A Response To “Getting to People Through Our Art” - What Next?

One of the great hopes of Project Pulchra is in the opportunity for essential conversations about art to take place. Blogging can be a fantastically suitable platform for these conversations to start and so this post is a response to the recent "Getting to People Through Our Art" - mostly because I quickly realized this became too big for the comment box.

The video in this post is a great reminder that art can have more ambitious goals than the "Arts & Entertainment" section of the newspaper can shake a leg at. It is also interesting that we post this video in the wake of Kony 2012 and the flurry of online discussion about the effectivity of "promoting awareness" through art (and good production values). It's making us rethink the phrase "knowledge is power."

What may challenge us most through all of this is how we are constantly reminded that awareness ultimately isn't enough - we have enough access to television and internet to know more about what goes on in the world and yet it isn't breaking through the Great Wall of Apathy. With a few praiseworthy exceptions most people become aware of the (legitimately genuinely achingly) heartbreaking-issue-de-jour before going back to living the same old life.

"[W]e don't like looking...because it might make us have to do something about it, and maybe even rethink our lifestyle." This is what so many of us are afraid of - that we'll be disturbed enough by what we see that we can't think of living the way we used to. So we build walls, dull the edge of truth to make it digestible. But what does it mean to be disarmed? To allow God to reach past our armour to touch us deeply in the most impressionable parts of our being? Art can disarm us like this, but we need to let ourselves to be disarmed. 

So how can we, as artists and Christians, be true to all the dimensions of our calling? How do we not only form our minds (through awareness) but our wills? How do we allow the mass exodus of information be translated into incarnational living? Eowyn Theophilus is spot-on when she describes how the Gospel is a force that changes our lives - in fact the only way we can truly gauge whether or not we've really encountered the Gospel is by how much our lives have been transformed. 

Truth (and art) in the end isn't entertainment - it's about transfiguration. Will we hope to never be the same?

Getting to People Through Our Art

[Longer post coming soon, but first...]

Born Free* from Empty Room on Vimeo.

I find collective arts projects like this one very inspiring...a group of people using the artistic tools and abilities they have to communicate a particular message and/or explore a particular topic. They're one of my favourite things because they incorporate all the arts in a very organic way, piecing together thoughts, stories, songs, new and existing works, etc., into what results in a sort of big scrapbook come to life (an old-school scrapbook, not the sort where you need to buy all your scraps new at the scrapbook store).

The Empty Room theatre company is using the arts to raise awareness about modern-day slavery in Canada, one of those highly uncomfortable topics which we don't like looking at because it might make us have to do something about it, and maybe even rethink our lifestyle. I think that most things (all things?) worth saying should have that effect on people...the Gospel certainly does.

"What we're trying to do with this project is to get to people through our art."

Watch and learn, because I think that's one of the things we're trying to do too.

New Single By Joe Zambon: Why This Had To Be

New single from Joe Zambon's upcoming album, "Sleeper, Rise."

Full album review come mid-April - details on Joe's upcoming release party can be found here (for those in Ottawa) and here (for those in Toronto).

Until then, enjoy!

A Vision of Art: Thoughts from Catherine Doherty

The arts have a powerful champion in (Servant of God) Catherine Doherty: a Baroness turned Harlem activist turned foundress turned candidate for canonization. In the late 1940's Catherine and her husband moved to Combermere, ON, after a long and turbulent history of activism in Canada and the United States. Together they founded the Madonna House apostolate and its various fieldhouses and wrote numerous tracts that continue to inspire the Church in Canada and at large.

Catherine held a special place for artists until her death and wrote frequently on the subject of the artist's call and vocation in the Church. Some of these writings found a home in Vision on the Mountain: The Madonna House Artist, from which this is an excerpt found in Restoration, the Madonna House magazine/newsletter:

A Vision of Art

by Catherine Doherty.

I want to record some thoughts and ideas that have come to me in prayer about the artists of Madonna House.

