Sitting around with artists discussing art is a very special experience.
I have been doing this on a regular basis the last couple of months through working on a collaborative project with a visual artist and a poet.
We each bring a unique perspective to the topic, not only because of our different personalities but because our modes of creating change how we perceive and communicate about art.
Our project is about hope. Hope through storms. Hope through tragedy.
Initially inspired by environmental catastrophes like Hurricane Helene and California wildfires in 2024, the project encompasses much more than that. It also is about war, injustice, and civil unrest.
Last week, we were talking about how art is an act of resistance. Hope, also, is an act of resistance.
It’s not necessarily a political resistance, though it could be.
More broadly, it is a resistance against despair. Against cynicism.
This week, I read a couple of newsletters which directly address this topic.
Benjamin Cremer wrote in Why Do the Wicked Prosper? that hope sustains resistance.
He continues,
This is where hope still lives. Not in denial, not in silence, but in faithful refusal. Hope looks like lament that tells the truth…Hope looks like compassion that does not grow numb.
Dr. Russell Moore wrote in Don’t Weaponize Your Patience about the need for “hopeful patience” which “recognizes delayed outcomes but does not decay expectations.”
He says,
Hopeful patience does not refuse to bear witness.
It is “full of lament but not despair.
Later, he comments that
a waiting that isn’t energized by both hope and lament will lose heart—and give up.
A waiting that isn’t energized by both hope and lament will lose heart – and give up.
That reminds me of Proverbs 13:12 which says that hope deferred makes a heart sick.
The newsletters I read this week fell right in line with what Mary, Cara and I were discussing in regard to our project.
Our project follows this very path of lament and hope.
It is an artistic remembering. An acknowledgement of difficult times. Telling the truth. Refusing to dismiss suffering as either normal, excusable, invalid, or insignificant.
At the same time, we don’t stay there in the pit. Artistically, we point to a time of renewal. Where seeds sprout in the rich soil left behind by sediment and ash.
Life comes again even after death. The human spirit will be revived.
This week, a friend reminded me of Olivier Messiaen’s piece Quartet for the End of Time, which he wrote and performed with other prisoners while he was in a camp during WW2.
Art helps people get through difficult times, at once acknowledging adversity while also uplifting the spirit by pointing toward what is beyond. When safety, freedom and peace come again.
Art is an act of defiance that refuses to let the darkness define us.
Artists, we may not always be at the front lines of the fight against oppression, and we may not be the first responders in a tragedy.
But this we are called to do: sustain hope and combat cynicism and despair.
Onward we go!