Where do we make art in the midst of the domestic church? Very few of us have the luxury of carving out hours at a time to hone our crafts, to craft our works. Some years ago, I used to have a long bus ride to work and would pull out my laptop and bounce along with it on my lap, carving out a manuscript, my first of a novel that has since been set aside. They were incredibly fruitful journeys. Those bumpy commutes, and much was done, and a great habit was formed. But alas, those days have passed, and I no longer have the luxury of that much time alone en route in order to put form to thought and intention.
Thus, I am a man and a writer of notes, of scraps, of traces that are pulled together. These disparate threads. A little here, a little there, in order to bring these words to the page. As husbands, as wives, as mothers and fathers, time may feel scarce, pressed. But it cannot be an excuse. This cannot hold one back. If God calls you to a creative endeavour, to a creative vocation, if you feel that His will presses you to give light to your works, or to the talents He has granted you, then you must find the tender moment. You must listen for that gentle whisper. You must, in all honesty, set aside much of the distraction and the disarray of the modern world.
The cult of dissipation must be abandoned, forsaken. The dissipation of time and form, of discipline, of art and culture. This is our enemy. This is yours. You must recollect yourself, gather your energies, your faculties, and bring them to the service of your art, your craft, of your discipline, your vocation, your prayer. It’s not as if these are separate endeavours.
The same recollection required for art is the same required for prayer. A prayer is an act of supplication, an act of adoration, giving back to God our attention, our intellect, our time, our love. It should be the very same as our art: to return our talents a hundredfold, God willing, to serve the world in the preservation of culture, in the creation of something beautiful and new, formed and fed by the old.
The separation of faith and art is a falsity. It is an illusion. Not that one’s works need be explicitly Christian per se, but fundamentally Christological. Often, the art that seeks to be explicitly Christian can become tragically trite and banal. It’s often hard to truly understand and articulate why that might be.
I think there is a disorder of intention and artistry. I think there is a misunderstanding of how explicit one must be to promote virtue, or sanctity, or faith. I think that we can, and we must, give credence to the Gospels. Give credence to the Beatitudes. Give credence to the teachings of the Church in subtle, delicate ways.
Christ’s truth must be self-evident. We think of grace shining forth from the very bodies of the saints. It’s not as though they would have espoused and preached every minute of the day by word, but more by deed, more by the manner of their bearing. Should Christ be your guide and your light, then your very works will speak of His presence and His truth. Your very manner of being should speak of His divinity.
Thus, your scraps, your fragments, my scraps and my fragments, cast here and there and brought together, bound by a common philosophy of creative endeavour in the heart of the domestic church, may bear fruit, may find some purchase in the heart or the mind of someone, somewhere, trying to piece together something worth saving, something worth showing, something worth writing, a sound and a melody, a chord of a different sort of beauty, some discordant wonder. Some surprising work: a means by which their voice will take shape and bring solace, surprise, or wonder, or awe to someone. All the truth and beauty is His, dear reader.
All we can do is share that truth, that light, and that beauty in every movement, in every work, in every way of being, within family life, within community, and within the creative endeavour, ever and always, God willing. Consider the Christ, the craftsman, and the contemplative living together in a holy union, in the ultimate concord, in that beautiful, tender, holy home.
May ours not be a shadow of that very home in Nazareth, but an echo, a discipleship, a descendant, a beautiful melodic line of the House of David, rendered anew.
So trace your fragments, your notes, your scraps, and your sketchings, in the tender, delicate moment that you were given, whether it be 30 seconds or 30 minutes. Give light and life to something for His sake and for the world’s. His creation could not be the same without you.