Song As Sacred Action: Learning From Native Americans
Dan Wilt

In a small, Native American community center in eastern Maine, a group of friends gathered from towns on both sides of the Canadian/US border. A potluck and music-sharing evening had been arranged between the communities on the Pleasant Point reservation, and an air of joy and festivity filled the room. By the time I arrived with my children, the music had started and we were soon serenaded with a guitar and fiddle weaving together reels and jigs – engaging the whole, ethnically-mixed group in contagious humming and irrepressible foot-tapping.

Songs And Sacred Acts
Our hosts were from the Passamaquoddy tribe (part of the Wabanaki confederacy, meaning “people of the dawn”), and they warmly welcomed us to the gathering. After a few more songs, a group of young men began to gather in a sacred drum circle for the next expression of the night. They seemed to be both chatting and offering prayers as they prepared themselves to play, enrobing their hands and large drum in smoke from a smudge pot, while they breathed in the strong vapors.

Video cameras and audio recorders were poised, ready to capture the thundering beauty of the energetic native sounds we had come to know and appreciate. Then, a young man from the circle stood, and walked over to the microphone. His eyes and face revealed the striking characteristics of an ethnic heritage that is said to reach 600+ generations into the story of this area.

“The songs we will do are sacred songs of our people,” he proudly said. “For that reason, we ask that there be no video-taping or recording of what we are about to do.” My immediate response was to sigh with sadness. For anyone who has ever been stirred by the communal, impassioned performance of a native drum circle, capturing it in some form of media for others to behold is a rare opportunity.

I turned off my recorder, honored his request, and lingered in the raw celebration of tribal history and spirituality embodied in their intricate melodies and rhythms.

Music As A Shared Experience
The next day, I spoke with a good friend who had organized the non-native contingency of musicians. He had spoken to one of the drum circle leaders, and discovered a fascinating truth about their view of the sacred music they played, and why we were asked to turn off our recorders.

In the eyes of the tribe, it seems, their sacred music is not a commodity to be somehow captured and passed around for enjoyment or spectating after the performance. The very essence of the music arises from those participating in the live, sacred moment. The sacredness of the music is intimately tied to the shared, live experience of praying its themes together, and both the music and the focus of the music may be dishonored when we seek to document the event for a second-hand listener.

The tribal “pow-wow songs” (i.e. the ones we were allowed to record) were historically written to make money for the tribe – by playing them for the white man. Pow-wow songs were created, in effect, to be a loophole in the native vision of music. They are a necessary accommodation, enabling the tribe to survive in a system ordered against them.

In ceremonial music, the music is sacred because of its focus, and our shared experience. In fact, the music is the shared experience for the players and those gathered – our fellowship is an essential instrument in the offering.

For the Passamaquoddy, the playing of the music, and the community praying with it, creates a sacred space not meant for mass consumption. In ceremony, the beating of prayers to the sky becomes more important than the actual musicality of the playing. In summary, the music is not the center point in the experience, but rather the playing of that music. In many ways, Passamaquoddy sacred music is all about the moment of encounter, and the community’s participation in that moment, together.

The High Goal Of Communal Worship
While we may not fully embrace this view of intentionally sacred voicings of music, there is an insight here to be gleaned from our native brothers and sisters. In today’s contemporary Christian music experience, the gift of documenting music in media is that it multiplies a powerful message, and to some degree extends to us the experience embodied by the recording. However, our view of worship, employing music that is explicitly directed toward interacting with God should possibly undergo some reflective scrutiny.

According to this native view of sacred music, the fact that this past Sunday our church connected with God, through shared songs, may have been the highest goal to which our gathering could attain. As the worship leader, I am deeply aware that our band sounded great in some moments, and similar to a train wreck in others. And yet, without veiled spiritualized attempts to justify a flawed performance, the fact that we shared a common voice through those songs may be a higher goal to be celebrated than the pristine execution of the music (have you ever been to a music execution before? I sure have; I’ve even led the proceedings!)

