Transcript
Speaker: Hey friends, so today I'm going to put my little ad at the front end of the podcast instead of in the middle of the podcast because I didn't really want to interrupt the flow of the conversation because the conversation was just flowing and I don't need to interrupt it.
Speaker: So if you've already heard my Godspell spiel and don't want to hear it again, just skip like a minute or so and you'll be into the podcast.
Speaker: But I just wanted to kind of take a second, share with you guys about Godspell.
Speaker: I'm really excited because we officially have enough money where we can afford the rights.
Speaker: So that's fantastic.
Speaker: The show is absolutely going to happen.
Speaker: Our goal is to get us up to $4,500 by the end of the year, which is about a third of our cost to put on the show.
Speaker: So if you would like to donate and help us reach that goal, you can do so on our website.
Speaker: I'd really love to reach that goal by the end of the year.
Speaker: So if you haven't given and would like to give, or if you know people that might be interested in giving, go ahead and share that with them.
Speaker: If you want to know more about the show, maybe want to be involved next year when we're doing that.
Speaker: All the information's on our website.
Speaker: We're going to be doing it in July.
Speaker: I'm so incredibly excited with everything that God's doing in it already.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I've said this a million times, but I have such a phenomenal production crew.
Speaker: God is just lining everything up perfectly for it.
Speaker: I am, I'm, I'm in awe when I sit down and think of it and take myself out of the, the, the running of trying to get it funded.
Speaker: When I, when I zoom out and look at it, it's, it's incredible.
Speaker: The blessings that God is providing with it.
Speaker: So I am super excited about that.
Speaker: If you want to know more again about supporting it,
Speaker: Visit our website.
Speaker: Everything's right there on the Godspell page.
Speaker: Share it with your friends.
Speaker: Share it with your family.
Speaker: Anybody you think might be interested in being involved or supporting it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thank you, guys.
Speaker: Enjoy this episode.
Speaker: Like this week, I've been...
Speaker: I think it's the Collective Purity where it says, there's this one line I've been really dwelling on in my devotional time.
Speaker: It's like, God to you all hearts are open.
Speaker: And that phrase has been just stuck with me.
Speaker: And I think what I've loved about the liturgy and what I love as an actor is, you get to imbue these beautiful words that were created by someone else.
Speaker: And in a way, in the act of imbuing those words, those words then turn around and become part of you.
Speaker: Mm.
Speaker: Hello friends, welcome back to Artists of the Way.
Speaker: I'm John the host.
Speaker: Today I'm joined by my good friend Tim, who's our first repeat guest, which was very thought out by me.
Speaker: I didn't message him last minute being like, Tim, I don't have an episode this week.
Speaker: I need a guest.
Speaker: But I'm excited today.
Speaker: We're going to talk about the topic of art as a liturgy, which is kind of something I've been kind of
Speaker: Oh, what's the word?
Speaker: I'm trying to say spewing, and that's not the word.
Speaker: Percolating.
Speaker: That's a word.
Speaker: It's not quite the word I was thinking of, but the specific word doesn't matter.
Speaker: It's been kind of percolating in my subconscious, something I've been mulling on.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: Mulling.
Speaker: Mulling over, especially with the show that I'm in right now, which I haven't mentioned to anybody.
Speaker: I probably should, or like on the podcast.
Speaker: But Tim is currently directing a show at Master Art, Seeking the Child, which I am in.
Speaker: And there's just some things about that show that are kind of paralleling just some different aspects and different people in my own life.
Speaker: And so I feel like there's some ways God's using that as formation in my life.
Speaker: And so I've been kind of mulling over this idea of art as liturgy.
Speaker: And I've mentioned it to Tim before.
Speaker: I've mentioned it to a couple other good artistic friends and
Speaker: chatted through the idea a little bit, but not a lot.
Speaker: And Tim has had some thoughts on this same topic.
Speaker: So we're going to chat with him about that today and maybe a little bit about Seeking the Child.
Speaker: But how are you doing this morning?
Speaker: I'm doing good.
Speaker: I'm still recovering from Thanksgiving, which was yesterday.
Speaker: Lots of food.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm still trying to find my equilibrium after eating more than I normally do.
Speaker: But I'm doing well.
Speaker: Doing well.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: So liturgy is kind of like a very, it's a very old church term.
Speaker: I think a lot of people in modern mainstream evangelical Christianity may not be super familiar with liturgy and what exactly it is, even if there may be elements of it in their worship.
Speaker: So do you want to kind of just give us a little explanation on what is liturgy?
Speaker: Sure, I'll do my best.
Speaker: I mean, it really depends a lot on the religious tradition that you've practiced.
Speaker: But at its most basic, liturgy is a method of public worship.
Speaker: and this has been an interesting topic all through my life because being someone who started Reformed and then went Pentecostal, and now I'm moving toward Anglican, I've had very different thoughts about liturgy through the years because there's...
Speaker: just the basic idea that liturgy is the way that you do public worship.
Speaker: But then there's also, like some people will say, well, this is a liturgical church and this is a non-liturgical church.
Speaker: And what they mean is that there's a very set form of corporate worship.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Catholic services, Anglican services, the more Orthodox traditional services usually have a very set form.
Speaker: They follow the they follow the Christian year, the different festivals and the different they work through the scripture like Anglicanism, which we're in now does goes through the entire scripture in two years.
Speaker: And there's very set ways they do it.
Speaker: A lot of it when you talk about liturgy from its word origins is really more about the Eucharist and the inclusion of the Eucharist in a service.
