on art: calling

These next three days, I will be bringing you short, 500-words or less, reflections and devotionals on art. This is preparation for a larger project I happen to be working on, which I hope to tell you all about soon.

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All true art is initiated by annunciation.

The fourteen year old virgin Nazarene girl who so readily, so willingly, abandoned all the known to be the handmaiden of the Unknown is the model artist, in that she accented to the call of the art so quickly.

Others before her had experienced similar calls. A man is to bring his son to a mountain to be sacrificed; a child wakes to the voice of the Holy; a woman is told that she may be the only hope for a nation. And then there are the many, many others. Some say yes quickly, some slowly. Some run. Some hide. But the call will not leave them, the annunciation will not go.

The voice of the Caller haunts their souls, lingers like a dull ache. Wanting.

It is convenient to cast the Virgin as completely passive in the coming of Christ, but this is a horrific mistake. If we do not recognize that she said yes, that her word had agency in the process, that her faithfulness was necessary, then it is to say that we do not serve a loving God who happened to love us enough to give us the terrible gift of free will.

For there was something Mary had to contribute to the process. She gave her flesh. She gave her humanity. Without her, there is no incarnation. There is no Word made flesh.

And what does this have to do with art? I dare say that it has everything to do with it.

An artist who is making true art is not fashioning something from his or her own talent. No matter how we try and explain it, try to articulate it, there is no ability to properly put into words what is really happening. The Holy Spirit enters a space, draws forth something that needs to be created, and asks that we would accept the frightful joy of committing to be the instrument by which this thing, this thing that is somehow part of and yet other than ourselves, is brought into being.

This is annunciation.

It cannot be grasped intellectually, but neither can God.

If it is true that “in Him we move and have our being,” then it makes all the sense, all the non-intellectual, spiritual sense, that everything that we do that is honoring of Him, seeking to know Him, seeking to show Him, participates in this fusion of the self with the marvelous and awesome Other.

For this is not the experience alone of poets, bakers, sculptures, musicians, and the like. This is the craft of the lawyer, the stay-at-home dad, the pastor, the taxi driver, and the dentist. If they have been called, and it can be said with certainty that if they believe, they have been called, then they too have known what it is to ascent to something brilliantly not of themselves, yet taken from them, married to something greater, and left to produce an other, a beautiful, worshipful other.

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This last week, I had the joy of being away in Kalamazoo, Michigan for the International Congress of Medieval Studies, where I was given the opportunity to present a paper on one of Marie de France’s Lais. I have now been asked to turn the paper into an article for publication, which is a long way of saying that the whole experience was extraordinary. I had so much fun with old and new friends and really had an amazing time of blessing, rest, and laughter there. That’s why I was gone the past week and why this week is a bit lighter in terms of post length.

© 2011, Preston. All rights reserved.