Connected In The Music Of Worship
The next time you gather with a body of believers to sing the songs of faith, consider this view of sacred music brought to us by our native brothers and sisters. The music that you jointly make with the group gathered is the gift itself, offered exuberantly to God, in that moment. See yourself as an integral part of this sacred experience, whether you sing on the stage or from your seat, and share the vitality of the music with those playing and singing near you.

We may not want to skip recordings all together, but if we are attentive to the living moments of worship we share with others in our churches, we may find ourselves more present to our community’s shared moment of worship ¬– and more fully engaged with the One we adore.

Gifted writer, artist and communicator Joel Mason (SSU) offers his poem on the voyage of St. Brendan, and Garrett Viggers backs him up on hammered dulcimer.

It starts about halfway through the mp3. It’s breathtaking - a beautiful spontaneous work of art between the two of them. The poem and the journey it represents is a reflection of our postmodern wandering.

St. Brendan’s Voyage by Joel Mason, Music by Garrett Viggers

I seem to be in a bit of an “artist” series right now, so I’ll go with the flow.

I was introduced to this artist, Blair Anderson, by good friend and sacred networker Heidi Turner. What I may appreciate about Blair the most is her personal story, part of which unveils her struggle to call herself an artist even after 40 years.

Given the recovery in which the Church finds herself, I’m not surprised. The next 50 years of the Church, in my view, will be an exciting season of watching artists who follow Jesus find their honed, singular and highly skilled voice.

Let Blair’s story be a declaration to you if needed - that the artist must continually come forward, no matter the voices within that seek to quench the call.

Blair Anderson Art.

Again, in the midst a world that bases human value on so many insubstantial measurements, Derek Paravicini gives voice to the glory of God in the human image.

Especially watch the 1 in a Million clip - a gift. When I think of how many today diminish the spiritual and transcendent in such anomalies of hard-wiring, I’m amazed at the amount of faith they must exercise.

By the way, this man is blind, and by tests thinks in the manner of a three-year old.

Thank you God for for Derek as a living ensign to things beyond - thank you Derek’s parents for giving him the chance to live.

Derek …on 60 Minutes; Exclusive Video Only on Yahoo! News

And, for good measure, another man who they call “The Human Calculator.” Daniel Tammet has no visible disabilities that go with his talents.

Earth Day. Lights out. 8-9 pm.

My children are lighting candles everywhere. Very nice.

In the church calendar, Easter is the first celebration of many weeks of Eastertide, for 50 days until the celebration of Pentecost.

The themes of new creation, resurrection, and the corresponding lives of people of the new creation and resurrection, should continue to fill our thoughts, worship expressions and teaching.

The implications of resurrection and the new creation are vast, all-encompassing, and central to the human story.

Let’s not leave them with the chocolate this past Sunday.

Along with the Good Friday responsive reading in the previous post, I want to add (in the spirit of mentor George Herbert), a new reading I’ve written for Easter.

WHISPERS OF NEW CREATION
Dan Wilt

We hear a voice, now sweet, now strong,
Now fading into days to come
Compelling us to listen.

We hear a voice, now sweet, now strong,
Now fading into days to come
Compelling us to listen.

(c) 2008 The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies
St. Stephen’s University
www.theworshipartisan.com

I’m working right now on a piece entitled Liminal Locus: On Threshold Places, (liminal = liminus = threshold; local = locus = place) that addresses the reality that while all space can become a threshold of encounter with God, there is a reality evident in all spiritual history that places carry history, significance and even theological importance.

For now, I believe in spaces that are “set apart” for certain activities, one of which is the intentional expression of worship through symbolic action, shared encounter and community engagement. However, I do not believe in the concept that all “sacred spaces” and “non-sacred spaces” should be utterly disconnected.

