The Calm Before the Storm

These last two days of October are the calm before the storm that will hit with gale force winds in November.

That November storm is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, for long), in which the ever optomistic would-be novelist attempts to write 50k words in a novel--from scratch--during one month. Yes, my virtual friends, that's 50,000 words. And just in case you forgot, November has only 30 days.

It also has Thanksgiving Day and the Friday after it, four Sundays, and four Saturdays; all of which I have not scheduled as writing days. I don't write on Sundays, the Thanksgiving weekend will be busy with multiple family gatherings and mega cooking enterprises. And Saturdays are not scheduled as writing days because I will need a day at the end of the week to try to catch up on neglected work and word-count goals.

If my math is correct (and I trust it in this case since I am relying on an Excel spreadsheet to do my addition), I must write 2,500 words on each working day. That's a lot of words. And that's in addition to my regular work and family commitments.

I am working on six (some very difficult and involved) articles for Christian Renewal and have several more under consideration. I'm working on two for the next issue of the Messenger, which is the newsletter for Mid-America Reformed Seminary. I need to figure out illustrations for Not My Own: Discovering God's Comfort in the Heidelberg Catechism, which is the Grade 5 volume I wrote for the "Life in Christ" catechism curriculum project. I am developing a PowerPoint presentation with secondary students as the intended audience called "Living on Your Own, Without Living on Your Own." I also need to put together a comprehensive devotional proposal before January for a major Christian publishing company. There are other projects on the sticky notes strung above my computer, but just typing this list has made me realize that I may need to reconsider some of them.

Then there are my family commitments, which usually includes having one or two adult children at our home for Sunday lunch and caring for a grandson two or more days per week.

In my October 8 post, I wrote about the annual madness that is NaNoWriMo. I also invited readers to be my NaNoWriMo buddies and set a target of 10. I'm happy to announce that I now have 13 writing buddies. We will spur each other on toward prolific word counts through encouragement and, possibly, threats.

My novel this year is tentatively titled Living Echoes. It will be a first person account in the literary fiction genre. The protagonist is a middle-aged pastor's wife who's experiencing a crisis in her marriage and faith. The novel will begin with an accident. My plan is for background information to be provided in flashback chapters interspersed with chapters in which she gradually becomes more aware of her surroundings in the hospital. I initially envisioned it as a sort of Charles Martin construction, but I'm not at all sure how this will all fall into place.

Since this woman is a pastor's wife who has moved around a lot in her married life, the issue of "home" may be a major theme (I think). I don't know her name quite yet, but I know her voice. I think her husband's name in Jeff. I like them both very much; however, they are Calvinists, which according to Marilynne Robinson means: "We're all beautiful, and we're all flawed."

I'm not sure what will happen to them, but I will find out in November. And I'm not sure what will happen to Ascribelog, but I hope to post regular updates on the novel's progress. I'd like to continue posting meditations and Christian Renewal articles, but time will definitely be at a premium in November.

Although I've met my goal of writing over 50,000 words in a new novel for each of the last four years, my anticipation regarding the upcoming rush of creative effort and energy is accompanied by a barely submerged sense of panic ready to pop to the surface. It's as if I'm viewing the Doppler and the quickly approaching storm appears riddled with red cells.

Rev. Vic Bernales ordained in Philippines

The newly organized United Covenant Reformed Church in the Philippines (UCRCP) celebrated its first ordination service on Sunday, September 19, 2010, when Rev. Vic Bernales was ordained as the minister for United Covenant Reformed Church in Davao City.

“As far as I know, Rev. Bernales is the first minister ordained by a confessional Reformed church in the Philippine,” writes Rev. Nollie Malaybuyo (URCNA missionary and church planter of Pasig Covenant Reformed Church in Metro Manila).
About 90 people, primarily members of United Covenant Reformed Church, attended the afternoon service held at Soli Deo Gloria Christian Church in Davao City.

Rev. Nap Narag (UCRCP church planter in Laguna Province) preached on “God’s Message to a Called Man” from 2 Timothy 4:1-5. He spoke of the need for the minister to be faithful and committed to his call to preach the Word of God regardless of time or circumstances.

Rev. Edwin Puzon (pastor of the UCRCP in Las Pinas City) officiated during the ordination and installation. In his charge to the congregation, he quoted from 1 Thessalonians 5:12-13, 1 Timothy 5:17, and Hebrews 13:17 as he reminded members of the congregation of their responsibilities to love, honor and obey their pastor in the Lord. In his charge to the pastor, he asked him to accept the oversight of the congregation and “faithfully and conscientiously” perform his duties to foster the “fold” in the “grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.”

During that day’s morning worship service, Rev. Malaybuyo preached on “The Duties of Members Toward Their Pastors and Elders,” based on 1 Timothy 5:17-25.

Other church leaders participating in the service were Ojie Bicaldo and Allen Ostique (both elders of the UCRCP in Davao City) as well as Jose Cabugao (an elder of the UCRCP in San Carlos City).

This ordination came relatively soon after the denomination’s first classis meeting in March of this year, but it did not come quickly or easily in Vic Bernales’ life.

Rev. Malabuyo explains that Rev. Bernales came out of an “evangelical Missionary Alliance background, so his newfound Reformed beliefs were not accepted by most of his family and friends. But he persevered in the ministry and through his seminary studies, and God is now giving him the fruits of his labors.”

Vic Bernales has persevered, by God’s grace, through a decade of service to the church and two separate seminary experiences. He helped found the Davao City church in 2000 and has been involved with it ever since; first as a Sunday school teacher and exhorter, then as an elder and finally as a pastor. In order to better serve the church, he studied at Mid-America Reformed Seminary for one year (2001-2002) and later returned to complete his training (2006-2008). His ordination service was a long-awaited confirmation of God’s call to ministry.

“It has been my desire to serve the Lord in the church,” he says. “I wasn’t thinking of becoming a minister, but a teacher or an elder. The Lord providentially led me to pursue the ordained ministry as I grew in my knowledge of Him and in my desire for the congregation here to have an ordained minister. It was such a joy for me and, I believe, for the congregation when I was ordained and installed as a pastor. Ten years seems to be long, but it’s worth the wait. I’m so grateful to the Lord for His grace throughout this experience.”

Rev. Bernales hopes to minister more effectively to the congregation, particularly since he is now able to administer the sacraments. But he and other church leaders have hopes for the Reformed faith in the Philippines that are not limited to one congregation.

“We also have plans to begin reaching out to the other districts of the city and neighboring cities with the gospel through radio ministry and an outreach program,” he says. “I am hoping that by God’s grace in the next five years, we would be able to plant a new congregation in Davao City or on Mindano Island.”

This article first appeared as "Rev. Vic Bernales ordained: A Philippine first and God's confirmation" on page 9 of the October 13, 2010 issue of Christian Renewal.

© Glenda Mathes, 2010

URCNA Classis Central US: Wholly and partially

When Classis Central US met on September 13-14 at Doon United Reformed Church, it wholly affirmed an ordination exam and it partially sustained a personal appeal.

Classis convened on Monday evening to deal with routine matters before examining Simon Lievaart, who has been called to serve as Minister of the Word at Doon URC.