Speaker: Which for those who don't know, because Eucharist can be a more high church term is just communion.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's a high church term for communion.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Um, so I think when we're approaching the topic of art as liturgy, you really have to go back to the very simple definition of it's a form of worship that tends to be ritualistic, uh, which is, that's certainly where I've been coming at it as a, as an artist and a creator is like, okay, when we think about, um,
Speaker: offering what we're giving to the Lord in a way that is worshipful.
Speaker: I think you almost have to get to that point, even if you don't use the word liturgy, you have to get to that point where it's like, well, how do I do that in a very conscious way?
Speaker: So, but that might be going a little too far, far, but so that's where, I mean, my little overview of liturgy and you could probably poke holes in a bunch of that, but yeah.
Speaker: No, that's good.
Speaker: Yeah, so it's been interesting, I guess, for those who don't know, because not all our listeners are intimately familiar with my church life or your church life.
Speaker: So Tim and I have been attending an Anglican church for years.
Speaker: My wife and I have been attending it for about the last year now, maybe just a little over a year.
Speaker: Seven, eight months, I think.
Speaker: It's just been an interesting journey.
Speaker: That's a whole story in and of itself.
Speaker: But for both of us, that's been an interesting journey to kind of, I guess, claim liturgy as our own form of worship.
Speaker: Because, you know, and we'll probably chat a little bit more about this.
Speaker: You've had different...
Speaker: elements or draws towards aspects of liturgy throughout your spiritual life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: My wife was raised Catholic, so I had, I think, a really beautiful introduction to liturgy as we were attending each other's churches, and I got to kind of observe and then dip in and out of the liturgy of the Catholic Church during the Mass during that.
Speaker: But now, as we've been attending this Anglican Church, and it has
Speaker: its own liturgy, which is similar to and also different from the Catholic liturgy.
Speaker: It's been one that has, I've kind of claimed that script, which is a pretty common way to refer to the liturgy.
Speaker: And that's been a very interesting parallel to my work in theater, which you and I have talked about before, where theater, you have a script and you have to
Speaker: I wouldn't say you have to imbue it with emotion.
Speaker: I think it has emotion in and of itself, but you have to let that emotion
Speaker: be imbued into you and then come out as truth, which I think is a very—this is more of the theological side of just liturgy in general and something I've appreciated.
Speaker: But that's been a great virtue of liturgy to me as I've been attending Mass and doing some morning and evening prayer that comes along with Anglicanism, where there's days where it's like I may not be feeling—I don't know—
Speaker: I can't think of the prayers.
Speaker: There's a lot of prayers.
Speaker: There's a lot of prayers in the church.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I might not be feeling one of the prayers on a particular day, but by virtue of saying it and letting it imbue that truth and emotion in me and me committing to that,
Speaker: Saying, I am going to profess this and I'm going to mean it even if I don't necessarily feel like I believe it.
Speaker: That's a very theatrical thing.
Speaker: And I think has been a cool parallel form of worship for me as an actor.
Speaker: Oh, definitely.
Speaker: I think, too, there's something about actors, especially if you're playing a role for a long time.
Speaker: Now we're community theater actors.
Speaker: So usually it's around three, four weeks, five, if it's really popular, there's only ever been once in my life where I've actually played a, a, a role for over a year.
Speaker: It was like a year and a half.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But when you're in that, even in the short term, there's going to be days where you're like really on and you feel like you're really connecting with the words and the script and the character.
Speaker: And then there's going to be days where you're not.
Speaker: And as an actor, your kind of job is to find whatever that is inside yourself to kind of still portray that truthfully.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: I think for me, that's part of the love that I've come to have.
Speaker: Well, first of all, it's like liturgy kind of both has been there, but snuck up on me at the same time.
Speaker: I realized as I've gotten into the liturgy more that I've kind of been longing for it ever since I was a first believer, which is more years ago than I'm going to talk about.
Speaker: Because there's been these elements of classical worship.
Speaker: that I have been drawn to.
Speaker: And as I've entered into a liturgical life, in a daily devotion and the repetition of prayers, I've come to realize that a lot of the things that I've been drawn to in music and poetry and art, specifically Christian oriented, stem from the church liturgy throughout the ages.
Speaker: But the thing I find interesting, and for someone who's been a lifelong Christian, it's like I have, and I've said this to my friends before, it's like I have absolutely no problem praying for other people.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: I struggle with daily prayer just between myself and God.
Speaker: And I think that's one of the reasons that I've been drawn to the liturgy is because the liturgy provides you with prayer when you don't really know how to verbalize it.
Speaker: Like this week I've been, um,
Speaker: I think it's the Collective Purity where it says there's this one line I've been really dwelling on in my devotional time.
Speaker: It's like, God to you all hearts are open.
Speaker: And that phrase has been just stuck with me.
Speaker: And I think what I've loved about the liturgy and what I love as an actor is, um, you get to imbue these beautiful words that were created by someone else.
Speaker: And in a way, in the act of imbuing those words, those words then turn around and become part of you.
Speaker: And I'm not sure there's other art forms that have the same experience, but I hope we're going to try and delve into that a little bit today.
Speaker: I think there can be for sure, and we'll chat about that in a second.
Speaker: One more little geeky thing about the liturgy, and then we'll move on to art, I guess.
Speaker: People are like, when did this become a liturgy podcast?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Liturgists of the way.
Speaker: That's not what I signed up for.
Speaker: That's a really interesting concept, though.
Speaker: Maybe you can start an alternate podcast.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: I'll have a little spin-off.
Speaker: Liturgists of the way.
Speaker: But there's... It's... The words... There's this element of liturgy that I think is really cool that I've not experienced a whole lot as an evangelical Protestant Christian.
Speaker: which is that it's a work of the church in a sense.
