Friday, September 25, 2015

Wonder and art

[This is a post in an ongoing series on what is art and how we should be approaching it.  Please use the label at the bottom to see other posts in this series or continue to monitor this blog for updates.]

I’ve heard Ravi Zacharias tell a story (and you must forgive me, but for the life of me I cannot find that tale again, otherwise I would cite it properly) about how our sense of wonder and amazement diminishes over time.  In this story, he tells of his children, and how he would tell the story to his eldest about a room with a door, and the character opens the door, and outside is a dragon – and the eldest child’s eyes go wide.

To the middle child he tells the story, and there’s a room with a door, and the character opens the door – and the child’s eyes go wide.
 
To the youngest he tells of a room with a door – and the child’s eyes go wide.

And while it was not Ravi’s application of this story at all, the more I have mused upon it, the more I am convinced that the people who need to be telling stories of the wonders of dragons are the ones who were excited in the first place about the door.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

My triumphant return

So over the last many months, I have been training for a new job (my own business) and opening that same business, so things have been a wee bit hectic.  But as things settle down, and I want to get back to writing a bit, and so I’m hoping to get the ol’ blog back running again.

And as I’m coming back, there are actually quite a few things I want to say.  I have a lot to say about some bad “Christian” “art,” of course, but I also want to add something else.  I want to talk about what Christian art should be.

I’m doing a bit of research for an upcoming book on art, and while I’m considering these ideas, I’d like to use this blog for my notes on what I’m reading and learning.  So in addition to my normal format, I’d like to further the conversation on what we should be doing with the various forms of art.


We’ll do this under a category heading of “What art should be” for easy reference.  Please feel free to send in ideas on the topic!