“We can live in a world that we design,” according to Hugh Jackman singing “A Million Dreams” in The Greatest Showman. That line recently landed as a live spark on my inner kindling, setting off a mini-firestorm of passionate thought! I have spent years learning to decode the language of church for the creative tribe and here suddenly was clear snapshot of the disconnect! It might take a bit of focus to unravel, but it is an understanding that can cut through the Gordian knots that keep creative folks in a particularly “Christian” funk!
Christians who have been well taught the fundamentals tend to have their religious triggers tripped with a line like that—and often go off preaching—sometimes in a pulpit (other times just on Facebook). I’ll briefly demonstrate here what that would sound like: A world WE design? NO! The messes we are in result solely from our choice to live in a world WE design rather than submitting to the one GOD designed! We are not called to live in a world that WE design, but rather spend our lives seeking to press into and express the world of salvation that HE designed! He alone is the great Designer—when we try to design things, we constantly mess up in “Romans 7-frustration” or “Ecclesiastes-futility” fashion! God, in fact, is trying to deliver us completely from the worlds WE want to design and relocate us in the perfect world HE designed! (That’s roughly how it would go…and it would get amens!)
HEAR ME SAY before I go on that the above is NOT untrue! God does specialize in actually extricating us from all the hells that result from heeding Fleetwood Mac’s word in the 70’s: “You can go your own way….” That is a fundamental: All we like sheep have gone astray, as Isaiah said, and Jesus gloriously and graciously took that wandering--along with all the dysfunction it unraveled--upon Himself, landing us in the immense potential of life lived in union with Him!
The preaching above is NOT untrue in essence, but it might be wildly incomplete in application! In sports or music, the problem with “fundamentals” would be if we never went on to actually play a game or attempt a concerto performance! If we fixate on truth without the laboratory of relationship and real life, we run the risk of alienating the more complex (and creative) souls among us. And, when our desire for clarity in the fundamentals exceeds our awe for the majesty and mystery of life, we might be headed toward a dangerous reductionism—one that threatens the creative among us (or keeps them from even being among us at all). Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Getting clear on fundamentals can be helpful. Being reductionist can hurt.
What about this “fundamental” consideration: God is CREATOR and we are MADE IN HIS IMAGE! There are designs swirling in the hearts of people that are NOT necessarily contrary to God’s grand design because He planted them there in the sweet spot where He also placed “eternity”! It is harder to preach against living “in a world we design” if we begin to think of the God-possibilities wired in men and women BY HIS DESIGN! Even when those designs are not readily recognizable as His, the mere ABILITY to design (dream, create) should always be recognized as a hallmark of His Ephesians 2:10 creative workmanship! “We can live in a world that we design…” MIGHT JUST POINT TO THE CREATOR—AND REDEEMER—if we could just let it! Maybe we should celebrate the dreamers, not preach them into pits!
What if God wants to awaken and develop in you things that are Creator-like? What if He is not nearly as afraid of your dreams going astray as the church has made you feel? What if there are drives and urges and longings in us that did NOT die with Christ because they were actually planted by God in your very being? In that case, they would be turned on by the engine of resurrection life on the other side of the cross! What if His plan was for you to “rule and reign” in life—not just over attacks of the enemy but also over doldrums and uncreative living—over boring and repetitive mere conformity to a clinical standard—over the oppression that dwarfs novel thinking and keeps dreamers in boxes and creative risk-takers in religious captivity? In short, what if God DELIGHTS IN the worlds we design and wants to partner with us in the odyssey????
As I sweated it out on the elliptical today with Hugh Jackman singing in my ears, it occurred to me in broad spectral color how much we weren’t telling the whole story when we make a rush to force repentance from our own dreams! Only God Himself in intimate relationship can help a creative find the line between his own indulgence and his authentic passion-driven part in the master plan! It is a delicate work that requires a skilled spiritual surgeon! He alone qualifies!
