art

I'm reading "The Heart of the Artist" by Noland and I wanted to share a couple quotes from the book. Thankfully, there has been a resurgence of the arts within the Church, but we are far from realizing the potential of the whole realm of the arts to capture our wonder as is expressed in this reflection by John Fischer:

“When artists reach into their colors or to the notes of a musical score, into the developing solution in a darkroom tray or to the flow of words on a page, they are interacting with the eternity God has placed in their hearts…Because their minds cannot fathom what their hearts know, they feel the weight of the God-placed burden. Art often seems irrational, because the heart is reaching beyond the mind…trying to find the meaning of its existence.”

Francis Schaeffer had these sentiments in regard to the mediocrity and resistance to the pursuit of excellence in the arts with regard to the Christian:

“Of all people Christians should be addicted to quality and integrity in every area, not be looking for excuses for second-best. We must resist this onslaught. We must demand higher standards. We must look for people with real creative integrity and talent, or we must not dabble in these creative fields at all. All of this does not mean that there is no room for the first halting steps, for experimentation, for mistakes and for development. But it does mean that there is no room for lazy, entrenched, year after year established mediocrity, unchanging and unvaried.”

Is Schaeffer to being too elitist? I recall Colossians 3:23, which says, "Whatever you do, work at it with all of your heart, as if working for the Lord and not for man." Sounds like pursuit of excellence to me...