INKBLOTS--Unopened doors, payoffs at the end

Gesture toward the unopened door...

INKBLOTS—May 6, 2013

Birds twittering in the cottonwoods outside—I’m seeing lavender azaleas on the verge of the forest that surrounds D McComas’s brick house in the country—great setting for creating and for beating each other up (in love and gently). It’s warm and feels like summer, though we’re all from around here so we know what’s coming; May is our nicest month and June comes and summer and the rain will return, but we’re okay with that; it’s the weather that pleases me because it’s clearly the weather that pleases the Lord.

Patrick shared some of the impressive images from the illustrator he has discovered. We talked about animation and illustrations. Then John read his chapter three from Saving Grace. A good deal of showing, less telling. More description of specific mannerisms; good deal of improvement. I mentioned Thoreau’s advice on self editing: find the place where you’re writing at your best and replicate that in the rest (I added the metered couplet). We all agreed that the locker scene where Grace is in earnest we began to be emotionally invested (as Patrick termed it). We begin to feel Grace’s fear when we see that her boyfriend is casual about it all and not feeling her pain.

Umberto Eco says that you use early chapters to train your reader to be prepared for following a detailed theological passage later. I agree. By creating fascinatingly real characters in a real-world setting from hundreds of years ago. The key I think is that the author has got to get the reader invested in the character; they have to believe that it is going to be worth it to follow the fortunes of this character in trouble and needing a way out. The first few chapters must give the reader a sense that what is happening to this character is rivetingly important, needs their attention, is worth their attention, and all the while the reader should be so captivated they never think about any of this at the time!

Patrick brings us up to speed on graphic novels as a genre. He brought a copy of Maus (Mouse, in German), Art Spiegelman, the Mt Rushmore of graphic novels, Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel. Jews are mice, the Nazis are cats, Americans are dogs—WW II setting, top of the list for graphic novels. Blankets by Craig Thompson, with objectionable content and the tragedy of a guy giving up being a Christian, unhappy ending, real downer, depressing book. Japanese made comic books into graphic serial novels. Watchman, Allan Moore, considered by some to be the most famous writer of comic books; it’s a satire on super heroes. Celtx program for writing film, graphic novels, and novels, work collaboratively.

Patrick reads the hardest part of the graphic novel built on the Epic of Gilgamesh, Puritans and the others. He is considering doing this in collaboration with an illustrator, funds raised through KickStarter. There’s lots of directing involved in writing a graphic novel, planning out the panels as part of the way the story unfolds. The writer narrates the blocks for the illustrator (where there is not text or little text). I want to understand this genre and I know almost nothing about it. I saw Japanese men reading graphic novels on the Tokyo subway some years ago, but that’s about my only connection to this genre. It is fascinating to hear Patrick talk about all this. He really has studied the genre, it seems to me, and that work has contributed to his work on producing his own graphic novel, in which he will demonstrate that either we’re all insane or Christianity is actually true after all. This genre requires, I beginning to think, a great deal of coordination with the illustrator; much more of a partnership than in text novel writing, even if illustrated occasionally. I wonder if there are other Christian writers making headway into this genre? “Greatness only brings the greater grief... and once again it becomes our precious treasure.” Lots of this level of narrative from Patrick’s imagination. I just checked and there are enough writers of graphic novels with an intentional Christian message that there must be several publishers of Christian graphic novels. Art-on-the-Ave art coordinator is Patrick Korsec, Inkblot member.

I read the first chapter of HAMMER OF THE HUGUENOTS, or something like that.

D Mac reads his Korean War novel. The war is prolonged and the protagonist is feeling ground down, eager to get home and see this war behind him. Chosen Reservoir when the Chinese began to enter the war. Ship turning hard to port. Weather, summer ends abruptly and its winter, cold, cold. Harsher voice… could you give us an audio comparison, growling like a… in a voice that reminded Thomas of… Good writing, word pictures, sights, good dialogue. I’d like to get more sense of smell and sounds.

Patrick calls it the gesture toward the unopened door. Creates curiosity in the reader, a sense of anticipation, something is coming, there is a payoff coming. Set the hook by gesturing toward the unopened door. Tolkien restarted the Lord of the Rings ten times, throw it out, start it over. Wanted a complete world. No unopened doors. Whereas Lewis was riveted on the unopened door, the mystery, the unknown. The more complete we try to make the fictional world the more incomplete it becomes. There is always an unopened, unexplained, unexplainable dimension to the world, broken and out of joint as it is.  