Remember when God brought each of the animals to Adam to see what he would call them? Genesis declares, “Whatever Adam called them, that was their name.” That seems more like the commissioning of art than the fulfillment of a utilitarian purpose (though everything God does has purpose—even His art!). Think of it: the God who just released the ultimate creative project—the UNIVERSE--now turns and shares that joy by commissioning another creative act from His friend Adam! In reductionist terms (I’ll indulge): God’s first task for man was a right-brained one! (And have you looked at animals lately—really looked? Consider a pink flamingo or a jewel-toned ostrich and tell me that’s all just practical and no whimsy or creative fun? And don’t get me going on fungi and ferns, fish and insects and even the fractal formations found throughout the natural world!)
Could it be that God actually wanted Adam and Eve to be the “under-shepherds” of His design to such an extent that it would seem like they lived in a world they designed? Did He want to release them into--not restrain them from-- their own creative energies? The lie that they ultimately believed in the garden was that God was holding back freedom—and perhaps acts of design and creativity—rather than championing His sons and daughters in the things He wired into them in already through His own creative act!
So let’s not repeat that lie to each other or to the outside world! Let’s not portray a God who is too small to allow you room for your initiative, your plans, your designs—even to live in a world YOU—along with those you love including Him—DESIGN! Let’s realize that there is NOTHING man can dream that can excel the dreams God has dreamed for Him—and planted in Him! The way forward is found in receiving Him as all that He is, not in turning the fundamentals into reductionist confinement! Let’s let the fundamentals serve their purpose as a beginning, not an end--and definitely not a cage! (I hear Pink Floyd here asking, “And did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?” But that’s another blog…)
God may be longing to graciously adjust our methodologies or mindsets, but He is not rebuking us for trying to design worlds. He wants to partner with your design skills like a Father partners with His child learning to paint, or a Master partners with His own apprentice. What creative projects might God be commissioning from you? Adam named the animals (not a few) and whatever he called them, that was their name! Your work, too, will matter because you have more authority as a “world designer” than you have realized!
Monday, February 04, 2019
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
O Mighty Metaphor: Models and Beyond
Oh, the wisdom of Veggie Tales. A generation was shaped by those adorable talking produce items and I’m pretty sure the parents who had plugged the VHS videocassette in were occasionally struck by the humor-wrapped life lessons—at least the first few times through. For my parenting part, a less noticed Veggie Tale episode became a classic: the story of St. Patrick. I was always interested in Patrick’s transformation of Ireland and had watched every Liam Neeson narrated documentary out there, but then decided that the Veggie Tales 8 ½ minute summary of the historical Patrick was basically, as David Letterman used to say, “all you need to know”! Talk about postmodern blurring of genres—there ya go—stunning truth from animated produce! (And, like all good things, it’s now on YouTube if you are interested.)
While there are many profound things to be said about Patrick’s story that apply to us all, the treasure I took away from that video—lateral thinker that I am—was a truth about humanity that really had nothing to do with him. Veggie Tales had introduced the pre-Christian pagan religion of the Irish people via a scene in which their leader held up a tree branch while the cartoon characters gathered round chanting, “Oh mighty twig.” When Patrick famously used the shamrock to teach the Irish people about the Trinity—you remember: 3 leaves = Father, Son and Holy Spirit—those same cartooned Irish switch to, “O mighty shamrock.” (It was the Veggie Tales comment on the challenges of cross-cultural missions!) Patrick quickly counters with the correction: NO! It’s a metaphor! And then comes the treasure: the worshipping Irish are definitely not yet reached and respond with, “O mighty metaphor!!!!” I don’t care who you are—that’s funny---and genius!
We are worshipping creatures but we are also what I call, “rapid-attachers”! We are so desperate for understanding that we latch on instantly to explanations, steps, procedures, metaphors and MODELS that seem to promise us control of those things in life we can’t see and touch! Models of the unseen—metaphors and beyond—are incredibly useful—until they’re not! They are, after all, just models. They point to broader realities to aid us in the unseen dance with Truth! But they are NOT actually the reality! If we start to simply “work the model,” we have lost the point entirely—and our dance becomes drudgery indeed. We are far too “sticky” when it comes to reasonable explanations and we pay a heart-price for it!