Speaker: Like the liturgy is the wisdom of the churches of the church, not churches.
Speaker: There's one global church that is the church of Christ, not the denomination, right?
Speaker: The actual church of Christ.
Speaker: And you know, all the liturgies,
Speaker: the goal is let's distill all this wisdom.
Speaker: Let's take these prayers from these wonderful saints and church fathers who studied scripture and, and, and did so faithfully and, and beautifully.
Speaker: And a lot of the liturgy is Psalms and prayers and pieces of scripture.
Speaker: And it's like, let's just take the work of the church and,
Speaker: the best of it, which aligns with scripture, you know, scripture is still supreme and authoritative and the liturgy submitted to that.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: I mean, most of it is from scripture.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But then we get to kind of, it's, it's a connection point to the history of the church.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Like we pray in the morning prayer.
Speaker: There's a prayer from St.
Speaker: John.
Speaker: Oh gosh, I'm going to mess up his name.
Speaker: St.
Speaker: John Chrysostom.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: who is one of the ancient first two or three centuries fathers.
Speaker: There's a hymn that's been sang since the first or second century of the church that's in there.
Speaker: We get to echo these words that the church has used to worship forever.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We get to sing the Sanctus, which is mentioned on another podcast here, the Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of power and might.
Speaker: We get to use those exact, well, not the exact words, but the English version of those exact words.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think it's a really beautiful way for us to be able to, A, partake in the whole legacy of the church because we're all brothers and sisters in Christ, even stretching back to the first and second century.
Speaker: But then also, like, we get to receive that from the church, and God gets to use the church as a ministry to us throughout all ages.
Speaker: And I think that that's super cool and something I didn't get a lot of in my...
Speaker: upbringing, I guess, in the church from my denomination, because church history kind of stopped at the Reformation and then jumped back to the New Testament.
Speaker: But it's been really cool to kind of be able to receive things from all of church history, from the best of the wisdom that the church has to offer on its insight into God and the truth of Scripture.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I think, you know, cause we were having a conversation a little while ago about, you know, for the past, gosh, 20 some years, I've been a Pentecostal.
Speaker: Um, and I haven't, if you ask me, I'm going to say, well, yeah, there's still, that's still part of my spiritual DNA and who I am.
Speaker: And cause I do believe that the spirit is very living and active here in our present today.
Speaker: But I think the thing that both has most attracted me to liturgy is the very thing you talked about.
Speaker: It's like when I'm praying the prayers, when I'm going through the Eucharist, when I'm practicing with that, first of all,
Speaker: In our little local body, I'm connecting with everybody.
Speaker: We're all unified.
Speaker: Which just being unified in the culture we're in today that is so filled with divisiveness, just being unified in attitude and action, in worshiping the Lord through the words that we're saying together, that we're saying as a group,
Speaker: enacting those things, just coming to a place of unity is a beautiful thing.
Speaker: But then when you think of the timelessness of God, I'm walking through and saying words
Speaker: that are beyond time and space.
Speaker: There's people 20 miles to my east in Holland at a denomination, they're saying those words.
Speaker: There's someone in South Africa saying those words.
Speaker: There's someone in Asia.
Speaker: There are people
Speaker: all over who use the prayer book, who are all doing this.
Speaker: And we're connecting with those people regardless of space.
Speaker: But then you take that next dimension.
Speaker: And as a sci-fi fantasy geek, this really blows my mind.
Speaker: You take that next dimension and now we're
Speaker: We're connecting with people throughout time.
Speaker: People who have used these same words and these same actions for almost 2,000 years.
Speaker: And then you think about we're also connecting with those people in the future who are going to use the same words.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And just to kind of bring it back to art, unless you're doing a very original piece, every time you imbue a character, you're in a way connecting with every other actor that has played that character.
Speaker: And that was something really interesting with Hamlet, especially.
Speaker: Hamlet is another thing that's...
Speaker: Kind of ancient.
Speaker: I mean, it's much less ancient than the church and the words of the scripture.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But still like, what, five, six hundred years, something like that, that Hamlet has existed.
Speaker: And I know that was for me and Shane, I think for you as well, as we were approaching these characters in Hamlet.
Speaker: was crazy because they were characters imbued with so much legacy.
Speaker: And yes, we were a small community theater production.
Speaker: So I don't think you could look at it 100%.
Speaker: Well, you could.
Speaker: It's not like I was... There's like this famous little script of Hamlet that's passed on to like the next Hamlet, quote unquote, by whoever received it last.
Speaker: So it's not like I was receiving that book.
Speaker: But in a way, I was like carrying on this torch from...
Speaker: Laurence Olivier and Derek Jacoby and David Tennant and Benedict Cumberbatch and all these amazing actors whom I probably didn't meet their level of because they're professional and all of that.
Speaker: But I got to partake in some of that legacy.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Carry that on.
Speaker: But also...
Speaker: it was still like John's Hamlet.
Speaker: And then liturgy, like those words, the way I inflect the collect for purity or the prayer of humble access before we take the Eucharist, like that's still John's, that, that is John's prayer.
Speaker: I own that, but it's also the prayer of the church.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: And it's the prayer of every individual Christian who has prayed that prayer.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And kind of like in a way, we're going through that with the play that we're in too, because this is only the third time this play is put on.
Speaker: And you're playing the lead and I've played the lead in the past.
Speaker: So as a director, it's really fascinating for me to...
Speaker: To watch you do these words that I've done in the past.
Speaker: But you're imbuing them with your own character.
Speaker: And there's elements of John's personality that are coming out in Artaban that weren't there before.
Speaker: But then I also... What's been cool is I've been able to connect and see you make discoveries.
Speaker: That I've made.
