Art as Grace: Co-Creating with the Creator

Thank God for spilled ink, for the Word. (Logos)

Through countless pages, I’ve found myself and abandoned myself. Praised past efforts and condemned them. Loved and loathed. There are pages I’ve shared and ones I’ve torn to bits or hidden in vaults.

My mind recoils at the thought of those mad ravings reaching the light of day. Notebooks have served as outlets of therapy, interrogation, and revelation. I’ve learned that sometimes, sentences, ideas, and paragraphs are a result of Holy Possession (a term coined by Nikos Kazantzakis).

This is the realization that humanity’s ability to create is reliant on the Source of all creation. Scripture is said to be divinely inspired. Is it logical to believe God gave up speaking through people after St. John’s mic-drop letters on Patmos Island?

Yeshua says we can know a tree by its fruits. Art produces branches. ( See Dante’s Divine Comedy and its influence on theology and literature).

Rotten apples are a result of beast-like consciousness, one which parades its futility about as something worthy of reverence. If we are nothing more than animals, and there is no God, all things are permissible. Post-modern art tends to grapple with this concept as reality.

While waiting for a coffee, a patron of the shop walked over to my seat and thought it best to warn me of the evils of capitalism. “There’s the Paraclete or the parasite. You can build up your fellow creative, collaborate and rectify or destroy and devour, working solely for individual gain. Who do you work for?”

As Bob Dylan said, no matter who you are, you gotta serve somebody.

Unconsciously, we learn to entertain and welcome parasites, consenting for them to claim us as a host. (Be they in the form of unchecked impulses, vices, harmful ideology, self-serving ambitions, or codependent relationships.)

We believe in order to be. In Christ is a reality that frees us from our bondage to sin and the false self.

We must begin to offer up ourselves daily, trusting that Christ will renew us and leads us along the narrow road, or the Way less traveled. Welcome to the Good Life. He calls us to be co-creators of a better existence. This must always take precedence over fallen man’s commandment of thou shall turn human life into a material force.

Or Maim thy neighbor if they ask you for a favor. In the old days, folks died of consumption. In this age, people die from consumption of another sort. Yeshua raises us from the dead in order for us to revive our fellow man. When we find our identity in the heavenly realities we participate in the Father’s plan for humanity.

The Orthodox Fathers say Yeshua is the image by which creation was made and toward which creation is to move. Christ Incarnate is the model for man’s creation and the goal of man’s existence. By willfully dying for the sake of the world, Yeshua destroyed the devil’s power by using the devil’s strongest weapon (death) against him. God himself, by his grace, tasted death in the place of every person. (Hebrews 2:9)

Yeshua tasted death, meaning He experienced it fully and intimately. The Resurrection is Christ the Redeemer taking center stage, having reestablished man’s God-intended dominion over creation. He did not rise alone. The fear of death hinders the way we live.

Compare this to what we receive from the Bread of Life (communion). Christ offers us His body and life-giving blood.

I tell you the truth unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life within you. But anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise that person at the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. I live because of the living Father who sent me; in the same way, anyone who feeds on me will live because of me. I am the true bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will not die as your ancestors did (even though they ate the manna) but will live forever. (John 6)

The devil encourages us to find our identity in our attachments and illusion so that we may become workers of deception. The earth’s resources become something to possess and God’s justice is no longer considered in regards to our conduct. The self appoints itself as God. Inevitably, chaos ensues.

Awareness of Christ leads to the realization that we are but sojourners of this temporary reality and our true home is in the mystical body of Christ.

Our prayers silence the static that surrounds us and allows for our thought machine to begin operating on divine software.

In our communion with God, we are brought into a deeper awareness of what it means to be a child of the Most High. Yeshua is our blueprint. The Suffering Servant offered Himself on our behalf for us to be free in the truest sense of the word. We are not to use such liberty as a cloak for vice.

Honor all people. Love the brethren. Fear God. Yeshua’s wounds are our salve, by His stripes we are healed! Our baptism is our entryway into Wisdom. Who can know the mind of God but the Spirit of God? The dictionary defines a counselor as a person trained to give guidance on personal, social, or psychological problems. What role does the Spirit have in your life?

Do you seek His counsel in these fields or are you trying to plow the land by yourself? The journey of life, death, resurrection, and transfiguration occurs with Emmanuel, not from a distance but with us: I in them and you in me, so that they shall be perfected as one, and so that the world shall know that you have sent me and that you have loved them just as you have also loved Me. (John 17:23)

We are called to a personal relationship. Not to a personal, tailor-made Yeshua. He is the salvation of all souls and the Spirit moves as it pleases. We have no say on how, when, or why, He calls others to Himself. Can solitude be solitude if the Lord is our companion?

Yeshua commands us to go into our inner room, shut our door, and pray to our Father, who is unseen. So to does an artist create in solitude. If the work is to bear fruit, it will name others in the work. It will go beyond itself. A poet doesn’t read a poem to hear themselves speak.

Such solitude or asceticism equips us with the tools to salt the earth and manifest the Kingdom of God into our present circumstances. By living with such reckless trust we bring the desert into everyday life.