Platonic dualism in Western civilization (and theology) has corrupted our ability to see all of life, and human activity, as a forum for sacred activity. I.e. The ground underneath our feet is holy as we walk with God - but some ground is designated specifically for encounter with God (i.e. Jesus and the Temple - “My house shall be called a house of prayer….”).

Just seeding the thought, for input as I move ahead with the idea.

The essential ideas it seems that Wright is covering in his new book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church have been central to much of our thinking here at the Institute. Tom Wright has been a good friend of the Institute over the past few years, welcoming our interviews, magazine solicitations and more.

His exploration of these ideas, biblically, seem to be creating a fresh groundswell of scholarly and intellectually credible thinking related to the redemptive cord that the Scriptures weave into the human story.

I’m delighted this book is out, and even without having read it in specific, can recommend it based on his other writings on the topic. It’s a privilege to recommend this book to worship thinkers around the world as a necessary part of one’s library.

A fascinating piece on the young Venezuelan conductor, Gustavo Dudamel.

His work to plant youth orchestras in Venezuela and the United States is a great example of stewarding a creative gift well.

Gustavo Dudamel …on 60 Minutes; Exclusive Video Only on Yahoo! News

After a strong discussion with my brother-in-law, Ed Gentry, last week, some important ideas are emerging in my heart and mind as we navigate the current trends in Church thinking.

I suggested that in the next 30 years or so, the primary challenge to Christian faith will not be Islam, Judaism, Hinduism or even atheism. It will be Theism. (Moltmann suggests that Christianity and a simple Theism are extremely far from one another.) Agnosticism (to be unsure if there is a God) will run a close second.

Why will Theism (or in some cases, agnosticism) be the challenger in the ring within the community of the faithful? The Church is discovering that it has severely lacked in its creational worldview - the magnificence of love, human aid, social justice, environmental concern and general appreciation for this world in which we live. The world around us has held up a mirror to cranky and pie-in-the-sky go-to-heaven-when-I-die Christianity, and the image has not been pretty. Creation and creationalism (a celebration of this good world), in all aspects human and environmental, are vital verbiage for the Christian vocabulary.

It doesn’t take a Christian to figure out that these things are important, so in many ways, we’re discovering how much we have in common with other human beings who do not believe that the Jesus’ words are true - “No man comes to the Father but through me.” The Church is in recovery, and we are slow. It’s both our curse and our gift to be slow, it seems. I usually believe it is our gift to the world.

So, in an age of tolerance (which can be taken to its own extreme) and understanding, Christians are awaking to the reality that others actually have something beautiful to say in art, philosophy, science and many other fields. It’s a glorious rediscovery that shimmerings of God’s truth are everywhere. We actually like people of other faiths, backgrounds, nationalities and histories - and even find affinities on many levels. We’re getting it, connecting with fellow human beings, and it’s all so thoroughly biblical, GodTrue and JesusRight.

In addition to this awakening, the age has waged it’s battle around the King (Father Raneiro Cantalamessa). Attacks on the person of Jesus being God have been many, and the new incarnations of age-old Gnosticism have railed their attacks on the divinity of Jesus. Jesus, coupled with Mary, DaVinci, Judas and the whole gang have been the subjects of the spiritual tabloids for many a moon these past years.

Many thoughtful Christians, however, they have rallied and sought to academically and credibly address these questions and the onslaught of disbelief. The average Christian has in some way felt strengthened by these helpful challenges and counter-challenges, and yet the air has changed.

I believe the changed air has put a question mark in many Christian’s minds about the “scandal of particularity” - i.e. the specific connection of Jesus with God. In my estimation, this will result not in a disbelief in God (sorry, Mr. Dawkins). Christians see too much glory, beauty and wonder in the world to trace it all back to mud.

Rather, I believe that a subtly diminished view of the biblical Jesus, and an aligning of ourselves with all things eco-, socio-, enviro- and human friendly is beginning to replace (for some) a vibrant connection with Jesus as Lord.