FREE Bond Lectures on British Reformation History (and worth it!)

We all like free stuff, right? April 25-27 (Thursday 7:00. Friday: free spaghetti dinner, 5:45; lecture at 7:00. Saturday, free breakfast, 8:30; lecture at 9:30), Western Reformed Seminary has asked me to deliver three FREE lectures on “THE REFORMATION IN THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD: Why Every Generation Must Have Reformation.” (FREE!

St Andrews Castle with one of my students

and I promise--they'll be worth it!) This will be a mini course in British Reformation history, accompanied by lots of on-location photography from my tours. I'm giving away 6 FREE copies of THE THUNDER, my recent biographical novel on John Knox. I will also have postcards and information about the forthcoming KNOX at 500 Scotland Tour 2014 (registrations are already coming in for this once-in-500-years opportunity). It should be a grand time, open to the public (including free Friday spaghetti dinner and a breakfast Saturday morning). More information: http://www.wrs.edu/

The Ronald W. Taber Lectures each year emphasize our Reformed theology and heritage, and their application to the world. This year well known traveler and author Douglas Bond (see his website) will be speaking on “THE REFORMATION IN THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD: Why Every Generation Must Have Reformation.” With his excellent photographs he will provide a “virtual tour” of interesting and important places in England and Scotland.

Thursday-Saturday, April 25-27

THURSDAY NIGHT, 7:00 p.m., “Reformation in England” (Early Stirrings: Bradwardine and Wycliffe. 16th-Century Reformation: Latimer, Cranmer, Ridley)

FRIDAY NIGHT, 7:00 p.m., “Reformation in Scotland” (Early Stirrings: Patrick Hamilton and Wishart. 16th and 17th-Centuries: John Knox and the Covenanters) (Free Spaghetti in the Spring dinner at 5:45 prior to the lecture)

SATURDAY MORNING, 9:30-11:30 a.m., “Reformational Psalms and Hymns in English: The central role of singing in the Reformation” (Free breakfast at 8:30 prior to the lecture)

INKBLOTS Cannonballs at Poolside

A Carl metaphor for the evening

INKBLOTS Tax Time (most writers don't have to worry over much about taxes from too much income--keep your day job)

I summarized in brief a lengthy discussion I had over the last week or two with another author on story and message. We have 8 men tonight and several white wine options to share. Valuable discussion, ranging widely from cannonballs in the pool, to Mongols and Puritans, evolution and swearing in fiction.

Patrick led off with update on his graphic novel and finding a wonderful artist for it. She is not a Christian and loves the story (including the "religious elements") but thinks that Patrick is a sexist based on how he portrays women. He read the most critical moment in the story, as he feels it. Goodwin is fearless in the face of immortal forces. I love Patrick’s Job allusions. "Everyone is insane and everyone must learn... something, the name of the insanity he chooses..." Solomon allusions. Believing in nothing or believe on the Lord Jesus, but the antagonist thinks this is just another insanity, one that might give some comfort in the valley of the shadow of death but still just another madness. This is an intriguing dialogue. Goodwin is confronted with an arch critic of Jesus, who says if Jesus was here he would chop off his head and put it in a jar. Godwin unmasks the antagonist's primal hatred of Jesus and Christianity, revealing that maybe his insistence that all is insanity including Christianity is merely a smoke screen to vent his hatred of Christ. Does it need more stage direction for the visuals, since it is a graphic novel. Tim said Patrick's writing reminded him of the long passage dialogue in Perelandra, by CS Lewis. Question asked about the genre and the juxtaposing of Puritans and Mongols; can you do that in this genre? In a graphic novel you can draw people in with bazaar visuals. I think I mentioned before that Patrick's tone reminds me of Lewis's Till We Have Faces.

Adam just jumped in with reading. No prelude, no explanatory, just reading. Maybe it's because Adam is distracted with getting engaged this last week! Congratulations! They met while performing in a theater production and he proposed on a pass between Germany and Austria; they met performing in The Sound of Music! I hear theatrical in Adam's writing, sort of Agatha Christy-esque. I like how clipped and to the point your writing is developing. Didn't we sort of beat you up for affected prose before? This moves rapid pace, yet with local color. I looked around the room at the others. I don't think one of us wanted Adam to stop reading. This is a good sign. A daft old gentleman, and a married couple, oddly and variously matched. All set in the context of cemetery caretakers, or is it undertakers. Characters all odd ducks. Why were the people doing what they are doing. Harold and Maud film, Carl brings this up. Cat Stevens in it, hearse, love with a woman 60 years his senior. Clean prose, vivid description, but rapid pace for the tale. Intriguing crime fiction underway. This feels like a fiction triumph underway. Funeral talk ensued.