There are amazing laws and principles surrounding the topic of faith and many of them are grounded in Scripture—and helpful. Steps like “believe you receive” and then “rejoice before you see it” are part of a model that swept through the Christian consciousness in the 70’s so thoroughly that the medical community noticed the benefits of positive affirmation and “faith-based” support. There is nothing wrong with having steps and principles. There is everything wrong with letting it end there—worshipping the model so much so that you forget the broader picture of reality to which it was pointing! Principles of faith are so profoundly much more than “name it; claim it”—they are mere portals into a veritable world of available possibilities—almost the least of which is actually receiving the goal on earth! We were meant to live in a realm of “more than meets the eye,” and the meeting of our needs is the doorway into far more provision than the narrow peephole that got us in! The swirling kaleidoscope of God-stuff in dynamic, exciting motion is where we are meant to live! The model is not the point—it is merely the point of departure! We can enjoy the instruction, but we need not get stuck at, “O mighty model.”
Consider the atom. In school, we learned a model of these smallest (well sort of smallest—there are smaller, it turns out) building blocks of matter. The simple circle with protons and neutrons in the middle and electrons orbiting in perfectly concentric energy levels around is beautiful—and comforting—and seems controllable and completely explanatory. If you took college chemistry you will know that this simple model was vital to understanding what elements would do in a chemical reaction. It gave you an A in the course if you could translate that model into action on the test and in the lab. However, if you took college chemistry, you also had to learn what that simple model couldn’t do!
It turns out that electrons and protons seem to have a whole other life that the model was hiding: they exist more as probabilities than “particles” as we know them, and manifest as energy waves more than discrete points in space! In fact, as Dr. Heisenberg helped us understand, we lose a portion of what we get to know about a particle when we try to pin it down! The more “accurate” model of the atom which is taught in high school now features electrons not as “dots” but “probability clouds”---regions where it is likely that a concentration of energy we know as an electron might occur—hazy clouds of minute and fleeting pixilation rather than the neatly orbiting black sphere! The quantum message seems to be that the atomic truth is accessed by simple models but not at all defined by them!
And isn’t that just like life? When we were younger in our faith and our journeying, we got excited about the ability to understand and work the principles! Our models of reality gave us hope, as well they should! Whatever had come into your heart and inspired you did its work well if you marched forward with a God-induced smile on your face and a confidence about your role in the world! But, when the “dots” on your diagram seem more like “clouds,” you will then be called to temporarily—like Abraham with Isaac—lay your model on the altar for the receiving of a larger AND LESS TIDY grasp of reality! At that moment, we discover whether or not we have begun to say, “O mighty model”!
God is never against simplification. He gives models so we can relate to unseen realities. But He might be against that which is simplistic! Our need to control and over-define hurts others and ourselves. Our narrow definitions of success and acceptability spawn legalism and judgment that do not belong in the kingdom of this particular benevolent King!
Jesus was the Master Communicator. He told stories (that we call parables) to invite people into His the heavenly vision of unseen reality. Stories are living models. They are truths with people-handles on them. Jesus’ stories prevented His truth from becoming sterile or clinical by earthing it in gritty real-time experience, closing the gap between a far away heaven and a messed up earth. One of the most “model-like” stories Jesus told was the parable of the seed and the soil. Four kinds of soil each receive the seed of the word of God differently, and therefore yield vastly different results. (And people have taught that throughout the centuries with the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 attached—bullet points long before there were PowerPoint slides.) But, the whole point of that parable—the whole key to the model—is a quality of HEART—which everyone knows is more a “cloud” than a “dot”! There is no literal chemical analysis of the soil that receives the seed—no machine that will give you a printout of the technical condition of the heart! Instead, while showing us there are reasons for things, Jesus points us back to the openness and trust that makes the dance with the Unseen work in the first place! Take heed to the condition of your heart and you’ve got the point of the metaphor! You won’t be saying, “O mighty metaphor” but, “O mighty Truth”!
