The Master's Artist

Advent Art

A profound statement: life isn't always easy.

I'll pause a moment to let that sink in.

We may endure hardships, deaths, illnesses, unpaid bills, unemployment, disappointed expectations. We may feel stuck, hopeless, and hapless. This fuzzy darkness sneaks into our periphery vision.

So we turn to art--to books, movies, TV, paintings, sculpture, theater, music. Bad art gives us merely an escape, or worse, a pornographic fantasy that leaves us empty and wanting more, more money, more house, more success, more romance.

But, ah, art at its best, this art engenders understanding, helps us work through mysteries, gives hope in the injustices. I think of Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed wrestling alongside us with violence and injustice--the horror of school shootings, the randomness of Katrina, the monsters and victims in us all. And in the book, the protagonist turns to Picasso's Guernica to work out the place of God in such a terrible world. I think of the poetry of Habbakuk: how long, O Lord? And his shock at the Lord's answer.

I think of Quick Lamb in Cloudstreet who, by entering into the suffering, turns it into dancing. I think of the hope Pearly finds in the midst of grief in The Living End, of the forgiveness in Rembrandt's Prodigal Son, of the victory in Mahler's Resurrection Symphony.

Perhaps art mimics Christianity in this way. Jesus offers not a way of escape from the hardship but a hope through it, knowing that this is not the end. He has the final victory. He will usher in peace on earth, goodwill toward men.

We exist in Advent, a time of waiting, for the fullness of the Messiah. And we, with a peace that transcends all understanding, work for his kingdom of peace and justice, mourning with the hurting, loving the unloveable, offering God's hope to the suffering.

Art can show us this advent season and this final redemption, that we may endure and then, in the power of the Holy Spirit, grasp joy, hope, and contentment.

Heather A. Goodman prays that her short stories and novels bring this sort of comfort to others so that rather than escaping life, they may face it and praise God.

The Particular Sadness of Art

I baked and I cooked and I prepared all day yesterday for book club, and I thought, yes, this is what I will write about. But I waited until after book club met because book club always leaves me ready to extol the virtues of books and art and how art is communal.

So, inspired by Jeanne Damoff, I copied down quotes about my particularly sad lemon cake (we had read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender) and sandwiches of joy and spaghetti sauce filled with "sadness, rage, tanks, holes, hope, guilt, tantrums. Nostalgia, like rotting flowers. A factory, cold" (p. 222). For good measure I set out Laughing Cow cheese and veggies picked by farmers discouraged by the Texas drought and I giggled like Keegan when he finagles my keys from me.

Maybe it was the dreary weather, or maybe because some adored the book and some disliked it (though this has happened before), or maybe it was the spaghetti sauce, which was too heavy, too strident, too much, but the evening felt off, disconnected, like the characters in the book empty and disappearing and longing for something more. Nostalgia, like rotting flowers, I thought.

Way Leads on to Way

"I'm realizing that I may not be able to get where I want to be career-wise without sacrificing my family," my husband said. "And I'm not willing to sacrifice my family."

Our little boy slept in the backseat, and I rested my hand on the back of my husband's neck, my fingers in his hair. Love for this man made my eyes water--that he would see this, that he would set aside his ambition for us. It made me consider my own ambition to see my novels successfully published and read.

Ambition has a funny way of shape-shifting. I want to be published, I used to think. Then I saw my short stories in journals, my articles in magazines. Well, I clarified, I want my novels to be published, to see readers ruminating over life in a new way after interacting with my art. Couldn't God be glorified in this way?

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and being one traveller, I must choose one. To be the writer I used to dream of being (according to the time table I'd set), I'd have to sacrifice my family. I can no longer lock myself in office, the outside world be deviled, immersing myself in novel with more consideration for characters than for flesh and blood until typing the words "The End." Instead, I snatch bits and pieces of writing during nap times between mopping the floor and chopping vegetables for dinner. And when Keegan awakens, I close computer and immerse myself in child's play, shaking maracas and chasing boy and tickling belly. Characters hover at the edge of my mind. Perhaps I overhear a conversation as I pat-a-cake or grasp an image as I roar like a lion. I tuck these snippets away to jot down another time.

The time for researching the business-side--agents and publishers and my book is like--the time for hobnobbing and connecting and networking, that road is distinctly less traveled.

True, this may be a stage. As children become more independent, I will someday return to the business side of writing and to a more prolific daily word count. But in this stage, I learn: that more than delighting a book club, I desire to delight my son for his smile pays better; that the art of caring for family glorifies God as much as the art of penning words; that being a mother may mean I'm not as successful a writer, but being a mother makes me a better writer.

This last thought I said to my husband that night on our drive home, our bellies full from dinner (and flan for dessert!), our hearts full from love. "It's not just the fodder," I said, "but my understanding of the world, of love, of God. I think this is true for business too. You may be a less successful businessman in the world's eyes, but you will be a better businessman." Care for family flows out into the world.

