Today was the final day of our Church artist group’s month long art show at The Gardner Public Library. I think we averaged about a tour a week and we had lots of people sign our guest book. So I would call the show a critical success.
We approached this show very differently from the way we have approached other shows. I have been telling the other artists in Ccada that our art should create conversations. It should raise questions. It should help us start relationships with people in order to show the love of Jesus.
So with this show we decided to gather groups of people together and view the art while telling the stories the different pieces held within them. Sometimes the story was as simple as an interesting technique the artist used to create the piece. The piece above for instance required a styrofoam cup, some green paint, some black paint and a fine toothed comb,
Believe it or not this is actually an enhanced photograph. Would you want to live there?
We live in a world that has forgotten the art of story telling and the gift of story listening. We like our graphs and pie charts. We love the headline and the sound byte. We will read anything as long as it is 300 words or less and we listen to any report that doesn’t take more than 7 minutes of our time.
But just because the art of story is forgotten doesn’t mean it’s lots its power.
As a race humans are hard wired for story in a way that even our hurried culture cannot undo. We have questions and we are prone even in the midst of our busy lives to stop and discover the answers.
So with this art show I told the stories behind the works. I asked the questions that made the pieces come alive. For instance…What time of day is it in the painting above?
As humans we don’t live in sound bytes. We don’t live in mathematical equations. We live in stories. We seek out themes and ideas that give our personal stories meaning.
Tonight my sister is at a church in Southington telling the story of Cory TenBoom yet again.
Her story resonates with so many people because it shows in real time how any story that intersects with God’s story can become filled with power, adventure, hope and above all love.
At the Vicarage we are becoming more dedicated everyday to telling the story of how Jesus’ love has intersected each of our stories in a radical way. We don’t know where the telling will lead us exactly. Oh we know the end of the story pretty well (we skipped ahead and read the last page). It’s all the steps in the middle that are a little fuzzy. That said, maybe it’s not all about the temporary outcomes. Maybe it is about just being faithful to live out and to tell the story.
What’s your story?
Notes From the Vicarage 