Now, on to the point of this brief post on a vast topic.

For this post, my point is that a rediscovery of creationalism makes us feel like we all believe the same story - Christians and good human beings alike. This has some strong elements of truth in relation to creational ideas, as mentioned above. There is much common ground, and they are all ideas with strong biblical support (love, social justice, care for the environment, care for the poor, ending slave trafficking, etc.). In my estimation, the biblical story, and Jesus culmination of it, is meant to aid us in recovering our true humanity.

However, as Ed shared with me so beautifully the other evening, the Christian’s Redemptive story is not the same as everyone else.

Resurrection. New Creation. A Champion. Sacrifice + Resurrection = Cosmic Salvation. Hope has entered the room. A reason for personal and corporate hope today, and tomorrow. Inner transformation by the Holy Spirit. A universe in the final throes of it’s brokeness, resulting one day in new heavens and a new earth. A returning Lord, with Whom we rule and reign. Eden amplified and restored. Death as beginning and not end. Marriage as a sacred act and microcosmic icon of relationship with God.

God-centric and inspired redemption… on and on and on.

As a Christian, we embrace the creational story, and are happily in recovery through the herculean efforts of current and emerging church thinkers, writers and activists. However, now that we realize that we are human beings again, along with the rest of the world, that doesn’t make us all the same in how we view the world in which we live.

Our redemptive story rumbles with an eternal thunder that heals then, now and forever. Jesus is the living Lord who brings this redemptive story to pass at the nexus of our shared past, present and future.

That’s all I have time to write for now, but this should get things started.

For my son and I, games we make up such as CrazyChess, FlameChess, PawnsAgainstBigGuysChess, PowerChess and much more drew me to find this.

I love the creativity involved in these expansions on the simple - so physical and sensory, so creational. The way the light dances at night on the large pieces is lovely.

So creational to “play” with simplicity like this.

Watch the vid on the site.

A new kind of cold war: Ice chess - Europe- msnbc.com

In working on the next issue of Inside Worship magazine, I came across a profound sermon from Bishop N.T. Wright of Durham. Years ago, I had the privilege of sitting in his living room at Westminster Cathedral, as he shared with my friend and I his perspectives on worship.

Here is an excerpt from his sermon, The Road To New Creation. It’s a beautiful piece of work, and thanks to www.ntwrightpages.com for providing it.

The Road To New Creation (excerpt)
Bishop N.T. Wright

…If you turn Christian faith into simply the hope for pie in the sky when you die, and an escapist spirituality in the present, you turn your back on the theme which makes sense of the whole Bible, which bursts upon us in everything that Jesus the Messiah did and said, which is highlighted particularly by his resurrection from the dead.

A religion that forgets about new creation may feel some sympathy for the battered and bedraggled figure in the ditch, but its message to him will always be that though we can help him a bit, ultimately it doesn’t matter because the main thing is to escape this wicked world altogether. And that represents a tragic diminishing and distortion of what Christian faith is all about.

The God in whom we believe is the creator of the world, and he will one day put this world to rights. That solid belief is the bedrock of all Christian faith. God is not going to abolish the universe of space, time and matter; he is going to renew it, to restore it, to fill it with new joy and purpose and delight, to take from it all that has corrupted it. ‘The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom, and rejoice with joy and singing; the desert shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.’ The last book of the Bible ends, not with the company of the saved being taken up into heaven, but with the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth, resulting in God’s new creation, new heavens and new earth, in which everything that has been true, lovely, and of good report will be vindicated, enhanced, set free from all pain and sorrow.

God himself, it says, will wipe away all tears from all eyes. One of the great difficulties in preaching the gospel in our days is that everyone assumes that the name of the game is, ultimately, to ‘go to heaven when you die’, as though that were the last act in the drama. The hymn we’re about to sing ends like that, because that’s how most people have thought. But that’s wrong! Heaven is important, but it’s not the end of the world; God will make new heavens and new earth, and give us new bodies to live and work and take delight in his new creation. And the ‘good news’ of the Christian gospel is that this new world, this new creation, has already begun: it began when Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead on Easter morning, having faced and beaten the double enemy, sin and death, that has corrupted and defaced God’s lovely creation.