Mr. Lievaart is a 2009 graduate of Mid-America Reformed Seminary. He and his wife, Jodi, have two children: Joash (3) and Sophia (7 months). He served Rehoboth URC of Hamilton through February of 2010, when he became a candidate for ministry in the URCNA. At the end of April and beginning of May, he spent three Sundays in Doon. Since then he has been serving Parkland Reformed Church in Alberta, both in Ponoka and at the church plant currently meeting in Lacombe. He received the call to Doon on July 6 and accepted it on July 17, although his acceptance depended upon successfully sustaining an ordination exam at the next meeting of Classis Central US.

“Though the decision involved much prayer and serious consideration,” he says, “it was not a difficult decision. Jodi and I firmly believe this is where God has called me. We are thrilled about this and grateful for it.”

Since immigration laws have tightened in the last few years, a move from Canada to the US now takes some months. The Lievaarts plan to move to Doon as soon as immigration paperwork is completed and they obtain the necessary visas. A date for the ordination service will be set when the timeframe for the move is finalized.

At its meeting, Classis Central also dealt in executive session (which is not open to the public) with matters of pastoral advice at the request of three churches as well as carefully considering a personal appeal against a decision of a consistory.

In his report, Classis Clerk Rev. Doug Barnes wrote that “delegates spent a substantial amount of time reviewing documents, hearing testimony from the appellant and the consistory, and deliberating on the merits of the appeal. Classis voted to partially sustain the appeal and offered pastoral advice related to the situation.”

He later explained, “It’s not unheard of to partially sustain an appeal. It just means that only some of the claims of the appeal were proven, but others were not.”

Rev. Patrick Edouard (Covenant Reformed Church; Pella, IA) said later, “The novelty of the situation made it extra laborious and onerous. That was a good thing for two reasons: (1) It meant that we are unaccustomed to having such matters rise to the level of the broader assembly. (2) It meant that all the delegates were of the same mind that we would deliberate as long as required in order to prevent harm to even one of the least in the Kingdom. Those deliberations evidenced the collective pastoral hearts of the delegates.”

In other business, Classis heard routine reports as well as reports regarding a military chaplain and the many church plants supervised within Classis Central. Classis received greetings from fraternal delegates representing other federations and heard from men who had attended meetings of other federations as fraternal delegates.

Classis also made several classical appointments: Rev. Paul Ipema and Rev. Tom Wetselaar were re-appointed to as delegate and alternate to CECCA, Rev. Dan Donovan and Rev. Todd De Rooy were named as delegate and alternate to CERCU, Mr. Jay De Young (Community URC) was re-appointed to the URCNA Web Oversight Committee and Rev. Matthew Nuiver was appointed as alternate. Mr. Daniel Zylstra (Lynwood URC) and Mrs. Beth De Leeuw (Redeemer URC, Orange City) were appointed as delegate and alternate to the URCNA Songbook Committee, and Rev. Keith Davis was re-appointed to a second term as church visitor for the eastern section of Classis Central.

The consistory of Redeemer URC of Dyer, IN, will convene the next meeting of Classis Central, the Lord willing, at 6:30 p.m. on April 11, 2011.

[Some information for this article was gleaned from a report by Rev. Doug Barnes, Stated Clerk of Classis Central US.]

This article appeared as “URCNA Classis Central US: Exam sustained; Appeal partially so” in the October 13, 2010 issue of Christian Renewal.

© Glenda Mathes, 2010

Athanasius: Against the World

Perhaps you’ve never heard of a conference on Athanasius—perhaps you’ve never even heard of Athanasius!—but a recent conference in Pennsylvania demonstrated the importance of this fourth century theologian for today’s church.

Although Athanasius is popularly known as an “early church father,” it may be more accurate to use different terms since the church existed from creation and Adam could be considered an “early church father.” Athanasius is recognized as a father of Christian teaching, however, because his work greatly influenced the development of Christian thought in the centuries following Christ’s earthly ministry.

Athanasius was a bishop in Alexandria, Egypt, who is revered by Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians as a champion of Trinitarian doctrine against the attacks of Arianism. The Athanasian Creed, which reflects biblical teaching on the Trinity, bears his name because until the seventeenth century he was thought to be the author. Although Athanasius did not write it, he did write Against the Heathen and On the Incarnation. As an observer at the Council of Nicea, he argued against Arius’ doctrine of Christ as distinct from the Father; the Council adopted Athanasius’ position that the Son is co-eternal and co-equal with the Father. Athanasius suffered constantly for his defense of the biblical faith, at one time narrowly escaping capture by 5,000 soldiers and five times being sent into exile.

The importance of Athanasius for today’s church was the main point of the conference, “Against the World: Learning from St. Athanasius,” held on September 11, 2010, at Grace Bible Church in Dunmore, PA.

The conference was sponsored by Life Reformation, “a small group of evangelical Christians committed to advancing the cause of the gospel of Jesus Christ, especially in Northeast Pennsylvania, by providing accessible and practical theological resources that equip God’s people to live for his glory,” according to Rev. Bill Boekestein, pastor of Covenant Reformed Church (URCNA) in Carbondale.

“What that actually means on the street level is that a few close friends and ministerial colleagues and I have been trying to introduce historic reformational Christianity to our predominantly Roman Catholic, mainline evangelical and Arminian fundamentalistic community,” he explains. “We have tried to do this by maintaining a practical theology blog, LifeReformation.org, and organizing conferences and other speaking events. The response has been generally positive although there is a tremendous amount of work to be done yet.”

Rev. Boekestein and fellow organizer Pastor Mike Conroy (Grace Fellowship Church; Tunkhannock, PA) were two of the conference speakers as well as Dr. Carl Trueman and Dr. Tedd Tripp. Dr. Trueman is Professor of Historical Theology and Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and a contributing writer at Reformation21.org, the online magazine of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Dr. Tripp is pastor of Grace Fellowship Church in Hazleton, PA, and author of Shepherding a Child’s Heart and Instructing a Child’s Heart.

Rev. Boekestein relates that when he, Pastor Conroy, and Evan Hughes (Grace Reformed Episcopal Church; Scranton, PA) first began searching for speakers willing to participate in a conference “organized on a shoestring budget by three inexperienced young guys…we decided that we would go with whatever reasonable topic was suggested by the first speaker that accepted our request.”

“In hindsight,” he adds, “we are so glad that speaker was Carl Trueman and the topic he suggested was St. Athanasius. After committing to this topic we decided to focus on his monumental battle against the theological error of his day (Arianism), and his nearly unparalleled contribution to creedal theology.”

The conference was held on a Saturday and consisted of four morning sessions and two afternoon sessions, with an opportunity for questions after the morning lectures and after the afternoon lectures. An extended lunch break allowed participants to visit local restaurants.

The conference began with Rev. Boekestein showing that the Bible emphasizes history and God calls us to be “theological historians” in his lecture, Avoiding Chronological Snobbery: The Bible on History.

In the second session, A Professional Rebel: The Life and Times of Athanasius, Dr. Trueman surveyed the life of danger faced by Athanasius in his struggle to promote biblical teaching on Christ.

