The Parable of The Artist

Once upon a time an Artist originated a stunning work of art. Mixing various media such as sculpture, water color, oil, ink, movement, texture, and light, the Artist created a piece the likes of which no one had before beheld. Pleased, The Artist displayed the piece prominently at a cross-roads for all to see. Travelers trekked from afar to admire the piece, which ignited in them a burning desire to create also. When this happened, The Artist, standing off unnoticed, bowed his head and smiled.

Strangely The Artist did not scribble his signature on the piece, believing his authoritative strokes, unique colors, and complex designs spoke for him. The Artist also left his work untitled hoping those drawn to it would christen it. Soon enough it became known as The Creation. The Artist took great pleasure in the joy his work brought and so scattered smaller pieces of art throughout the world. Predictably Art flourished.

After time, however, Art Critics thrived and complained that The Creation, and all of The Artist’s other works, carried no signature. Thus Controversy as to the true identity of the Creator of The Creation also flourished.

Eventually people not only Denied that the The Artist conceived The Creation but further Claimed that their artists had--artists with names such as Baal, Pan, Zeus, Mother Nature, and Chance. Rivalries bloomed. Schools of thought evolved. Many revered The Creation rather than The Artist. Others rose up and reasoned that, because no one had seen The Artist or any artist, that no Artist existed. Instead, they argued, “Our fear and ignorance invented the idea of an Artist to help us understand The Creation.” But they couldn’t explain how The Creation originated. Some argued that since no Artist exists The Creation must have Spontaneously flared into being.

This View ultimately won the day and The Creation evolved into an Object of study rather than an awe inspiring work of Art. Its paint, canvas, frame, material, and techniques were studied, tested, weighed, categorized, and controlled. Unfortunately, to those studying it, The Creation lost its Beauty and Wonder, becoming a conquered object. The Critics further erected a wall around The Creation and, to appease those still traveling to see it, made available, at a small cost, blurred prints. Consequently all of the other unique works of The Artist became objects of study as well, only valued if they served a purpose The Critics supported. Art as The Artist designed it died.

Now The Artist wept bitterly. But not because of a lack of recognition for his work. For had he wanted Fame he would have fixed his signature unmistakably on his every piece. The Artist mourned because his Original idea, for all of those who admired The Creation to become intimate with his ways as artists themselves, miscarried. Decay flourished.

Inconceivably The Artist bowed his head, smiled and returned to The Creation determined to recreate and reinspire Art. In a final, powerful, artistic stroke The Artist sculpted A Cross that blended the image of his love for all artists with the pain The Artist felt when Art in them died. A small but unstoppable revolution followed. The Artist established an Artist Colony designed to incite all to learn Art. Lesser artists then became Art teachers passing on the Wonder and Technique of The Artist to all future generations. Today that Colony of Artists stands in the Crossroads--commissioned to Declare the love and wonder of The Artist himself.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the works of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” (Psalm 19:1-4)

We are not accidents nor are we alone. We are the works of God’s hands, drawn in love and mercy. If you haven’t spoken to The Artist of late, there is no better time than now.

Skittish Trout

It was just a wide spot in the stream where the mountain valley flattened out to pool and drink the icy water. Tall, snow-covered peaks reflected in its placid surface. Narrow shadows hung suspended in its middle: brook trout facing upstream and feeding on anything drifting through their territory. I had to crawl through the grass as I approached the pool so as not to send the trout flying for cover in the undercut banks. Even then, the shadow of my fly rod arching across the water panicked them. Skittish trout, they’re called. So attuned to hawks and fishermen and other predators are they, that any movement from above is perceived as a threat. And rightly so.

I have a friend who calls herself a skittish trout. She grew up in a guilt-based, authoritarian religion and church. Any question, doubt, comment, or difficulty she had with her childhood faith and church was met with anger and derision. Intellectual abuse, she called it. Not that she didn’t have faith, she just wondered. As soon as she was old enough, she fled organized religion. And today anytime even a shadow of that old-time religion falls across her life she flies for the safety of the cutbank, peering out, yet still wondering.

In the process of starting a church, I’ve discovered large pools of skittish trout. Unfortunately, stories similar to my friend’s abound. Church splits, pastoral infidelity and dishonesty, harsh judgementalism, cold cliquishness, unbending dogma, rampant self-righteousness, cookie cutter lifestyles and answers, authoritarian leadership, political partisanship, powerless people, and ample—but common—human failings in what is supposed a divine institution are just a few of the shadows that the church and her people cast across the pool of modern life.