Speaker: And it's like...
Speaker: I see your eyes light up and I'm like, my eyes light up and I'm like, oh, that's really cool.
Speaker: But then I also, what's really been fascinating is you'll find things in words that I've written and performed that I didn't find, even though I was the author and have played that character.
Speaker: And that's been just as fascinating for me.
Speaker: And I think in a way that reflects what the, what entering into a liturgical church has been for me is in, you know, I've been a huge student of church history, particularly the Western church for a long, long time and entering into this church.
Speaker: And now I'm doing these words that I've actually been aware of for a while, but I'm like, wow.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I'm able to discover things almost on a weekly basis that I'm like, oh, wow, this is now affecting me in a very strong and personal way.
Speaker: These words that I may have been familiar with.
Speaker: But then next week, I'll go through and we'll read the different scripture passages and we'll do some of the same prayers that we do every week.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: But something in that prayer, if my heart's open to what God wants to do in those words, different words will come more alive to me every week.
Speaker: And I think that's both...
Speaker: What I love about theater is discovering in the script, in the characters, in the things that we're playing, discovering that truth.
Speaker: And then, you know, that's very much paralleling what we do at church and what we do in theater for sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So let me ask you about then life formation in both of these things, like how our life is formed by liturgy and by art and the way that that parallels.
Speaker: Have you pondered that idea at all?
Speaker: Kind of.
Speaker: Well, I'm going to back up a second.
Speaker: Because John's going too fast.
Speaker: You've got to pump the brakes.
Speaker: No, I'm actually going to like back up and take a little side road.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because, and this is something that when I was a Pentecostal, this is like, I was on a soapbox about this.
Speaker: Every church is liturgical.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Even the churches that say we're spirit led.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: You have a form of worship.
Speaker: You have a ritual that you go through.
Speaker: And so if you go back to that basic meaning that we talked about is like every every single time you come to public worship, there is a liturgy.
Speaker: Now, what that liturgy looks like may be different.
Speaker: And I think when we're calling it a liturgical church, we're calling it that because that's a time-honored traditional.
Speaker: That's one that's been used for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Speaker: Where if you go to like a contemporary service or a Pentecostal service...
Speaker: If you go to any church for more than three or four weeks, you kind of discover that they have a way they do things.
Speaker: Yeah, they have their rhythm and patterns.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Where the worship is, where the sermon is, how they do that.
Speaker: Well, and even the calendar, too, just by nature of...
Speaker: Being American, we have Father's Day, Mother's Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Or a drunk retreat if you're going to avoid Halloween.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's still that rhythm as well where it's the special feast days.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: in the churches that we label as liturgical, they're just kind of looking a little further back and saying, okay, we're going to adopt these things that either were in many ways outlined by God in scripture or out of the tradition of the early church.
Speaker: So life formation, I think all of us,
Speaker: Unless you're completely random and chaotic in your approach to life.
Speaker: All of us have habits and rituals that we fall into on a daily basis.
Speaker: So in a way, we all are liturgical in nature.
Speaker: I think that's not just human nature.
Speaker: I think that's kind of imbued in creation.
Speaker: Like when you look at animals, like geese who fly south and fly north, and they have...
Speaker: They sense the times and seasons and know when they need to do these different things in their life.
Speaker: It's very instinctual.
Speaker: And I think in a way, life rhythm is a very instinctual God-given gift to who we are.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think it's kind of natural for us to kind of all fall into a rhythm of life, which is really what...
Speaker: you know, liturgy, when we talk about liturgy in the church sense, it's a rhythm of worship.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, and I think the more you take that rhythm of worship and say, okay, I live my life every day.
Speaker: There are things I have to do every day.
Speaker: Um, like when you, when you go into like the book of Colossians where it talks about, um, do all things as unto the Lord.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: And that our very lives are an act of worship.
Speaker: So if we take that to heart and we really think, okay, my life and how I live my life is an act of worship as unto the Lord.
Speaker: And we all have these kind of daily rhythms.
Speaker: And I think the difference between, and this is kind of like going back to the church thing, is like liturgical churches recognize, embrace, and say, oh, we are going to be, this is our rhythm.
Speaker: Churches that are non-liturgical, and it's funny because in like Pentecostal, it's like, we don't use the liturgy.
Speaker: We follow the leading of the spirit.
Speaker: Like, yeah, you do.
Speaker: But at the same time, it's like we're sitting here making an order of service every week.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: So I'm like, but isn't that liturgy?
Speaker: So I think all of us, I don't want to get too...
Speaker: I think all of us have, who do we serve?
Speaker: And are we going to be conscious about how, about molding our rhythm of life to the one that we serve?
Speaker: And I think that's, what's been really cool about me as I've entered into life.
Speaker: liturgy as my form of worship in a communal sense, it's also started to make me think about liturgy as worship in a personal sense.
Speaker: And as an artist, it's also especially approaching the show that we're in, which is, you know,
Speaker: very much a show about living your life surrendered to God and his leading.
Speaker: So when you think about, all right, if I'm going to live my life, surrender to God, what does the rhythm of my life look like as someone who submitted to that?
Speaker: And I think that's an interesting question for an artist too.
Speaker: And I even talked to when I was,
Speaker: chatting with John Van Dusen last episode about that a little bit too.
Speaker: Like artists have a tendency to try and throw rhythm out the window and do as much art as we can and be as productive as we can and just load it all up.
Speaker: I have that tendency very much.
Speaker: So it's very, I have to be really intentional and oftentimes fail to say, no, today prayer is more important than me creating a thing or moving towards this, uh,
Speaker: So if I can take a little more time to pray and give that project less time, and that's fine, I have to pick when it's a healthy time to do a show or not.
