Marginal Christianity

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist. – Pablo Picasso Vincent Van Gogh is widely known today as a typically eccentric artist. He might not have invented Impressionism, but he was the first to paint stars swirling uncontrollably in the night sky, or to depict sunflowers as golden explosions, or the sky on fire above a wheatfield. His pictures were vivid, wild, daring, chaotic, full of bright yellows and deep blues. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to visit the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and be surrounded by a room full of his work –  Sunflowers ,  Irises ,  Almond Blossom ,  The Bedroom  and  Potato Eaters  – you’ll know the powerful visceral effect it can have. And yet, if you go to the 2nd floor to the “Van Gogh Close Up” exhibit you’ll find scores of meticulous drawings of hands and feet made by Vincent when he was beginning to learn art. And then it dawns on you – Vincent didn’t simply pick up a brush and...

  Posted on April 1, 2015 | Leave a comment In the Christianity of my childhood, Easter Sunday was Cadbury eggs, brunch and celebratory church services full of rollicking hymns like “Up from the grave He arose.” In my adolescence and twenty-something years I became fond of celebrating Good Friday, a part of Easter weekend largely bypassed in my childhood. With its mournful tone and quieter focus on the cross, Good Friday was almost more compelling to my melancholy self than the joy of Easter. Yet for Christians, Friday and Sunday are equally crucial. The horror of death and the beauty of resurrection are both essential. The tension of Saturday, between death and life, loss and victory, suffering and healing, is where we live. We are mortal, decaying, sin-sick creatures. Yet our redemption is secure in the resurrected Christ; we will be made new. Art is a gift that God gives us to help us cope with Saturday life. In Real Presences, Jewish literary cri...

30  Then Moses said to the Israelites: “Look, the Lord has chosen Bezalel, Uri’s son and Hur’s grandson from the tribe of Judah. 31  The Lord has filled him with the divine spirit that will give him skill, ability, and knowledge for every kind of work. 32  He will be able to create designs, do metalwork in gold, silver, and copper, 33  cut stones for setting, carve wood, do every kind of creative work, 34  and have the ability to teach others. Both he and Oholiab, Ahisamach’s son from the tribe of Dan, 35  have been given the skill to do every kind of work done by a gem cutter or a designer or a needleworker in blue, purple, and deep red yarns and in fine linen or a weaver or anyone else doing work or creating designs.           According to the Nicene Creed the Holy Spirit is “the Lord, the giver of life.”   Wherever signs of genuine life and humanity are found, there the “divine spirit” is at w...

July 17, 2012 By Daniel A. Siedell (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/cultivare/) We live in a bipolar and schizophrenic culture. On one hand it is extremely crude and licentious and on the other, excruciatingly puritanical and legalistic. A robust and mature Christian cultural witness recognizes that this is two sides of the same coin, and thus resists the temptation to reduce the radicality of the gospel into “Christian virtues” that are then applied to artistic and other cultural practices in an effort to regulate and maintain an aesthetic of public decency (i.e., eliminate penises, breasts, and four-letter words). But a robust and mature Christian cultural witness must be built on a theology of culture that is not fooled by what is seen, that is, what is obvious artistically, but attend to what is heard, the “sound” that emerges gradually from painting, poem, song, or film. An artist I have known for over a decade once told me that “paintings tend to distract us with how they look.”...