In the third session, The Art of Christian Biography: Athanasius and the Story of Anthony, Dr. Trueman examined the strengths and weaknesses of Athanasius’ “Life of Anthony” and demonstrated how it set a standard for future generations of biographers.

In the fourth session, Once and Future Faith: The Importance of the Ancient Creeds Today, Dr. Trueman considered how the ancient creeds are a rich resource for today’s Christians.

Pastor Mike Conroy led the fifth session, Finding Our Lord and Our Language: Athanasius on the Psalms. Utilizing a lengthy letter of Athanasius, he helped listeners understand the glory, majesty, and weight of Jesus’ name and how that should affect prayer and discussion about Christ.

In the final session, A Courageous Ministry: Doing Right in a World Gone Wrong, Dr. Tripp spoke about the dedication and perseverance of Athanasius in spite of dissent, violence, and repeated exile.

“Dr. Tedd Tripp did a great job in closing the conference by providing several ‘take-away points’ from the conference,” says Rev. Boekestein. “He highlighted the importance of church history, the importance of theological disagreement, and the importance of one life well-spent. He reminded us that truth is not defined by majority vote, that truth worth living for is truth worth dying for, that the battle for truth must be fought in each generation and that the Lord is the protector and defender of his church. He closed by reflecting on Athanasius' blend of courage, persistence, passion, insight and clarity. As a shepherd's shepherd, Athanasius had a passion for the entire church of Christ. That's a lot of practical wisdom drawn from a person many of the participants had never heard of prior to this conference.”

About 60 people attended the conference, which was the group’s second annual fall conference. Last year’s conference on John Calvin was held on a Friday night and drew 185 people. According to Rev. Boekestein, at least 15 churches were represented by this year’s attendees with Reformed persons in the minority.

“One of the goals that I believe we met was to make a case to our evangelical community that history matters,” he says. “I think those who did attend were thoroughly edified.”

Full conference audio is available at LifeReformation.org.

The group plans to host a Reformation Day event on Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will and is planning a conference with Dr. Joel Beeke and Rev. Anthony Selvaggio for July 16.

The above article appeared as "Athanasius Comes to Pennsylvania" by Glenda Mathes on pages 6-7 in the October 13, 2010 issue of Christian Renewal.

© Glenda Mathes 2010

Open Your Mouth, Psalm 81

The almighty God who spoke into being the swirling universe is the same God who whispers into our hearts through his vibrant Word.

It's been almost three weeks since I posted reflections on a Psalm, but God's perfect timing brought me to Psalm 81 this morning.

The weather has been beautiful here in the Midwest this fall; weeks of warm sun and cool air have been deepening the gorgeous colors. But much of the time I've been burdened with concerns and unable to appreciate the beauty.

I've been working on recognizing negative thoughts about personal problems and reorienting my thinking to praise and thanks to God. The first verse of Psalm 81 fits right in.

Sing aloud to God our strength;
shout for joy to the God of Jacob!

The next two verses are an apologetic for using instruments in worship:

Raise a song; sound the tambourine,
the sweet lyre with the harp.
Blow the trumpet at the new moon,
at the full moon, on our feast day.

God then recounts what he did for Israel when he delivered his people from Egypt:

I relieved your shoulder of the burden;
your hands were freed from the basket.
In distress you called, and I delivered you;
I answered you in the secret places of thunder;
I tested you at the waters of Meribah (6-7).

Because God's deliverance from Egypt represents the deliverance of each believer from the power of sin, these words apply to Christians today just as much as they applied to the Old Testament nation of Israel. We may drink many bitter waters, but they are part of God's providence in our lives. He is the One who relieved our shoulders from the burden of our sins; he freed our hands from carrying the heavy basket fill with sin; he delivered us when we called on him in our distress; and he answers our prayers in each personal and secret place of thunder.

God calls his people to listen to him and reminds them of his commandments:

There shall be no strange god among you;
you shall not bow down to a foreign god.
I am the LORD you God,
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it (9-10).

While verse nine reiterates the first commandment, while verse ten repeats the prologue to the Ten Commandments. But then God does an amazing thing; he inserts into this commandment repetition powerful and personal imagery that is a promise.

Who can read, "Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it," and not think of a baby bird opening its beak while a parent stuffs it full?

The same image has come to me often in recent weeks while I've been feeding my youngest grandson his "solids" (a euphemistic and slightly inaccurate descriptor). He opens his mouth wide and I quickly shove in a plastic-coated spoon containing a small glob of super pureed baby food.

If he's cooperative and opens his mouth, it can be a quick and neat process. But if he's not all that hungry or doesn't really like the taste or texture of a new food, it can be a lengthy and messy experience. It can make me think, "This is one thing I don't miss about being a parent."

This morning I wonder how often I hold my mouth closed or turn my head, making God's good food smear on my face or get up my nose.

God's promise in Psalm 81:10 is not to give me just a little, but to "fill" my mouth. All I need to do is unlock my jaw and open my mouth, not just a little, but "wide" open.

In verse 11, God bemoans his people's lack of submission:

But my people did not listen to my voice;
Israel would not submit to me.

Whenever I'm unhappy with my lot in life, am I actually not being unhappy with God? Am I not tuning out his voice? Am I not failing to submit to his will for my life?

When Israel hardened its collective heart and failed to submit, God "gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels" (12).

My failure to submit to God's will often results in my stubborn heart following its own counsel.

If God's people would turn their hearts to him, he promises to destroy their enemies and fill their mouths with wonderful food:

Oh, that my people would listen to me,
that Israel would walk in my ways!
I would soon subdue their enemies
and turn my hand against their foes.
Those who hate the LORD would cringe toward him,
and their fate would last forever.
But he would feed you with finest of wheat,
and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you (13-16).

Even though we may not always see our enemies immediately subdued, God promises that those who hate him one day will cringe in fear before him. Their fate is literally sealed forever in hell. But those who listen to God and walk in his ways will be filled to the point of satisfaction with bread made from the purest and best wheat, dripping in honey that God miraculously provides from a rock.

Open your mouth! Open it wide!

On Knowing Nothing: An Interview with Bret Lott

The day that Oprah Winfrey featured Brett Lott's out of print novel, Jewel, on her book club, it went from Amazon.com’s cellar to its number one seller.

Worldly wisdom would say that Bret Lott was “lucky,” but the truth is that Bret Lott has benefited from his perseverance and God’s providence.

Lott chronicles both the perseverance and the providence in his candid Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life. Before We Get Started is, indeed, an intensely practical memoir. It would be difficult to find advice more practical than Lott’s detailed description of his system for tracking submissions and rejections. In fact, he includes an entire chapter on rejection, with which he is well acquainted, having received at that point something like 600 rejections.

But Lott is a genre-spanning author who has received significant acceptances. In addition to Jewel, A Song I Knew by Heart is another best-selling novel. Lott's other novels include: The Man Who Owned Vermont; A Stranger’s House; Reed's Beach, The Hunt Club; and his most recently published Ancient Highway. Lott's short stories have appeared in numerous magazines; collections of his short stories are A Dream of Old Leaves and How to Get Home. Fathers, Sons and Brothers is a collection of memoir-like essays that reflect on relationships among three generations of men in his family.

I had the opportunity to communicate via email with Mr. Lott and ask him some questions about his work and his faith.