Almost all of us have, or have heard, a similar story. The scars and their impact vary. I started following Christ at age fifteen and began looking for a church to attend. Even I knew that was the way of things, but I was naive about the dress code. My hair flowed below my shoulders and my jeans were ratty. It was the 1970s. At the end of the sermon, I tramped forward in response to the “altar call.” I knelt to pray and a pastor (At least I think he was a pastor. To me he looked, acted, and smelled like one) approached and asked me if I wanted to become a Christian.

I proudly told him how just days earlier I had become a Christian at a church camp. He frowned at me and shook his head.

“You need to get your hair cut before you can become a Christian, son,” he said as if this truth saddened him deeply.

I was young and stupid and argued with him. “Jesus had long hair. Haven’t you seen those pictures of him?”

Not impressed with my theological acumen he simply offered, “I have a pair of scissors in the back. I can get them, cut your hair, and then you can pray and become a Christian.”

I decided to look for another church.

Since then I have been in three churches where the pastors have had affairs, and within most of the churches I have been a part, have seen and heard things that come straight from the gates of hell not the streets of heaven, and have made my own sad mistakes as a person and a pastor (proving the adage that if I find the perfect church I had better not join it because I’ll ruin it).

Two things:

One, apparently not being a skittish trout but maybe a stupid one, I have yet to fly for the cutbank and hide. Sometimes I feel like a singed moth circling the flame. I’m not sure why I don’t fly. Probably because God keeps blocking the escape route. Probably also because with each scar the church and I have left on one another, there are equal—and more—marks of grace and life this crazy body called the church has bestowed on me. That she has allowed me to seek my calling and share my thoughts, ideas, and life through her may be the least of them. And when I parade before my eyes the faces of friends I have made, and how they have enriched my life, in this human/divine community, I am humbled and grateful.

Two, dealing with people’s souls is dangerous and delicate. So too, I’ve discovered, is this starting and being a church, and mysterious. We’re not selling widgets or snake oil. We’re attempting to touch God and, through rugged and calloused human hands, places in ourselves God hid in our deepest reaches, places we’ve hidden even from ourselves. Hanging out a sign reading, “Got God?” does not do anyone, especially the Creator of our souls, justice. This, sharing our souls, spiritual journeys, and lives, is not marketing. It cannot be shrink wrapped into some tidy package. It’s messy, alive, sensitive, unpredictable, sometimes ugly, often beautiful. Tread softly.

I wish finding God and ourselves and living in a Christ community with truth and grace could be written up in a book or produced in a program or bulleted in a three point outline, or contained in a church building (and sometimes God even works through these things). But alas we and God and life are deeper and messier than that.

And none of this is new. Even the first two humans hid from God after they discovered their bare, naked distance from and need for Him. We have been flying from God ever since. Skittish trout indeed. Fear not, however, God is no predator, but is a patient, persistent angler.

Making God’s Top Ten List

At year’s end newspapers and magazines often publish top ten lists containing what they deem the most significant happenings of the past twelve months. They serve as reminders of what we have just navigated and also reflections of what that author, if not our culture, values. This year’s compilations included the typical earth-shattering events:

• Barack Obama, a gifted young man, is elected President.
• Paul Newman, a gifted old man, passes away.
• Wall Street, seemingly the lifeblood of our economy, flounders.
• Mike Shanahan, coach of the Denver Broncos, is fired.

What if God published such a list? Would it reflect the same priorities? Or would it recognize events we don’t? What if God’s list looked more like this?

• Dennis, a very important and busy businessman, does nothing.
• Brett shares the remote control helicopter he received for Christmas with his younger sister.
• Gladys, an elderly woman living on a small pension, puts $1 in the Salvation Army kettle.
• Mary looses her job, and only source of income, and is not fearful.
• Kevin accepts God’s view of him.
• The Smiths grieve the loss of their mother and sit together in loving silence.
• Cheryl turns to the person behind her in line and smiles.
• Jared asks God to be his friend.
• Abdul prays for the peace of Christ in his war-torn country.
• Robert James is born and breathes his first breath.
• Tony and Marie forgive one another and remain married.
• Daryl reads a good novel.
• Rhonda and Clay kiss.
• George faces the end of his long life with open eyes and heart.
• Cassie offers a neighbor a cool drink of water and some shade.
• Christmas arrives again.

I wonder. Or, because of my blurred, earth-bound perspective, have I missed too? Now we see through a glass darkly, Scripture says. Jesus never seemed to focus on the “big story” of the Roman world but rather on the “little things” in the people around him. The first shall be last and the last first, he said.

