Debriefing

I returned last night from the Transforming Culture symposium. It made me happy. Very, very happy.

Now begins the long process of processing. It was incredible. I wanted to pack up all the speakers and bring them home with me so I could chat with them over coffee and keep them in my writing space for when I need encouragement, inspiration, or a good kick in the butt.

In a way, I did.

I'd like to process all of this with you guys. It will take several posts, but what they had to say about art and theology affirmed, inspired, and challenged me. I want to share that with you.

For today, I'll leave it with the two big impressions I left with:

1. Contentment: I'm an artist, and I'm called to a specific work. I had a hard time thinking of it as called for a while, but I now believe that to be true. This is part of my identity, and that identity doesn't ride on the rejection of my work. I'm an artist because that's who I am, not because that's what I produce. (Caveat: I will talk later about what it means to be an artist, and there are specific things surrounding this, including a pursuit of excellence. I do not mean this statement as an excuse to call myself an artist when I'm not creating art.) Being content gives me the freedom to both wholeheartedly pursue this calling (i.e. writing, especially fiction writing) and allows me to release things including my ideas of the future, jealousy of other writers, other jobs that I shouldn't be doing.
2. Pursuit of excellence: I'm always striving, and that's okay. I should be caught up in the details, perfecting my work. It's okay to call bad art (writing, singing, dancing, etc) bad art. And more than anything, more than wanting to be published, I want to make sure that my writing is not bad art. Bad art is less than Christian. It does not embrace what God has for us. It settles for less. This means I can't rush things, as I'm prone to do. I have to take the time. I have to wait. It's interesting to me that my mind's been filled with the idea of anticipation in the past couple of weeks mainly through Easter and the hope of our future resurrection, but also in books such as Water for Elephants, which does an amazing job of building anticipation. I'm in that period--anticipating the recreation and resurrection of the world and anticipating how God's going to shape my writing as I work every day.

There's so much more to say, so much to pass on to you from these speakers, so much to decompress and weave into my life. Some of these ideas have to do with my art in the world (fiction writing), and this includes both the pursuit of excellence but also rethinking CBA v. ABA (not to say that I'll arrive at a different conclusion, but I'll rethink it all the same). Some of it has to do with my art within the church (music and playwrighting) and incorporating art into the worship service, into the church building, into the life of the church (specifically my local church).

In the meantime, I've begun updating my Incarnating Christ page with new resources I've discovered regarding art, writing, and social justice (namely art's role in social justice). And, I need to catch up with email and blog comments. It was lovely having absolutely no access to the Internet for three days, but the fallout is painful.