GM: In Before We Get Started, you devote an entire chapter to the subject of rejection, which doesn't seem like a common practice in books about writing. Why a whole chapter on rejection?

BL: This grew out of a kind of need I saw in students I was teaching at Vermont College. Some of the graduating students had sent out their novels and stories to only one or two places, and were getting discouraged, and I realized that there really wasn’t much ever being said about not only the whole spirit of submission and rejection, but also the practical elements of it. So I decided to give a lecture on it, and decided as well to make it a PowerPoint presentation — I took a couple dozen rejection slips and letters of rejection that I’d gotten during my life (out of the nearly 600 I had accrued by that time), scanned them into the computer, and then gave a lecture in which the students got up close and personal looks at the sorts of rejections I’d gotten, and then heard from me how I dealt with them all. I followed up that part of the lecture (which was about 90% of the entire thing) with my successes — my first acceptance letter, of course, and a couple others. All this so that they could understand, as fully as I could let them know from my experience, that this whole writing thing is about perseverance, wherewithal, tenacity, and faith, all in the face of the assurance that you will be rejected.

When it came time to put this book together, I really wanted to use those images of the actual rejections themselves, which led the publisher to say No, as the cost for production would go through the roof, and there were permissions and copyright questions and all that hoo-ha. So I was forced, finally, to write the whole thing out, which led to what I think may be the most helpful essay in the whole book, because people see the accomplishments a writer makes — we only see in bookstores and journals the finished, accomplished piece of art — and as a consequence those who are learning to write, because they have seen only the end product, begin to believe that the end product is the ONLY product. Not true. Rejection is the cornerstone of a writing career. That’s why I wanted to make sure that essay appeared in a book on writing.

GM: You write that "scales fell from" your eyes with the realization of how Raymond Carver served as "the conduit" through which his stories passed, while in your earlier stories you served as "a ringmaster calling attention with a megaphone" to your characters. How can a writer decrease from ringmaster to conduit?

BL: Be humble. Realize it’s not about you, even if it is about you. This is where being a Christian is really put to the test in the context of an artistic endeavor: You must realize that, even if the things about which you write are about you, that you—the artist—are not what is at stake. The characters are at stake. This speaks to being a Christian in that we as believers must have compassion on others, and to do so NOT to bring attention to ourselves (hence Christ’s railing away at those pious people who pray on street corners and tithe mint and seek the most prominent place at the table because of their supposed close relationship to the God whom they ostensibly worship). One can decrease and let the characters increase by practicing what it means to let Christ increase while I decrease: remember to be humble. I believe that if one practices the remembrance of humility long enough, there comes a time when that humility will become a part of the fabric of who we are; write long enough with an eye on the characters and not on those perceived glories of Being a Writer, and you will find those characters being alive and working and living; you will find yourself decreasing.

GM: How does your faith intersect with your work?

BL: I believe in the depravity of man — I do not see him as essentially good, and do not see him as able in and of himself to surmount his nature, and see that nature changeable only through a saving knowledge of Christ. This intersects with my work in that my characters are most often (well, basically, always) wrong. They operate within a belief that they are right, and for that reason the story’s conflict emerges: I write about people who are in conflict with the worlds they themselves have created. I do not, however, write about them in a way that would have readers say they are not savable, or to pass judgment on them; I try to write of them with the compassion of Christ, who saw all of us — every one of us — as individuals who were lost. And because I write from a position of hope in Christ — a hopeful stance — my characters seem, by and large, finally to come to reckon themselves to and with their own failures — they are humbled — and find ways, by and large (though not always) to then live. I do not write about religious conversions, do not outright write about Religious Experience. I write about the deeper elements of Hope and Confession and Humility in a world that tells all of us every day You Can Do It Yourself. My characters realize they cannot. But I want to say right here and now that I do not write thinking, What would Calvin think? Or, Am I reflecting Reformed Theology with this next sentence I write? I do not believe theology will save us. I believe Christ saves us.

GM: How would you define a Christian perspective on the arts?

BL: I would hope that Christians would look to the arts a whole lot more than they do. Unfortunately, the arts, as a result of the Enlightenment, were commandeered by those Enlightened, who felt that, as Kant put it (and this is a rough paraphrase) that anyone who relied on the guidance of others or who depended on perceived higher powers was a weakling, resulting in art that celebrated the salvation of the self by the self. And as a result, believers very often eschewed any participation in and patronizing of the arts. But this is wrong. Believers ought to patronize and practice the arts as a means of expressing hope and love and joy at the fact of our creator’s love for us.

GM: What can believers do to promote Christian artists and their creative efforts?

BL: Create and participate in the study and practice of art — creative writing, painting, sculpture, etc. — through courses at their churches, to begin with, and I am not here talking of Creative Memories. I mean true explorations of the talents we have been given to express ourselves as believers in God through art. Next would be not to be afraid of art — to seek it out and appreciate it, and not limit ourselves solely (and soully) to Sandy Patty and Angela Hunt and what’s his name, the Painter of Light. I don’t mean here to be dismissive, but we need to be challenged by art, and not merely comforted by it. We need books that confront ourselves with ourselves, and not more books that allow us to escape ourselves into soft-focused conflicts that happen all for a happy ending.

***
Bret Lott proves that being a Christian and a popular author are not incompatible. He proves that writing quality literary fiction and being a popular author are not incompatible. And he proves that being humble and a popular author are not incompatible. His memoir stresses the need for humility and submission in the creative process.

On the day Brown delivered the smiling Amazon box containing my copy of Before We Get Started, I was contemplating my writing life and confronting the doubt demons that periodically assail me. As my husband drove beside the lake and we neared home that evening, I watched gulls flash white against dark clouds over the gray lake and I thought, “Why do I even try? The more I write, the more difficult is seems to be. I know nothing.”

The next morning I got up at 5:00 as usual and went into my office. I picked up the copy of Before We Get Started. A little over ten pages into the book I read, “…the longer I write—and this is the one sure thing I know about writing—the harder it gets, and the more I hold close the truth that I know nothing.”

I was pierced by providence. I put down that book and picked up The Book. My regular devotional that morning directed me to 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, where Paul writes:

"And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom...."

I was convicted. I do not write with lofty speech or wisdom. I experience much weakness, fear and trembling. My speech and message are not in plausible words of wisdom. Yet, through Lott’s memoir and my scheduled devotional reading, I felt as if God had reached down, put His arms around me and said, "You don't know anything, Glenda, but I do."


The above is a slightly updated version of an interview that appeared in the May 9, 2007, issue of Christian Renewal.

