The Artist's Long Obedience

Note: the following address was given at a retreat for artists and songwriters in Knoxville, TN, in December 2021

In my life as a pastor, I have been saved by the wisdom of my elders. Not saved in the sense of my soul’s reconciliation with God, but saved from predictable foolishness and heartache had I been left to my own lack of wisdom.

About 17 years ago, I was a pastor in my mid-20s and I began receiving spiritual direction. My spiritual director impressed upon me a quality of the pastoral life made known by Eugene Peterson: a long obedience in the same direction.

This, to me, is the heart of commitment: a long obedience in the same direction. I have been meditating and pursuing the long obedience life as a pastor, a preacher, and a writer for 17 years. The idea of faithful obedience in one commitment sounds desirable and holy, and it is. What I didn’t know 17 years ago is that a long obedience in the same direction is costly.

I did not know then how truly restless I was within. Not a holy restlessness, but a restlessness that had not acquired patient endurance or stability. I do not believe I’ve acquired them now either. But the difference is, I trust these virtues to do good work in me, and I’ve come to trust these virtues in my life as a writer and preacher.

Patient Endurance

In my life as a preacher and writer, I’ve embraced a seemingly unproductive activity in the writing process: staring out the window. I used to feel guilty about this, but then I realized that this is one way in which the artist shares what Dorothy Sayers called ‘the mind of the Maker.’ God, too, looked into an abyss before the work of creation began. God created the world out of nothing—creatio ex nihilo— as the theologians say. Human beings create, not from absolute nothing, but from the things which God has made, whether that be real materials, ideas, or desires.

Back to my window. Staring out my window trains me in a way of patience that I need. The artist begins well by facing nothingness, open space, blankness; for that is a posture of trust, an active waiting on the Holy Spirit. Confronting one’s helplessness places the artist on the path of holiness and humility. Staring out of the window (or staring at a blinking cursor that seems to taunt me), the artist encounters his inability to create anything of meaning or goodness through giftedness alone.

Patience requires enduring the discomfort that creative work rarely comes easily. If you try to bypass this discomfort; if you grow impatient and refuse to wait on the Holy Spirit because you are restless to get something done, your work will be forced. Work that is forced may have an outer form of godliness, but it lacks the power thereof. I have written sermons in this way and I do not recommend it.

Patience, staring out the window, is an apprenticeship in humility and calling. The Lord humbles those he calls. Jacob walks with a limp after wrestling with God in his youth. Then he becomes the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. “It is good that a man bear the yoke in his youth.”

Any activity that trains my patience also trains me in humility and endurance. When Ernest Hemingway experienced writer’s block he said to himself, “I have written well before and I will write well again. All I need to do is write one good sentence.” The Christian adaptation of that sentiment is “all I need is one moment when I sense the movement of the Holy Spirit.” Then, the work of staring into the abyss has done its work. It’s time to get to work and create something from nothing.

Patient endurance is a chief virtue in the New Testament. Our Lord Jesus said, “through endurance you will gain your life.” Well, endurance and patience do not come without resistance, without times of testing and trial.

I suspect some of your best work as artists has been forged from testing and trial. The reward of those trials is not that you have composed a new song. Your reward is gaining Kingdom endurance, Christlikeness, and sharing intimacy with Jesus in trials. Remember what Jesus said to his disciples after they cast out demons in his Name. “Rejoice not in these things, but rejoice that your names are written in the Book of Life.”

Stability: The Holy and the Mundane

Patient endurance, testing, and trials lead us to another quality of commitment: stability. I’m not speaking exclusively of emotional stability, though that’s important. I mean stability in your habits.

One of the best treasures in Christian tradition and, in fact, Western civilization, is the Rule of St Benedict. In his rule of life for monastic communities, St Benedict required aspiring monks to make a vow of stability. Stability is the antidote to the unholy restlessness I mentioned earlier.

To be committed to one place, one community over many years will provide you ample opportunity for sanctification. Flaws, hang-ups, and peccadillos may be well-hidden for a few years, but in time your fallenness will be revealed. The alternative to stability is simply leaving when you are confronted with your sin; leaving when things get hard or when you have been hurt; leaving when you no longer feel passion or inspiration.

When my wife and I were being prepared for marriage, our pastor taught us to lean into the hard places and the difficult moments of our relationship. That is the call of stability. It’s putting down roots in the places where your sin might be exposed; where you don’t feel adequate; where you don’t know what to say or do when the stakes are high. Stability is choosing to throw myself in total reliance on God the Holy Spirit to speak and lead.

I recently realized my inner instability in my reading life. I looked at the number of books I’ve begun and haven’t finished; good books, I’m sure, that I abandoned before 50 pages, simply because my restlessness and curiosity got the best of me. The church fathers believed that curiosity was a sin when it served self-interest and personal ambition.

The trade-off, in the long run, for our restlessness is missing the goodness that follows by remaining. There is a harvest to reap when patience has been sown into your habits. I have returned and finished some books I previously abandoned and they made a tremendous impact on my life and thinking. Similarly, stability leads me to a richness in community life or creative life that I cannot acquire in the short-term.