Speaker: I have to pick when it's a good season of life to write something or not.
Speaker: And I think it's just a human nature thing to struggle with rhythm.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: I do think it's important for artists.
Speaker: What is that rhythm in seasons of life?
Speaker: Like what is your seasonal rhythm?
Speaker: Like big picture, what's your small picture rhythm day in and day out?
Speaker: What's your rhythm of creating and what's your rhythm of receiving from God so that you can create?
Speaker: Cause we can't create if we aren't receiving from God.
Speaker: Well, I mean, we can, but I don't think it's as good.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm curious on like the seasonal, unless you had other thoughts on that, I guess I don't have to.
Speaker: Well, no, I think, I think if we're going to jump into seasonal there, I thought, I think there's ways that those connect.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Cause I'm, I'm thinking about, so seeking the child is the show that we're in right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: And as I've said a couple times on this, God very much frequently aligns the show that I'm in with things going on in my life.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: So much so.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Seeking the Child has been kind of, in a sense, profound, but also in another sense, just another show, which has been kind of strange.
Speaker: But I think it's because God has been stretching my perspective in that show, whereas I don't think he's necessarily been...
Speaker: That's not true.
Speaker: This last week or so, he's hit me with a couple things to think about and I think some healing things.
Speaker: But in general, what's been really healthy about this show and unique about this show for me in this season is it's helped me to get into the perspective of somebody who doesn't experience God the same way that I do.
Speaker: Yeah, which you and I have talked about.
Speaker: But there are several people in my life that don't experience or relate to God in the same way that I do.
Speaker: Plus, I'm going into chaplaincy eventually, God willing, unless he leads me a different direction.
Speaker: And that's one where.
Speaker: many people are going to experience God very differently depending on where their walk with him is at and like just their tendencies as Christians because we all relate to God differently.
Speaker: And I've always been aware of, like I've never been the kind of person, well, that's not maybe true.
Speaker: Maybe I have at some, in some times.
Speaker: I try not to be the person that's like, you're not hearing a word from God or this or that or this thing that is,
Speaker: Applying the way that I relate to God onto other people and assuming that if they don't match or meet that that that's bad spirituality on their part, right?
Speaker: I try not to do that, but then it can be difficult to empathize or relate When you don't experience it when it's something outside of your experience There's a lot of times where I'm like I'm trying but I don't get it and I think playing the character that I am I've been able to explore
Speaker: Because I don't think this character relates to God in the way that I do and the way that he relates to God and his experience of God throughout his life is his whole thing.
Speaker: I don't think that his experience of engaging with God is my experience of engaging with God.
Speaker: So getting to do that has been a good kind of broadening, beautiful thing for me.
Speaker: So all that to say, that is a way in which God is using this show in my seasonal rhythm as a sort of liturgy where I'm repeating this story.
Speaker: I'm repeating these words.
Speaker: I'm repeating this theme in my head over and over and over.
Speaker: And he's just using that to gently and kindly stretch me and grow me in the way that he wants.
Speaker: So I'm curious...
Speaker: What, I don't know, I'm curious on your thoughts on that idea.
Speaker: I think in some way, I think actors may be a little more hardwired to be able to accept liturgical worship.
Speaker: Because we go through it.
Speaker: I mean, every time we're in a show, there's,
Speaker: And I was thinking about this just this past week as I'm like directing the show, you have to kind of put the schedule together.
Speaker: And I've directed a number of different shows and there's a routine, there's a rhythm, there's a method where you start out and you always have the read through when you first cast the show and you have the read through where everybody gets together and goes through the script.
Speaker: And then you kind of go through your blocking rehearsals and you go through your character work and you get and then you get into sort of the scene work time.
Speaker: So every show, even though shows are radically different, casts are radically different, how how we approach a show.
Speaker: has a rhythm to it and has a certain way that you approach it.
Speaker: And then I think of like when I'm working on a writing project or people that I've talked to who are artists, one of the important things that writers will tell you and artists will tell you is you have to set aside specific time, schedule time to work on your art.
Speaker: And
Speaker: in a way, even in personal, individual art, I feel like you've almost, yes, there's inspiration and there's finding that motivation to work on it, but if you talk to our friend Susie, she has deadlines and she has to schedule that time.
Speaker: to work on her creative projects.
Speaker: And, you know, you and I both know if you don't schedule time to work on a creative project, you'll have a great idea and it will never be realized.
Speaker: Like this very episode of the podcast.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I was like, I should work on this or I want to have an episode.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think theater is probably even closer to liturgical worship because it's communal, it's collaborative.
Speaker: It may only be a director and one actor in a one-man show, but it also could be like in our case, we've got director and artists working by the scenes and we've got a cast of like 19 people.
Speaker: And we're all kind of walking through this rhythm communally.
Speaker: to approach this goal of offering this piece of worship.
Speaker: An interesting parallel to what you're talking about with art there and with liturgy that I hear people say about both those things is I feel like I think a lot of artists have a concern about like
Speaker: over making the art too mundane, doing it too mundane.
Speaker: By scheduling it, you're going to take the joy out of it, or it's going to become your job, or it's going to become work, you know?
Speaker: And then I think, on the other hand, with liturgy, I have people and friends who are concerned about the idea of a liturgy or a written-out form of worship because it's like, oh, I'm not free to worship then.
Speaker: Like, I want to just...
Speaker: worship, but there's these words that I have to use to worship that's going to make it too mundane or too rote.
Speaker: And I'm not going to really be able to embrace it.
Speaker: But I think there's... Oh crap, I can't remember who said this quote.
Speaker: Darn, that's going to frustrate me.
