never been published...until now

It has always been a dream of mine to write a book or have something published in a magazine. The realization of such a dream is subject, of course, to whether or not you have anything of interest to say.

Never in a million years did I think my first published article would be about art and faith. However, when I look back at the path of my life it makes sense. Still I am just a little shocked, but excited nonetheless.

The new magazine, COLLIDE, which is "devoted to exploring God's fingerprints in the media," recently asked if I would contribute an article on the topic of tension - the tension of creating art in and out of the church. The article was published in their most recent issue. I would encourage you all to sign up for a free trial if you haven't already. I believe this new magazine will prove to be a very interesting voice to artists who also happen to be Christian.

I feel very honored and blessed to have had the opportunity to share some of my thoughts in COLLIDE and hope to write more for them in the future.

Click here to read the article. (Click on the image when you open it to enlarge the print!)

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

jesus + health care

I don't usually think of writing movie reviews. While I watch quite a few movies, I'm never really compelled enough to write anything that I think people would want to read. Let it be known, however, that I'm not writing this post because I believe you'll want to read it. Rather, I'm writing to convince you to go and see Michael Moore's new film about America's health care system, SICKO.

The film has been out for a couple of weeks and has been getting pretty good reviews. I went today with a couple of friends and was completely moved. Now I will be the first one to say that I'm not always a huge fan of Michael Moore. I think his tactics often get in the way of his message - diluting it to the point of camp and rhetoric. Sicko is something else entirely.

ME + HEALTH INSURANCE
I knew that when I moved out to Seattle for seminary I would be giving up my amazing health care through Actor's Equity, the union for actors. The way health care works for actors is through a point system. After you become part of the union, you begin racking up points or weeks for every week you work at a qualified theatre. To get a year of coverage you must work a minimum of 20 weeks, consecutive or non-consecutive, during a 12-month period. 10 weeks will get you 6 months of coverage. Basically if you don't work enough you don't get covered.

I have been blessed the last three years to be able to work enough to qualify for coverage...which, like I said is amazing. The producers of the qualifying theatres pay into a pot which goes towards covering those actors who qualify. Until very recently, the actors paid nothing except a $500 deductible and a $10 co-pay. Now actors are required to pay $100 per quarter - still an incredible deal.

All that went away when I started school. Many of you who have lost or changed jobs know what it is like to not have any coverage all of a sudden. It can be a scary feeling especially if you are not sure where your next meal is coming from.

Seeing Sicko today was quite apropos, as I had just received a letter from Blue Cross that I had finally been approved for coverage. I had spent countless hours scouring the internet for the best coverage and ended up applying for coverage through ehealthinsurance.com. I am lucky to be a healthy, 20-something, so getting coverage was not that difficult, but frustrating nonetheless.

JESUS + HEALTH CARE
The point of this blog, you ask? Well it's two-fold.

To begin with, I think Sicko is Michael Moore's best film to date. And I would encourage all of you, whether you like him or not, to see this film. At the risk of sounding like some kind of activist, I think that the film poses some very interesting questions about our health care system, and perhaps more importantly about how we take care of one another.

Secondly, I wonder if we'd ever thinking of giving Jesus universal health care. I was struck throughout the film by Jesus' words to us about taking care of the sick. In his parable about the sheep and the goats his says:

For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.
Matt. 25:42,43

He also says:

I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.
Matt. 25:45

Moore's argument is summed up by asking, "What is wrong with us that we won't take good care of each other."

Again at the risk of sounding like an activist, this kind of "universal health care," a system similar to that in Canada, France, and the U.K., where everyone receives care, seems pretty much in line with what Jesus is asking us to do - to take care of the sick.

Certainly these systems have their flaws - people will take advantage of them, private companies will go out of business, people will lose their jobs, etc... While I don't advocate shutting down an entire industry and I might feel different if my mom worked for Cigna or Aetna, I still think that Jesus would like the idea of us taking care of each other in this way.

Let's say Jesus lived on earth right now. He's a free-lance speaker and is self-employed. Chances are good he either doesn't have health insurance or pays extremely high premiums to cover himself and the others in his organization. For argument's sake, let's say he doesn't have insurance and suddenly finds himself extremely ill. Supposing that he decides not to heal himself, he instead subjects himself to our worldly ways of treating the sick. Finding himself too sick to work and in need of serious care he finally heads to his local doctor who treats him and sends him on his way. Months later he is stuck with medical bills that he is unable to pay. On and on it goes until he has to fire all his disciples and quit speaking because he is too ill to work, and too poor to see the doctor.