Renee Magritte, the Belgian surrealist painter, was not all that surreal in his thinking. His painting, The Treachery of Images features a very real image of a pipe with a phrase in French underneath that translates to, “This is not a pipe.” Was he being cute or ironical? No—he was making a statement that the image of the object is NOT the actual object! He proposed that if, while looking at this painting, you believed it was a pipe and tried to stuff if with tobacco, you would be immediately educated: This is not a pipe. If you like pipes, look at it, but please don’t attempt lighting it: you will only have a canvas on fire! The treachery of images is that they won’t “smoke” in real life! If a pipe is your real desire, let the image—or the model—point you to action and go find the real thing!
Faith is a big reality. We need models. They work like magic to inspire us. But let us guard against our tendency to camp out on them and fight for their universality. They are PORTALS INTO BROADER EXPERIENCE, which is the whole point in the first place. Faith is an experience that is meant to “melt into wonder” daily as we dance with it. When we remember that the models are only necessary wardrobes into the Narnia beyond, we will be able to keep our experience fresh and flowing, children of a good, giving God who cooperate with spiritual realities in open-hearted adventurous expectation. I’ll stop here before I sound completely like the Message Bible reworded! After all, even this article is just pointing to something far beyond: Go out in search of THAT!
While there are many profound things to be said about Patrick’s story that apply to us all, the treasure I took away from that video—lateral thinker that I am—was a truth about humanity that really had nothing to do with him. Veggie Tales had introduced the pre-Christian pagan religion of the Irish people via a scene in which their leader held up a tree branch while the cartoon characters gathered round chanting, “Oh mighty twig.” When Patrick famously used the shamrock to teach the Irish people about the Trinity—you remember: 3 leaves = Father, Son and Holy Spirit—those same cartooned Irish switch to, “O mighty shamrock.” (It was the Veggie Tales comment on the challenges of cross-cultural missions!) Patrick quickly counters with the correction: NO! It’s a metaphor! And then comes the treasure: the worshipping Irish are definitely not yet reached and respond with, “O mighty metaphor!!!!” I don’t care who you are—that’s funny---and genius!
We are worshipping creatures but we are also what I call, “rapid-attachers”! We are so desperate for understanding that we latch on instantly to explanations, steps, procedures, metaphors and MODELS that seem to promise us control of those things in life we can’t see and touch! Models of the unseen—metaphors and beyond—are incredibly useful—until they’re not! They are, after all, just models. They point to broader realities to aid us in the unseen dance with Truth! But they are NOT actually the reality! If we start to simply “work the model,” we have lost the point entirely—and our dance becomes drudgery indeed. We are far too “sticky” when it comes to reasonable explanations and we pay a heart-price for it!
There are amazing laws and principles surrounding the topic of faith and many of them are grounded in Scripture—and helpful. Steps like “believe you receive” and then “rejoice before you see it” are part of a model that swept through the Christian consciousness in the 70’s so thoroughly that the medical community noticed the benefits of positive affirmation and “faith-based” support. There is nothing wrong with having steps and principles. There is everything wrong with letting it end there—worshipping the model so much so that you forget the broader picture of reality to which it was pointing! Principles of faith are so profoundly much more than “name it; claim it”—they are mere portals into a veritable world of available possibilities—almost the least of which is actually receiving the goal on earth! We were meant to live in a realm of “more than meets the eye,” and the meeting of our needs is the doorway into far more provision than the narrow peephole that got us in! The swirling kaleidoscope of God-stuff in dynamic, exciting motion is where we are meant to live! The model is not the point—it is merely the point of departure! We can enjoy the instruction, but we need not get stuck at, “O mighty model.”
Consider the atom. In school, we learned a model of these smallest (well sort of smallest—there are smaller, it turns out) building blocks of matter. The simple circle with protons and neutrons in the middle and electrons orbiting in perfectly concentric energy levels around is beautiful—and comforting—and seems controllable and completely explanatory. If you took college chemistry you will know that this simple model was vital to understanding what elements would do in a chemical reaction. It gave you an A in the course if you could translate that model into action on the test and in the lab. However, if you took college chemistry, you also had to learn what that simple model couldn’t do!