First and foremost I see the Madonna House artists as humble people. Humility means living in truth, and an artist must live in truth with God, with himself or herself, and, of course, with the world, because it is to the world that he or she must give truth.

I want to record some thoughts and ideas that have come to me in prayer about the artists of Madonna House.

First and foremost I see the Madonna House artists as humble people. Humility means living in truth, and an artist must live in truth with God, with himself or herself, and, of course, with the world, because it is to the world that he or she must give truth.

In what form this truth will be given depends on each individual artist. But whatever it is, it must give the Word: the Word in ceramics, the Word in painting, the Word in sculpture, in any art medium open to humanity.

The goal of the artists in Madonna House is the same as everyone else in Madonna House: living the Little Mandate, forming a community of love.

For that is what they are really going to express: love. I see them forming a community of love amongst themselves that blends into the big community of love that is Madonna House.

I see these artists humble, tolerant, merciful, tender and gentle to all they meet, to each other, and to themselves.

I see them as the just stewards who give out grain in due season, for in a sense they are masters to all their household. As the rich man must share his gold, they must share their talents with people who are blind and cannot see.

Their medium is really clay; their talent given by God is his spittle. They can mix the two together and put it on the eyes of others, so that the blind who do not understand what art is, do not appreciate it, who do not know that creativeness is one of the needs of humanity and one of the gifts of God, will then be able to see and know.

Yes, the artists of Madonna House will read and meditate on the words of Christ who says, Greater miracles than I will you perform (Jn 14:12). And so they will, just because they will bring a new dimension to human lives.

They will bring enthusiasm for art, for beauty, for creativeness to everyone they meet. God has sent them as teachers who teach a new language to their brothers and sisters of the apostolate to liberate their spirits and bring them peace.

To create is to be at peace; in creating artists are one with the Creator. They are like a bridge, like a hyphen between God and man. They are his troubadours of beauty.

With enthusiasm, with tolerance, with humility, with mercy, compassion, and understanding, they must explain again and again and again. And they must not care particularly whether the seeds of their explanation fall on fertile ground. That is up to God; they simply explain again.

They are also the men in the gospel to whom various talents have been given. They have to put those talents to work so that when the master comes, he finds them increased, fruitful, incarnated. Their gifts are to be doubled, quadrupled, and returned to the Lord a hundredfold.

An artist is a dreamer. He dreams in God so that form, ideas, and media come to him again and again, an answer to his dreams in God.

What is a dream in God? A dream in God is always dreamt for others; it is never dreamt for oneself and for one’s own satisfaction. True, the satisfaction of an artist is also one’s product, whatever it may be: a song, painting, sculpture, ceramics, but it is always the smallest part for the Madonna House artist.

The artist must never forget that he is really not totally the creator of his work of art, that God created in him, and God steps back and looks at the creation, whatever it may be, and says, "It is good." That is the true satisfaction of the artist.

The artist is also a pilgrim. He walks many roads without pausing too much unless God wants him to stop. He is a pilgrim of the Absolute in search of ways and means to bring God to all humanity, because he is in search of beauty, in search of ideas.

He or she stands still before God in order to talk to people, and he speaks to God with a silent language and an open heart through his creations. And in this silent journey, God speaks to him.

So the artists of Madonna House must be humble people, people of prayer, of silence, of faith. For they are not going to create, God is going to create through them.

The artist must live constantly in many places. He dwells at the same time in Bethlehem and in Nazareth.

He walks with Christ in his preaching time, he shares Christ’s passion time, he hangs on the cross, but always, always he resurrects, and it is in living in the resurrected Christ that he creates. For dying and resurrecting again with Christ is the miracle that applies so beautifully to the artist.

There are moments when he thinks he is really dead, dead to all ideas, dead to creation, dead to living. But then, suddenly, a gentle wind comes, all the clouds are gone, and the beautiful vision of the new creation is before him.