John Schrupp tells about Pastor Carl's first funeral service. Funeral for a septic tank. Carl still training for the marathon--brutal training in the rain and after the eating of Easter.

Shane got a piece published on realreaganconservative.com. So that's good success. He wrote a speech for SeaPack and got zip, but this site picked up and posted his article (he pointed out that it was no pay and online, but nevertheless, published after a technological fashion). Promote but not provide for the general welfare. Central importance of liberty of individuals to create and be productive. The less liberty the less prosperity. Government intervention enervates productivity. Self interest is the best ensurer of productivity and opportunity for all. This is a passionate piece, explaining why he is a conservative, to preserve the greatest ideas in the history of mankind. 700 words, moved in a clipped, to the point manner. Could Shane anchor this piece with contrasts in European politics? Discussion of the difference between anarchists and libertarians. Apex of liberty, the title of the article. So not possible to have absolute liberty if there is more than one person on the planet. Shane makes the point that libertarians, in his opinion, are flawed on the nature of man. Shane then shifted gears and read a poem exploring the cosmological argument for the existence of God. Which reminded me of Lewis's Evolutionary Hymn:
Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future's endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.

Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
while there's always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we're going,
We can never go astray.

To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards that unknown god we yearn...

Carl, the proud owner of six baby chicks (hey, the guy has a church full of farmers--I think he's just trying to fit in), is not reading about animals tonight! I'm leaving! I love Carl's Herriet-esque devotional pastoral reflections. This is about his bride and his eleven year journey of developing convictions. The East Coast version of themselves would laugh at the West Coast version of themselves. Carl realizes that his developing convictions can deflect from the gospel; he sees it in himself and in others. Grumbling results. Great images. Cannonballs at the pool, soaking everyone else with their grumbling splashing. Rolled out the red carpet, inviting others to grumble with him. Carl admits that he too often fails to listen and draw out the other person's challenges, preferring rather to pontificate and solve the problem. They ask a simple question about where to eat and he launches into a erudite treatise on nutrition or the family table. First and last is the gospel. He wants his heart, hand and mouth to be riveted on the gospel, Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. 

This is what I love about Carl. He reads and we almost entirely forget about the writing process. We are drawn to lift our gaze from the lint accumulating in our navels and get on topic. Love it. The issue is not the issue. The problem is not the real problem. Carl so wants to listen better and begin to get down to the real issue, pull that out. This guy's church is blessed to have a pastor who thinks this way, who examines himself like this and clings to Christ for grace to listen, love, and care for the one who has issues (which is all of us, especially those of us who think we don't).

Tim (first-time 'Blot), reads chapter one of a book he is working on. I missed the names at the very beginning of the chapter. Fountain feels like it will collect meaning and maybe develop into a symbol. Changers, Eagle and Lion. Black paws. Sitting at a cafe, the fountain gurgling in the background. I feel like there is pretty dense description but a lack of action (and a clear lens through which to see it all). I feel like something ought to be about to happen, but I am not sure what or when or to whom; I need to know whose fortunes I most need to care about. I think the pace might be the problem. Where is this in the novel? That might help me. Our constant challenge in 'Blots is only getting the snippet, not the bigger story context. Here's what I think might rivet my attention: a clearer point of view through which I the reader am observing the action. I need a place to stand, eyes with which to see the fascinating details. Patrick suggested a clearer sense of what the conflict is, but then you launched into the history, and broke away from the focus of the conflict. Shane suggested need for shape shifters to be better defined.

What followed was a discussion about swearing in fiction. When is it appropriate and what is appropriate? For me, the big question is does it entice the reader to ape the language used, and the writer, thereby, because an instrument of leading someone into temptation. Not for me. There is a line I never cross. I never take the Lord's name in vain, ever. Period. Verisimilitude be -----!
 