Put it like this, in terms of Jesus’ spectacular story. The world, and we humans within it, are in a mess, left for dead in the ditch. The secular world walks past on one side; it hasn’t got time to worry about other people’s problems, because there’s a profit to be made and power to be grabbed. The modern religious world walks past on the other side, believing that this world doesn’t matter because we’re going to leave it fairly soon and go somewhere else. (These two, of course, reinforce one another.) But the living God has come with healing and hope in Jesus Christ, has picked up the battered and dying world, and has bound up its wounds and set it on the road to full health.

This deeply biblical theme, so well known to some other traditions (such as the Eastern Orthodox) and so completely forgotten in much of the Western world and church, makes glorious sense not only of the whole sweep of biblical thought but of the very specific and practical work on which we rightly focus this afternoon. My friends, we are here because, whether we’ve thought of it like this or not, we know in our bones that looking after Number One isn’t where it’s at; that in Jesus Christ we are called not to save ourselves from the world but to bring salvation to the world. We are here because we are committed to the pilgrim way, the way that leads to God’s new Jerusalem, and because we know that on that road there is healing: then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

New creation has begun in Jesus.”

The following is a series of brief thoughts on the arts that I’ll be sharing to kick off St. Stephen’s University’s Arts Week tomorrow in chapel.

The thoughts are by no means exhaustive, but are intended to give some framework for the role of creative expression in the world in which we live, and to instill a sense of purpose in the creative Christian voice.

VOICES FROM THE HINTERLAND: Reflections On Creativity And The Christian

Introduction

I’d like to begin these reflection on creativity with a poem that I wrote a few years ago. It’s a poem that gives some sense of meaning and context to my own creative activity, and to the act of creativity in general.

a new star

it lodged in space and time unknown,
held aloft by sheer delight;
my love now so brightly burning,
the newest star now born.

The Gifts Of Memory, Mystery And Movement

The creative act, it seems to me, is like the birthing of a new star. They say the Orion nebula is like a star factory, pumping out thousands of new, sizzling suns every year. Just like every act of art, the light that hits our eyes on every starlit night carries with it the gifts of memory, mystery and movement.

Memory is there. Something about the upward tilt of our head before the blackened canvas causes us to remember that our universe is very large, and such revelation typically brings us more of a sense of delight in such grandeur than it does a sense of our own, dwarfed position. We remember that we’re as big and as grand as the cosmos; that the universe within us is equally laden with meaning and dignity.

Mystery seems to be present as well, as our minds tingle with formless questions as to which celestial sparks are the farthest, which galaxies the strangest, and what kind of mind could be so fertile as to spawn such rambunctious glory.

Then, there is Movement. The soul seems to move as the light moves; the soul flickers as the light flickers. When ancient starbeams hit our atmosphere, we see the effect of air and light that we call a “shimmer.” If we squint at the stars and cause our head to just slightly quiver (as I used to do endlessly on a hill nearby my childhood home), it can almost seem as if the stars are dancing, moving abruptly and fiercely, like us, rather than quietly sitting in a static, stark field.

On The Voice Of Art

My task is, in the next few minutes, to lay out a reflection on the vital nature of the arts for the human being, and then to specifically engage those ideas with what it means to be follower of Jesus, the Christ. I perceive myself to be an artist, loving the pulse of words and rhythms most in my own forays into the fine arts, but also as one equally enamored with the arts of friendship and laughter, disciplined study and romantic love. I’m neither an art scholar nor an academic in the truest sense of the word. But I do count myself an aesthete, or a “lover of beauty,” with the best of them.

