The paradoxical unity of suffering and joy, sadness and healing….

“Yes, for me the drama of a storm in nature, the drama of sorrow in life, is the best. Paradise is nice, but lacks the beauty of Gethsemane.” Vincent Van Gogh

“All of Reality is also symbolic at the same time.”

Joy and suffering are teethered to the same pole—that pole is The Cross of Jesus. This is why great art, reveals beauty in suffering.

Art is meant to serve us with a clearer picture of Reality! Reality is that Love is found in our suffering. Christ incarnates as The Cross always, and then the resurrection brings what St Peter calls, “a living hope”. Great art reveals both.

For sorrow is most beautiful here, because Jesus is still there.

Bright Sadness:

How can we, as St Paul put it, “be sorrowful, yet always rejoicing”; how can we learn to live in the “living hope” which Peter spoke of, to have that bright sadness, which realizes that Jesus is always in the garden of Suffering, and already reigning silmultaneously.

The dutch artist, Van Gogh was asking this question in his own unique eccentric way. He found Jesus in sunflowers, worn worker’s boots, and in simple scenes of loneliness and human sufferings in the fields. How can we move into that bright sadness which Jesus walked and walks in-that yieldedness to suffering and God’s presence in the simple things around us? To be every joyful while in clear sight of suffering around us. How can we find the tone of Joy in the blues about us?!

Suffering exist in the continuum of a living hope, which is Peter’s reason to live well. In I Peter, he says with this living Hope before us, let’s endure our trials as places of transformation! Still true that.

(Signs speak to the healing of understanding, and wonders to the healing of the imagination. Art is a wonder, meant to make more whole how we image things. The symbolic is always present in everything around us, but we must help other’s see it.)

The role of art is to incarnate Christ”s Life into the symbolic dimension, so that we are in awe of God again. That’s a servant’s role, and so one must put their own art onto the Altar of His art of Life.

What art may be:
Art as incarnation, and ushering in the Kingdom into the symbolic.
Art as suffering well.
Art as expression of Christ on earth through the symbolic.
Art as tabernacle of meeting through the symbolic parts of us and God.

Social role of art:

Art is meant to mid-wife collective imagination, which is why the artist themselves must be in a servant position! We serve the healing of the imagination.

And yet…

“My art is less important than my family’s life.” Vincent Van Gogh. (So few artist get to that level of sacrifice!) Art must yield and enter into life’s suffering to be made whole.

Sorrow, pain and suffering makes the most beautiful art, because Jesus is always there in suffering—the One acquainted with all our griefs. For this reason the storms and gethsemane are where beauty is found. “This is the paradoxical unity of suffering and joy down here.” Vincent Van Gogh.

There is not escapism or romanticism or utopianism in true art, rather there is incarnation into the particular sufferings around us. Jesus is always meet-able in the storm and night car crashes around us daily.

The Cross and Resurrection work in daily tandem down here. I paint suffering, so that i will know joy more incarnately.

Art is meant to serve life, not the other way around. Van Gogh realized his own brother’s life was more important than his own art, and so was willing to lay it down if necessary so his brother’s and his son’s health would improve. Art yields to life!

The paradoxical unity of suffering and joy is my subject on earth. And certainly was Van Gogh’s!

Jesus is always sorrowful yet always rejoicing. How does art meet Him there?

Since we know that joy and sorrow are tethered to the same pole, and that pole if The Cross. How can our art reflect the beauty in suffering?

Sorrow is most beautiful because Jesus is always there! The One intimately acquainted with all our griefs shows up in suffering. And our best art, is made in that space!

It’s always resurrection in death down here, and that’s why great art finds Christ in suffering, and is therefore never just sentimental, escapist or romantic, but living spirituality whether overtly religious or not, meets Christ in daily moments of suffering.

Once, Van Gogh was willing to sacrifice even his art as less important than his brother’s life, i think his art got more profound. Once we get our art on the altar of sacrifice, then it becomes more useful.

Everything has a symbolic dimension, the artist makes that overt. But if that artist also lays down their life and gifts, they are able to get into another layer or level of beauty—the actual suffering of Christ in His Own creation.

This seeming paradox of the storm being more beautiful than a sunset, is one of the things Van Gogh left us with. That Christ is met best and most deeply in pain. The brightest glory is met in suffering. The resurrection is met through the Cross. All great art, has this inner understanding in it.

We are not meant to escape suffering, but meet God in and through it. That’s what Van Gogh was saying, among other things, through his paintings of worker’s shoes. He didn’t need to paint the cross, the Cross of Christ was present in those worn out tired and glorious shoes of the urban worker.

Christ is met best in our sufferings. Art is a servant of that way.

Lots of us want resurrection without death, but that’s simply not how life works. The best artists teach us to see glory in suffering.

When you lay down your own gifts or art, you want to serve a truer vision of what actually is. That vision is that God meets people in their pain, and suffering, and walks along side making us more whole. The meeting point is suffering, the outcome is glory. Art is meant to serve life, not the other way around.

To become the message of your art, is more important than making art. That He incarnates into you what you are trying to see and teach, is the message. When an artist does this, their life becomes the message they are trying to express. That’s the way of Christ in artists.