Still, I occasionally find myself dreaming of doing something that would land me on one of those earthly top ten lists, "Time Magazine’s Man of the Year." There are those days, though, where simply getting out of bed and facing another day feels astronomically monumental. And other days when my plans and actions of reaching for the moon go unnoticed. Those are the times it’s heartening that God seems to notice the ordinary with the same eyes he sees the extraordinary. Faith pleases God, we’re told. Reality is I spend most of my days with only a mustard seed of faith in my pocket. Too often I can’t even find that among the lint. But maybe, just maybe that’s enough to make God's list.

The Best Month of the Year

Which month of the year is preeminent? Truth be told there really is no contest, as you’ll discover below. But special holidays and observances are piling up monthly, apparently each month vying for “The Best Month of the Year Award,” in a very odd—and in my opinion—hopeless way. Below is a mere sampling of the madness.

One would think December would win “The Best Month of the Year Award” (BMYA) hands down, boasting as it does of Christmas and, uh hm, Take It In The Ear Day (December 8). Nope.

January weighs in with New Year’s Day and National Humiliation Day (I wish humiliation happened to me only once a year). Nice try.

February embraces Valentines Day (often very similar to Humiliation Day, for guys at least) and Ground Hogs Day. Are you kidding?

March commemorates St Patrick’s Day and National Noodle Month. Even many Irish don’t really care.

April claims National Frog Month and a special Day for Fools (no, not my birthday). Enough said.

May marks May Day and National Moving Month (did I break some law moving last July?). What?

Everybody loves June and the beginning of summer; but June also brags of Potty Training Awareness Month. Close.

July observes Independence Day and—lucky, or not, for all those July 4 picnickers—is also National Baked Beans Month. What no beer?

August is just hot. Why is this even on the list?

September settles in very close to the top of the BMYA list because my wife’s birthday is September—yes, the whole month. September also celebrates National Cable TV Month. If only . . .

November also nestles near number one celebrating Thanksgiving and International Drum Month (is this somehow connected with all those leftover Thanksgiving drum sticks?). Tryptophan!

But the obvious winner of the BMYA is . . . "November, drum roll please" . . . OCTOBER!

You laugh? Consider the following: October celebrates Free Thought Month (which gives me permission to freely think October is preeminent), National Liver Awareness, Hispanic Heritage, Fire Prevention, Disability Awareness, National Popcorn Popping, and Church Library Month (that’s a biggy).

October also features some of the best contradictory observances: Go Hog Wild—Eat Country Ham Month alongside Hunger Awareness, Month of the Dinosaurs beside Clergy Appreciation (maybe that’s not a contradiction), and National—get that—NATIONAL!—Sarcastic Month combined with Positive Attitude Month. And then there’s Halloween (which some might consider a blight on a nearly perfect month).

Plus there are some pretty amazing people who were born in the month of October. I won’t mention any names; just let it be known that October is also Self-Promotion Month.

So, what’s all this got to do with God Sightings, life, faith, and all that important, serious stuff? I’m not really sure.

Maybe . . .

• Humans are incredibly creative and at the same time extremely silly.
• There are way too many things to prevent, be aware of, and celebrate than is humanly possible.
• I am just so ebullient about October I had to write something about it.

Is there a God Sighting in October? You tell me.

Kids, Eye Glasses, Skateboards, Snakes, and God

I once accompanied a nine year-old boy on a search for his lost glasses. I did it out of duty. And I held no real hope of finding them. I went only to quell my guilt for not searching when we would inevitably go purchase another pair. Plus this particular nine year-old is a delight and even searching for a needle in a haystack with him could be fun.

We parked my truck near the place he remembered last having his glasses—a walking path snaking through our small community and landscaped with large river rocks. He had been at the new skateboard park and I reckoned we had about three quarters of a mile of path to search from here to there. I knew the path well and was naively picturing the most likely places to search. The boy had followed no such direct route, however, instead following the more fun and loopy nine year-old course.

First, we searched the bushes around every rock he had climbed and launched himself off. Next we veered off the path and hunted around a statue of a flying horse he had investigated. Then we left the path altogether and cut diagonally through a parking lot. But even that was not direct. He showed me the sidewalk railing he had climbed over, climbed over it again, and then cut behind the dumpster and finally sauntered through the restaurant, again. It was truly random! Back on the path we peered under every weed in the spot he had stopped to chase a garter snake. He had bent over there and thought that might be the point his glasses slid off, though he couldn’t really remember. Here I engaged in the search earnestly agreeing it was the most likely place. But we came up empty and continued by scouring every dink and dodge he took off the path until we finally reached the skate park.