Speaker: There's this beautiful quote that I feel like is either by Chesterton or Lewis, but it might be by somebody completely different.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: where I think it's Chesterton, where it's like we serve a God that makes the sun rise every single morning and takes so much joy in the sun rising every morning.
Speaker: And that is the exact same thing over and over again.
Speaker: But he has this childlike joy where he says, again, he wants it to happen again and again and again.
Speaker: And we have the tendency of being like, well, that's mundane, you know?
Speaker: I love watching the sunrise, but probably three quarters of the time that I get up for work and the sun's out, I'm like, that's too bright and I want to sleep more.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But then there's beautiful times where I slow down and I see the sunrise and I'm like, oh, that's right.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: And the mundane rhythm has beauty to it again.
Speaker: So, I don't know, I don't have a full answer, but I'm like, that's an interesting parallel.
Speaker: Well, and it kind of goes back to what you were talking about in your exploration of Artaban, realizing that people experience God in different ways.
Speaker: And that can be a seasonal thing as well.
Speaker: Like I know right now I'm very deeply affected by the words of the liturgy and the words of the daily prayers.
Speaker: And that's really, really helping me because I feel like I've gone through this dry season where I'm not, I haven't been able to find the words to communicate with God.
Speaker: So being able to lean back on people who've prayed these prayers.
Speaker: And in many ways, I'm like, those prayers are the...
Speaker: result of years of people trying to find exactly the right words or using the words that God gave us to begin with to find the right words.
Speaker: So this is a season for me where that's very, very alive and active.
Speaker: But there's other seasons where, you know, I am much more, it's much more about my own Psalms that I offer up.
Speaker: And I think we limit ourselves if we,
Speaker: And I guess this is one of the wonderful things about all the denominations that have kind of come out of the splintering of the church after the Reformation.
Speaker: For me, the liturgy is very important right now.
Speaker: And this is a season of my life where it's filled with life.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There was another season of my life where being spirit led and Pentecostal was very, very life giving to me.
Speaker: And I really needed that for that particular season of my life.
Speaker: Um, and I think those are like larger seasons, but I think we all, you know, kind of going back to when you look at characters in scripture, when you look at characters in the show that we're doing, um,
Speaker: And kind of going back to Henry Van Dyke's short story, it's like there's so many different characters in this book.
Speaker: And same can be said of scripture.
Speaker: They're all experiencing God.
Speaker: but they're all experiencing them in very deeply personal and seasonal ways.
Speaker: Um, just giving one example, like one of the characters Arban runs into is John the Baptist.
Speaker: Now, if you look at John the Baptist's journey in scripture,
Speaker: He experienced God probably earlier than any of us.
Speaker: I mean, he had the spirit on him in the womb, and we see his reaction before he's even born.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a very present, radical, amazing thing.
Speaker: Then we go and we see John the Baptist in the wilderness where he's walking out the mission that he's been given in life.
Speaker: He's very, very... Almost ascetic.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And he's passing that along in ways that are very ritualistic, that are very repetitive to every person that he comes along.
Speaker: He's saying the same words, doing the same actions.
Speaker: He's got a liturgy in being someone who's going, I mean, his liturgy is baptism.
Speaker: And that, well, the cool thing is like, and we just experienced this at church a couple weeks ago, that baptism is
Speaker: It's still a part of church life, but that was a season in John's life And then we hear like I just read this in the Gospels, you know where Jesus's disciples are starting to baptize and some of John's disciples goes aren't you mad because they're like taking your thing and he's like No, we're not we're not in competition You know Jesus is the one who is the one to come
Speaker: But then eventually we're gonna see John at a very different place where he's in prison and he actually sends that message to Jesus and his disciples saying, are you the Messiah?
Speaker: I'm like, whoa, what happened?
Speaker: Because he was the one who was proclaiming Christ as Messiah, saw the dove of hand of heaven come down on him, hear the word of the Lord, and now he's at this place
Speaker: And Jesus even says no one is like John.
Speaker: And John gets to this season of his life where he's not experiencing God, where he doesn't have that surety of seeing and hearing.
Speaker: So he's at this place of doubt.
Speaker: And Jesus sends a messenger back to him saying, no, the lame walk, the blind see, the good news is being preached to the poor.
Speaker: So, which has a slight theological sidebar, like John walks through a season that many Christians I'm aware of would say, oh, look at John being a bad Christian there.
Speaker: Which... That drives me crazy.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Just an interesting thing.
Speaker: I'm like, that's a depressed season that I feel like we've all probably gone through at some point and are at least aware of people, if not have had people say, oh, you just got to have some more faith, man.
Speaker: You're not praying hard enough.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But if John the Baptist...
Speaker: Possibly one of the greatest Christians, quote-unquote, to ever live could go through that.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And I think we're too quick.
Speaker: We're too quick to say, oh, if things aren't going perfectly in your life, you're not doing it right.
Speaker: I'm like, well...
Speaker: That's not biblical, you know?
Speaker: And I think that's part of the beauty of just, like, accepting the season you're in.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And being able to fall back on, okay, maybe I'm, again, going back to what I originally was saying I found beautiful about the liturgy, maybe I'm not feeling it today.
Speaker: As an artist, maybe I'm not feeling...
Speaker: working on this piece of art.
Speaker: Maybe I'm not feeling writing.
Speaker: Maybe I'm not feeling playing my instrument.
Speaker: Maybe I'm not feeling recording a podcast because it's the holiday season, you know?
Speaker: No, I am enjoying this.
Speaker: Not to say, oh, I have to talk to Tim.
Speaker: Yeah, it's so hard.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: But like, maybe we're not feeling it.
Speaker: Or maybe somebody is...
