GOING FORWARD

“In creative work — creative work of all kinds — those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. It is, simply, something else. Its labor requires a different outlook — a different set of priorities.” Mary Oliver

This is also very true of the creative work of disciples of the Kingdom. It is not our desire or intention to make the ‘world go around’ but to make the ‘world go forward.’ If we do not go forward we are choosing to stay and remain as we were and not what we could be, not what might happen, but what currently exists. This is a faithless way to live. As Oliver says, ‘this work is different from the ordinary’ and ‘it requires a different outlook…a different set of priorities.’ That is our challenge: to be different enough not to make the world go around…but forward.

That is the work of creative disciples. As working artists we are only interested in painting a new canvas, not touching up and repairing an old one. That is the way of the Kingdom.

“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made.” Jesus