I care about beauty as a window to God, as a healing balm, as a catalytic agent of justice and freedom and renewal, and as a satisfying drink of cold water to a desert’s thirst. From this posture of awed appreciation, I speak. I also care about beauty as an indication that God is alive and that I am alive as well – that we are made for this rippling creation, and that this artful world all around us holds keys to our own redemption, both inward and outward. In short, I deeply believe in art; not only that it exists, but that it should exist and has powerful purpose for existing. I believe that art speaks, art tells, art beckons, art sings, art calls; art has a voice. I believe that art is from God, and mimics if not embodies His voice, in both riveting whispers and gravelly growls.

I also believe that most art in our world is broken, to some greater or lesser degree. Art reflects the artist, and we are a broken race. Just as anything can be twisted and corrupted by our own blemished voices, so too art can reflect our most base natures. Yet I am unwilling to give up the baby for its murky bathwater. Art finds its origins in God, and in the first sentences of Genesis. You and I are destined to create, and out of that act of throwing stars into space, to participate with God in healing, deliverance and transformation - not the least of which is our own.

The Hinterlands

I come from a small town in Pennsylvania called “Middletown.” Middletown. I don’t believe a hamlet’s name could be more generic. A meeting was held on that little plot of land a few centuries ago. I can just hear the most influential voice in that gathering suggest, “I think we should name our town according to its geographical position in relation to more interesting places on either side.” Middletown. The name feels more like a gesture than it does a monument; just like the town, it feels like it could come or go at any minute.

For all of my joking about it’s name, Middletown is where I am from. It’s my home. It’s always been, and as far back as I can remember, when I say the word “home” I still have part of me that thinks of that quirky little village. I’ve often quipped that my life is that of an advocate of middle grounds, always suggesting that extremes have their flaws and advocating the wisdom of mutual understanding and radical centers. And yet, I’m appreciating as I get older that sometimes one voice must be viciously loud, and another strikingly soft, for a point to find its way through the din of babel that fills the airwaves, and lifewaves, of our age.

Middletown is a bit of what one might call a “hinterland.” According to most dictionaries, a hinterland is a place “in between.” It’s a middle-land if you will. It’s not a large urban center, nor is it the coast. It’s not the land into which a dominion plows its money and energies. It’s not the land that is necessarily waste, either. A hinterland is a “place in between.” It’s a place inland from the free and inspiring vistas of the coasts, and it’s a place outland from the stabilities and governments of the big city. It’s neither here, nor there.

It’s the back country, the hidden bush, the small town, where forces both dark and light are at work, where questions can be asked without immediate suggestions of recalcitrance or rebellion. It is the land where poetry can simply suggest, or query, or lift, or bend, or stumble over itself in an endless quest for finer and finer nuances of meaning. On the borders, on the edges, pioneering and protecting decisions must be made. In the cities, in the centers, those decisions are reinforced and resourced for the good of all. In the hinterlands, however, in the middle-grounds, we can often more freely search for meaning in a meaning-filled world.

Voices From The Hinterland

In the beginning of time, a sacred world took the stage. God created, it says in the first verse, of the first book of the First Book. All beauty came from God, brimming with truth and vibrant with the full spectrums of life and light and sound and scape. There, something broke, someone fell, burning deep shadows onto the lands of light. Now, neither in the center, nor on the fringe, but rather in a no-man’s land, we wander. The hinterland it seems, is our home. To those living on the edges, making the adventurous look tame and screaming for wilder ways, we lift our voice. To those living in the center, deciding on decisions, protecting trustess of the sacral rules, we lift our voice.

To express oneself in art is to incarnate our hinterland questions, perceptions, ideas and feelings. It is also to incarnate truth from less obvious places in our souls. Author Madeleine L’Engle said in her book Walking On Water, “To paint a picture or to write a story or to compose a song is an incarnational activity. The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birth-giver. In a very real sense the artist should be like Mary, who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius or something very small, comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.’” From the back country of our hearts and lives, we speak the inutterable; we tempt the fairies to come forward and to tell the world they exist. We give voice to profound realities that lead us to God and to ourselves, and then, often, back again.

