FFM 2007 - Part 2

After waking up, getting oriented on campus (since we'd arrived in the dark) and finding Johnny's, the campus cafe for breakfast, the band headed off to register in the heart of the Fine Arts Centre. I looked around briefly for Lauren Winner - I was hoping to catch up with her and talk about her upcoming engagement at Wycliffe College - but she was nowhere to be found. From 11am-noon, the band assembled in a makeshift rehearsal space provided by the organizers, and we ran through the next morning's set. The music was taking shape, our parts were making more sense, and we were feeling halfway decent about the prospect of leading several hundred people the next morning. This year's FFM had a really serious spike in attendance from previous years. Where last time there were probably 100-150 people in attendance, 2007 saw around 1000 participants. That's probably something to keep in mind as we examine the ways in which the conference took place. I can see how the change in attendance could have changed the vibe of the keynote addresses. They probably would have felt different in front of a more intimate audience of 100, as opposed to the numbers in attendance this year. Lauren Winner got to the stage and spent her first ten minutes talking about why she shouldn't have been asked to give this particular keynote. By the middle of her address, I was in full agreement. Let me frame it this way: the woman has written a couple of decent books (Girl Meets God, Real Sex), the most recent of which explores a plausible approach towards chastity in the context of Christian faith. I have not seen her speak on it, but I would expect that she's probably comfortable with that schtick by now. Asking her to speak on the arts, and more specifically music, something which she admittedly knows little about, seems like a setup. One of her dominant refrains was that "God cares about senseless art." I had to approach this statement again and again, asking "what on earth did she mean by senseless art?" Especially in the context of a Christian discussion, I had to question the value of calling art senseless to begin with. I suppose I understand what she was getting at - that there is something extravagant and marvellous about the creative process. Winner helpfully discussed art's value in relation to the building of the temple. Such art, she related, was an act of worship where the construction of modern church edifices is often based on the bottom line. But despite this point (which she could have significantly expanded upon and made coherent what was left unclear) she could not seem to tie that sense of worship back to her idea of the senseless. My question lingered: does worship not make sense of the senseless? In recognition of a creative and creating God, is artful creation not only sensible, but sanctified? To steal from David Dark's lecture from Saturday, this must be so, if it points to the truth. I have to admit to tuning out at various points, but my ears sure sprang up again when her discussion of art meandered into a discussion of the poor, where she stated, "The logic of scarcity in our surrounding world is at odds with the Christian logic of fecundity through the God of abundance." The creation and enjoyment of art, Winner seemed to say, either supercedes or at least matches our responsibility to the poor. Are we to feed the poor or buy good art? Winner's logic, avoiding the problem of the church's relationship to the poor, appeared to favour art. I would have preferred it, if instead of creating such a reductionist duality between art and poverty, she had spent some time artfully wrestling with the realities of scarcity in our world. Looking out my window today, I do see poverty. I know of God's promise of plenty, but what I witness, grounded in the realities of my time and place, is poverty. Financial poverty, spiritual poverty, whatever way you want to spin it, our world is impoverished. This does not deny God's fecundity, but points to the realities of a fallen world. I do see people who live in overpriced, poorly maintained apartment buildings. I meet these people in the street. Perhaps I share a conversation and a coffee with them. In so doing, I find myself called towards an artful engagement with all of God's people. In so doing, I do not feel as though I can place art over and above the value of the people with whom I meet. In such a case, my engagement with art would in fact be senseless. How can we value art for arts sake, and not be concerned with the plight of the rest of creation? Certainly this does not reduce the ways in which we can engage with art, or to create things, but I suspect it will be important to reframe art's value (and especially that created by Christians) not in any senseless aesthetic, but rather in terms of its ability to tell the truth, that is, to engage in acts of worship.