Fireproof your work

2 Peter 3:9-11 The Day of the Lord  9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some understand slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be dissolved in the fire, and the earth and its works will not be found.  11 Since everything will be dissolved in this way, what kind of people ought you to be?

So… what kind of people ought you to be? If everything will one day be dissolved in fire, what kind of work can you do that will last? What does this mean for artists?

What we once had

The digital generation has been busy making a trade: search engines for prayer, information for knowledge, browsing for contemplation, branding for identity, and connectivity for community.

What have we found? What have we lost? What can we do about it?  

This image regretfully revises and updates “prayer for the potato crop” by Jean-François Millet. How far have humans have come in 110 years – where once we had faith?

 

Authenticity

Authenticity is a word related to the words author and authority. It deals with questions of truth and untruth, and of origins. There are several laws and socially accepted values dealing with authenticity (that differ in various countries and cultures). Ultimately, though, this is a word that will eventually cross all of our paths, especially in this day and age.

• How does industrial manufacture impact authenticity?
• Quality vs. quantity and identity  – how are these issues discussed in art?
• Does authenticity really matter in life, morality, society?
• Is more really more or is less more?
• What are/were industrial artists up to, and how does it say anything to us today?
•  How is or isn’t popularity a legitimate deciding factor in terms of decision making and value?
• What is another other good question about Authenticity that you can address?

Please respond to this post with a deeply thought out reply. Present your thinking by replying here with a link to an original response in ‘claim, support, commentary’ format. Please, give me some authentic, original thinking!

How can we see more than we can see?

The Day-Glo paint company explains fluorescent color on it’s website:

“The color spectrum is much larger than we can perceive! The range moves from invisible, low-energy infrared rays to high-energy ultraviolet rays. The ‘visible light spectrum’, or the colors that we see, are actually in the middle of the range…. 

How do fluorescent colors behave differently?… Where a clean, bright conventional color is able to reflect a maximum of 90% of a color present in the spectrum; a fluorescent color can reflect as much as 200% to 300%.”

Basically – fluorescent colors reflect both the light range that we can see, and the light range that we can’t see; it translates the light we can’t see into light that we can! That is why it looks so bright! It actually reflects more visible light than it takes in!

Take invisible light and make it visible!What does this mean? Reflect both who we can see that you are (your natural physical self) and ALSO who we can not yet see who you are (your Spiritual self)!

What lights you up? How do you shine invisible light? Consider the lists of Spiritual fruit, gifts, callings (Romans 12:6-8, 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, Galatians 5:22).

In what specific ways do you reflect more than just what is obvious about you?

 

Lighting fires, putting fires out.

Where I come from in Northern California, often at the end of summer or in early fall, when the grass is golden and the oaks and pines are at their driest and most combustable after months of no rain, along will come a storm. Often the first rain clouds and the first light showers also bring lightning. After a bolt or two touch this arid mediterranean tinder-box climate, forrest fires break out!

These fires consume like crazy! Trees explode, field are leveled and blackened. Soil is made more rich with ashes (this is also why some farmers will carefully burn their fields after harvest). Some seeds that have been waiting years to break-open will only sprout after a fire! While fire is good for the environment in it’s way, it is bad for the people and their houses planted there. So, they fight it.

Controlled burning is one way. Firefighters will cut a path and burn a small section ahead of the uncontrolled blaze to eat up the fuel before the wildfire gets there. This smaller, controlled burn stops the dangerous unruly burn dead in it’s tracks.

There is a Spiritual Metaphor here. Lighting fires, putting fires out. 

Fire and passion are words that are often tied together. 

Northern California fire crews start a backfire to stop the Poomacha fire from advancing westward.^[25]

 

Consider the analogy of controlled burning and uncontrolled burning in your own life.

Consider ways that a Godly fire, a pure passion, beautiful and under authority has been able to or can defeat and protect against the ravages of a wildfire. Is there a passion that you should ignite? Is there a fire that threatens to destroy your life?

 

onward

“If the whole world were to follow you today, where would you lead them?”- bassist Victor Wooten, asked this question. A slight variation would be, “if the world was actually following you today, where would you be leading them?”

How are you answering this question with your life?

Inscape: No two are identical.

For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead – Romans 1:20

Inscape is a term used to describe the distinctive design that constitutes individual identity.

It is as if there is something valuable inside each individual, woven into every thing and everyone, something that is only found in that one thing or that one someone. Each tree has it. Rocks and people do too, each their own. Each of the tiniest molecules has it and the farthest radio wave bursts from deepest space, whether or not a pattern can be found, has it. It points to our uniqueness, and the uniqueness of our Creator.

Gerard Hopkins, who invented the word inscape, wrote a poem about his heartbreak at watching a tree being cut down and dismembered. He was heartbroken because when he beheld it’s inscape, when he looked at this tree, he could sense Christ and the hand of the Creator, and he ‘would rather die’ than see such beauty destroyed.

When have you looked at someone or something and seen God?

Niche pockets of Thriving

1 Corinthians 12:12-14 – “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.”

In his book, Culture Care,  Makoto Fujimura discusses the ideas of unity in diversity. 

A healthy eco-system is hospitable to all kinds of life-giving growth! In a healthy system, there is often a great variety of life multiplying, reproducing and thriving together in niche pockets. It is the opposite of an industrial, uniform, militaristic approach to land management. Large scale farms only have room for one uniform type of crop, all others are removed. The same myopic view is often applied to other areas of culture.

Where do you see this homogenous mentality (making everything the same and uniform) damaging our thriving and our culture today? What alternatives do we have?

art + work =

“perseverance produces character; and character, hope.” – Romans 5:4

‘You can’t get something for nothing’ is how the old saying goes; ‘there is no free lunch’. Even in the lesson of Salvation through Grace, which is freely given to us, we see that it was not free; there was a great cost (it killed Jesus, and will radically change us if it’s for real). ‘You can’t get an omelette without breaking some eggs’…

When has perseverance produced character in your life? 

Responding : your responsibility

“The artist is not to pick up his responsibilities when he lays aside his art – he is to exercise his responsibilities in the very production of his art. And we who make use of his art are not to leave responsibility behind when we enter art. In our very use of it we are to exercise our responsibilities.” – Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in Action

In what ways and to whom do you find yourself responsible for the Art (visual, auditory, culinary…etc) that you take in, that you use, that you consume or observe? How do you see your choices in the art that you enter into having an impact on your life, on others and on the world that you live in?