It turns out that electrons and protons seem to have a whole other life that the model was hiding: they exist more as probabilities than “particles” as we know them, and manifest as energy waves more than discrete points in space! In fact, as Dr. Heisenberg helped us understand, we lose a portion of what we get to know about a particle when we try to pin it down! The more “accurate” model of the atom which is taught in high school now features electrons not as “dots” but “probability clouds”---regions where it is likely that a concentration of energy we know as an electron might occur—hazy clouds of minute and fleeting pixilation rather than the neatly orbiting black sphere! The quantum message seems to be that the atomic truth is accessed by simple models but not at all defined by them!
And isn’t that just like life? When we were younger in our faith and our journeying, we got excited about the ability to understand and work the principles! Our models of reality gave us hope, as well they should! Whatever had come into your heart and inspired you did its work well if you marched forward with a God-induced smile on your face and a confidence about your role in the world! But, when the “dots” on your diagram seem more like “clouds,” you will then be called to temporarily—like Abraham with Isaac—lay your model on the altar for the receiving of a larger AND LESS TIDY grasp of reality! At that moment, we discover whether or not we have begun to say, “O mighty model”!
God is never against simplification. He gives models so we can relate to unseen realities. But He might be against that which is simplistic! Our need to control and over-define hurts others and ourselves. Our narrow definitions of success and acceptability spawn legalism and judgment that do not belong in the kingdom of this particular benevolent King!
Jesus was the Master Communicator. He told stories (that we call parables) to invite people into His the heavenly vision of unseen reality. Stories are living models. They are truths with people-handles on them. Jesus’ stories prevented His truth from becoming sterile or clinical by earthing it in gritty real-time experience, closing the gap between a far away heaven and a messed up earth. One of the most “model-like” stories Jesus told was the parable of the seed and the soil. Four kinds of soil each receive the seed of the word of God differently, and therefore yield vastly different results. (And people have taught that throughout the centuries with the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 attached—bullet points long before there were PowerPoint slides.) But, the whole point of that parable—the whole key to the model—is a quality of HEART—which everyone knows is more a “cloud” than a “dot”! There is no literal chemical analysis of the soil that receives the seed—no machine that will give you a printout of the technical condition of the heart! Instead, while showing us there are reasons for things, Jesus points us back to the openness and trust that makes the dance with the Unseen work in the first place! Take heed to the condition of your heart and you’ve got the point of the metaphor! You won’t be saying, “O mighty metaphor” but, “O mighty Truth”!
Renee Magritte, the Belgian surrealist painter, was not all that surreal in his thinking. His painting, The Treachery of Images features a very real image of a pipe with a phrase in French underneath that translates to, “This is not a pipe.” Was he being cute or ironical? No—he was making a statement that the image of the object is NOT the actual object! He proposed that if, while looking at this painting, you believed it was a pipe and tried to stuff if with tobacco, you would be immediately educated: This is not a pipe. If you like pipes, look at it, but please don’t attempt lighting it: you will only have a canvas on fire! The treachery of images is that they won’t “smoke” in real life! If a pipe is your real desire, let the image—or the model—point you to action and go find the real thing!
Faith is a big reality. We need models. They work like magic to inspire us. But let us guard against our tendency to camp out on them and fight for their universality. They are PORTALS INTO BROADER EXPERIENCE, which is the whole point in the first place. Faith is an experience that is meant to “melt into wonder” daily as we dance with it. When we remember that the models are only necessary wardrobes into the Narnia beyond, we will be able to keep our experience fresh and flowing, children of a good, giving God who cooperate with spiritual realities in open-hearted adventurous expectation. I’ll stop here before I sound completely like the Message Bible reworded! After all, even this article is just pointing to something far beyond: Go out in search of THAT!
Monday, June 19, 2017
Living Loud (This one goes to 11...)
Remember Riverdance? It was that 90’s moment when Irish dance landed on the pop culture radar as a viral sensation before the adjective even existed. The show’s humble beginning as a Eurovision Songfest “filler” opened the way for a full-length production that would ultimately be performed from New York to London and everywhere in between, inspiring episodes of such artistically diverse works as “Pinky and the Brain” (the one where Brain tries to clone himself to create the world’s best-loved Irish dance troupe from which to take over the world)! Who didn’t love or parody Riverdance?