I have been a pastor at Apostles for 15 years now. I tell my friends in ministry that life in a local church gets really good around year 10 or so. Which is not to say that there is not goodness in the first ten years, because there certainly is.

But after you have a decade together, you have shared joys and sorrows in one place. You have reconciled arguments and misunderstandings. In so doing, you acquire history in relationships where people become a part of your story and you in theirs. Suffering and hope is shared together in holy ways.

Stability in the Mundane

Stability also means that you have embraced the mundane parts of life. It has been said of the Rule of St Benedict that it kept the treasures of learning and Western culture in tact when the Roman Empire was collapsing. I believe that’s true. It’s also interesting to say that about a document—a very brief document, in fact—that addresses simple things utensils, sweeping the kitchen, and washing dish towels. Where is greatness in that?

St Benedict trained his monks in stability by teaching them reverence for daily, ordinary tasks. Commitment is not some grandiose enterprise; it comes down to ordinary, daily faithfulness. Benedict gave a practical method for our Lord Jesus’ teaching: be faithful in small things so you can be trusted with great things.

These daily tasks can be infused with holiness, even when the work is mundane and boring. Arduous activities can become the means of honoring the Lord, even encountering the Lord.

I’ve often thought that there’s a humble and lovely holiness for musicians who do the simple exercises necessary for their art. Playing scales, vocal warmups, writing exercises, rehearsing tricky sequences until you can play and lead with confidence–these are mundane tasks. Yet they are holy, too.

I know the corollary for writers. It’s working with words: thinking carefully and artfully about nouns and verbs, active versus passive voice, what makes a good sentence. These disciplines are essential, mundane though they be. They are not only the means by which you improve your craft; they are tools for something greater than yourself. They become the means by which you make a sacrifice of praise on Sunday morning.

“As Thy Days, So Shall Thy Strength Be”

There is a cross-stitched frame that I saw for years in my grandparents’ home, a portion of a verse from Genesis, a brief word of blessing that Jacob spoke over Asher: “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.”

Their home was one of the most peaceful and loving places I’ve ever known. They were married for 69 years. There was a holy rhythm to their home that sustained their strength. They were some of the most stable, dependable, and faithful people I ever knew. I never doubted that they arose before 5am each day to pray and read Scripture, to pray for their grandchildren.

That frame now hangs in my home; to shape my own home and family, and my personal habits, especially on mundane days.

Being Misunderstood

Another sacrifice in one’s long obedience is being misunderstood. This is the plight of the poet. It is also the prophet’s lot. The Jewish theologian said of the Hebrew prophets

While others are intoxicated with the here and now, the prophet has a vision of an end… The prophet is human, yet he employs notes one octave too high for our ears.¹

Such it will be at times for you, too, for the prophet and the poet often share the same space.

I always remember reading the following lines from WB Yeats and finding consolation that I was not alone as a writer, agonizing in the writing process. For writing is agonizing most days. Yeats writes these lines about the artistic life in his poem ‘Adam’s Curse’

We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.

You will be misunderstood at times and this will be an experience of suffering. It may become a kind of spiritual martyrdom. That kind of suffering may be God’s will for your sanctification. Salvation is not finally being understood by the masses, or even by the local mass which is your local church. That is an illusion and a trap; it is seeking salvation in the approval of men and women. Salvation is communion with Christ. And for the artist this means bearing the inherent loneliness that comes with being misunderstood and bringing it to Christ, who was the most misunderstood man in human history. Communion with Christ will save you from despair. And you will be able to endure the pain of being misunderstood only in his presence. Artists can know the paradox of suffering which St Paul expressed:

we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair ²

The Endurance of Saints in Community

It may be that this kind of commitment; this long obedience as an artist; this sacrificial life that inevitably requires suffering will, in fact, create a future for those who come after you.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy said, “The martyr does not obtain the victory personally, but his successors win in the long run.” You are not committed to your work for your own sake. Self-expression is not the purpose for which you are called. You are not even committed to this work solely for those you lead now. You also are called to prepare the way for your successors. And you will achieve this by patient endurance, stability, and redeeming the suffering of being misunderstood.

It is a holy and difficult calling you have. That is why spaces such as these and a communities of artists are essential. To know and feel that, in fact, you are understood on your own terms; that you are heard; that you can endure dry spells, conflicts, difficulties—that is something that Christ gives to his saints in communities of the Holy Spirit.

And so, as St Paul longed for the Corinthian Christians to become saints through suffering, so it is my prayer for you. My hope is not only that you become wonderful artists in Christ, but that you become great saints who happen to be fine artists. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy said, “The saints are a dynasty of geniuses who are more concerned with the perpetual flow of spirit to all than with their private exaltation and self-expression.”

And so, may God the Holy Spirit give you his grace and strength to acquire patient endurance and stability, so that you may lead those you serve both now and in generations to come to the good, the true, and the beautiful in Christ alone. Amen.