church as 'an art school of divine majesty'

It makes all the difference, John O'Donohue once said, whether you see God as an artist.  Once you do, everything changes.  For, as he observed so rightly, we have so over emphasised the will of God, and so devastatingly neglected the imagination of God, that we have deeply impoverished ourselves. For:

Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.  (in To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings)

I didn't used to regard myself as an artist.  That is only for special people, I used to think, and you have to be very good at it.  Now I know that that is bunkum.  We are all artists.  Some work with paint, clay, or other materials.  Some with the human body and its expression.  Others with music or words.  Others shape places, communities, moments or people.  For we are all made in the image of God, and the first divine blblical characteristic (read Genesis) is creativity: then, now and always.  That is something I love about St Luke's church in Toowoomba.  It comes marvelously alive when, at Carnival and at other much more ordinary times, it is clothed with the grace and creativity of God in human artistry.  And it can happen every day, if we let it and embrace it...

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For me, the church is therefore what a brave man once called 'an art school of divine majesty'.  Think of that, or, better still, imagine that: feel it, and see what a difference it makes to your life and faith and that of others.  What Fr George Tyrrell (see photo left) was trying to say is that being part of a religious tradition and community is like being part of an artistic tradition and community.  There may be great 'masters' like Rembrandt who show the way.  An artist may sit at their feet and learn and develop in that art school.  For we do not make art by ourselves. That is an individualist fallacy.  Yet there will come a time when every artist need to make this task their own.  Perhaps they will even overthrow some of the foundational assumptions and shapes of their master: all however in the cause of deeper beauty, love and truth.  Isn't that, said George Tyrrell, how faith evolves and expands? 

Tyrrell was a man of great courage. For, drawing on God's grace and the riches of the Church's tradition, he used his creative imagination, scholarly intelligence, pastoral sensitivity and deep religious learning to give new life to the Church of his day.  Today many of his insights have been accepted, further critiqued and developed by Catholic and Protestants alike.  However he was condemned by Pope Pius X, with other so-called Catholic Modernists, expelled from the Jesuit order, denied the sacraments, and finally excommunicated.  He was not allowed a Catholic burial and was interred in an unmarked grave.  A priest friend, Henri Bremond, who had the grace to make the sign of the cross over the grave, was himself, as a result, then suspended for a while.  For being a religious artist is not always easy - just see what happened to Jesus.  Yet being an artist, and part of an 'art school of divine majesty', is part of the gateway to resurrection: to greater and deeper life, beauty, truth and love, for us and for others.    May the divine artist flourish in everyone.

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