I still listen to Bill Whelan’s masterful soundtrack from time to time and cherish it as an impression of Celtic fire at it’s best—a thought about life frozen in digital time with a feel that is both ancient and modern (and those who know me know that I yearn for that mixture). But here’s the thing—on said soundtrack, in addition to the musical prowess, there are also the sounds of the dancers themselves! When I am listening to the tracks, I can hear the moment Michael Flatley takes the stage for his solo—and the moment the whole troupe falls in behind him like an army as if proclaiming in masse, “we know we are rocking your world right now!” As the famous Irishman, Liam Neeson pointed out in the documentary about Riverdance, it represented a nation and culture whose time had come to be celebrated! Dance was clearly fueling that awakening.
This morning found me listening to the remix at the end of the Riverdance album and suddenly a memory from the time—and an inspiration—captured me! In an effort by a few purists to discredit the uninformed populism of that Riverdance represented, someone had targeted Michael Flatley (a Chicago native) for the arm movements and otherwise non-traditional pizzazz he seemed to be adding in to the traditional dance form. (I mean, there is that moment in the opening number that seems vintage Michael Jackson…but who cared?) The other criticism was the one that spoke to me, however. Someone had tried to expose the fact that—wait for it—the producers of Riverdance had actually mic’ed the floor so that they were actually amplifying the sounds of the dancers shoes! How impure!
I don’t remember thinking it at the time, but this morning, it occurred to me mid-track as if my heart was shouting it back to the critics in the 90’s, “Why NOT mic the floor????” I mean, after all, isn’t the dance the point? When you are listening to the track, how great to also “hear” the dance? And if you are in the theatre for the show, why would you object to an enhanced auditory experience of what you actually came to see? Impure? Or boldly expressive of the grand theme?! Yes, like Michael Flatley, mic’ing the floor represented a showmanship, but thank God for the gift of showmanship when we came to see a show—when our psyches are the canvas for the brushstrokes of impact! Come on, those who can, give us a show!
We have had the good fortune of being friends with some of the members of Delirious?, a Christian band whose impact on their genre was no less “viral-pre-viral” than Riverdance. At a time when American Christian music was languishing, some people were calling Delirious? another British invasion. (For the uninitiated, the question mark is part of the band name, not a typo!) Delirious? shows in America were packed and we were all thankful for their artistry and hearts. I remember one show in particular (“Paint the Town” tour, I think) when the band leaned into some Elvis flair. They sported white suits that featured cape-like “wings” from the arms and the production and effects were a little bit space age (so maybe Elvis meets “Lost in Space”?). It was a blast of creative fresh air!
In a time when Matt Redman was writing about getting back to the heart of worship, here were his friends in Delirious? expressing it quite differently—the opposite of “stripped away”. And that’s when it hit me: Delirious? got it: they “got” what a concert is. They understood the platform they had been given and their responsibility to turn it up loud and “show up” on the night! They were mastering the genre in a way not previously done, perhaps because of the fear—not the reality—of losing the heart of worship. Delirious? knew that the heart of worship resided exactly there—in the HEART that worships! Outward expressions, no matter how creative, are either filled or empty based on the heart that generates them. If their show had featured Irish dance, they probably would have mic’ed the floor and flapped their arms!
Society is filled with shaming of “showboats” and I get that. We all definitely need to be pressing into the life skills of noticing, connecting with, and understanding others. And the most creative among us must have an injection of relational capacity into our otherwise self-referenced inner chambers! BUT, there still is a floor to be mic’ed, a dance to be done and amplified, an idea to be celebrated and a show to be put on! We must hold others in high value and learn to be a team player for sure, but God help us not forget the call to produce our own life’s unique “SHOW”! As Bono said at the beginning of “Vertigo,” after counting to fourteen, skipping a few, “Turn it up, Captain!” I take that personally: I am the Captain of my own ship and there are plenty of folks telling me to turn it down! (For what if Spinal Tap was right, not about an amplifier, but about me or you: “This one goes to 11!”)
