Celebrating the Arts
It is a gift to be able to create. As human beings, we have been given the ability to imitate our Creator by exercising and developing our creativity. God creates from the beginning, bringing out of what is formless and void, giving it design, structure, function, and purpose. We create out of what God has made and entrusted to us, ordering our little worlds after the order, or logos, by which He made the heavens and the earth. Moreover, and especially for the Christian, this truth is no mere, distant inspiration to adorn our labors in life. Christians are graced with the capacity for participation, such that our little efforts to perceive and practice the order of God’s good and beautiful creation become for us a mode of communing with Him. The more we exercise this kind of contemplative creativity, the more we come to know God. In its way, the creativity of the Christian is a kind of prayer.
Churches do well to encourage the creativity of their members. As creativity is a good and native human capacity, as it is capable of being a means of communion with God, the Church is obliged to edify and direct it toward the end of beatitude. This begins in prayer. As Blessed Julian of Norwich observed in her contemplation of a single hazelnut, the world that God has made is one that He creates, upholds, and loves. The efforts we expend in artistic labor, no matter how amateurishly, unfold and draw out these modes of recognition in us as well. Take, for instance, a small piece of pottery we might have sculpted free-hand or on a wheel. If we are able to overcome the embarrassment we might feel over our lack of skill, we will surely, in some small part of ourselves, smile and say, “I made this,” and experience the joy of it, because we made it, gave it a place, and continue to smile about it when we pass by and notice it. And this can become the beginning of prayer for us the very moment we remember that God looks at what He has made and called good, and loves it all the more.
Over the past two years, St. Matthew’s Church has made deliberate efforts to create a space to develop and direct the creativity of its members. To this end, two individuals have risen to the task of helping us all to grow in this area. On the one hand, Ms. Alea Peister has given her time very generously to institute Creative Retreat Days, during which she has taught from her own experience as a poet and deep reader of the Church’s spiritual tradition to give us a kind of ‘theology of making things.’ In addition, she has created spaces for artists, both professional and amateur, to gather for a quiet day at the parish to practice their art together, to encourage one another, and to integrate that practice with the Church’s rule of prayer.
On the other hand, Mrs. Becca Albert has led the effort to create the Festival of the Arts, a venue for the artisans of the parish to display their work for others to enjoy. This Summer, we celebrated the second annual Festival. It began on a warm evening in the church with Evening Prayer together as a community, followed by a meal together. We believe that everything we do at the parish must emerge organically from our life of prayer together, from the cultivation of a community that breaks bread together. Having prayed and eaten together, we enjoyed a walk through a gallery of visual artistry, featuring paintings, photographs, drawings, and even a set of custom-crafted stainless-steel headers. The youngest artist displaying work was six, and the oldest was over eighty. On that evening, though, they stood side-by-side, glowing as people enjoyed what they had made. Our evening progressed to live performances, made possible by the technical prowess of a group of volunteers who simply love to make venues happen as its own kind of art. The live show featured musicians and spoken-word artists from the parish. From folk tunes to opera, from poetry to short stories to creative non-fiction—as a congregation we laughed and wept and sang together, as the singing and readings washed over us.
The Creative Retreat and Festival of the Arts are now parts of our yearly liturgy at St. Matthew’s. As we have now practiced this integration of faith and imagination for two years, I have been reminded that, in the end, even the Christian life is a work of art. Holiness is intrinsically beautiful. The life of the saint far exceeds the greatest painting or sculpture. By practicing the spiritual discipline of prayer, combined with labors of creativity, we develop the eyes to see how our words and actions in our relationships and worship become participation in the Lord’s creation, re-creation, and new creation in the Kingdom. I am grateful for those professional artists who worship with us every Sunday. I am equally grateful for the cadre of amateurs who show us what it means to do something because it is lovely and they love it. And I am grateful for a tradition that worships the Lord in the beauty of holiness from the first hour of every day.
Please take the time to see some of the works offered at the last Festival of the Arts, included below. And please consider joining us for the next Creative Retreat and Festival in the months ahead.