While maybe a silly illustration, this scenario is played out everyday. Again I am struck by the fact that Jesus tells us over and over that HE is the least of US - and that what we don't do for each other is what we haven't done for him.

When Jesus said, "whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me," I'm pretty sure he meant it. So I guess I wonder...if Jesus were alive today, do you think we'd want to give him universal health care?

art + god

“How much time have we wasted trying to make “bigger and better” or slicker and sweeter messages instead of just being the messengers?”
– Betty Spackman

I struggle with this question a lot. First as a Christian, and second as an artist, who happens to be a Christian.

I’ve just begun reading for a new class called “Theology and the Artistic Impulse.” I’ve listed the course goals and objectives below for your reading pleasure:

Course Goals
1. To expand awareness and understanding of contemporary visual art through learning how to look, then see, then feel, then analyze.
2. To connect this art to the human and cultural realities of our time to be on the planet.
3. To think, speak and write creatively, yet authentically, about the relationships of reality, mystery and poetry discovered in the theological implications of contemporary art.

Course Objectives
By the conclusion of this course you should be able to:
1. Begin a lifelong appreciation of contemporary art as the messy and risky production of living artists, which can bring pleasure, wit, beauty, interest and revelation to a living culture.
2. Think in a dialectical manner in the formation of relationships between visual expressions and ideas.
3. Strengthen Christian belief by risking its application to the questions our culture is asking through its art.
4. Plan, make and present a work of liturgical or “gallery” art for exhibition.

I’m terribly excited to finally be taking a class on art and theology – these two things are the reason why I’ve felt most called here to Mars Hill.

The quote above came from an article I’m reading by author and installation artist, Betty Spackman. The article, Play Time – Finding the Freedom to Imagine and Explore, is essentially about how art and theology do in fact go hand in hand, despite how hard our post-enlightenment minds would like to separate them.

Her quote is in response to a story she tells about a Christian theatre group putting on a production of “Thumbelina,” where they had gone to great lengths to turn the story of Thumbelina (a butterfly loses his life while rescuing a little girl) into a parable about Christ.

She says,

“…at rehearsals we found we were very good at portraying the evil crows and the lusty frog but very bad at portraying the innocence and beauty of the child and the butterfly. It all came across as unbelievable, stupid and sentimental – a kind of shallow ‘feel good’ fable that was neither good theatre nor a true representation of Christianity."

She goes on tell of one possible solution which would have been to drop the Evangelical spin all together and just tell the story with truth and authenticity.

Which takes us back to her quote at the very beginning…

”how much time have we wasted trying to make “bigger and better” or slicker and sweeter messages instead of just being the messengers?”

A new friend of mine recently gave me a great bit of advice for artists in the church. He was telling me how he thought our role should be mirrors and not teachers. As artists, we should be given the task and responsibility of mirroring back to the church its present state and its relationship with the world. I think many people would be very uncomfortable with a bunch of weirdo artists going around “mirroring” things and not providing any kind solution…so of course, some common ground would have to be found. (Please excuse the logistics…this is a new idea!)

Often as artists in the church we’re asked to tell the truth in very clear and precise ways so that the “average guy in the pew” will get the message, in other words, teach. Now I’m not saying that we shouldn’t take all people into account when we’re preparing something like a film, a song, a painting, a dance, or a play. But if we have created the piece with the expressed purpose to only explain and teach, we have suddenly become biased and thusly complicated things a great deal more than if we had just created…just because.

My girlfriend works at a large, mega-church in Chicago. We often talk about the difficulty an artist has working in an evangelical institution. Thankfully, this particular church does place a high value on the arts. However, oftentimes the “average guy in the pew” argument beats the artist’s original conception because someone believes the “average guy” won’t “get it.” Now we could go back and forth about what is more important…either everyone logically understanding everything that might be going on in a piece of art, or the feelings of wonder, beauty and awe that the piece of art created. (For the record, I don’t believe that those things are mutually exclusive!)

At any rate…back to our post-enlightenment minds…I think most of us believe in the separation of art and church whether we know it or not. Betty Spackman writes,

“Whether one is an artist or not, I think as Christians we are all implicated in the horrendous deficiency of imagination, the visual illiteracy, the dispassionate celebrations of “the joy of our salvation,” the uncaring lamentations of our sorrow for the oppressed and wounded, our lack of protest for the destruction of our ecosystem and the consumerist kitsch that is the predominant expression of faith in most of the Christian community.”

This is a scathing indictment of the state of art in many of our modern-day churches. I don’t claim to have the answer, though Spackman’s words do seem to bring with them an air of the prophetic…what if we were just the messengers?

Click here to read the whole article by Betty Spackman