Dear Friends,
This Sunday is Welcome Sunday at St. Bart’s. If you are in the city, I hope you will make plans to attend the 11 am Choral Eucharist in person with a festive reception following, when we will have a chance to bless and honor our newcomers and get to know the 25 or so dynamic individuals who have recently decided to make St. Bart’s their spiritual home.
Several of them gathered with seasoned parishioners and friends for our fall “A Place the Table” Retreat Day last weekend. We were graced to have Carey Wallace, author of Psalms of Wonder, present a workshop on art and spirituality, and her opening question was striking: What kind of artist are you?
Her question took me aback. Mind you, this was not an artists’ retreat; it was for everybody. I had not recently entertained the idea that all of us are artists. After all, it has been said there’s art and then there’s science. But when you consider the ambiguity ever present in the human experience, perhaps the two are closer than it seems: The doctor carefully delivering a difficult diagnosis, the parent figuring out how to discipline with understanding and firmness, the lawyer exercising the art of persuasive rhetoric, the investor funding an innovative startup.
Art accomplishes what science, legislation, and mere knowledge cannot on their own. Art tells a story. Art speaks to our hearts. It demands vulnerability, authenticity, and the risk of creating something beautiful and true where once was a blank page. The subjectivity of art challenges the objectivity by which our world too often measures person against person, race against race, nation against nation according to wealth, productivity, and utility.
The “Radical Welcome” to which our community aspires is in itself an art form and we, the artists — called to imagine, to listen, to risk, and to add our signature touch to the masterpiece God seeks to bring about through the church (clergy and lay alike!) Each time we share our stories and risk creating, we are engaging in sacred art. Each time we gather in community we become ourselves a new creation, a living tapestry of humanity and divinity woven together by God.
Extending Radical Welcome to others changes us in the process. Together, we are transformed into living stones among the mosaic of the saints. Heaven knows that we at St. Bart's are a “piece of work!”
So what kind of artist are you? The Great Creator has shown us that art is for everybody. Our magnificent edifice embodies that belief. So too may the temple of our hearts, as we celebrate the miracle that all of us, no matter our age, profession, gender, or race, have been blessed with creative power and potential to join with God in making – and becoming – a whole new world. The studio is open.
See you Sunday!