Have you ever noticed how the sky fills with light well before the sun actually rises? That’s the way I realize things. I get a hint of the idea long before I fully grasp it. I stand in the light preceding the source for a long time, and then when the sun actually rises in my mind, it’s not that much of a stretch for me to accept the change.
I think I’m standing in the pre-light of a pretty huge revelation. It seems, much to my shock and amazement, I might be considered an “artist.”
In the last couple of months, it’s been suggested to me several times that this is the category where I am classified. Of course, my medium is not clay, canvas, sculpture, music, or anything else in the physical realm. My art exists in the sphere where words meet the imagination and create new worlds.
While I’m slowly adjusting to identifying myself as a writer, it hadn’t really occurred to me that writers fall into the “artist” category. Several incidents have prepared me to accept this shiny reality, and I’m attempting to adjust my thinking accordingly.
And that’s when the insecurities come.
I openly and earnestly admit how much I love to write. It’s my release, my small act of worship, my favorite form of expression. It’s the lens I use to view and process the world. All of this I understand. I even acknowledge that this isn’t true for most people, so it’s something special for me.
But for it to be an art form - for me to be an artist - I have to be creating new experiences and expressions with the things I’m writing. I have to be taking something you’ve seen before and turning it into something you haven’t. Each story would need to usher you toward Truth. Is this not what artists do?
Perhaps the only balm for my insecurity is that I’ve never sought to be an artist. I stumbled into the category quite unknowingly. I’ve desired to chronicle my pursuit of beauty and emotion and holiness and failure and redemption and worship and …
And, I suppose, that is more important than any pressure I put on myself by accidentally noticing that I landed in a category of people who create passageways toward Truth.
Besides, I can’t ever figure out how they all know how to dress like artists, anyway.