Art creates space to ponder

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"If we think at all about the church, it is historically and intrinsically an artistic operation. It always struck me in the little rural church where I grew up that no matter how flat and unimaginative and prosaic the life of the village was, we had that organ music on Sunday morning. And what the organ music did was to create space for us to ponder the stuff that didn't fit the formulae. And, by and large, the language of the church and the language of liturgy is essentially artistic language. We flattened it. So the work, it seems to me, first of all, is to help people see what has been entrusted to us is artistic from the bottom up. If people are caught in dogmatism or in moralism they tend not to notice how incredibly artistic it all is."  ~Walter Brueggemann

Heard these words again this morning. It's a little self serving, but the quote comes from a TWOTP interview we did with Walter last year. You can find the video on our site for context.

I had to put this up because I've been speaking lately about creative expression being central to God's people being God's people. After a while one begins to doubt one's own words. Is it really? Maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe I'm way off base. And then I hear the words above and I realize being an advocate for artists and the arts means being an advocate for that which is entrusted to us. Suddenly being an advocate for the arts seems mildly terrifying, but it's a holy terror.

Posted via web from The Broken Wing