© Glenda Mathes, 2007, 2010

Autumnal Psalm

Praise God

For gleaming star that crowns the gilded dawn
For frost that clings to shingled roof and lawn

For breath that fogs in air that’s crisp and clear
For flashing flags of startled antlered deer

For sunlight’s glint on frost-wrapped blades of grass
And even for the windshield’s frosted glass


Praise God

For warming sun in sky of sapphire blue
that glows through leaves in every varied hue

From flaming maple, russet oak, to gold
of elm’s frail pale and hickory’s brilliant bold

Above the clinging, crimson creeper vine
Beside the scarlet sumac and green pine


Praise God

For dry leaf crunch and dry leaf smell
While walking on the woodland trail


Praise God

For brunette beanfield shaven clean
And blonde corn’s crooked stubble seen

For round bales, wrapped and stacked in rows
Rich fodder safe from winds and snows

For golden mountains of shelled corn
that suddenly in fall are born

And daily augered to new height
in dusty cloud from morn to night


Praise God

For geese in Vs that cleave the dusky sky
While purple clouds upon horizon lie

For rising amber harvest moon
like bulging shimmering balloon


Praise God

Let everything that hath breath
Praise the Lord



© Glenda Mathes

Flame Maple

Bare winter branches float against
a sullen sky in bitter world;
the shadowed, ashen haze recalls
an ancient promise from
a smoldering fire-pot.

The springtime tree is kindled by
a blaze of bursting scarlet buds,
while blood-red petals bless the ground.
It seems a bush ablaze
with unconsuming fire.

Its summer green conceals bright fire
within a pillared cloud of leaves
providing wanderers with peace
and rest that’s only found
in providential shade.

The autumn sun that melts first frost
glows red within translucent leaves,
transformed with heaven’s instant fire,
like blazing answer to
a righteous prophet's prayer.

A fresh, new gale has fully come
fulfilling promises of old,
with rushing of its mighty wind;
it whirls the flaming leaves
like pentecostal tongues.

© Glenda Mathes

Wouldn't you like to be my buddy, too?

Would you like to finally write that novel you've always wanted to write? How about doing it in one month? And let's make it November because working around holiday preparations and family gatherings makes it more interesting.

That, my friends, is NaNoWriMo!

NaNoWriMo is shorthand for National Novel Writing Month, an event of truly global proportions in which would-be novelists from all over the world sign up at the NaNoWriMo website and try to write a novel (from scratch) of at least 50,000 words during the month of November.

Can it be done? Oh, yes! Last year there were over 165,000 participants from hundreds of regions around the world. More than 30,000 of these aspiring novelists typed over 50,000 words to become winners. And I was one of them!

I've been a winner each of the previous four Novembers. One year's result was a novel that grew into my juvenile fiction series about an endearing character named Matthew. Another year I wrote the third novel in that Matthew series. I wrote rough drafts of literary novels the other two years. One was named Sisters duirng NaNoWriMo, but I renamed it This Side of Heaven when it entered the revision stage of a Work In Progress. (Then Karen Kingsbury came out with a novel with that very same name! I will have to think of a new title. I'll probably have to rewrite a crucial and climactic scene near the end. But it has some promise.) My other literary novel began with a scene in my mind. I saw a woman sitting on a beach. She was wearing blue jeans and a pink shirt. She had a blonde pony tail that was blowing in the wind. I spent all of that November figuring out who she was, how she got there, and why she was so sad.

This will be my fifth noveling November. As of yet, I have no idea what I will write about and I have no inspiring scenes in my mind. Am I concerned? Not at all!

Chris Baty is the founder of National Novel Writing Month and energetic Executive Director of its parent organization, the Office of Light and Letters. He is also the author of No Plot, No Problem. Chris excels at writing creatively humorous pep talks that motivate even the most timid novelist to attempt a first try.

He describes NaNoWriMo as a "fun, seat-of-your-pants" approach, writing:

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Chris also writes:

By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

The freedom of writing without an internal editor is my favorite thing about NaNoWriMo, while learning to squelch that pesky persona is my most difficult task. It isn't easy, yet I already anticipate November and NaNoWriMo. My birthday falls in November and I view NaNoWriMo as my birthday present to me.

Strange, you say, why would anyone want to give themselves the gift of unremitting pressure coupled with hopeless goals?

Because, my friends, it is a real gift to allow myself to focus on fiction for one month out of my entire year of constant nonfiction writing deadlines. Oh, I still have regular deadlines during November. And I still have family commitments; in fact, I have more than usual family commitments during November. But I simply schedule in enough blocks of time to write an extra 50,000 words that month. Now doesn't that sound like fun?

Wouldn't you like to join me in my NaNoWriMo madness? My goal is to have at least ten writing buddies this November. NaNoWriMo buddies can see each other's word counts and encourage (read "crack the whip over") each other. I already have three writing buddies. I'm looking for seven more. Head on over to the NaNoWriMo website and sign up. Then add "Grandma Glenda" as your writing buddy.

Who will be first to jump on the careening NaNoWriMo bandwagon?

William Edgar: Theologian and Jazz Musician

Answer quickly: How many seminary professors do you know who are also professional jazz musicians?

Dr. William Edgar is Chairman of the Faculty and Coordinator of the Apologetics Department at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and Professeur Associé at the Faculté Libre de Théologie Réformée, in Aix-en-Provence, France. He serves on several boards, serving as President of the Huguenot Fellowship. He is a regular speaker in the Veritas Forum programs. He is ordained in the PCA, is a frequent conference speaker and the author of several books, including The Face of Truth: Lifting the Veil; Reasons of the Heart: Recovering Christian Persuasion; and Truth in All Its Glory: Commending the Reformed Faith. Dr. Edgar is also a professional jazz musician.

For my 2006 Christian Renewal series on "Christians in the Arts," I read some of his work and interacted with him via email. The result was this interview reflecting his interest in jazz, his view of entertainment, and his perspective on the arts.

GM: You're Professor of Apologetics, Coordinator of the Apologetics Department, and Chairman of the Faculty at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia; you're also a pianist who regularly plays with a professional jazz band. That’s an unusual combination. How does your faith intersect with your interest in jazz?

WE: Martin Luther once remarked that if it couldn’t be sung, it wasn’t good theology! Jazz is a kind of music that not only has Christian roots, but carries a Christian worldview. It articulates the sense of deep misery, but also the inextinguishable joy of the Christian life. It is sad that the churches, both Black and White, have kept themselves aloof from this marvelous music, because they fear secularization. It is true that jazz is not always performed in the most holy places. But the music itself rises above the circumstances.

GM: Does the same thing apply to the blues?

WE: The blues is stark and realistic, and it would be easy to conclude that this type of music is without hope or redemption. The realism of the blues does not stand opposed to hopefulness, but to sentimentality. The blues tells us how to live on earth in order to prepare for heaven.

The Bible never pretends that evil and suffering are easy. But it gives them meaning. God’s revelation never underestimates the power and the cruelty of the trials wrought by a fallen world. But it tells us that He is in control.

Truth is the highest virtue in the blues. The foremost blues singer of the Old Testament is surely Job. While his suffering appeared to him to have no purpose, he was vindicated in the end by a God who owed no accounts to him, but who nevertheless is incapable of injustice.

GM: What do you say to people who worry about improvisation?

WE: Jazz is improvised. This does not mean playing what you feel like. It means weaving a narrative over the constraints of the tune. In Black American experience such improvisation was the constant skill required to approach the obstacles of oppression and the opportunities for freedom. Is this not similar to God’s dealings with His people? The sinful world which God, by His love, desires to redeem, would appear to throw up an impasse. How can God remain just and yet the justifier of the ungodly? The answer is the greatest improvisation of all time: the cross of His son, Jesus Christ. Could it be that God himself is the first and greatest jazz musician?

