Hints of Spring

Spring is coming to Charlottesville! The daffodils are showing their bright faces, the bradford pears have exploded with tiny white flowers, the cherry trees are about to burst, and the wind blows in slightly warmer temperatures, though the past two days have proven spring is not fully here just yet.

Looking out the window of my office, the trees look like they’re snowing, tiny white blossoms moving in the breeze. Spring is an exciting time. Plants that looked like they were completely dead suddenly raise their heads and come to life again; all the new life makes me happy. There is something so beautiful about a season of new life, something contagious. The world looks pleased with itself in the spring, smiling again after the dormant winter season of sleep.

Ok. I don’t even know what I’m writing any more — spring always makes me go slightly crazy in a happy 5-year-old child kind of way.

Art Looks Forward

“Here is the challenge, I believe, for the Christian artist, in whatever sphere: to tell the story of the new world so that people can taste it, and want it, even while acknowledging the reality of the desert in which we presently live.” –N.T. Wright

I think Wright is correct in his assessment of what it is artists who are Christians ought to be doing. I also think that this is an extremely difficult thing to do. It is much easier to live in a dualistic world which either focuses on depravity and brokenness or overemphasizes the beauty of the world around us [or seeks to escape altogether] than to embrace the tension and pain. To step into a broken yet beautiful world and see what is here and imagine what is to come is almost more difficult than we can bear… almost. To embrace the tension and the pain and offer it up without despairing completely, while still holding onto hope, however small – this is what true Christian artists should endeavor to do. And to produce not just anything but to produce excellent art, something of great value, is a difficult thing indeed.

One who gazes at the present while looking ahead to the future — this is an artist and a Christian.