Was TOPLADY a theological monster or a saint? Find out in my new biography

New book with Evangelical Press (UK)

I was so blessed in writing this concise biography of Augustus Toplady. Visit my TOPLADY web page featuring other readings and more on my new book AUGUSTUS TOPLADY, Debtor to Mercy Alone, now available with Evangelical Press. After you read the Introduction posted there, listen to an audio excerpt from chapter 4. Read an excerpt below on this post from the chapter that picks up right after the audio. 

"I vividly recall the sweetness and joy of Toplady's diary when I first read it more than twenty years ago now. Douglas Bond has ably captured the man and his faith in this brief biography. Warmly recommended!" Michael Haykin, Professor of Church History, Southern Seminary. 

  

You can order a signed copy of the book at my webstore, www.bondbooks.net, or you can order a hard copy or Kindle edition at TOPLADY.

 5

A Praying Life

“My God, I want the inwrought prayer,” cried Toplady, “the prayer of the heart, wrought in the soul by the Holy Ghost.” So much of the recorded praying of Toplady reflects just that, praying from the lips of a man who is filled with the Holy Spirit, whose prayers are being sanctified by the immediate presence of the God to whom he is praying. Thankfully for us, Toplady developed the habit of copying down his prayers probably as he prayed them. But there is nothing of the pompous Pharisee strutting in prayer to be seen or heard by men. His prayers are the kind of Psalm-like communing with God every Christian desires.

DISTRACTION AND WANDERING IN PRAYER

But let’s face it, communing with God, the activity that occupied so much of Toplady’s days and hours, is profoundly foreign to most of us. When we do get around to quieting our hearts and falling to our knees in prayer, one distraction after another begins its assault on our receiving consciousness. A text message warbles in our pocket. The telephone rings, and we strain to recognize the voice leaving a message. The computer intones the audio signal that a new email has just arrived. We wonder who it’s from. An aid vehicle roars by, siren blaring. A sleepy child crawls onto our back for a cuddle. The hotpot clicks off and we begin hastily rifling out our petitions so as to get the tea steeping while the water is at its hottest. Tea is always better when the water is at its hottest.

If me manage to negotiate the minefield of information technology and toddlers, and we actually get around to praying for real needs, we may find ourselves—often long minutes later—musing on how those parents could have let their son or daughter get involved with the wrong crowd in the first place. Clearly they messed up. If only they had raised their children the way we have raised ours. And when we finally shake our self free of those thoughts, and return shamefaced again to confession and asking for still more forgiveness, there’s the particular problem men have with praying. We men think we can take care of things, solve the problem. We don’t like stopping and asking for help. We can handle this. We’re men. It’s what we do.

When we attempt to get down to the serious business of praying, at best we are too hasty, and at worst we may actually be taking the Lord’s name in vain and compounding our sinning. It is for these reasons that Toplady’s praying is so valuable for distracted moderns. Though many of our 21^st century distractions would have been completely foreign to Toplady, we should not fool ourselves. He was a man subject to many of the same challenges we face with prayer. “Was afflicted with wandering in private prayer. Lord, melt down my icy heart, and grant me to wait upon thee.” How often would Toplady’s confession not be an accurate description of our praying life? And like you and me, this would not be the last time he would have reason to long for greater constancy in prayer. In a diary entry dated Monday, December 14, 1767, he reminds us that neglecting prayer has direct consequences:   

Before I came out of my chamber today, I was too hasty and short in private prayer. My conscience told me so at the time; and yet, such was my ingratitude and my folly, that I nevertheless restrained prayer before God. In the course of the day, I had great reason to repent of my first sin, by being permitted to fall into another.

It is just, O Lord, that thou shouldest withdraw thy presence from one who waited so carelessly on thee. May I never more, on any pretext whatever, rob thee (or rather, deprive my own soul) of thy due worship; but make all things else give way to communion with thee!

HONEST SELF-ABASEMENT

In a culture destroying itself with the cult of self-esteem, Toplady often prayed in a way that sounds foreign to our ears:

Who am I, O Lord? The weakest and vilest of all thy called ones: not only the least of saints, but the chiefest of sinners. But though a sinner, yet sanctified, in part, by the Holy Ghost given unto me. I should wrong the work of His grace upon my heart, were I to deny my regeneration: but, Lord, I wish for a nearer conformity to thy image.

So unaccustomed are we to hearing someone speak of himself as “the weakest and vilest of all thy called ones,” we might be tempted to dismiss Toplady’s self-deprecation as false humility, an elaborate charade...

