Sabbath Artist

I knew it was time for a new blog, one dedicated to thinking about and documenting worship ideas. What I did not have was a name. I asked friends for help, and Sherry came through. “Sabbath Artist,” she wrote me. “SA. It’s also for your initials.”

I’ve had a long and fairly well-documented struggle with how I relate to the word artist. I enjoy artists. I appreciate the way they see the world as a story and then help interpret the stories they discover so that we can understand the stories more fully.

One of my neighbors is an artist. She communicates stories through rocks and stones that she coaxes into shapes and warms with metal to make jewelry that is both beautiful and filled with the stories the rocks told her and that are waiting to participate in the next story. We were talking one day about artists and stories, and I shared that I felt like I was an artist without an art form. She responded very quickly, insisting that I did have an art form: relationships. Another artist friend volunteered a few months later that he thought my art form was living life.

I asked myself if  “Sabbath Artist” was too bold a claim. What would happen if it turns out I’m not an artist at all? What kind of person self-proclaims that they are an artist? And yet – I think Sabbath at its best is art. Sabbath involves stories, contemplation, and practice; we learn to use new tools to better express our Sabbath stories.  I don’t think I have ever met an artist who felt they were done learning their craft; if anything the way of the artist is one where the path continues to change as new stories interact with longer-held stories and the artist stretches to continue to better share those new and old stories together.

I have not perfected Sabbath, nor have I perfected the planning of worship. I do think that becoming more intentional about the stories that inform both Sabbath and worship will help me live in to the art form. And perhaps I will discover some new art forms, new ways to share stories, along the way.

South Gate UMC, Lincoln - January 2019