The Little Things: A Meditation On The Art Of Encouragement

by David Taylor

Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey.
Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness.
Constant danger, safe return doubtful.
Honor and recognition in case of success.

Sir Ernest Shackleton placed this advertisement in the London newspapers on December 29, 1913. Shackleton, the son of an Irish doctor, had already achieved fame through his highly touted race to the South Pole in 1909, in the Nimrod Expedition. For his achievement King Edward IV invested him as Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. During his various Antarctic journeys Shackleton had endured harrowing days at sea and suffered snow blindness, scurvy, and frostbite on his fingers. At one point he and his crew had been forced to subsist on one cracker a day; at another point, near starvation, they’d shot their ponies for food.

Now, on the eve of the First Great War, Shackleton sought a greater fame. He announced he was going to traverse the entire Antarctic continent, from end to end, all 1800 miles of vast snowfields and glaciers. He chose fifty-six men of stout constitution to join him on a mission he dubbed the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. This would become the last major expedition during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration of the early twentieth century. As one commentator remarks, “The expedition failed entirely to accomplish [its] aim, but it remains memorable as an epic of heroism and survival.” Black and white photographs capture the faces of these men. They are sun-burnt. Bitter sub-zero winds have left their skin cracked. Icicles cling to their beards like barnacles. They half smile, half wince under a bleak grey sky.

I have been told that the ad is apocryphal. That may be. Still, it accurately describes the merciless conditions under which these athlete-explorers made their mark on history.

I believe Shackleton’s note should be posted on the front cover of every art book, every art school brochure, every announcement of every art summer camp, every art magazine, every artist residency and every website of every organization dedicated to the preparation of artists. I would amend it thus:

Warning: Hazardous material inside. Might cost you your sanity. All children aspiring to be artists, like children born of a communist state, must memorize the following memorandum. Herein lies your future life: small wages, bitter rejections, long months of enduring drafts of work that are complete drivel. Constant danger from people around you, especially the church-going and blood-related, who will tell you (or forcefully hint) that you are crazy and weird and wasting your time. Safe return to the end of your life doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success, but likely not financial. So hold on to the honor part because that is probably all you will get.

It is difficult to be an artist. Over the last thirteen years working as a pastor in Austin, Texas, I have seen hundreds of professional and amateur artists — filmmakers and modern dancers, poets and actors, singer-songwriters, designers, painters, architects, even a clown artist — come and go through the doors of Hope Chapel. I have seen many artists succeed and plenty fail. Most fight for every inch of progress. All artists I’ve known have had to look the Minotaur in the face: “Do I quit or do I keep going?”

If you asked me to tell you the Top Three Most Important Things I Have Observed throughout all my years as a pastor, one would be this: artists need continuous encouragement. This isn’t because they are a particularly weak. All humans need encouragement. But artists need it principally because of the nature of their work. Their work requires them to travel frequently into the realm of their own emotions, and then deeper still into their soul, and this can be demanding, wearying work. Artists also work in a culture, at least in North America, that places a low value on art. When budgets tighten, art habitually gets cut first.

So I spend roughly thirty percent of my time in the simple task of encouraging artists. If you as a pastor or church leader, or any Christian for that matter, want to love artists well, then encourage their hearts, their minds, their wills, their hands, and their relationships and you will be doing a great work for the Kingdom of God.

In this essay I want to map out a landscape of encouragement and apply it to the life and work of an artist. I have divided the essay into two parts. The first part is a foundational perspective on the nature of encouragement: why do we need it? In the second part I take a bird’s eye perspective — from above, if you will — in order to get a sense of the different components of encouragement and how they might work together. I write the following as both a pastor and an artist.

PART 1: ON COURAGE

The two assumptions that inform my work of encouraging artists are these:

The natural condition of human beings, from Adam and Eve to the present day, is the condition of being afraid.
For artists to become all that God intends for them to be, they must pass through many experiences of pain, each experience ushering them to a new level of growth and maturity.

These two assumptions implicate the two life-stages of an artist: the beginning of being an artist and the continuing of being an artist. There is the decision to begin a climb and there is the decision to keep climbing. There is the day you decide to make art and the day you decide whether you want to keep making art. Will I choose to keep growing? Will I choose to keep pushing myself to try new things?

Fear and pain, the ever-threatening Scylla and Charybdis, keep innumerable artists from ever starting out. And those whom fear and pain have not been able to deter, they constantly derail with failures, the sting of loneliness, depression, and the possibility that they are simply mediocre pretenders who are wasting everyone’s time.

Thankfully, God has provided us with an antidote: courage. Courage, regarded in classical times as one of the four cardinal virtues, is the virtue by which one faces and overcomes the dangers of this world — not rashly, but wisely, not for selfish gain, but for a greater good. Courage is what artists need to be artists. Yet as my friend and painter Jim Janknegt reminds me, “You cannot make me courageous, David, but you can en-courage me to be courageous.” Courageousness cannot be imposed upon a person. A person has to want to be brave. And the only way for that person to become brave, as Aristotle maintains in his Nicomachean Ethics, is “by doing brave acts.”

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Comments

Melody Hanson

I'm stunned. Blessed. Flabbergasted. And delighted with this article.

And so excited to pass this on to friends and the pastors @ my church. We talk about encouraging artists but other than an "artist showcase" weekend once a year not much else is happening. I don't think people know how to encourage artists if they even know who they are. Except perhaps a few who have large presence or personality.

That you are so intentional with caring for artists in your church is incredible.

Thank you.

Melody H. Hanson

http://logicandimagination.wordpress.com/

Ric

Thanks for these words of encouragement - as someone who works in developing arts and spirituality in the UK I know that the church is not always a hospitable place for artists to be.

Every blessing in your ministry,

Ric

www.iaskforwonder.posterous.com

Jeff Nelson

Most of the encouragement Ive received over my life as an artist when I needed it most was generally negative encouragement. As I look back, I have no doubt I'd be further ahead and more confident as an artist if the people around were encouragers, but because of this lack of positive encouragement I have built a natural and deep well of encouragement for others. It truly is a gift from God because it pours out of me for other artists. Along the journey I have learned that Suffering is the pathway in which we are made ready to serve others and now I receive greater joy in encouraging others than I do in creating art.

David I appreciate your rational and honest appraisal of encouragement, it has helped me shape my own thoughts better and gives me a desire to read more from you.

Thank you,

German J Morales

I can identify with the lack of encouragement from family, especially from my father, when in my teens (12) I was studying music in a conservatory of music, and preparing to be instructed classic guitar by one of the world's masters. Today, myself a parent, I do not excuse my parent, but I do understand the pressures and fears that he must have had- of his children to struggle with a "non practical" profession. Too often parents want their children to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. regardless of their dreams. We parents can easily forget that once we had dreams and a natural vocation- I pursued mine, others took an alternate path: all we needed was encouragement- positive feedback to feed the dream and help us to sharpen our skills toward that special vocation. Today I have two children, out of our five, that want to become artists- they are artists! Now, I remember the lack of encouragement I received, and the reasons behind: money (or the lack of it)! I understand very well today's challenges, but if you have the dream and the gift, you must give it all (caution: not your soul) for it- with passion! If you are an studio artist then live, breathe and perspire studio art- you shall become a master! Thanks for the words of encouragement! G.M.

Kathleen Overby

"painter Jim Janknegt reminds me, “You cannot make me courageous, David, but you can en-courage me to be courageous.” Wow. Just wow.