Part Two, Are MESSAGE and STORY enemies or friends?

Gillian writing poetry... with a message

"We writers use words, each one of which, like it or not, conveys a message in a microcosm. If what you mean is, write with honesty and authenticity, without slavish subordinating of story to message, then I'm with you all the way. But let's not switch that around and create a servile subordinating of message to story either. David didn't; Paul didn't; Jesus didn't either."
 
(JEFFERY'S last words from previous post "...As Emily Dickinson wrote, "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant — / Success in Circuit lies..."

DOUGLAS
Jeffery, you should be a painter rather than a writer (IMHO ;0). Unlike what postmoderns persist in dictating to us, words do convey objective meaning (brush strokes may be beyond explanation, though not meaningless, but words aren't equal to a painter's brush strokes). By their very nature, words have a message; that's what words are. So I smell false dichotomy when I hear you pit story against message. 

Again, I return to the greatest story, the Bible. It is story of the most stupendous quality AND it contains a clear intentional message (Paul even says that specific things about God are "clearly seen" in natural revelation, let alone in special revelation, special because it is a message of grace and love, one that uses words). 

I could maybe agree with you if I only read the Bible's poetry and parables (though David and the rest did intend to deliver a message, nothing could be more clear when reading the poetry of the psalter and elsewhere in the Bible; and Jesus often explained the message of his parables, whatever else they are, they clearly are stories with an intentional message). There's a great deal of intentional message throughout the pages of Scripture, and a good deal of that is intentionally explaining with clarity the preceptual indicatives of gospel truth--the message, though finally it's all placarding a PERSON not mere precepts. 

Is there still mystery? Of course, but that does not reduce the unequivocal message of the Bible to pure mystery. "what ever you do in word and deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus..." That does not mean that everything I write must be evangelism, but nor does it diminish evangelism or apologetics or other ways of communicating messages in writing to second-class status because it is not intentionally not including messages. 

I find it somewhat ironic that you are intentionally communicating a message to me (us) about not intentionally communicating messages in literature, which seems a bit odd. When Oscar Wilde tells us that there is not a moral or immoral book, he has just communicated a moral understanding to us, a message, or is it an un-message? Either way it is no less an objective message he wanted to get across.

Should fiction spring organically from the authentic mystery of real life in a broken and bewildering world? YES, of course it will. But we all have some interpretation about what it all means, presuppositions that shape our story telling, including the author who wants to avoid admitting it. Compare it to historians who insist they are being purely objective in their research. They are? 

Every historian has a historiography, studied or knee-jerk, but each historian selects sources, has predispositions, has projected outcomes in mind, and the ones who deny it the most may be the ones most under the influence of their predispositions. So do story tellers, and film makers, and poets. Painters and musicians do too, but those of us who daily use words are not in precisely the same artistic category as the others. 

We writers use words, each one of which, like it or not, conveys a message in a microcosm. If what you mean is, write with honesty and authenticity, without slavish subordinating of story to message, then I'm with you all the way. But let's not switch that around and create a servile subordinating of message to story either. David didn't; Paul didn't; Jesus didn't either. 

The Bible's message is not second-rate to its story. They are one. I'm teaching Merchant of Venice right now; does anyone read that play and think that Shakespeare is not telling an amazing story and that he has a purposeful message in it (among other things) about the nature of love? Antonio: "my purse, my person, my extremest means lay all unlocked before you." And Portia's father: "He who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath." I would argue that the greatest literature is always purposeful and skillful on both fronts: story and intentional meaning, and that when we try to separate the two it's just as deadly as taking a pound of flesh from Antonio nearest his heart.  

JEFFERY
 Douglas, what is the message of a tree?

What is "the message" of The Good Samaritan or The Prodigal Son? (Good luck summing that up in one post, or one essay, or one book. People have been discovering new depths of those stories since they were first told.)

Similarly, what is the message of this poem?

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

It is a very, very meaningful poem. I use it in writing workshops, and we circle it and circle it, finding new levels of meaning almost every time. I would never reduce the "meaning" within it to a "message." Might we discern "messages" from it? Perhaps, but I'd find that word to be too trite. But it is meaningful, in ways that move me, in everything from its shape to its line breaks to its rhythms to its sounds to its rhymes.