Speaker: feeling it and writing like a thousand, 2000 words a day, you know, um, that doesn't mean that one is doing it better than the other.
Speaker: That just means you're in a season and it's okay as both an artist and a Christian, if you're in a season where the art's not flowing or you feel like God isn't saying a word to you every other day, um,
Speaker: But it seems much more like a season where God is just kind of quietly there and you don't necessarily even feel like he's there.
Speaker: You just know he's supposed to be there because the Bible says he's supposed to be there.
Speaker: you can walk through that season and that doesn't mean you're failing as a Christian.
Speaker: And the parallel as an artist does not mean you're failing as an artist because you're having a hard time doing the art.
Speaker: That might just be the season that you're in.
Speaker: Maybe it's the season of receiving.
Speaker: And I think...
Speaker: We're too quick because we've grown up with this idea of productivity and needing to be... And in some ways, we've kind of absconded with the biblical idea of fruitfulness, where we feel like we need to be producing fruit.
Speaker: We need to have fruit in our lives in order to be good Christians.
Speaker: And I'm like, well, that, yes.
Speaker: But trees need to grow.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And the seed doesn't have any fruit.
Speaker: The sapling doesn't have any fruit.
Speaker: Sometimes it's years before a plant will start to produce fruit from when it first starts to grow.
Speaker: And you might be in a season of germinating.
Speaker: And trees die every year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They die and then come back to life every year.
Speaker: Which, another side note, resurrection is literally like baked into trees.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Anyways.
Speaker: Which is so cool.
Speaker: So cool.
Speaker: But they, even once they're a fruitful tree...
Speaker: There's like a certain few months where they're bearing fruit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, you don't want to eat an apple when it's not apple season.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: As much as our like food productivity line tries to let us have all the fruits all the time.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So it goes back to that rhythms.
Speaker: And I think one of the lost, it's a lost thing on us to discover.
Speaker: And I think you were actually talking about this with John Ben-Dusen as well.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: There are seasons where we need to, you know, because I think he was talking about it in reference to the Sabbath and about his family trying to take, you know, practice the idea of Sabbath.
Speaker: Sabbath was created.
Speaker: I mean, and Jesus says this so many times because when he gets accused of doing stuff on the Sabbath, he goes, look.
Speaker: The Sabbath was not created for God.
Speaker: The Sabbath was created for man.
Speaker: It's part of the rhythm that you have in your life that you need rest.
Speaker: You can't be doing the good works that God has called you to do if you're not resting.
Speaker: Resting both physically, resting spiritually, resting your soul and mind.
Speaker: to receive what God has for you.
Speaker: And I think as artists, we need to be very careful that we don't fall into the trap of producing, where we forget that we're not gonna produce something honest and truthful and beautiful if we haven't received honesty and truth and beauty.
Speaker: One of my favorite things in the last few years that I've discovered that's been helpful for that for me, which I think I even shared with you because it was in that book that I lent you, the leadership book, which comes from Benedictine monks, which is the Benedictine rule of life.
Speaker: And the way that they—I don't know exactly how they put it together in the original Benedictine way.
Speaker: It might be just the same thing, but the way this author took that and put it together—
Speaker: for us today was he has like four boxes and two of them are ones where you're giving out things and then the other two are receiving so it's I think it's prayer work play and something else I don't know but the idea is that there's one that you're like
Speaker: Oh, relationships.
Speaker: So one is like, you know, what are you pouring into in work?
Speaker: What are you pouring into in other people?
Speaker: And what are you doing for God?
Speaker: And then what are you receiving from God?
Speaker: And what are you receiving from other people?
Speaker: And the idea is in these four quadrants, there should be a roughly equal amount of what you're receiving and what you're giving.
Speaker: Because if you're giving more than you're receiving, you get depleted.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And if you're receiving more than you're giving, you end up being selfish and greedy.
Speaker: So you have to make sure that that generosity is part of your daily rhythm.
Speaker: And I think that is something that... And here's the interesting thing.
Speaker: I think fruit and the idea of art and beauty...
Speaker: is the thing that creation element of it.
Speaker: I think that's what takes us a step further because you could say a lot of this is, is very life, you know, um, animals, trees, creation itself has to have that receiving and giving.
Speaker: It's kind of the part of, um, who we are.
Speaker: But I also think that when we're starting to talk about art, we're talking about that, that one thing that,
Speaker: that connects us more to God than it does to the creation that God has created.
Speaker: Now in all its forms, like even engineering and very left science, chemistry.
Speaker: Now we're talking about art on a larger scale.
Speaker: Like creative act.
Speaker: Skilled, yes.
Speaker: Yeah, the creative act, yeah.
Speaker: Which I think that's the thing that separates the beauty of art from the beauty of the created.
Speaker: So for example,
Speaker: I love to go walk in the parks.
Speaker: I did that this morning.
Speaker: And there are still some birds around, even though it's starting to get cold.
Speaker: And they're singing.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And it is absolutely natural and good to go out in God's creation and observe the beauty that is there.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: the difference between the song that the bird sings and a song like that Stuart Jones or John Van Dusen or, I don't know, any musician you can think of is the bird is not doing it as a creative act.
Speaker: The bird is doing it out of instinct and that's how they were created to communicate.
Speaker: And you could say the same thing for any person
Speaker: Insects, birds, animals, creation, even plants, trees, they have a way that they, you know, communicate, receive, give into the environment that they're in.
Speaker: What separates us is that we can willingly step into a creative act that is outside of instinct, which then I think if you're doing it the way we're designed to do, it becomes an act of worship.
Speaker: in and of itself.