Riverdance was not just Irish dance. It was a celebration of many dance styles, including my favorite piece from the show, the Fire Dance, which featured the world class Spanish flamenco dancer, Maria Pages. I remember being fascinated to read that flamenco owed its “stomping” style to its gypsy origins. The gypsies, a persecuted people shaped by their lack of a homeland, developed a style that broadcast defiance. With a forceful heel driven into the floor, it is as if they were saying, “I will be here, fully present, in this territory!” If you don’t know you are permanent, greater force is necessary in showing up with all you are right now in the temporary place! Perhaps that accounts for their passion as a people. But aren’t we all transient, in a way? Shouldn’t we all put our feet down strongly in the “now place” to leave a mark once we have moved on? Shouldn’t we all mic our floors???
There was a man named Shammah in the Biblical narrative who was listed as one of the warrior King David’s “mighty men”. What did he do to earn that “mighty man” status? He defended a pea patch against attackers! He warred single-handedly to secure a single plot of land growing legumes. Surely there were other plant-based protein sources available but evidently, Shammah deemed this patch worth his life—and his honor. The lesson is clear: When is a pea patch not just a pea patch? WHEN IT IS YOURS!! When you have lived into the soil, tended the seed, endured the seasons and invested yourself into what “Chariots of Fire” calls, “your one true chance of greatness,” it might be time, like Shammah did, to take your stand “in the middle of the plot” (and do a flamenco stomp if you have to) to defend it! That dance inside you that just won’t quit will inform your determination!
There are preparation times; there are incubation times, but if Shammah’s pea patch was in harvest time, he knew it was time to give the world a show! If you are (like me) afraid of “showboating,” as long as you have realized that you are not the only show in town, then your answer is “fear not”! (Some creatives are the shyest extroverts in town!) Showboating is a matter of the heart and if your heart is right, sincerely desiring to lift up this world that definitely needs lifting up, go ahead and mic the floor, stomp the stomp and impress the fans! God’s opinion about the gift inside you being expressed was settled when He made you. You are a gift. You are a “show”. You are a wonder. You are an idea whose time has come. The purists might not understand. Smile and dazzle them anyway. It’s not too late. Your pea patch—your inner world—is worth it. The show must go on.
I still listen to Bill Whelan’s masterful soundtrack from time to time and cherish it as an impression of Celtic fire at it’s best—a thought about life frozen in digital time with a feel that is both ancient and modern (and those who know me know that I yearn for that mixture). But here’s the thing—on said soundtrack, in addition to the musical prowess, there are also the sounds of the dancers themselves! When I am listening to the tracks, I can hear the moment Michael Flatley takes the stage for his solo—and the moment the whole troupe falls in behind him like an army as if proclaiming in masse, “we know we are rocking your world right now!” As the famous Irishman, Liam Neeson pointed out in the documentary about Riverdance, it represented a nation and culture whose time had come to be celebrated! Dance was clearly fueling that awakening.
This morning found me listening to the remix at the end of the Riverdance album and suddenly a memory from the time—and an inspiration—captured me! In an effort by a few purists to discredit the uninformed populism of that Riverdance represented, someone had targeted Michael Flatley (a Chicago native) for the arm movements and otherwise non-traditional pizzazz he seemed to be adding in to the traditional dance form. (I mean, there is that moment in the opening number that seems vintage Michael Jackson…but who cared?) The other criticism was the one that spoke to me, however. Someone had tried to expose the fact that—wait for it—the producers of Riverdance had actually mic’ed the floor so that they were actually amplifying the sounds of the dancers shoes! How impure!
I don’t remember thinking it at the time, but this morning, it occurred to me mid-track as if my heart was shouting it back to the critics in the 90’s, “Why NOT mic the floor????” I mean, after all, isn’t the dance the point? When you are listening to the track, how great to also “hear” the dance? And if you are in the theatre for the show, why would you object to an enhanced auditory experience of what you actually came to see? Impure? Or boldly expressive of the grand theme?! Yes, like Michael Flatley, mic’ing the floor represented a showmanship, but thank God for the gift of showmanship when we came to see a show—when our psyches are the canvas for the brushstrokes of impact! Come on, those who can, give us a show!