GM: Would you mind telling the readers of Christian Renewal about your jazz group?

WE: Our jazz group is called Renewal. We’ve been playing together for about 10 years. When we play as a trio, we feature a lead vocalist, the piano and a bass. Our regular singer is the renowned Ruth Naomi Floyd, one of the great gospel-jazz voices of Philadelphia, who is a composer and widely featured in concerts and radio around the world. Check out her work at http://www.contourrecords.com/. Our bass player is C. J. Vonderahe. I’m the pianist and speaker. To the trio we like to add Michael Kelly on percussion, and the amazing Kathleen Kilpatrick on reeds and tap shoes. The full band has five players: vocals, saxophone, piano, bass and drums.

Our philosophy is that jazz ought to entertain, but that its background is in the spiritual experience of African-American people, reared in slavery and nurtured on the Gospel. It carries the twin themes of suffering and hope, so characteristic of Black culture. We hope our audiences will sense the realism, the passion and the joy as we perform.

Specifically, we take the audience through some of the history of African-American music, both sacred and secular, mixing narrative with music. We outline the challenge of finding spiritual roots in the music, and then go on to explore specific genres.

Again, our theme in our presentations is that the theological background for jazz, and for much great music in any genre, is deep misery with inextinguishable joy.

GM: How would you respond to Christians who regard entertainment as of little value?

WE: The problem is not entertainment. It is the secularization of entertainment. And that, ironically, is the fruit of the secularization of work. At the Reformation in the 16th century, work was understood to be noble, a calling for everyone, yet flawed, never a panacea. Work is a divine calling, going back to Genesis 1:28.

These days work is either looked at as pure duty, or, the opposite, a messianic hope. Our modern culture has often turned work into drudgery, a necessary evil. An equal but opposite error is to exaggerate the value of work. And so, we try to find relief from this drudgery, in the form of a hedonistic entertainment industry. Entertainment for its own sake is a plain distraction (Proverbs 20:1; 21:25).

There is a better way. It is to recover true entertainment. And that is done, first, by recovering the lost notion of work as noble-yet-flawed. The fourth commandment gets the balance right. God wants us to work. But He gives us a day in which we remember Him in a special way. The Sabbath is a sign, placed right into the structure of our weekly schedule, a forecast of heaven. To enter into final rest is to be fully with our savior God (Hebrews 4:1). Work cannot save; only God can. But authentic rest is not pure leisure; it is a moment of grace!

“Entertain” is quite an interesting word. It is from the French, entretenir, which means to maintain, or to converse. To be entertained is to maintain a conversation. Negatively, it is mere babble, or chatter. But in the biblical sense, it is a conversation—with eternity. Amazingly, while you are a sojourner here on earth, you may still keep a conversation going with heaven.

Real entertainment, then, is a profound reflection of the presence of God, which we now have (already recognized), and will have in full measure (not yet fully appropriated).

GM: What, then, are some of the legitimate forms of entertainment for the serious, hard-working believer of today?

WE: Well, to begin with, God has “richly furnished us with everything to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17), but still we must choose. Though there are many others, four forms stand out for me.

The first is laughter. Of course, laughter can be cruel, or cynical, and certainly perverted. But it doesn’t have to be. Large parts of creation are just funny, or, better, delightful. We get a sense of this from Psalm 104. Birds sing. Wine and oil lift our spirits. Leviathan frolics. All in God’s wisdom. Of course, part of what makes us laugh in delight is the element of surprise. Sadly, we Christians are sometimes dreadfully predictable. What if we learned to laugh a lot at laughable things? It might make us more believable.

The second example is sports. Considering the abuses in our culture, why not avoid athletics altogether? Because, for one thing, we would be disregarding a wise saying in the New Testament. Paul notes to Timothy that physical exercise is of some value (1 Timothy 4:8). He often used the analogy of the athlete for the Christian life. Like laughter, sports and other games remind us that there is more to life than horizontal, functional purpose.

A third type of legitimate entertainment is the meal. I have spent half my life in France. The French really understand the value of a great meal. It’s not just the food, although that is certainly a gift (God could have given us pills!). But it is the fellowship, the conversation, the simple enjoyment of a moment away from the stresses of work.

Fourthly, the arts are wonderful entertainment. Much art today is problematic. But that should not blind us to the marvelous exceptions. Many Christians would limit the use of the arts to ones that have an evangelistic function.

There is nothing wrong with the right kind of message-driven art. But there is far more to the purpose of art than mere message. I have invested a good deal of my life in the art of music. I find there is nothing quite like the succession of sounds, “well-ordered to the glory of God,” as Bach used to say, for entertainment.

If we want a life in imitation of the divine pattern, we will choose to follow Christ, “for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from His” (Hebrews 4:10). As we do, we converse with eternity, as we wait to enter fully into His joy.

GM: How would you define a Reformed perspective on the arts?

WE: One move the reformers made was to simplify the use of the arts within worship, while at the same time stressing their importance for everyday life. They criticized the sacred-secular dichotomy of the Middle Ages. Thus, you did not need a “sacred” subject, like the cross or a miracle, to be Christian in your painting. Rembrandt, for example, steeped in Reformed Holland, could paint a side of beef in a way that clearly glorifies the Creator.

C. S. Lewis, who was basically Reformed in his theology, once said that the Christian writer must have blood in his veins, not ink. So many Christians will write “with a message,” rather than simply enjoying words. The difference is critical.

As Lewis argues in several places, especially An Experiment in Criticism, when there is too strong a message, a work of fiction thins out and becomes propaganda rather than narrative. Good art, be it in the form of paintings, music, or novels, must be persuasive of truth, without preaching.

Our culture needs books, music and art that will encourage us to greater imagination, to greater art. Those are not things that will in themselves effect transformation. But they surely will help to persuade. Not moralism, nor propaganda, but good, well-crafted artistic persuasion.

Today, we see things upside down. Good art can help us see things right side up. According to the Book of Revelation, heaven is coming down to earth, and will soon replace the old heaven and the old earth (21:10).

May we be urged to work quietly with our hands and hearts, crafting true stories, appealing to the imagination, for the sake of the truth. May we see small but real changes, which one day may add up to significant cultural transformation.

* * *
Essential Books on Christianity and the Arts, recommended by Dr. William Edgar

Jeremy Begbie, editor: Beholding the Glory, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000

Jeremy S. Begbie: Voicing Creation's Praise: Towards a Theology of the Arts, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991

Hillary Brand & Adrienne Chaplin: Art & Soul:Signposts for Christians in the Arts, Carlisle: Piquant/Inter-Varsity, 2001

Madeleine l'Engle: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, Wheaton: Harold Shaw, 1980

Flannery O'Connor: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1962

H. R. Rookmaaker: The Complete Works, Piquant

H. R. Rookmaaker: Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1970

Calvin Seerveld: Rainbows for the Fallen World, Toronto: I.R.S.S., 1980

Calvin Seerveld: Bearing Fresh Olive Leaves: Alternative Steps in Understanding Art, Piquant/Tuppence, 2000

Gene Edward Veith: State of the Arts: From Bezalel to Mapplethorpe, Wheaton: Crossway, 1991

Gregory Wolfe, editor: The New Religious Humanists: A Reader, New York: The Free Press, 1997

Albert M. Wolters: Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985

The above is a slightly updated version of an article that appeared in the September 27, 2006 issue of Christian Renewal.