I don't mean to suggest that you must be a parent to be a good writer, businessperson, pilot, farmer. I mean that in this, in mothering, God teaches me, and I doubt if I should ever come back.

Heather A. Goodman loves discovering new paths with her family. Sometimes, these paths weave themselves into her writing.

Limitless Humanity

In the movie Limitless, Eddie, a struggling writer--struggling with finances, writer's block, relationships, and a decent haircut--takes a new pill that allows him to access all parts of his brain, rather than the small percentage humans currently use. Bam! He writes his novel in four days, and his editor can't put it down. Then he decides that he no longer wants to be a writer. He wants to do something bigger, something more important.

He goes to Wall Street.

A Cloud of Witnesses

"In a prison in Philadelphia, [Charles Dickens] saw a man who had been held in solitary confinement for six years and who sat in his cell wearing 'a paper hat of his own making.' It was the shadow of Dickens's own terror. To have no communion with humanity--no readers for his writing, no audience for the performance--is what Dickens dreaded most."
- In "Dickens in Eden" by Jill Lepore (The New Yorker, August 29, 2011)

Would you write if you were never to be published? An often asked and fair question. After all, we have no guarantees that our words will reach an audience, that a publisher will pick them up, that a reader will peruse the pages. As believers, we create as an act of worship to God. Art as doxology, Francis Schaeffer wrote.

But as believers, we also know we were created in and for community, and we seek community in and through the form that excavates our very humanity. An archaeologist shares her findings, anxious that others may know the world she discovered. A chef delights in cooking for others, combining flavors to treat others's palates. Or, to put it another way, worship is not just an individual act. It is also a corporate act.

I pen stories and characters in hopes that this act of worship will become part of the corporate dance. When rejections pile up and dejection hovers near, I imagine the new world--the Revelation 22 world--where nations sing God's praises, and perhaps paint and write and dance his praises as well. Meanwhile, I trust God with how he chooses to use my offerings now, a friend who connected with a character, unknown readers of a small literary press, a little boy who wants to hear the one about the blue alien again, and I strive for excellence, for everything I do, I do as unto the Lord.

Aye, there's the rub: contentment and striving together. Though we sometimes feel that our work is in obscurity, we are not the man in solitary confinement with the paper hat of his own making. God sees us. He knows our work. Besides that, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, and so we run with perseverance.

Today I sit at my desk, another day of working in obscurity, offering this gift God has given in hopes that he sees fit to use it in his kingdom to his glory. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Heather A. Goodman writes for the glory of God and rejoices in the community of believers and artists God has put in her life.

When Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

"Are you still writing?" my friend asked, or, rather, several friends have asked. I hesitated, for I no longer write every day. Sometimes an entire week goes by without a typed word. And on those days when I do write, I no longer spill out 1500 to 2000 words but measure them out by teaspoons.

Even now, I stare at screen trying to remember how to construct sentences and paragraphs. Subject, predicate; nouns and verbs.

The story turns and twists in my head, always there, always knocking, wanting more than I can give. And I wonder, what makes an artist?

Writing About Wildflowers

I once read about a writing instructor (I've since forgotten whom, unfortunately) who told his students to write about their unique experience growing up.

Unique? they questioned. We grew up in suburbia, in the same suburb that sprawls from Florida through Texas to Oregon. Little boxes on the hillside. There's a green one and a pink one. The same PTA, the same soccer little league, the same ballet class endlessly looping.

In Which I Ruminate on a Favorite Show

Dexter Morgan is a blood splatter analyst for the Miami Police Department. He is also a serial killer. But he lives--and kills--by a strict code, which includes a rule to never kill the innocent. He takes his compulsion to kill and turns it into a vigilante service.

While I do recommend the show (Dexter), I don't recommend his lifestyle. Neither does Dexter. He considers himself a monster, overwhelmed and overcome by dark forces. Yet we can't help rooting for him, hoping he'll escape whoever's on to him this season.

Doxology

So the man who really loves God, who is working under the Lordship of Christ, could write his poetry, compose his music, construct his musical instruments, fashion his statues, paint his pictures, even if no man ever saw them. He knows God looks upon them.
- Francis Schaeffer

There was a time, not so long ago, although ages ago, when my work began to get attention. A few literary journals saw fit to publish my short stories. A couple of production companies and churches took my short screenplays and breathed life into them. Agents oohed and ahhed over my work. I even finaled in one competition and won another.

Then came the silence. Not the beautiful silence of a starry night when the campfire has faded to embers and the last bit of wine lingers on your tongue. Not the satisfied silence that rings with the symphonies last notes and anticipates the audience's applause. Not the rapt silence of daydreams when the world fades except for the fairies dancing in the trees. This silence neither meditates nor divines. It is not content nor winsome nor magnificent.

One Block at a Time

I don my five-finger running shoes, shoving each toe into its separate compartment, for this is how it starts. This is how I convince myself to run: by putting on my shoes. Then I'll step outside and start running, one block at a time. I promise myself only this block.