We have had the good fortune of being friends with some of the members of Delirious?, a Christian band whose impact on their genre was no less “viral-pre-viral” than Riverdance. At a time when American Christian music was languishing, some people were calling Delirious? another British invasion. (For the uninitiated, the question mark is part of the band name, not a typo!) Delirious? shows in America were packed and we were all thankful for their artistry and hearts. I remember one show in particular (“Paint the Town” tour, I think) when the band leaned into some Elvis flair. They sported white suits that featured cape-like “wings” from the arms and the production and effects were a little bit space age (so maybe Elvis meets “Lost in Space”?). It was a blast of creative fresh air!
In a time when Matt Redman was writing about getting back to the heart of worship, here were his friends in Delirious? expressing it quite differently—the opposite of “stripped away”. And that’s when it hit me: Delirious? got it: they “got” what a concert is. They understood the platform they had been given and their responsibility to turn it up loud and “show up” on the night! They were mastering the genre in a way not previously done, perhaps because of the fear—not the reality—of losing the heart of worship. Delirious? knew that the heart of worship resided exactly there—in the HEART that worships! Outward expressions, no matter how creative, are either filled or empty based on the heart that generates them. If their show had featured Irish dance, they probably would have mic’ed the floor and flapped their arms!
Society is filled with shaming of “showboats” and I get that. We all definitely need to be pressing into the life skills of noticing, connecting with, and understanding others. And the most creative among us must have an injection of relational capacity into our otherwise self-referenced inner chambers! BUT, there still is a floor to be mic’ed, a dance to be done and amplified, an idea to be celebrated and a show to be put on! We must hold others in high value and learn to be a team player for sure, but God help us not forget the call to produce our own life’s unique “SHOW”! As Bono said at the beginning of “Vertigo,” after counting to fourteen, skipping a few, “Turn it up, Captain!” I take that personally: I am the Captain of my own ship and there are plenty of folks telling me to turn it down! (For what if Spinal Tap was right, not about an amplifier, but about me or you: “This one goes to 11!”)
Riverdance was not just Irish dance. It was a celebration of many dance styles, including my favorite piece from the show, the Fire Dance, which featured the world class Spanish flamenco dancer, Maria Pages. I remember being fascinated to read that flamenco owed its “stomping” style to its gypsy origins. The gypsies, a persecuted people shaped by their lack of a homeland, developed a style that broadcast defiance. With a forceful heel driven into the floor, it is as if they were saying, “I will be here, fully present, in this territory!” If you don’t know you are permanent, greater force is necessary in showing up with all you are right now in the temporary place! Perhaps that accounts for their passion as a people. But aren’t we all transient, in a way? Shouldn’t we all put our feet down strongly in the “now place” to leave a mark once we have moved on? Shouldn’t we all mic our floors???
There was a man named Shammah in the Biblical narrative who was listed as one of the warrior King David’s “mighty men”. What did he do to earn that “mighty man” status? He defended a pea patch against attackers! He warred single-handedly to secure a single plot of land growing legumes. Surely there were other plant-based protein sources available but evidently, Shammah deemed this patch worth his life—and his honor. The lesson is clear: When is a pea patch not just a pea patch? WHEN IT IS YOURS!! When you have lived into the soil, tended the seed, endured the seasons and invested yourself into what “Chariots of Fire” calls, “your one true chance of greatness,” it might be time, like Shammah did, to take your stand “in the middle of the plot” (and do a flamenco stomp if you have to) to defend it! That dance inside you that just won’t quit will inform your determination!
There are preparation times; there are incubation times, but if Shammah’s pea patch was in harvest time, he knew it was time to give the world a show! If you are (like me) afraid of “showboating,” as long as you have realized that you are not the only show in town, then your answer is “fear not”! (Some creatives are the shyest extroverts in town!) Showboating is a matter of the heart and if your heart is right, sincerely desiring to lift up this world that definitely needs lifting up, go ahead and mic the floor, stomp the stomp and impress the fans! God’s opinion about the gift inside you being expressed was settled when He made you. You are a gift. You are a “show”. You are a wonder. You are an idea whose time has come. The purists might not understand. Smile and dazzle them anyway. It’s not too late. Your pea patch—your inner world—is worth it. The show must go on.
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