We have to give birth to ourselves.

I am in danger of weeping on an airplane. I think, “What can I say to my seat mate if she asks me why I am crying?” I could tell her that I have been to an intense event. Maybe a funeral. But really I have been to a birth. This weekend I saw women giving birth to their very selves. Or perhaps, mostly, I realized that I have actually done this for myself.

I have been undergoing the slow process lately of realizing that I know stuff. That I am not a newborn, a beginner. I readily admit, loudly and often and with much self-deprecating laughter that I do not know everything, or even very much. But I do know some stuff, stuff that merits being passed along. This week, at the Emerging Women’s Leader Consultation, I was able, through mere time and conversation and the need of others, to verbalize some of that–and in that naming, something vague and misty drew form.

I’m not sure how to document that time in Atlanta, to get it down in journal form, retrievable and in archival quality albums. But I do know that I don’t want to forget it. I have some paper notes in my journal, and the physical memory of walking the lab, and taking communion with Deborah, soaking our sorrows in the hot tub with Rebecca are embedded in my body. But I’d like to get some of it down in bits and bytes. So here’s one conversation, a short one, just twenty minutes or so. But it was ever so helpful to me. Blair, she blessed me.

Several months ago my friends Josh and T went out and bought a bazillion magazines and made a beautiful collage to encourage me in what I’m doing as a Cultivator. Right in the middle they actually found, in print, this phrase. “You Have to Use Art to Preach.” The way Iz puts this is that folks with postmodern lenses tend to “intuit truth through art.” For the past six years this has been my passion. I’ve been trying, with many other fellow travelers, to find a way to empower and release the artists in our midst. I’m never really sure how I’m doing at this. I think part of it is because I don’t really speak “artist” and so I’m never sure if people are pissed and unsatisfied, or just busy doing the brainwork that they do to make the astonishing and beautiful connections that they make to create the things that they do. (I am making a lot of blanket statements here. Could you just humor me please? I am, after all if not the Queen, at least the Grand Duchess of Hyperbole.)

This weekend I brought two pieces of art that Craig and Fiona, folks from my crew had made. Blair, a silversmith and a digital artist was helping me with the tear down, and the prints were rolled out on the floor in front of us. Blair was prising off a bit of tape when she said, “What I see here is that your people are not producing art as add on’s to worship. Whoever produced these produced them AS an act of worship.” That floored me. In that one sentence I realized…

that I had come to a destination I didn’t even know I was trying to reach. I knew the arts were important…that they had to, had to, had to be a part of our world. I knew that I wanted the guitarists and the worship bands and even the preachers to step aside (at least some of the time — maybe most of the time) and let the artists lead us to new places and parts of God. But I guess I didn’t really realize that we had done that, that we had crossed some kind of boundary. That we had moved from treating our artists as “producers” — as people who could be called upon to add a nice decoration to an already finished product – the bow on the top of the Sunday morning service, so to speak. I hadn’t realized that we had moved, at least closer to a place where the artists get to be Dorothy, where they get to lead the pack towards Oz for awhile. I want to learn how to do that more and better. I want to teach other people how to do that too.

Another thing or set of things started to come into focus as Blair and I bustled about, her with her camera hanging around her neck; me on my knees on an ugly red carpet stuffing candles and ropes from the labyrinth into my gigantic suitcase. I think it has something to do with cultures of dominance. Within church structures there is dominate culture. Type A folks with administrative skills and charismatic personalities are typically our leaders and they get to find the next kind of leaders. So we have created a set of standards for leadership which pretty much demands that we exclude our artists. Now, everyone will be able to say “what about so-and-so” and list the name of someone they know who is both and artist and a titled leader within a traditional church structure. But I am standing here to testify, that I am being led, right now, in no uncertain way by a number of artists who do not fit the mold for leadership in any church that I have ever attended. They don’t have the gift mix or skill sets that modern models of leadership require. But they are, nonetheless, some of the most significant people whom I follow (are you getting this Iz, Fiona, Neil & April?)

What if leadership is in fact not predominately about a set of administrative skills, but rather about character? And what if character is about more than just moral living? What if character, and therefore leadership is not so much about organization, and writing mission statements, and creating five year plans? What if it is instead about attentiveness, and passion, an instinctive connection to the divine, and living an integrated life? Well, then we can broaden our definition of who can be a leader. Then the artists among us, the artists I am living with, become leaders. And if we allow everyone to play, if we allow everyone to lead us towards a common eschatology (the kingdom of God is here!) then we get to see more of God. I mean, there is a reason God created all this vastness in his people. And I don’t think it was to make sure that one personality type got labeled “healthy,” and then made so that everyone else could be forced to morph into that shape in order to get a stamp of approval. “Okay for Leadership.” I think the reason for all the different strokes in us different folks are because God is vast and it takes all of us, all of our stuff, to reflect his vastness. Look, a unique way of phrasing things is not a character default. Seeing things in color instead of in black and white is not a defect. A sensitive soul, a moody nature is not a sin—and in most cases it’s not even an illness for crying out loud! They are gifts. It’s time we treat them as such. The quirkiness of the artistic temperament is not a brokenness of character. It is actually a flaw in the dominate culture that we are not able to make room for the emotional intensity, unique communication styles, and extra-ordinary patterns of living that our artists can provide. Really, I’m rambling now, so I’ll stop. But what I said to Blair was this: I don’t know yet how to nurture the artists I live with; I’m not sure how to feed them. But at least I’m learning how not to squish them, how not to put them in a corner, shove them in a box. I hope that’s enough for now. I hope they can hang with me and help me to learn more — I hope they can let me have the time and the space to do so (because really, I’m a little glacial). I want to learn how to do that more and better. I want to teach other people how to do that too.