The Aesthetic Voice
As creators, we speak in many voices. Art is often spoken of in the term “aesthetics.” We know the definition of this word by its opposite - anaesthetic. Anaesthetics are those things which numb, and dim both pain and pleasure impulses. Aesthetics, by contrast, are those things which sensitize, revitalize and make one simply more aware. The artist lifts his or her voice, from the hinterlands of our questions, hopes, dreams and senses, and “makes aware” those who have been numbed by either the shouts of the revolutionary edge or the silence of the mundane and repetitive center.

The artist who follows Jesus raises his or her aesthetic voice, in paint or poem or song or sketch, to uncover the wound, to suggest its healing or its actual state, and to somehow aid its healing by directing attention (sometimes by invoking more pain) to the wounds we bear.

The Authentic Voice
Art, if it is anything, is authentic to its creator. It is real. It doesn’t come primarily from the outside in, as if some objective fact could burst on the scene and demand that you paint it, or say it or sing it. Art comes from the inside; from our gut response to the world, or an experience, or a thought so primal it threatens the life of its thinker. The art bears our personality along with it, like a ship carried by a raging river. The creation reflects its creator. The artist lifts his or her voice, from the hinterlands of our perceptions, impulses and faith, and demands that shrouds be lifted and masks be removed before the party continues.

The artist who follows Jesus raises his or her authentic voice, in melody or movement or rhythm or rhyme, to unmask the imposter, to reveal our strong or weak estate, and to somehow draw honesty like water from the rock hard personas we create to hide ourselves.

The Artistic Voice
Art is endemic to the human race. Creativity is a must. We were made to create, whether through forms of right-brained creativity or left-brained creativity. Creativity is the surest sign that there is no such thing as a secular world - a place or time where God is not welcome or is ever completely shut out. Even the most adamant atheist creates, and expresses, and revels in the curve of a line, the turn of a phrase or the sound of a symphony. The artist lifts his or her voice, from the hinterlands of our belief systems, trust and delights, and offers a new way of saying something timeless, often eternal, to the weary ears of the listener.

The artist who follows Jesus raises his or her artistic voice, in story or sound or prose or print, to declare that God is alive, that we are alive, and that there is no place where the possibility of shared, divine-human relationship is not. Art prophesies to the world that there is a God not only in heaven, but also on earth, who is not divorced from His creation, but rather has drawn near.

Conclusion

I’m from Middletown, and in some ways, so are you. We are from a small place between two bigger places; a hinterland, really, in the grand scheme of things. Today, I’ll do that for which I was created. I will create, from this strange, non-descript, in-between land. I will feel part of the pain that’s been, and part of the glory to come. I’ll do so as I live from the vibrant joy that comes from believing in the Incarnation, the reality that God knows humankind intimately, and that humankind may now know Him back just as intimately.

To be a Christian, it seems, is to create from the living center of hope, and to aesthetically, authentically and artistically raise our voices to declare that love has come, and redemption has entered this good, yet fallen creation. Our voice may sing questions, or it may suggest answers; the hinterland will never leave us. And yet, you and I must raise our voice from this place, for God, for ourselves and for others who will hear glory and reality in our trembling words.

In a thousand ways, lift your voice to speak from the hinterland you call your own. Among the screams of the wilder borders, and the soliloquies of sedated centers, your voice will eventually be heard.

Another gift in our understanding of the universe, and another gift to our perspective. Big universe. Big God. Big dreams for humankind.

“US astronomers have discovered the biggest black hole orbiting a star 1.8 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia, with a record-setting mass of 24 to 33 times that of our Sun, NASA said Tuesday.”

US astronomers spot massive, record-setting stellar-mass black hole - Yahoo! News