Change (part 3) - Growth!

Growth is and must remain a mystery.  We may try to grow on our own, without any help, but it would only be to our own peril.  We can not, ultimately, make something grow.  We may be able to manipulate the conditions of growth, but to less a degree than we think.

Growth is happening, and will happen, in spite of us, as naturally as a tree branch growing.

As the physical body can not help but grow, provided basic nutrition, rest, and stimulation,  so the inner world must continue to sprout on its own terms.  We can not take credit for growth, but must own its lack.  In other words, we can prevent growth, but we can not cause it.

Some may feel this is not fair.  But it remains nature’s reality.

Our “freedom” is limited in scope to a negative, to not distracting the natural processes of growth,  But that is the gift, not a curse. We are not responsible to make ideas grow, but to present them.  Plant them.  To do our small part in the process to put them where they belong.

The rest is done by the natural systems of life.

Once an idea is birthed, the ones only we can bring to life, the rest is God’s.  Our job is the idea.  The melody.  The vision.  Not to create them, but to receive them.  To listen well.  And to express them.  Freely.  We can not dictate or control history to go our way.

Our attempts to control or force success have led to replacing the artist with something more palatable and cooperative: the entertainer.  We turn creative “talent” into sport, and to compete one must rehearse to precision the ability to produce dazzling, however fake, “wow” moments.

We have suffocated The Spirit out of it, reducing art to cheap craft only.  All science, no art. Business, not magic.  Entertainment not prophecy.

But what if art is more about listening, translating the deep longings of human experience?  What if talent was not merely about making great art but making art that makes great humans?

In other words, what if the point of art is to inpire humans to keep going, to endure hardships, to long suffer for good?  In short, to be a blessing?

If so, “talent” takes a back seat to perspective…thoughtfulness…insight.  Art becomes more of an internal conversation, inconsequential to the medium used.  The focus is on discovery, not craft perfection.  Sumbmission, not decisiveness.  Listening, not talking.

The artist must be trained in this process of discovery, translating insights from the eternal world into tanglble expressions of the physical one.  This becomes primary.  Craft, secondary.  Cheap entertainment, lastly.

The outward craft is important, but specifically to the degree that it serves the expression of real truths.  Otherwise, “art” is simply a matter of exhibiting mastery of some skill set, no different than watching a carpenter hammer a nail or chisel a piece of wood.

Both useful in themselves, and helpful to humanity.  But not art as we are speaking of it.  Art is prone to wander from the merely pragmatic.  It draws away from the perfunctory.  It lures us to explore, to re-look, to re- think, indeed to go, when we would much rather stay.   

We need the lure.  Not that the things of earth are all that alluring.  But they are here.  Convenient.  Easy.  Cheap.  They will always be more accessible, and therefore more utilized.  But they are substitutes. They do not give us what we are looking for.

We are looking for something that transcends yet somehow deeply connects to this life.  We are searching for meaning, signiicance, some residue of the eternal.  It does not come cheap.

It takes a fight to behold even a glimpse.  But that glimpse will change everything.

The artist is called to that horizon, beyond what we can currently see.  Through false barriers of fear, to do just that: To see what is out there.  To see what is ahead.  And to tell the story that will lure us out to that same dangerous ledge.  The footing is scarce, but the view splendid.   

Write your melodies.  Sing your songs.  Paint your canvas.  Draw us on.  Thank you!