MA Project

So, normally for a Masters program you have to write a thesis. Well, I get the privilege of doing this, except with a twist. I don't know if other institutions give project options as well as Denver Seminary, but I sure am glad I get the option. Basically what doing a project instead of a straight up thesis means is that the majority of my research comes from a project that I conceptualize and implement. I still have to write a massive paper, but I have less theoretical book research to do. This way I get out of the books and into applied research, which makes me happy, and I get to be a little creative, which makes me very happy!

After months of growing in my head and heart, my project will finally come to life in two weeks, and for two days people will have the chance to experience something pretty fantastic (if I may say so myself). Just as I shared about the hands that I drew, this project is a testament to the growth and change that has happened in my life since coming to DenSem.

My project essentially is exploring the connection that I see between the visual arts and a person's spiritual formation. Therefore I have created an artistic spiritual formation experience that people will walk through and interact with in order to see how viewing and interacting with already created art and how creating art from a posture of listening to God can facilitate a person's spiritual formation. I have taken a paradigm of a spiritual journey developed by an Old Testament Scholar from the Psalms as my outline. There are three stages in this paradigm and each stage in the experience will have art pieces to represent it. Participants will be invited to interact with these pieces in each individual stage in order to process their own journey. Then they will go and creatively express where they are at on their spiritual journey. These words on a blog can't quite paint the vision in my head for this, but perhaps this excerpt from the introduction of the pamphlet participants will receive will help with the concept behind it...

“The Psalms, with a few exceptions, are not the voice of God addressing us. They are rather the voice of our own common humanity – gathered over a long period of time, but a voice that continues to have an amazing authenticity and contemporaneity. It speaks about life the way it really is, for in those deeply human dimensions the same issues and possibilities persist. And so when we turn to the Psalms it means we enter into the midst of that voice of humanity and decide to take our stand with that voice. We are prepared to speak among them and with them and for them, to express our solidarity in this anguished, joyous human pilgrimage. We add a voice to the common elation, shared grief, and communal rage that besets us all.”

Art does the same.

The Psalm writers were artists; words were their medium. God blessed this vulnerability and has used it throughout the ages to communicate and spiritually form His people. In the same way God desires to use His people’s creative expressions today. You are about to experience a taste of this. After reading through this brief introduction you will proceed into a series of spaces in which you will encounter pieces that were created out of times of this “anguished, joyous human pilgrimage.” Don’t just admire the pieces, but enter into their story, and allow God to meet you there.

An Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann states that our faith life consists in moving with God in terms of:

(a) being securely oriented;

(b) being painfully disoriented; and

(c) being surprisingly reoriented.

I am sure you can identify times in your life when you have gone through each of these movements. You are now going to be able to reflect on those times through an artistic experience. As you proceed into each space you will find pieces that represent one of these three movements. When you turn the page you will find a more detailed explanation of each movement and blank space. By the pieces of art you will find questions to help you interact with the pieces in the movement.

A church in the Littleton area has graciously let me use their youth room for this and has been awesome in helping me design the spaces that will make up the main part of the experience. I can't believe it's only two weeks away, and yet I wish it were tomorrow, because I am so excited to see what God does through this. If you read this before May 6th and 7th, please pray for me as I prepare this experience and organize all the details, and also for the people that will be walking through it - that God would work mightily in their lives through this artistic experience and that they would somehow be drawn closer to Christ through it.

I'll hopefully have a video to put up of it, but I will definitely have pictures and details of how the two days go.





grace and peace.