May 2024

“The opposite of war isn’t peace…it’s creation”

La Vie Boheme B, Rent - The Musical

Hope and art.  Last week, I experienced both of these as I watched the new film “Out of the Picture” at the Avalon Theater during the Milwaukee Film Festival.  This new film, which won 2nd place in the Cream City Cinema contest, documents the elimination of art critics from local newspapers and their potential rebirth in new venues, through new forms.  In the midst of so much conflict in the world, this documentary helped me reimagine artists and art critics as people engaged in a vocation of hope.   They are in dialogue with each other and the larger world. In the words of Rollo May, “genuine artists are so bound up with their age that they cannot communicate separated from it.” Artists process the world around us to understand it better, to explain it, to question it, and to challenge it.  At its best, art, in its array of forms, can help us to reimagine the world.  What I love so much about the Bible is that it begins with the act of creation and God “saw that it was good.” As we discussed throughout our readings during Lent, Jesus was working to reimagine how we live out our faith and to live into the Kingdom of God.

Over the next few months, we will be in conversation in our gatherings at Dinner Church and Living Faith asking the question about how we can play a role in creation, in the scriptural concept of “shalom”.

A special thanks to Erin Richards’ for letting us know about the film “Out of the Picture”, which she helped produce!