As I explore the concept of home in my current body of work, Hello From Home, I’d be missing a big part of my own journey of contemplating home, if I didn’t include the home, anchor, and journey, that is faith.
I’m a Christian, which can mean a LOT of things today. Religious trauma is real, and if this post is not for you, please feel free to skip past it, or read it, and then unpack with a trained therapist.
For those curious, also walking in faith or questioning the validity of it, this is for you.
I see Christianity as a kind of home. Just like an old, lived in home, there are broken pipes, sometimes the basement floods, but it is a shelter from the wind, and most importantly — my family lives here. My sisters and brothers, my heavenly father/mother, and my most cherished invisible friend.
Not everyone gets along. There are many rooms, and they are decorated differently. With human eyes, it resembles a loose, imperfect structure holding all of us who say we want to be more like Jesus.
I’d like to invite you to visit this home, if you are curious. Maybe you don’t know what is true anymore; You feel like you can no longer in good conscience remain affiliated with Christianity. Or, maybe you consider yourself a Christian, and feel alone in this world of cultural divides. Maybe you feel caught in a culture war, and you can’t find your way forward. Or, maybe you’ve left the Church and are wondering why anyone would ever associate with Christianity.
If it helps, here are some writers, thinkers and faith leaders who’ve encouraged me, and helped to frame my perspectives. They express views that draw from both progressive and conservative learnings — this might feel hard, and yes — it is hard. It’s a big exercise to reach across a political divide and try to understand what informs such a wide range of beliefs. But I believe it’s integral to coexisting in that big old house I was talking about earlier.
Some books I read a long time ago, but they impacted me so much that I wanted to share them, even if not all the views of the writers are ones I hold. Other books in this collection, I have read over and over and still am reading (or listening to) now.
If I’m correct, they are dialoging about a broken home, one that is in a two thousand year process of renovation, damage, repair, and remediation. In the words here, you’d notice the acknowledgement of this, and the hard work, of working out our faith.
In this wind-blown shelter, we come together, and try to hold some understanding of God through our faulty senses. We believe this understanding was most clearly shown in Christ. I hope we are learning his way of being. I hope we are leaning on His supernatural grace.
Anthony Ray Hinton - The Sun Does Shine
Kathleen Norris - Amazing Grace, a Vocabulary of Faith
Dorothy Day - the Long Loneliness
Shane Claiborne - the Irresistible Revolution
Serene Jones - Call it Grace
Savannah Guthrie - Mostly What God Does
Bryan Stevenson - Just Mercy
Brother William Short - The Franciscan Intellectual Tradition
Dallas Willard - Life Without Lack
Madeline L’Engle - The Rock that is Higher: Story as Truth
Howard Thurman - Jesus and the Disinherited
Donald Miller - Blue Like Jazz
Anne Morrow Lindbergh - Gift from the Sea
Nicole Unice - the Struggle is Real
CS Lewis - the Great Divorce
Dallas Willard - Renewing the Christian Mind
Peter Scazzero - Emotionally Healthy Spirituality
Tish Harrison Warren - Liturgy of the Ordinary
Timothy Keller - the Reason for God
Grace Hammon - Ask of Old Paths, Medieval Virtues and Vices for a Whole and Holy Life
Thomas a’ Kempis - The Imitation of Christ
Anne Lamott - Help, Thanks, Wow
Kate Bowler - Everything Happens for a Reason and other Lies I’ve Loved
Honorable mention —
Andy Squyres is not an author that I know of, but he should write a book, and you should check out his music.
I’d be remiss not to talk about Scripture. I believe God’s nature and heart is expressed throughout history and the world — a heart that is love, justice, working for peace, and working to bring people to a place of self awareness and humility — this is demonstrated clearly in the Bible, and so it is the perspective by which I read the Bible. I read every day with awareness of passages that almost never get talked about in Churches.
Many faith teachers will emphasize what they are drawn to the most, and I think it’s best to read the Bible to know what it says — and what it doesn’t say. The Bible is made up of sixty six books. Needless to say, there is a lot going on in there.
If the passage seems to challenge these tenements that I know to be true about God, I look for further commentaries, ask hard questions, and wrestle with it. There are passages in scripture that make me weep with sadness. I believe this wrestling is part of the faith building process. I often find myself grappling and praying “God I know that you are good — help me to see your good purpose, your character and nature, in this situation.” And while I don’t always see the resolved picture I hope for, I find that if I hold this posture while reading scripture, it strengthens me to hold that same posture as I grapple with the overwhelmingly sad world we have inherited, believing in God’s goodness, grace and love, despite the brokenness of the world around me. The Bible doesn’t give me all the answers I need, and I believe this is on purpose. Rather, it prepares me for a confusing and uncertain world by orienting me towards a good God, despite all the confusion. And in a way — that is the only answer I need — in the end, I don’t understand, but I believe God is still with us.
You might be wondering, what does any of this have to do with art?
I think the reason Christianity can feel ridiculous is the assertion that we are all children in need of love from a Father and a Mother. The Bible says that Jesus who is both human and God, is one we can call “friend.” So, as Christians, we go about life dependent on an unseen parent and an unseen friend. Imagine being very committed to an imaginary friend; how silly that does seem? Like I said, I often laugh at myself, just thinking about how it might seem to someone who is not a Christian.
And being an artist is often about suspending disbelief, letting go of what other people think, and following my heart. It’s about engaging in an honest inner dialogue. When I paint, I’m by myself a lot, and I think I can ruminate on past hurts. These kind of thoughts can really impact my creative process and the work in the end. While in my life, I’ve gone through many beliefs and perspective shifts, I find that belief in a creative God, postures me to create. As I understand both God’s, and my own, inherent nature, I am pulled away from the noise, and into awareness of endless creativity and fascination.
I’ve also found that leaning into my faith gives my mind and heart a place to rest.
Artmaking is not just a thing to do, it is a way to think, and see the world. Without an orientation towards a loving, creative God, it is easier for me to get lost in an emotional state that can weight me down. Instead of revisiting past hurts while making art, I pray, worship, and ask God/Jesus (my dear invisible friend) to help me. I feel a lot of peace doing this. As Brother William Short says in his book, Franciscan Intellectual Tradition, there are times when we can tell the mind to go to sleep — that it has done enough thinking. And to let the heart find it’s way to God, through a kind of warmth, and that warmth is love. When I am in that mode of being, I am in the best position to receive the love from an unseen being that I believe loves me, the artwork is part of my experience.
If I could totally explain it, it wouldn’t be a mystery, and it wouldn’t be faith.
Right now I am listening to/reading the book called “Miracles” by CS Lewis, a difficult but worthwhile read on the nature of reality. This quote is giving me something to meditate on recently.
“An ‘impersonal God’—well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads—better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap—best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband—that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion (‘Man’s search for God!’) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?”
― C.S. Lewis, Miracles
Hey — this was a long one. Thanks for staying with me. If you want to talk about reading any of these books, or being a creative artist who walks in faith, please reach out. I’d love to connect.