An artist is pregnant with God and his beauty. An artist eternally brings forth the child, and an artist eternally is pregnant with the Holy Spirit, the Counsellor, the giver of ideas.

Yes, an artist is a pilgrim of the Absolute, an artist is a dreamer. An artist, whether man or woman, is a person pregnant with God. An artist is one who gives birth to God in his creations. An artist is a singer who sings the praises of God and brings the face of God and his beauty in his creations.

An artist is a poet whose words constantly, beautifully and rhythmically speak of God. An artist is a singer; an artist is a troubadour.

An artist is an ordinary person who goes about doing the chores of every day whatever they may be because he knows that every work of his hand and of his mind, the sweeping, the washing and the cleaning, the fixing and the mending, the talking to people, are experiences that God puts into his or her hand to share with others.

An artist is a person of open hands and open heart who receives these experiences from God like a woman who cooks receives from the hands of the farmer the raw material of food and transforms them into a feast.

So the artist, making a chalice of his hands and of his heart, takes all experiences, painful and joyful, ordinary and extraordinary, and places them into the chalice and transforms them by love, into his creations.

And both the housewife and the artist follow in Christ’s footsteps, Christ, who took bread and wine and transformed them into himself, to feed man’s need for love, for beauty, for understanding, for joy.

An artist is a person of sorrow but he is also a person of joy. An artist is a person of peace, deep peace. God’s peace is like the bottom of the ocean which allows storms to rage on the surface because storms are often bringers of ideas. For God speaks in the raging wind of the storm as well as in the spring breeze.

The artist is a mirror who reflects God’s image in his creation. An artist is a healer who partakes of the power of the Good Physician because his works must console and heal.

His art however, must also ask questions; so the artist is a disturber of people as well, like Christ is. He does not allow them to fall into a sort of mediocrity.

An artist is an anawim [a person who knows he is poor and totally dependent on God]. He knows that all he has comes from God, so he leans on God.

An artist is a channel of God’s creation. An artist is a person in love with God and with humanity; he or she is a bridge between the two.

Madonna House artists live in humility, in tolerance, in compassion, in love and in passion.

They are like trees standing by the water, which shall not be moved. They receive God’s rain and God’s sunshine and show it to the world.

Lovers of God and lovers of men, humble, simple, they show the world the face of Christ. Hidden in Nazareth, they preach through their works. Hanging on the cross, they preach through their works. Dancing in the temple of the world of creation, of Madonna House, they praise the Lord through their creations.

They are ordinary people with extraordinary gifts; they know they cannot bear the weight of them so they lay them in the hands of God.

—From a pamphlet, Vision on the Mountain: The Madonna House Artist, (1995), available from Madonna House Publications.

Stay tuned to Project Pulchra for continued discussions on the relationship between Catherine's spirituality, the Madonna House mandate and the place of the arts in contemporary Catholicism.

Moment of Beauty: Shake it Out

Sitting on a couch with a man I care about, exploring music away, this song came on and I was transfixed. I was struck mostly by the instrumentation and the sound at first. Later on, I groovesharked it up and found the lyrics to be as equally edgy and cut-throat... a powerful story about deep darkness and light, hope and suffering, death and resurrection.

I'm still not certain what to think about some of the lyrics, specifically "I like to keep my issues strong" when placed with "but it's always darkest before the dawn". Overall, the lyrics really speak to me of what happens when we let the doubts and fears we have take over our lives... letting them stop us from living the life Christ intends for us to have, and seeking to find our way back to His grace. As I am a dancer, the line "It's hard to dance with a devil on your back, so shake him off" particularily speaks to me, and makes me think of the song "Lord of the Dance". Except Shake it Out has funky beats and sounds. It twists and turns down a journey through the darkest moments we face, and seeing the "what-the-hell-I'm-going-to-let-it-happen-to-me" light at the end of the tunnel.

Shake it Out: Florence and the Machine

Link to song/lyrics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCWnVznnWcs

What are your thoughts? Does this speak to you in any way?