© Glenda Mathes 2006, 2010

Writer Larry Woiwode: Realistic and Reformed

Rather than author, Larry Woiwode prefers the identification of writer. That appellation is certainly accurate. Descriptive detail and believable characters enliven his realistic work, while his portrayals of sin and redemption reflect his Reformed worldview. His prose soars with the lyrical quality of his poetry. His wide-ranging work demonstrates exceptional literary excellence.

And Woiwode has written in many genres. His most recently published work is a second memoir, A Step from Death. The title of his first memoir, What I Think I Did: A Season of Survival in Two Acts, plays on the title of his successful first novel, What I’m Going to Do, I Think. His other novels are Beyond the Bedroom Wall, Poppa John, Born Brothers, and Indian Affairs. Two collections of short stories, many of which appeared in The New Yorker, are Neumiller Stories and Silent Passengers. Even Tide is a collection of exquisite poems. Acts contains essays on the biblical book, and The Aristocrat of the West: The Story of Harold Schafer is a biography.

In addition to The New Yorker, Woiwode’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, Esquire, Harper’s and The Paris Review. He has been honored as a Guggenheim Fellow and a Lannan Literary Fellow, receiving the Lannan Foundation Studio Award. He has received the John Dos Passos Prize, the William Faulkner Foundation Award, the Aga Khan Award, the Theodore Roosevelt Roughrider Award, and the Medal of Merit from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He has also been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award.

Having lived as a full-time writer in New York City early in his career, Woiwode chose to return in 1978 to his home state of North Dakota, where he has served as the state’s Poet Laureate since 1995. He has taught writing at Wheaton College, the State University of New York, Binghamton, Jamestown College, in North Dakota, and in a variety of other American and international settings. On his farm, he raises horses and bales hay and continues to write. He’s also a Reformed Christian.

For Christian Renewal, I interviewed him via email in 2006 about his work and his views on literature and a Reformed perspective.

GM: You write in your memoir, What I Think I Did, of the mentoring assistance of William Maxwell, fiction editor at The New Yorker, when you first came to New York. How important is it for a new writer to have that type of mentoring, and how might a writer find a mentor in today's publishing climate?

LW: In What I Think I Did I indeed acknowledge the careful interest of William Maxwell, and the way he served as encourager and editor when my stories started appearing in The New Yorker. I don’t know if I mention that when he read the metafiction I was writing at first, led on by Beckett and Bill Gass and some rather theoretical writing workshops I took at the University of Illinois, he would merely nod and smile or say, as in one instance, “This sentence could be a novel.”

As I came onto my material, centered in the Dakota culture of my birth, he sat me down at the table where he worked with writers and showed me some editing he had done on a piece, along with suggestions about where he felt the story had gaps.
I’m a little uncomfortable with “mentoring,” that noun made verb, and see my experience with Maxwell rather as the life-altering experience of working with a real writer. Workshopers and theorists and mentors aren’t helpful if they aren’t writing and publishing themselves. Beginning writers might be on the lookout for published writers willing to read their work. More important than that, however, is to keep busy writing and sending work off--where it can be published, I mean. Too many young writers feel they need a publishing contact or a mentor. No. They need finished pages. No writer can work with blank pages and you can’t make a purse, as they say, out of a sow’s ear. Well, maybe a roughhewn hairy one that doesn’t hold much. Steady production is the key.

The sentence Maxwell pointed out, by the way, became Beyond the Bedroom Wall. His sterling insight was a writerly one.

GM: There seems to be a lack of literary quality in many popular novels as well as novels for the CBA market. How would you define literary excellence, and how can it be cultivated in readers and writers?

LW: It seems to me that literary excellence went out when accountants and marketers took over publishing. This began in the seventies, with the introduction of the idea that a book should be “targeted” to a specific audience. This was merely a marketing ploy meant to sell more books. As soon as a writer assumes he or she is writing for a specific audience, whatever the genre or category or age level, condescension enters. The best writers attempt to do the best they can with each book, without compromise or condescension, addressing their writing to the single person the book is meant for. This is usually the person named in the dedication.

Readers must become more discerning, and the only way to achieve that is to read the great books of the past. The verbal TV and confections of contemporary fiction do not engage the reader in the effort it takes to cultivate taste. The boundless, borderless confections of fantasy don't help here. There seems a mistaken conception that the primary genre of Christian fiction is fantasy. No, the tradition has been almost wholly realistic, from Chaucer to Dostoyevsky to Flannery O'Connor, serving as application of the gospel. Fantasy began late last century with the great fabulist, Tolkien. He was not so much an aberration as an original. To imagine his is the only mode or you should try to match his footsteps is aberrant.

GM: How would you articulate a Reformed perspective on the arts?

LW: I once thought I had a fairly well-developed Reformed perspective on the arts. I read not only Merton and C.S. Lewis and Dorothy Sayers, but also Rookmaaker and Seerveld and Calvin and other Reformed writers. But as my books appeared they encountered resistance not only in the broader evangelical world but the Reformed community as well. I’ve been told by members of that community they were offended by a word or two a character of mine used, or a descent into sin.

A truly Reformed perspective, I thought, would contain sin, considering the concept of total depravity, if the reader is to get a glimpse of redemption, as we see it in the Bible. There I encounter idolatry and deception and lying and incest and murder, not to mention a warrior telling Israelites they’ll be drinking and eating you know what. I don’t ascribe those sins or the modes of language to the authors and certainly not to God, viewing Him as the inspiration behind it all. Yet the sins and some of the language of the characters in my books are ascribed to me by some in the believing community. Oddly, they aren’t bothered by murder, the necessary engine of most Christian (and other) detective mysteries, but throw a book aside at the “S” word. That seems to me similar to the conundrum of those who want to save the whales but promote human abortion. I don’t have the Heidelberg in front of me but I know the Westminster says some sins are more heinous than others. These mysteries are, of course, another form of fantasy, as most "Romance" novels are. You won't sharpen your literary taste on them.

GM: What can Christians and churches do to support and promote the creative expressions of artists who have a biblical worldview?

LW: The answer to that’s simple. Buy their work. Encourage others in the Church and the larger community to buy their work. When a plumber does work, you expect a bill. Writers for some reason are supposed to do almost everything for free. The only aspect of the material world that is absolutely free, however, is the invitation to enter the supernatural world of God through Jesus in the Gospel.


The above is an updated version of an interview that appeared in the August 16, 2006 issue of Christian Renewal.

© Glenda Mathes 2006, 2010

Makoto Fujimura: Refracting Light and Reflecting Grace

“…the arts are a glorious gift from God; and in the process of creation lies the joy of God's creative heartbeat.” -Makoto Fujimura

One of the most high profile Reformed Christians in the arts today is Makoto Fujimura, a New York City artist who utilizes ancient Japanese techniques in modern abstract artwork.

“I see abstraction as a potential language to speak to today’s world about the hope of things to come,” he says.