And once again, I have never said, nor implied, that storytelling shouldn't be "purposeful" about "meaning." Personally, I prefer to discover the meaning as I write, and then edit it by trimming away all of those excursions that don't contribute to that meaning, as I quoted O'Connor saying earlier.

So please stop implying that I am saying writers shouldn't care about meaning, or that they shouldn't be purposeful about it. I have said the opposite of that several times. Every day I hear more great artists talking about how they set out to "say" one thing and the work revealed something different, or greater. I also hear artists talking about the work of "discovery" during "play."

If you persist in suggesting that I don't think artists care about meaning, or that the work is not meaningful, then we're not having a conversation; you're talking to some imagined version of me. I have been using the word "message" to mean "something we can reduce to a paraphrase, some kind of solution to a riddle."

To me, the best stories are poetic... they suggest something more than a lesson that I can distill into a paraphrase.

DOUGLAS
I feel like you're evading my point. You don't write trees. You write words, each of which has a meaning, including tree. You write about trees, and you do so because they collect meaning in the experiences of real life. William Carlos Williams doesn't sound much like Lewis's favorite poet, does he? The Imagists had a clear agenda (they even had a 6-part credo in which they laid out the rules of poetry for conveying their meaning, their message). An intentional un-message is no less a message, is it.

JEFFERY
"The heavens declare..." "Day by day pours forth speech." I want to strive to make art that speaks the way God's work speaks... through suggestion, through invitation, through possibility. Because that is how the great works of art speak to me. Even if the artists themselves don't understand what they've done. I've grown closer to Christ because of the questions about faith that Woody Allen includes in his stories. He will outright deny that there is such a thing as right and wrong, or God; his stories suggest otherwise consistently.  You are drawing stark lines between story and poetry and visual art and music that I do not believe exist so starkly.
I happen to believe that a tree *is* a story. It is also a poem. It is also a picture, both particular and abstract. And its relationship with music is profound. Again, George Macdonald:

"When we understand the outside of things, we think we have them. Yet the Lord puts his things in subdefined, suggestive shapes, yielding no satisfactory meaning to the mere intellect, but unfolding themselves to the conscience and heart." - George Macdonald

I will continue seeking out, and striving to craft, artwork that reflects that.

And for what it's worth, C.S. Lewis is wonderful, but I don't agree with him on everything. Neither did Tolkien. I didn't even like his stories much when I was a child because they felt too much like "lessons."

Whatever agenda the imagists did or didn't have, this poem by Williams is as precious to me as many of the psalms because of how its sounds, shapes, line-breaks, and word pictures contribute to a central meaning that classroom after classroom full of students discover as they work on it.
I look forward to beginning my next workshop with this poem, and with the assertion that it's "shallow." Because then we're going to spend an hour discovering its depths. But they take time to discover... much longer than the span between my earlier comment and Rebecca's announcement that it is "shallow."

 From the beginning here, I've been passing along what I've learned from Macdonald, O'Connor, Dickinson, Lewis, Chesterton, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Merton, and more artists and teachers than are worth counting here. I didn't invent these ideas; I found them, and they captured much of what it is about art - narrative or otherwise - that I love. As their work reflects and demonstrate these ideas, there is an integrity to them that keeps bringing me back to them.

Anybody who says that I deny there is *meaning* in great art has misunderstood me from the start. I only meant to affirm what is a constant testimony among the artists that I've studied: That art is the work of incarnation, of making words flesh, of giving shape to things unseen... an activity built into us because we are made in the image of God. And when we engage in art, we can learn all kinds of things from that art, but if it is good art then what it reveals is ongoing. We may catch glimpses of it and share it in words. But it is bigger than any one person's version of its "message."

Grace and peace to you. Have a joyous Easter. I'm going back to the work I love... the pursuit of God's glory through the endless pleasure and remedial discoveries involved in exploring and making art.

DOUGLAS

I think I see our problem. We're using words to mean different things. (BTW, I'm a big fan of Woody Allen and discuss and explore his films in my conference speaking; though I grow closer in love with Christ from reading his love letter to me in his Word, filled with poetry and clear indicatives that have a message for me; I love you with an everlasting love, is both poetry and a message, not one or the other; that's not to say I don't often find many things unbelievers write or paint that deepen my longing to grow in grace and the knowledge of Jesus). 

I use meaning and message much nearer to synonymous, which I think helps keep me from disparaging the message. I wonder if it wouldn't be helpful to keep story and message as closer verbiage kin so that we don't find ourselves elevating the story and denigrating the message (that is, the meaning of the story). 

