Right Under My Nose (part 1)

In my inner search to get back to the deeper passions of my heart–as a clue to what God would have me do with them–I’ve recently had an “a-ha” moment.

During my college years at a Christian university, the two most impacting and lasting memories I had were of the two places where I really felt I belonged–where I was part of a shared community. Both had to do with music. The first was a music ministries team I traveled with during the summer of my sophomore year. A group of sixteen college students spent two months traveling the U.S. and Europe, singing songs about Jesus. When you spend two months on a bus with people, you get to know them pretty well. Sometimes we fought like cats and dogs; most times we laughed until our guts hurt. And at the end of the trip–nobody wanted to get off the bus. Nobody. Because we all knew once we got off the bus, it would never be quite the same again. I still keep in touch with some of those folks, and consider all of them to be friends for life.

The other place I felt this strong sense of community was in the music department at school. Creative types tend to be a little off center, and their sensitivity can sometimes be misunderstood by others. But there was just something about hanging around that department, talking with people…we just “got” each other. And though there is the natural competitiveness that happens in that environmnent–there was mostly a mutual admiration and respect for one another, and we fed off each other’s creativity.

I’ve recently come to realize that these experiences shaped me in such a way that I’ve actually spent much of my life since then trying to re-create that sense of shared community. When I became a full-time minister, I tried to find that community among other ministers–only to find more competitiveness and politics than comradery. In fact–I think the reason I tried so long to hold onto my relationship with institutional Christianity, even while I drifted from its values, was the desire for community. I love being in community, belonging to a community with shared goals. And I hate feeling outcast. I didn’t want to let go–even though what I was holding onto was really an illusion.

But so it is. 🙂 And yet–this is something that runs deep in my soul, and I think it is fueled by more than some personal need of mine. I love the dynamic of shared community; I love to see what it does for others, not just myself. I’ve seen elements of this in my years of house church–many times when the people really “gelled” together and functioned as family. I’ve seen the great sense of fulfillment it brings people when they know they belong together. So I feel like there’s something to this.

But I’m realizing that there has to be more than just “belonging together.” Church communities can only last so long when they are gathering just for the sake of gathering. Eventually, I think, there has to be a shared sense of mission. And in addition to this–in my own heart, I’m seeing that it isn’t just community for its own sake that moves me…

It’s community–and creativity. The two examples I gave above involved music and community. It’s the artistic part in my soul that I think needs feeding now.

Recently I’ve been letting this desire fuel my dreams a bit, and I’ve been dreaming about what it would be like to form some sort of creative community–a collective of artists and musicians for the purpose of mutual encouragement and support, even a place where Christian and non-Christian artists can dialogue and share ideas–that kind of thing. I think there was an element of that going on when a couple of years ago we made an effort to do a 24-7 worship thing here in Tulsa. Part of the problem was that we just couldn’t gather enough people together–and that’s too complicated to go into with this post. But the desire to have a community to nurture creativity is still there–if we could just connect with the right people.

Having said all that…recently I’ve taken a look at my surroundings. I’m looking at the rebirth of desire in my own heart to pursue my creative gifts. I’m looking at The Wild One, who has excelled in every visual art form she’s ever tried, but never been formally educated in any of them. She’s finally doing so with the art of photography, and she grows with every photo she takes. I have no doubt she will have a successful career in that field. And then there’s The Director, whose natural eye for film surpasses anyone I’ve seen in his age group, or indeed, anyone I know. It’s not a stretch or a parent’s boast to say he has the potential to be another Spielberg, and I hope to post his first short film right here on this blog within a few weeks.

It seems like within the last year especially, all our creative gifts have come to the forefront of our thinking, and of our lives.

I am a musician. The Wild One is a photographer. The Director is–well–a director.

All creative. All artists.

The seeds of the community I am dreaming of are right under my nose.

(More to come…)