All the while, we had a fun conversation about snakes and any other stuff that came up. This was definitely not a mathematically precise power walk or even a systematic search. I observed he didn’t so much walk as bounce, light and airy with his feet only touching the ground for the fun of it. I learned the names of various skateboard moves and saw the familiar, I thought, walking path for the first time. We spooked another garter snake and marveled at how fast they are. We talked about likely fishing holes as we walked near the river. We wondered what fun things we could do with the $70 to $100 his new glasses would cost to replace, if we found his old ones. Reversing the Apostle Paul’s meaning “I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child” and I enjoyed every moment of it. Being a nine year-old ain’t so bad.

Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when he called the children onto his lap and told his adult followers to have a child-like faith. Maybe the “kingdom of heaven,” as Jesus talked about it and lived it, is more than a “straight and narrow path” defined by rules and time lines and well defined adult perceptions and ideas. What if the freedom Jesus promised his followers is better illustrated (and lived!) by a young boy turning his search for his glasses into another adventure? What if our pursuit of meaning—and Jesus himself—sometimes became a fun and loopy path? These things I pondered on the way back home.

But I had pretty much given up the search. After all, I had begun the search thinking I would not find what I was looking for (to paraphrase Bono). I would look down at the ground occasionally just because I should. Nearing my truck, I guiltily glanced down again and to my utter disbelief spied my nine year-old companion’s glasses sitting in the landscaping bark neatly folded as if someone had purposefully placed them there.

The nine year-old squealed; his face beamed; we high fived. We danced around as if we had found Jesus’ “pearl of great price.”

“I was just praying we’d find ‘em,” he said. “Jesus dropped ‘em right where you were lookin’.” Immediately my adult mind found a more plausible explanation for how the glasses ended up neatly folded where we had already searched. I wish it hadn’t.

God Sightings in the Gilcrease Museum

Get me within one hundred miles of Tulsa, OK and I get the shakes: an irresistible urge to visit the Gilcrease Museum.  I exaggerate not; just ask my family and any one of my million friends.  The Gilcrease is one of the finest western art museums in America, featuring Thomas Moran, Charles Russell, Frederick Remington, and others.  Besides it's free.

I especially appreciate Remington because even I understand his art.  Okay, I can't honestly claim to understand it, but I like it.  His art depicts stories I can imagine myself in.  For example, when standing in front of his sculpture of four cowboys firing their pistols, riding on wild-eyed ponies "Coming through the Rye," I find myself flinching, trying to duck out of the way of the thundering hooves.  I also realize Remington is inspiring me to tell my own story.

I'm not the only one.  Larry McMurtry also borrowed inspiration from Remington in the Gilcrease.  Remington's stop-action painting titled "Stampede" seems to show up in McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize winning western Lonesome Dove.  "Stampede" pictures a drenched cowboy in leather chaps racing his terrified horse alongside a panicked cattle herd.  Rain streaks the gray sky as lightning cracks behind them like a whip in the hand of God.  In Lonesome Dove Newt and the gang are chased across the prairie in a beautifully similar fashion.

I also find the Gilcrease irresistible because it has inspired in me a desire to know the artists themselves.  I am drawn into Remington's stories in art but also into Remington's own story.  I devoured a biography on him, finding in those pages a man gloriously obsessed with authenticity in every detail.  Remington is credited with changing how artists painted horses and other animals because he studied them in motion and accurately depicted them in art.  He even burned a pile of his own art in his back yard that did not measure up to his exacting standards. Each time I visit the Gilcrease, I find myself wanting to know more about this gifted, creative, intelligent man who could tell such enticing stories through color and clay.

An ancient poet once experienced a similar draw to another Artist:

"For you, Lord, have made me glad through your work;

I will triumph in the works of your hands.

O Lord, how great are your works!

Your thoughts are very deep."

At the Gilcrease, I too began to glimpse God's picture, a deeper portrait of life that inspired me to live my story in authenticity.  Now when standing in awe in a golden grove of aspen or among a snowflake-diverse group of people, I am drawn into a Story bigger than myself.  I dream; I listen; I am inspired.  I turn again and again to that strange biography about this Creative Genius who could work such wonder with color and clay.

The Gilcrease reminds me that all of life is an art gallery in which God, the ultimate Artist, draws us into the Story that inspires all others.  So, I deeply desire to live out the authentic story painted for me by the Artist of Life.  And maybe, like seeing Remington's masterful "Stampede" in McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, by God's grace, someone may glimpse God's story in mine.

That's what God Sightings are all about: seeing the Artist in the art.  God may not always speak through a burning bush, passionate prophet, or whispering wind.  But God is not silent.  Our task is to stand in the gallery and see and hear and know the Creator of our souls: to see God.

I hope these words, my meager art, such as they are, help.