I hear you emphatically agreeing (no horns or teeth intended here, my friend) that there is an intentional meaning to the Bible's poetry. I just don't think that means that it doesn't equally have an intentional message, or that to say it does have a message is a reduction of the either the story or the meaning. 

In fact, I find that dichotomy unhelpful. For several reasons, but take Ecclesiastes (great poetry), for instance. The poet concludes with nothing short of a summary wrap up of the message of the entire book: "The end of the matter; all has been heard," and then he gives a tight message summation of the whole (I'm more drawn to the poetry than to the wrap up, but the wrap up is also an important part of the divinely inspired poetry... and the message of that poetry, and so I don't think I'm at liberty to rate it below the poetry). 

Or take God's words to Job when he meets him face to face; there's intentionality, meaning, purposefulness (all words that I think lead us to another related word: message). I wonder if you've not turned "message" into a four-letter word and by doing so your message is less than clear.

ROBERT TRESKILLARD (the writer who started this dialogue)
For me, I like the natural revelation / revealed word concept ... truth and beauty can be communicated both ways, and both are needed and help each other. Part of what we need to do is to step back and speak not of individual stories that *we* are telling (as if there was only one way), but to see the much greater story that *God* is telling through us to a lost and hurting and beauty-blind world. He is speaking through Jeffrey's novels in a way similar to natural revelation, and through Douglas's (and my) novels in a way closer to a revealed word ... but all of these are God's stories, and both are needed and support each other, and truth and beauty can be seen in both. Both can glorify God. (And may our craft be up to that challenge.) 

DOUGLAS

All that said, I think we are more likely closer, much closer, than it may sound from this exchange on a very flat medium to work with. I totally agree with the way well-intentioned Christian writers and other artists so often artificially tack on the message and the expense of the poetry of the story. 

We are kindred spirits on that, for sure. And I applaud you for writing books that are not "preaching to the choir" and that celebrate beauty and truth and love but without an explicit gospel message (the story of Esther never includes the word "God" after all, though the other 65 books do and do and do). We're neighbors, you know, geographically so as well as warmly otherwise, in my book.

JEFFERY
A tree is a "story" just the way a life can be a sacrifice. We're speaking poetically because practical language isn't sufficient.

"The Good Samaritan " is about a series of events that somebody observed and prioritized and shared. Somebody else observing that story might have told it differently, finding a different story. They both might tell true stories about the event. When I look at a tree, I see a story of a seed, a planting, growth, receiving, giving, beauty, fruit, serving, etc. I see poetic implications everywhere. But my version of that story isn't the Everything. Others will see other aspects of a story, other poetic implications. Any of them that are well-observed can give us more of the truth about that tree. But there's more to it than any of us are likely to sum up. In the same way, a great play, a great story, a great poem, and a great picture go on suggesting things that are beyond even what the artist anticipated sharing. I suspect that Shakespeare, were he to read all of the wonderful things that have been gleaned from his plays, would be surprised and delighted beyond words.

 My favorite email I've received: Somebody objected to me paying attention to the truth that can be found in pagan fairy tales. She said, "If you think anything of value can be found in pagan fairy tales, then you've just opened Pandora's box." I love that. Because, in order to make a point about the meaninglessness of fairy tales, she used a fairy tale. The meaningfulness of that story became clear.

DOUGLAS
Jeffery, I read and teach pagan writers every day and love their work and gift and story and poetry (I love vintners, and chefs too, they're also artists), regardless of their declared world view. That's not where we disagree, trust me. 

But by biblical definitions, message is a good word, and so is story. Jesus told the parable of the GS to clarify the message he was conveying to his disciples; the story served to help him help them understand his message; this order is throughout the Word. Everywhere throughout the Bible, the story of Jesus, as J I Packer likes to call it, we are hearing Jesus message, the message of reconciliation (2Cor 5:19, and so many more places). 

I'm very uncomfortable with false dichotomies, especially ones that will inevitably appear to rank story over the message of reconciliation, steadfast love, a breathlessly wonderful message that unfolded as a story, that led the Lion of Judah to lay down his life for my sins. That story continues (without paring the claws of the Lion) as his redeemed messengers use each of our unique gifts to glorify and enjoy him now and ultimately forever. Blessings on your use of yours, my friend!