Visual Learners

I am halfway through writing the manuscript for my second book, posting biweekly (or thereabouts) on my paid subscription space, keeping The Blackbird Letters near the front of my mind, and feel as though I’m a bit neglectful of this space recently. There was a time when I posted almost daily on Sayable and that time is not now. I recognize the amount of content in the world has increased, and therefore the amount of content jealous for your time, eyes, and brain space has increased. I don’t ever want to add to the clamor, but do find a lot of joy in continuing to show up here, whether or not you can or do as well.

When weighing the cost of “giving up” something for Lent in February, I declined. Everyone has an opinion on whether that’s the right opinion, but after a year of social distancing, moving cross-country, renovating a house, not feeling settled or at home in church, and our first long winter back in the northeast, I just felt like giving up one more thing might break me. And maybe that’s the point of fasting during Lent—to share in the sufferings of Christ, to taste the cup of his sorrows. But I am human and this year has been one long drink from the cup of sorrows. Giving up my one teaspoon of sugar in my daily tea or forty days of British gardeners and stand-up comedy just seemed cruel. So I didn’t. I did, however, log off social media for the past week, continuing through Easter Sunday.

I have long had a love hate relationship with social media. It feels like a necessary evil for any writer in the world today, publishers care too much about promotion and readers can’t read what they haven’t discovered. Getting discovered through a retweet or share or like is the hope, but it sure does eke my creative energy. Some folks feel energized by it, but it often just feels like I am paying my dues to continue taking up space in other writing environments. It feels like we’re all doing the same things over and over again in different ways to keep the interest of others or at least keep them from going elsewhere. I hate to love social media and I love to hate it and sometimes I just need a break from it.

I did however, take a gander at my husband’s Instagram this morning to view some images he’s been talking about for the past twenty-four hours. It reminded me of another one of my favorite people on social media, Russ Ramsey, who fills his feed almost entirely with art. This time of year it’s art depicting Holy Week, so I spent a little time this morning looking at each image.

I’ve been thinking a lot about James K.A. Smith’s piece that I shared with you last month, about not being able to think our way out of the mess we’re in. For the past few years my most faithful writing allies and friends have been coming to these same conclusions, which we share with one another in our better moments. Of the making of Christian books there is no end, of the thought-leaders and recycled thoughts, there is no end. This refrain is on repeat even as I pen yet another manuscript dealing with issues of faith, doubt, curiosity, and questions. I’m asking the question, “What am I saying that hasn’t been said before a thousand times?” Publishers are looking for content that capitalizes on a moment in history, but we all know history repeats itself, and so too do the capitalized moments. I can’t say anything that hasn’t been said before a thousand times.

Art is the same though, look through those images for a moment, see how they all depict the same man, the same group of people, the same moments, and look again at how they all do it spectacularly differently. Each one is a masterpiece in its own right.

So perhaps, I wonder, the point isn’t to make new art, but to keep recycling the old art with as much faithfulness as we can endeavor. Perhaps our work as Christian artists is to ward off the cynicism that says, “Been there, done that, never want to repeat it,” and instead to repeat it but better. Perhaps our work is to fight back the jadedness that leads to hopelessness and to crush the envy that leads to anemic art, and to continue to create, continue to cultivate, continue to make and make new. Isn’t that the point of resurrection? Isn’t that the point of creation? Isn’t that the whole point of our entire faith? To uproot the bad and cause the good to flourish?

Wesley Hill has a piece in CT this week about what he calls “Text Playlists” and being equipped to preach the gospel. There are piles and piles of beauty that belong in my text playlists, most of which I just keep trying to regurgitate in my own way in my work and writing. This image would go in mine. I bookmarked it a few weeks ago and keep going back to zoom all the way in and look at it. I can’t stop. I won’t stop. It’s minutia like this that keeps me always fascinated by art: the cracks, the crevices, the lumps, the complete absence of pure white or pure black.

My mother taught us to love art and history and literature, but we also grew up in a post-Catholic family, so our art was more historical depictions than Christocentric. My grandmother has a host of crucifixes in her home and a bowl of the host in her china hutch (over which I nearly lost my head as a seven year old when I asked her if I should throw out the stale cracker I found while dusting said hutch). We regularly prayed that Gramma would get saved. I did not have an appreciation for depictions of Christ or the Holy Week or the cross, even into my adulthood. The reason given (and unquestioningly received by me) was that Christ rose from the dead so why would we focus on the suffering that happened before? Empty crosses are for the Christian, full ones are for those whose faith is weak and anemic or in need of something more than Christ’s resurrection. We pray for those people to get saved.

But now I am in my midlife and my body creaks and groans, my shoulders bear the weight of the sofa we hoisted into the loft last Saturday, my eyes grow increasingly in need of supplemental help above my contacts. When I was young and my body invincible, the empty cross made sense. Why would I dwell on the death when my whole life was in front of me? Some might say that my faith is weaker than theirs, that the rhythms of liturgy and the paintings of Holy Week and recitations of the creeds aren’t necessary for faith like theirs, where the empty cross carries them through a whole year. And I get that. I have also been there and anticipate being there again. But I am not there now. Not this year.

This year I need to see the gaunt curves of a Savior’s hipbone in the artist’s depiction. I need the downcast eyes of a Son who feels rejected by his Father (and brave enough to say it in front of those he led). I need the variety of skin colors on Christ followers through the ages, reminding me that this white evangelical situation we’re in today isn’t even a smidgen of the cloud of witnesses we’ll be among someday. I need the women being the first to see and believe and preach the gospel of the risen Christ. And, as always, I need the vividness of Thomas’s hands reaching toward the holes in Christ’s body.

I used to believe icons were idols, but I see now they’re visual stories made by human hands for human eyes and human hearts, to help us turn our gaze upon Jesus, to see full in his wonderful face, so these things of earth grow slowly and strangely dim in the light of his glory and full on abounding grace.

Make more art, friends. More and more and more. Make it of what has been made before and what will be made again. Say it again, that which has been said a thousand ways and a thousand times before. Fill it out and flesh it in and set it before the readers and viewers and seers and needers. Making art is like waking from a dream and trying to reconstruct it for your friend or neighbor, what is so alive and real to you will still fall flat to them, but it helps. Just a little bit more, it helps. We still have some time to go before we see Him face to face without all the mess of this place crowding it out and we need to remember again what every Christian before us has tried to remember: this happened, this crucifixion, this resurrection, this rising to new life, this eternity starting now.