Harmony

“Once in awhile you see an artist or an athlete or a musician step out of himself and disappear into his art and you sit there thinking, He was made for this.”

I was watching the Food Network channel the other day and there was a man who does very intricate designs on wedding cakes and he said, “You scale your mind down to the size of the point on your piping bag and you do your thing and when you’re all done you look up and realize there is an entire other world around you.”

That is EXACTLY how it feels when I am taking pictures or writing. I look up and wonder how long I’ve been standing in the middle of the road snapping off shots or how it suddenly got to be 3 a.m. and I am still sitting at my computer. I get lost in these two activities quite a bit. I can “disconnect” if you will – and when that happens I know something special could be coming my way.

It is in these times that I feel most closely led by the Holy Spirit. I’ve heard Him whisper to me things like, “it’s here…keep looking…you’ll see it” or “the word you’re looking for is…” and when I feel I am finished and I “flip” back to full consciousness, I am often amazed at what has come out through my eyes or my hands. Many times I’ve looked back and thought “I didn’t even know I had that in me.” (And, to be truthful, I probably didn’t!)

As we know, God is the ultimate creator and, although I can’t prove it, I deeply believe that He uses all of us to continue creating by stepping into - and becoming part of - His ultimate creation alongside us. We sit down to write and He joins us at the keyboard. We raise a hand to paint and He presses it into the canvas. We press our chin into the violin rest and He plays it. We reach for the three-pointer and feel ourselves float through the air.

Steven James asks why it is so rare for someone to be so perfectly aligned with his art/sport/craft/work that others would marvel at his unique talent. He’s speculating that sin causes the disharmony between us and God and I would have to agree. We are out of sync with God for the most part and I imagine it is rather difficult to create something using someone who can’t hear you clearly speak to them.

But, what then, shall we make of it when it does happen? When someone does something that draws the attention of others because it is so far above the rest? If we’re out of sync with God because of sin and sin is all around us 24/7, how does God get through in these instances?

I’m not sure…but I do know this –

If you allow God to use you – if you go with the flow and disengage from this conscious world – that’s when it happens. If I pick up a camera and just start snapping, I will be lucky to get one or two decent shots but, if I go for a walk, spend time talking to God and just let go of my day and my troubles and my fears and THEN start shooting…that’s when the magic happens. I think, at least for me, I have to not only get IN sync with God but I also have to get OUT of sync with my physical (sin filled) world. It’s almost like He meets me in another place, somewhere between the perfection of heaven and the sin of the earth.

I think anyone who learns how to “disengage” from being 100% present in the world can learn to be used by The Creator. Some of us will even figure out how to get really good at this “disengaging” process and will almost subconsciously be able to latch on to the energy that God has in store for His ongoing creation over and over and over again. But one must be very careful about it because it can be a double-edged sword. Disengaging just for the sake of itself is where desperation and depression live. You have to be willing to go back and forth in order to maintain the proper balance of being present here and being present with God (much like you do in long periods of prayer.) Going to this “other place” and staying there because you are drawn to the connection and flow of things outside of the sin of the world is unnatural for we ARE humans living in sin. Trying to avoid life by delving into this other way of ‘being’ leads not only to people losing themselves in their art but people losing themselves - period.

From the author's poem “Orchestration” I loved the lines:

“I hear snatches of it sometimes
in the silences, in the corners, on the outskirts of my dreams
but my days are all so busy and
my moments are all so heavy,
that they pull my hope down again into minor key.”

Disengaging…allowing God to have His say by letting Him use you- whether that is with words or paints or poetry or photographs or crafts or violins or carving wood or sailing boats or starting a company - whatever…God is - and continually wants to be - a Creator and, if you let Him, he’ll create through you, too.

The truth is, we’re all “made for this.” We just have to allow ourselves to fully be used by Him.