Category Archives: Books

Art and Fear

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I’ve never read a book right through in a day.  Well, I hadn’t until last week.

A friend put a book called “Art & Fear” into my path.  The subtitle is “Observations on the Perils and Rewards of Artmaking”.  I’m not an artist in the fine arts sense of the word.  I’m not even an artist in the nicer-than-usual stick men sense of the word.

But I’m a preacher.  And for me, that process and task feel like they have to be artsy–as artsy as I can get anyway.

So while the book wasn’t written for me, it certainly worked.  Add to that the fact that the book is only 118 pages, and off I went.

(On an aside, I believe that every book should be limited to 120 pages or less.  I was going to say 100, but I’ll give you a bonus 20 just to get things rolling.  I realize that fiction works may want their own rules–they just make stuff up anyway–but non-fiction should definitely have some lines to keep things within.  If I ever write something, I’m starting this trend.)

So because this book wouldn’t have crossed my path without some help, I’m going to extend the help even further.  I’m going to give you the good bits and save you a chunk of a day.

Here’s a few…

  • To anyone involved in a creative process, it’s important to keep clear what your task is.  To anyone who views your finished product, what matters is the finished product.  Not so for you–for you, what matters is the process, the experience of shaping that work (and getting shaped as that happens).  The viewers’ job is simply to be entertained or moved or whatever by your finished product, and it is tempting to work with their reactions ruling the front of your mind.  But that part is not your job.  “Your job is to learn to work on your work.“
  • David Bayles was an aspiring pianist, studying under a master.  After a few months’ practice, David lamented to his teacher, “But I can hear the music so much better in my head than I can get out with my fingers.”  The master replied, “What makes you think that ever changes?”  Lesson for the day: Vision is always ahead of execution–and it should be.  That is what gives you your direction to aim and your path to walk.
  • On a similar note, poet Stanley Kunitz once commented, “The poem in the head is always perfect.  Resistance begins when you try to convert it into language.”  That word definitely resonates with my small pool of experiences–resistance.  And that resistance can feel like a freaking war!  Just last week, I told a friend that my sermon and I were locking in for a Friday cage match.  Only one of us was walking out at 5 PM.  I hoped it would be me.  And that description isn’t even a metaphor!
  • Talent: Much is made of this word.  Perhaps too much.  “Talent may get someone off the starting blocks faster, but without a sense of direction or a goal to strive for, it won’t count for much.  The world is filled with people who were given great natural gifts, sometimes conspicuously flashy gifts, yet never produce anything.  And when that happens, the world soon ceases to care whether they are talented.”  My translation: It’s far more important to learn how to work your butt off than to have talent.   And a simple message like that is a good reminder to me every so often.  It encourages on days when I feel like a nothing, and it humbles on days when I feel like a something.
  • This little blurb is text-boxed in the middle of one page in the section dealing with talents:

Title: A brief Digression in Which the Authors Attempt to Answer (or deflect) an Objection
Q: Aren’t you ignoring the fact that people differ radically in their abilities
A: No.
Q: But if people differ, and each of them were to make their best work, would not the more gifted make better work, and the less gifted, less?
A: Yes.  And wouldn’t that be a nice planet to live on?

  • One final story about the quest for perfection:
    The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups.  All those on the left side of the studio, he said would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.  His procedure was simple: On the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group.  Fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on.  Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot–albeit a perfect one–to get an “A”.  Grading time came and a curious fact emerged: The works of the highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity.  It seems that while the “quantity” group was busy churning out piles of work–and learning from their mistakes–the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.  (I like that story.  Take what you will from it, and go after something!)

Desert (4/28)

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I’m reading a memoir right now by an author who decided to live for forty days out in the Judean desert.

He did it because he felt led there.

He did it because he knew the silence and solitude would offer him cleansing and healing.

He did it because Jesus did it.

He did it because authors do stuff like this to earn their livings.

Much of the book is mundane–it’s about simply surviving in the wilderness by yourself.  It’s about weather and bugs and passing thoughts.

But bits are profound.  There’s a lot of us that might feel like those last three sentences are themselves accurate describers of prayer and other such spiritual pursuits.

My favourite parts though have been his reflections on the desert:

I carried some of the wood back to camp and began making a fire.  After I threw the wood on a pile of branches I had collected, I heard a short, shrill animal scream.  Then it was quiet.  I imagined that a predator had just sneaked up on some unsuspecting prey, and just like that!  Only time enough for one last scream.

In the desert, God can sneak up on you.  In the cities and towns, people are so armoured, so fearful of one another–even those they love–that God doesn’t have a chance.  Our guard is up.  We’re so skeptical.  When we see God coming, we turn away as we might when we see a vacuum-cleaner or encyclopedia salesman coming and say, “Sorry, I’m not buying any today.”

Or we stand waiting for God to do something different, something new.

