Let There Be Light - Lent Day 1

When teachers who work in the field of the Arts have to seek feedback on a particular work of art from their students  - be it a painting, piece of music, a dance, a dramatic performance etc - they often have to start with a precursor. And the precursor is this - ‘This wasn’t made to be understood. This wasn’t devised so that we can put it in a box fully dissected and labelled. It was created to be felt, to be experienced, to make you part of something. And sometimes you won’t be able to find the right words to explain how it makes you feel because the feelings are so intense and sometimes confusing.’ 

I remember a distinct moment last year when I was trying to teach my matric boys the incredibly post modern play, ‘Ubu and the Truth Commission’ from the depths of my bedroom via a Microsoft Teams meeting. Eva was crying at the door telling me she had had a poo and my matrics where almost crying online because they couldn’t understand the play. What a time to be alive. If you have a spare moment do me a favour and watch the opening moments of Ubu and then have a giggle while you imagine me trying to explain it through online learning. 

The thing is we can only unpack a work of art so far. But ultimately the seed of creation, the full (sometimes subconscious) inspiration that germinates the seed will for ever lie in the heart of the creator. 

Sometimes we just need to let it be what it is. 

And it is through the complexity of our understanding of creativity that we come to get a glimpse of the one who made us.

So why then do we seek to put The Creator in a box? Why do we try to fully explain a work of art so complex that it took millennia to fully unravel and reveal itself? And why do we seek to summarise a piece of art that reveals more of itself every day? 

Yes, we have come a long way in exploring the myriads of mediums which make up the complexity that is life but there are still so many spaces that are just totally unexplained. That are confusing. That are there to be experienced rather than explained.

I do feel that creative people have a certain advantage when it comes to understanding God. We are naturally imaginative and happy to appreciate something for how it makes us feel without necessarily needing it to be explained. And many of us feel closest to God when we are creating because we feel connected to the Spirit of Creation. One of our names for God, after all, is Creator.

This week I started a Dance Club at school. Boys from every grade have signed up and we have started choreographing a contemporary dance. We had our first meeting on Monday. It was 45 minutes long. And for the first time in a year I have felt my true spirit come alive. It was glorious. In 45 minutes we got something going - a phrase of dance. And behind the masks of my boys I could feel the same surge of joy that I was feeling. We were returning to, or moving towards, a world where could join in creation again.

One of the deepest tragedies of this pandemic for me is the fact that the people who remind us of the soul of the world, the people who make things in order to remind us that we can feel, the humans who are called to weave notes of empathy into the fabric of humanity, have been silenced. It is not just a vastly devastating tragedy on a financial spectrum for these people, it’s is devastating because in silencing our creators we have silenced our own souls. 

Last night my family and I listened to some boys making (socially distanced) music. Stephen, who is also a creator, but a less effusive one than me said something like this afterwards- ‘It makes one emotional. Music has been such a huge part of our experience at Kearsney and it is amazing to see it return.’ And here I would like to say to all of us that art has been a huge part of our experience of life and we cannot wait to see it return.

And of course it will only be through the eventual return of the arts that we will fully be able to articulate this pandemic - as with all trauma and darkness it will be the plays, songs, orchestras, paintings, sculptures that will help us to process this thing. And it will be because they will help us to feel the tragedy we have gone though, rather than explain it. It will be through creation that we will allow the Creator back into those deep, unexplained mysteries of our spirits. And with this return there will be light.