us look away. We label it: indecent, confusing, dark, sacrilegious.

So you want to kill the Artists? Here’s how to do it: Tell them to make people happy. Tell them who GOD is and what “he” looks like, sounds like, feels like and tell them to recreate it for the rest of us. Tell them what it has to mean. Tell them it has to be “beautiful.” Tell them the point has to be clear. Tell them it has to be “accessible.” Or “relevant.” Or more like U2. Tell them that they are too avant-garde, or better yet, elitist. Use them to create sanitized, spiritual propaganda. Re-use their work in a way that promotes sentimentality or emotional dishonesty. Dismiss them because they don’t see it the way the masses see it. Divide their soul into the categories of sacred and secular.

Kill them off. They don’t play well with others, or appreciate the sanctity of sanitized faith, or respect our boundaries, or keep their opinions to themselves. Kill them all. That’s usually how it works. Of course, then another just rolls around. Sometimes we get excited because they’re cool like Bono and we dislocate our shoulders patting ourselves on the back that we’re embracing art. (At the risk of getting myself killed, I must say that Bono is much more Prophet than he is Artist. And I love him for that.) But the real Artists, the voices that sing silently from the unpopulated corners about where we’ve come from and where we’re going… well, they’re just too… everything.

Yet what do we do with this? The Artists. They overturn. Heal. Disturb. Comfort. Give words to our groaning. Challenge. Proclaim. Make peace. Restore. Illuminate.

That reminds me of something… oh yeah, The Holy Spirit.

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