Finding Jesus in the Swing

Great article over at the Catholic Register:

http://www.catholicregister.org/home/item/13968-finding-jesus-in-the-swing

When Philosophy Isn't Enough

The English language could take a few lessons from Ancient Greece about love. Aristotle was among the first (though folks like C.S. Lewis have since jumped on the boat) to point out that the word “love” is so complex it can't be held in a single four-letter word so much as four separate and distinct ones. Though I'm sure we're able to think of more than four, the word “philosophy” comes from the marriage of one of these types of love, philia, with the Greek word for wisdom: sophia (any Sophies out there?).

All is well and good, at least until we read how philia means a very specific kind of love roosting ambiguously between detached relationships and the tenderness of friends – platonically at best. More than a few people of the idealistic frame of mind (myself included) have seen the word and thought to themselves “Hey! That's awesome – this elective I'm taking is teaching me how to love wisdom itself! High five!” Again, all well and good; however the love here isn't familial, passionate or ultimately consuming – taken on a etymological level it means anything from a passing aquaintance to casual friendship with wisdom. Sure – High five! – but I want more.

Luckily we haven't exhausted our supply of Ancient Greek just yet; there are more words out there. One such word seems to hold promise: agape. Where philia is the relationship/affection between aquaintances, agape is the term we use to talk about unconditional love, pure self-gift, the Love of God. Agape is a word reaching through infinity.

So what are we left with here? Agapesophy? Too awkward. Agapesophistry? Yes*! Are we called merely to befriend wisdom? To say “hey!” in the halls, to high five? Or to journey together past the doors of light, night, joy and suffering to emerge together in a sun we finally understand for the first time? A wonderful part of following Christ is the call to transcend our concepts of what is normal, attainable or humanly realistic – we are called to a holistic experience of agape.

Agapesophistry is a call that leads us out of the ivory tower – out from the detached, primarily intellectual relationship with ideas, concepts and theories into a bold and holistic horizon of glorious relational technicolour. Jesus walk[ed/s] the staggering road of incarnation – He is the Word Made Flesh – and so we too are called to take the ideas He gave us and give them flesh in our lives. This is agapesophistry. Lady Gaga says it best: I dont want to be friends! We long for more.

So, interesting thought and all, but what is this doing on Project Pulchra?

Break it down. We have ideas, feelings, concepts and memories circling around in our heads like exotic fish in a pail. They might be as serious as transubstantiation or frivilously glorious as our longing for spring. But we all have things in our minds that poke and prod the inside of our skulls trying to find a way out – a way to be incarnated. Art does this.

Art is incarnational, folks! The leap between philosophy and agapesophistry is the same jump a thought makes in order to arrive on the page, the canvas, the vocal chord. We give it hands, eyes and legs to move and touch those around us. There is a wholeness, a holisticness to art that isn't present in a common language that's purpose is to be (rightly and wonderfully) functional.

Art is like another language, one that will evoke a higher response in some people more than others – there are folks who will understand the Gospel better through song than through a prayerfully executed presentation. We're human – His genius allows for this kind of variety. There is no ONE WAY to help someone encounter the truth, goodness and beauty of God, but art is certainly a way. One road to incarnational living among others.

For me, engaging with agapesophistry involves service, genuine relationships, liturgy, moments of mischief, gratitude and acting with courage and integrity. For many people reading (and writing) this blog, agapesophistry means making art. So lets get up to a little agapesophistry – let's dare to make our thoughts and experiences run through the pages, musical staffs and stages of our lives. Let people look to our lives to see our reasons to believe. Let people see us and find our dancing God instead.

I hope my posting name doesn't make anyone think I've perfected the art of agapesophistry just yet. On the contrary – I call myself a Christian not because I am Christ but because I strive to be like him. Same diff', gangsta.

*apologies to all those objecting to the suffix: -sophistry. I mean well, I promise.