Speaker: When we take the rhythm of life and we actually apply the rhythm of life to creativity, now we've gone and taken the liturgy of life and it's become worship.
Speaker: It's become art.
Speaker: It's become intentional rather than just instinctual.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now, some humanists would say that, like, well, creating art is kind of instinctual in humanity.
Speaker: I'm like, not... I would say that it isn't because it doesn't fundamentally feed a need.
Speaker: I mean, artists will say it does.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But I would say that's the difference between...
Speaker: instinctual physical need and God given spiritual emotional need.
Speaker: Um, and then we're talking about God has designed us to be creators, to connect with our creator in an act that, that transcends our just physical material mammal-ness.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And it's one of the ways that God has specifically wants us to be intimate with him as our God, whose greatest desire is to be intimate with his people and have his presence be recognized and acknowledged in our lives.
Speaker: And I think it's applying that sort of rhythm of life that God gives us both
Speaker: in a large sense, season of life-wise, but also in a smaller sense, like the time of year, like we kind of, we walk through the biblical year.
Speaker: But those are, like you were talking about earlier, those rhythms of life are there whether you follow the church calendar or whether you don't.
Speaker: It's kind of like, because that's how creation is designed.
Speaker: And then we also have those daily rhythms, like when the sun goes down, we get tired.
Speaker: When the sun comes up, we wake up.
Speaker: sometimes whether we like it or not.
Speaker: And, you know, we have those rhythm of our days.
Speaker: We need to work.
Speaker: We need to get food.
Speaker: We need to sustain ourselves.
Speaker: We need rest.
Speaker: We need cleanliness.
Speaker: You know, all those things that every mammal, every creature has their rhythms that God has set up in their lives.
Speaker: But we have the privilege of being able to surrender that rhythm to
Speaker: in a way that's worship.
Speaker: And that's something that is very unique to humanity.
Speaker: And then when we take it that one step further and say, okay, God has created us with these minds and skills and abilities and emotions that we want to express in theater, in art, in music,
Speaker: then we have an opportunity to join with his spirit in a creative act that is beyond what most other creatures are enabled to do.
Speaker: We actually get to be creators ourselves in a very small way compared to the enormity of the creation God has given us.
Speaker: But even
Speaker: I wrote a simple little prayer that I sent out for Thanksgiving for Master Arts Theater yesterday.
Speaker: And I was looking at it and I'm like, and I saw the influence of a lot of artists and poets through the years in how I approached it.
Speaker: And I'm like, even this simple act of just writing out this very simple prayer that I wanted to offer up to all the people who make Master Arts what it is.
Speaker: Like, wow, in that little moment, I actually stepped outside of the rhythm of my day, joined into the rhythm of worship and prayer that God has offered.
Speaker: And I was able to just create something.
Speaker: And I
Speaker: I think the beauty of that surrendering our rhythms, whether it be in a moment as an artist, in a creative process, in your daily routine, in your seasonal life, I think that's the beauty of liturgy really at its very core.
Speaker: The rhythms are there.
Speaker: rhythms are kind of embaked into us as creative beings, into God's creation as a whole.
Speaker: And I think it's surrendering the rhythm that already exists in a way that acknowledges that God is behind it and above it and below it and beside it and all around it.
Speaker: And then we can say,
Speaker: God, I'm going to enter into this act with you.
Speaker: And it may be, you know, if you think of like Brother Lawrence, the monk who wrote the practice of the presence of the Lord, he was not, he couldn't, because of some of his injuries, he couldn't do some of like the illuminated script and he couldn't perform music.
Speaker: So he worked in the kitchen.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: But he found creativity and worship in the rhythms of working in the kitchen.
Speaker: And I think that's a rule.
Speaker: That's guidance for all of us, not just artists.
Speaker: But anyway, I could talk forever about that.
Speaker: Oh, my goodness.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Well, this has been lovely.
Speaker: We are zooming to the end here.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: It flew by.
Speaker: That was amazing.
Speaker: What...
Speaker: Do you have any resources you would recommend people check out if they are interested in, I guess, thinking through the idea of rhythms and their rhythm of life, or if they are interested in liturgy as a concept for worship?
Speaker: Well, I mean, the obvious one is the Book of Common Prayer, which is used by a couple of different mainstream denominations, but that would certainly be a really good place to start.
Speaker: I know I also use, and this might be a little controversial,
Speaker: But I use a Celtic spirituality book of prayer from the North Umbrian community in Scotland that I've been kind of referring to for many, many years.
Speaker: I would also say look to some of the prayer poetry.
Speaker: Start with the Psalms.
Speaker: The Psalms have a certain rhythm to them, but they're also very much responses out of different seasons of life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then I would say, look to some poetry, especially prayer-focused poetry.
Speaker: Some of the Celtic prayers of David Adam have been, they're very, very simple.
Speaker: But very, very much an echo of liturgical prayer.
Speaker: So I could go on, but I think those are some great places to start.
Speaker: Definitely the Book of Common Prayer.
Speaker: It will give you an understanding of what the liturgy is, and it will immerse you in daily devotional rhythms.
Speaker: And there are some other ones.
Speaker: You don't necessarily have to go to the Book of Common Prayer, but I've found that one immensely useful.
Speaker: Um, then I would say, get into scripture and start to look at just how scripture works in seasons.
Speaker: Um, the festivals, Passover, uh, Sabbath, there's scripture talks about rhythms of life and seasons all through it.
Speaker: Um, so those would be some great places to start.
Speaker: I think.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Sweet.
Speaker: Well, thanks for coming on again, Tim.
Speaker: Thanks for having me back, John.
Speaker: I always love talking with you about stuff like this.
Speaker: So that's great.
Speaker: That's been great.