Born in Boston, Fujimura received his bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University and his M.F.A. from Toykyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. He spent several years in Japan studying the traditional Medieval technique of Nihonga. Using that ancient technique and materials imported from Japan, Fujimura creates widely-acclaimed contemporary images; images whose crushed mineral pigments refract light and whose content reflects the artist’s Christian worldview and the concept of grace.

Fujimura begins by stretching thin, hand-made paper over canvases or large panels. For pigments, he crushes minerals—actually semi-precious stones—such as azurite, malachite, and cinnabar. Finely ground mineral pigments become a lighter shade of color, while more coarsely ground pigments remain dark and intense.

“Minerals I use are like prisms, and they refract, more than just reflect,” he says. “I use them not just because they are beautiful, which they are, but because they have this wonderful lineage. They symbolize God’s spiritual gifts to people…in the Bible. In Solomon’s temple these precious stones were embedded in the walls as well as in the garments of the high priest.” He uses gold as a symbol of divinity because it does not change, while silver—which oxidizes and changes—is a symbol of “death within.”

The minerals are heated dry and darkened, then mixed with animal hide glue and applied to the thin paper in what Fujimura describes as “a semi-transparent layering effect” that “traps light in the space created between the pigments and between layers of gold or silver foil.” He calls this trapped light a “grace arena” that creates “the effect of space rising and falling through these veils of pigment.”

“These materials and the technique itself capture the essence of an aesthetic-world view developed over centuries of Japanese art,” he says. “At the same time, I believe the range of expression and surface-presence of these materials makes them appropriate contemporary medium; a visual diction that bridges the past and the present.”

The materials are expensive and Fujimura admits there have been times when he had to balance what materials he would order against what his family would eat that week. But he compares these exquisite materials to the fragrant oil poured over the feet of Jesus by Mary (whom he refers to as “the quintessential artist”).

“The arts parallel this act of pouring the expensive perfume,” he says. “Is the expense justified in art? In order to answer this question, we must answer not with 'why,' but 'to whom.' We are either glorifying ourselves or God. And the extravagance can only be justified if the worth of the object of adoration is greater than the cost of extravagance.”

“The extravagance of the materials used only contrasts the poverty of my heart,” he says. He explains that his art must testify to how his life has been touched by grace, and refers to his artwork as “God’s Images of Grace.”

Fujimura’s work has been influenced by artists of eastern and western traditions as well as recent historical events. As a resident of New York, the tragedy of 9/11 profoundly impacted him and generated his “Water Flames” series. This series is also based on the imagery found in T.S. Eliot’s poetry, notably the “Four Quartets,” a work inspired in turn by Dante’s Divine Comedy. A section of Eliot’s vivid imagery concludes: “tongues of flame…in-folded/Into the crowned knot of fire/And the fire and the rose are one.”

Quoting Dorothy Sayers’ phrase in the introduction to her translation of Dante’s “Inferno,” Fujimura writes, “I am aiming for this integration of elements, spiritual and physical, in these works that somehow capture the ‘imagination of ecstasy.’” He also writes of “the need for ‘visionary fire’ to sear us through.”

“We know that in order to create, we must destroy something,” he says. “In order for the minerals to refract beautifully, they must be pulverized. So Dante’s dream of purgatory seems apt in light of the process of creativity. It is a journey of beauty that the Japanese of old understood: ultimate beauty is necessarily tied with death, and sacrifice.”

“Art cannot be divorced from faith,” he says, “for to do so is to literally close our eyes to that beauty of the dying sun setting all around us. Death spreads all over our lives and therefore faith must be given to see through the darkness, to see…the beauty of ‘the valley of the shadow of death.’”

Fujimura describes a biblical perspective of the arts as flowing from Genesis 2: “art and culture that is generative (flows out of Eden into the City of God), rather than reparative (merely an effort to get back to the Garden).”

“Art reaches to both heaven and earth, fusing them together,” he says. “If we attempt to do this in our wisdom, the result will be a greater schism between heaven and earth. Christ is the ultimate example of this fusing: the incarnation of Christ, the divine becoming a man…is the greatest example in which all artists can find inspiration. Christ's unique significance for the artist goes even deeper than mere inspiration. Christ's incarnation resolves the most difficult dichotomy that exists for an artist; that is the dichotomy of form and content.”

Fujimura believes that “exclusive commitment to God” entails "practicing the presence of God" in studios and businesses. It means asking the Lord what He sees in art.

“His exclusivity and absolute sovereignty allow us the privilege of asking such a question in museums, galleries and as we work,” he says. “He is already there, pointing the way; in fact, he owns all things.”

“We are created to be creative,” he adds, “and we have stewardship responsibilities that come with that gift. The more we find fittingness in the God given responsibility, the more freedom we will find in our expression.”

Fujimura is an encourager. He encourages fellow artists in their work, and he encourages fellow believers to support the arts, first, by becoming more informed: “The community of believers needs to be more intentional in educating each other in art. The gap that exists between the arts community and the church must be bridged by God's community being more aware of the language of art, and being part of the solution rather than being part of the problem.”

“Churches need to be engaged in culture at large, but also to support tangible production of art that may or may not have any explicit connection with Christ or the Church,” he says. “In other words, Christians need to be the most important patrons for the artists (believers and non-believers) if we want to change the world.”

Fujimura believes that in order to lead and “teach our chlidren to lead” with creativity in this century, it is necessary to convince the culture “to value art” and “steward” it “with proper boundaries” and “a sense of responsibility.”

“What we create matters,” he says, “all art products cast their vision of what the artists consciously or unconsciously desire for the world to become. [I]f we do not understand both the power and the danger of our imaginative powers, we will not begin to birth meaningful, and hopeful works of inspiration.”

“Art needs to be an expression of how God defines us rather than an expression through which we define God. We must seek and express our identity in Christ, rather than expressing our identity in ourselves,” he says. “Accountability with our brothers and sisters through the local church is vital in understanding what our identity and calling is. Ultimately, our gifts belong to God and Him alone.”

Fujimura's work has been exhibited in many national and international venues. His artwork is featured in the Four Holy Gospels Project, scheduled to release an illustrated leather-bound Bible in January of 2011 in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible.

Fujimura is a sabbatical elder in the Village Church (PCA) in Manhattan. He describes his 1987 conversion as transferring his allegiance from “Art to Christ,” causing his “Art to be art” and creating a shift in his vision.

”Whereas before, I had an intellectual doubt of seeing reality as is, let alone depicting it,” he says, “...my newfound faith gave me the foundation to see reality and trust it…now I have a new conviction, to know for certain that certainty existed, that the ‘substance of things hoped for’ is not a shadow of existence, but THE greater reality, more real and weighty than our own.”

“…I want my works to be an alternative to museums and galleries offering…their Altar of Art,” he says. “…I want them to create a worship space inviting the viewers to God’s throne, where an encounter with the living, but invisible, God is made accessible.”

“I pray that God will use my works to prepare the way for many to hear the gospel,” says Fujimura. “The fruit of souls regenerated will remain forever; my works, certainly, will not.”

Quotations in this article are from an email interview with Mr. Fujimura as well as from essays on his website and blog.


The above is a slightly edited version of an article that appeared in the July 12, 2006 issue of Christian Renewal.

© Glenda Mathes, 2006 & 2010