Last night I saw the sunset blazing orange through the deep gray-blue of the surrounding clouds. Light broke the hazy darkness and scattered its rays over the felted mountain tops and valleys of pine. My own eyes lit up against ruby red and violent gold of the western sky then melted into the purple hue of the eastern sky, which was also visible across the expansive overlook. Color, space, time and place became an invitation to look beyond the expression of beauty into beauty itself.
Time-locked, the moment still exists within a photo for memory, but what I can see of it in a picture is only part of what was actually there. Furthermore, the experience of the moment was still only partial. I was distracted by the light and the shadows from the reality they expressed.
Word Pictures
Just like the mysterious truth about sunset goes beyond the motion and the color, I am finding it more difficult to capture the experience of my life in words. Truth is a way of life. Words may carry some of its expression, but the story they tell is much more powerful at communication.
To transfer from one to another; to form a relationship – that is what it means to communicate. The characteristics of one become the characteristics of another. Incommunicable diseases cannot be caught and so nobody is afraid of them. That which is communicable, however, spreads and grows from one to another becoming part of their experience of life for good or for evil.
I want to communicate the freedom of the kindness of God to the world around me, but this cannot happen until it first becomes part of me, then flows through me. The words that I write are ineffective at capturing my experience – except in so much as they are an expression of my heart’s desire to invite others into this way of life.
The invitation itself is an attempt to translate the desire that now flows from me because it flows from Him. No one wants the connection more than the Father Himself. His own name invokes the idea of relationship in terms that humans can relate to – though they may not fully understand.
Art As Invitation
My desire to introduce others to this way of life must be what drives my creative expression. It is impossible to capture, but greater skill produces greater clarity, so I must develop my craft in order to worship and praise more fully through it.
Furthermore, I must develop perspective so that the focus does not slip from what the art is meant to communicate onto the art itself – or worse, onto the artist.
Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn’t stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower – become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations. – C.S. Lewis “The Great Divorce” p.85
How can I see the invisible reality to which the tangible experience of my life gives witness? The truth about sunset is not the sunset itself, but the invitation it offers into a reality that cannot be seen with the eyes. The truth about writing is not found in the words themselves, but in their invitation to seek something yet beyond.