“Show me your stuff,” we say.  “Show me something I haven’t seen before.”

God doesn’t have anything new to show us.  He’s shown us everything.  It’s staring us in the face.  That’s what “we were made in God’s image” means.  We were shown the whole kit and caboodle, shown it in the very way we’re made!

“But I don’t see nuthin’!” you say.  Well, I’ve got news for you.  It isn’t about what you see–it’s about who is doing the seeing.”

In another place, he notes that the desert has taught him that the desert does not change.  It is timeless and eternal (in a sense), and if you wish to be at home with it, it is YOU who must change.

Sounds like a certain Being I know, eager to lead me to places where I am humbled and quieted, intent on “jumping me” and tuning my eyes so that my stubborn soul also sees that when it comes to dealing with Him, there is one of us who must learn to adapt.

The desert makes the identity of that one abundantly clear.

Praying Like a Complete Idiot

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I bought this book while in line at the supermarket a while back…

Flipping through it, I’ve concluded something: I’d do well–exceedingly well–to pray idiot-prayers like these!

Take this one from Christina Rossetti:

“O Lord, the Lord whose ways are right, keep us in your mercy from lip service and empty forms; from having a name that we live, but being dead.  Help us to worship you by righteous deeds and lives of holiness; that our prayer also may be set forth in your sight as an incense, and the lifting up of our hands be an evening sacrifice.”

So for all the morons out there, I’ll bring you more occasionally so that, yes, even folks like us can learn to pray.

A Diary of Readings

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Here’s a beauty for you.

This book (A Diary of Readings by John Baillie) was first published in 1955.  It’s one of those daily readers, which I’ve never been very successful with.

However, this one limits each day’s reading to one page or less, and the sources are mostly fantastic writers whose names I’m not familiar with.  Every few pages, I see a name I know, but most of it is like a new field for treasure-hunting.

I have yet to find a page that hasn’t been special in some way, and I wouldn’t say that of many books I’ve met.

Best part?

This is the kind of book you can definitely find second hand.  I bought mine for $1.50!  Money well spent…

How Does Everything Change?

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A friend (let’s call him “Wade”) wrote me this in reply to my recent post on this book I’ve been reading. I told him that I knew he was right in nearly every sentence.

I’m posting this (with his permission) because it speaks to something I’ve been feeling a lot lately: We’ve got to have more positive voices speaking in our ears. Next step: Mine needs to be a more positive voice.

People of my age and younger are professional cynics. We are gifted criticall thinkers, with the emphasis on “critical”. We can raise reasonable doubt about very reasonable things with no effort at all. Webs of the negative are quickly spun, and small people (like me) who could be actively creating small waves for the positive instead just get stuck.

Adding to the mess is the simple fact that deconstruction is fun! Who doesn’t prefer the sledgehammer-knocking-down-walls role to the careful and thoughtful work of constructing something new.

The trouble is that constructing something new is what’s needed.

And that’s why I’m grateful to have voices like “Wade” speaking to me.


In my life I have run into these bigger than one man ideas a few times over the years. My tendency, and I think the tendency for most people, is to encounter it, see the immensity of it, and feel immediately overwhelmed and a bit helpless. For some reason we think that we have to come up with some grand idea that is well thought out and pretty much guaranteed to work before we will do anything. And of course this very rarely happens. So we give up and say, “there’s nothing I can do”. We rationalize over time so that we can live with this idea that it is wrong, but somehow ok. Add to that the fact that we are immersed in the system and so continually bombarded with messages contrary to what we are called to what we know deep down is right.

I took a political science class on the environment in university. It was a very good class, looking at the state of the environment and politics relationship with that. It was one of the first times that I was forced to reckon with an issue that I could easily see was important, broken, affecting many people and very complex. I enjoyed learning about it, but after not too long I felt weighed down and paralyzed in what I could do to fix this. Pretty soon I was justifying my inaction with things like, ” God is in control”, “It’s all going to be destroyed anyway”, “This has to happen for Christ to come back”, etc…

What happened with civil rights in the south? A woman was tired of being pushed down, and refused to give in. Some people saw and heard this and it gave them hope. They realized they could do something as well, even if it was small to stand up for what they believed and try to stop the opression. Pretty soon there are lots of people doing this and change starts to happen. I realize this is a simplification, but it gives me hope. Hope that there is another way. Maybe I don’t know what that way will look like in the end, but I know something I can do right now that will move away from the current way.

If places like Wal-Mart engage in labour practices that are destructive- yes Jay I heard the intro to your sermon where you saw an ad in that store 😉 – I can stop shopping there. If I don’t like the culture I’m in that tells me over and over again that success and my happiness are dependent on things, money, and security, I can look for people who are not “successful”, either by choice or by circumstances. Small things, but everything starts small. Then look and pray for the next step.

I believe the Spirit that indwells us pushes us in this direction, we just have to learn to pay attention. And to take a step.