When your art is just a vehicle of incarnation and transformation something grand happens. Like King david your become the sign and wonder, you become a portent, model and piece of art made by God to express something. Few artists get there, where their actual lives become the symbol of what God was wanting to say through them about Himself. We become the art we are making as we yield it to Him, and place our whole being on His Altar.

At one point, the artist Van Gogh decided not to make overtly religious art, but instead to express His spirituality directly through the suffering around Him. He felt it best to disclose Christ through the peasants and village suffering around Him instead of painting the Cross.

He felt he could say more from painting glory in a storm well than painting the nails and blood. But he was still telling the same gospel story. “If I can’t meet Christ in the daily struggles around me, i certainly cannot attempt to paint an image of His Cross.” So much christian art has missed this basic incarnatiional point he was making through his art. So, we see so much sentimental or overtly religious art, rather than telling the gospel, His testimony, through the particulars of ours.

We don’t have to be overtly religious to express His Life in ours. His Spirit can be expressed through a painting of an old worker’s shoes. “One does not need to make overtly religious art, to express the actual message of a religious scene; that is, to capture the spirituality of Christ in that scene.” His Story can even be told directly through ours—as in the case of Jeremiah, Paul and others whose biographies became His. That is, whose life became living parables.

Van Gogh liked translating the parables into his current surroundings. That farmer, that woman who is tired, that afternoon when everyone in the village was depressed—contains all the old stories as well, if seen through the filter of the Heart of Christ! That was his main point, perhaps. We can see the gospel, all around us, if we look well and enter His suffering glory. We can be sorrowful but always rejoicing in all we see, as we enter Him and His vision. That living hope still stands, but we can’t avoid suffering or even try to escape it. Suffering is the most overt door into the house of Jesus. He’s always lived there.

This artist tried to overtly paint a Jesus scene, but just it didn’t feel true to him. Instead, he decided to paint the same incarnate message through pairs of old workers shoes, and storms at sunset, and potatoes in lament of lack of rain. I understand that way. And respect it. His one overt painting was Isaiah 53 about the suffering Servant. Makes sense, as he stated it indirectly through another prophet’s words. The suffering Servant and Gethsemane were perhaps this artist’s guiding inner images in his own struggle to meet Christ daily in life.

“All of reality is also symbolic at the same time, and Reality is filled with suffering and joy.”

Why paint personal:

“I’ve decided the paint the things closest to me as my true incarnation of spirituality!”

Religious art often tends to be too overt about its message rather than incarnational. Once the message has become who we are, we are free to express it through a flower or landscape, or a subway scene.

Afterthoughts: When an artist is more concerned with encountering God than expressing themselves, the trajectory of their journey becomes a teaching or message for others.

When we put our gifts on the altar of sacrifice, we become servants for others, and our art has another level of His Authority which enters.
Art as serving others, is still radical. Few artist make it to a place where they serve the whole with their creative gifts; most still need validation or fame, and don’t get to a Jesus like place of serving with your already king or queen—ness. It’s rare, but when it happens in a person, very beautiful. King David would be an example, as are many others throughout history. But it’s still unusual. The temptation for self glory are high.

Art as servant is still odd for many. But we are meant to serve with whatever gifts we were given. And art is just another medium of the formation of the Life of Christ in us—at least for those who have met Him.

Lastly, and perhaps the point of this raw entry: suffering is a place of always meeting God. And hope and joy are always hanging nearby on that corner.

To embody or incarnate the teachings of being in Christ is more important than representing them, and as we prioritize that, our art will reflect it.

But life comes before expression-being precedes symbol-yet, both inform one another. Expression is meant to serve being and be in tandem with it. If our art, is a place of meeting and devotion, it may be blessed to express that deep to Deep inner dialogue which will outlast us. Like our spirituality gets to be overhears—like St Paul and Jeremiah’s. Few artist get there. When they do, their lives and art become the same Message.

Art then is one sense, is just a medium to meet God through. In another, it reveals the symbolic part of that meeting. So when an artist actually seeks God, and comes into intimacy with Him, their art becomes a testimony. And a story for us all.

When art becomes a window into conversion and ever growing intimacy with God, that artist themselves become a living portent or symbol of how humans are meant to relate to God. That was the case in King David, and many others throughout history, but is still rare, and worth noting forever.

To discard fame, celebrity and entertainment and enter actual out loud spirituality and public death and rebirth is still perhaps the highest calling of the priestly role of artists. To live out loud in our spiritualities, to walk the wire in the publics view, is a rarefied sacrifice which God always takes note of, i think. Those who have, leave a legacy of more than fame, but on of participating and incarnating a much longer and potent story of being for us all.

Last thought: suffering is a place to meet God. We meet Him in the suffering around us, and we find ironically, His Joy there. When artist avoid suffering a place of meeting, their art loses it’s force of life, and goes flat or untrue to what is. This is because Jesus is always in suffering, and making it beautiful. Beauty is met best in suffering. If we can see the glory in pain, we can get a glimpse of Jesus’ heart. And then express it.