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Exodus 31:1-11
BY DEBBIE SCOTT

I believe art and religion are powerfully connected. One source that helped me to understand this connection was a book written more than 30 years ago by Chaim Potok, called 'My Name is Asher Lev.'

Like so many of Potok?s novels, this book invites us into a world unfamiliar to most of us, the world of very conservative, religious Jews called Hasids. Asher Lev is a Hasidic Jew, born in Brooklyn shortly after World War II and the Holocaust. His father moves around the world trying to save Jews from the fate of the six million. It is serious business.

When Asher Lev is born, it is assumed he will follow in his father?s footsteps. But instead, Asher discovers within himself the gift of art. Not just talent or skill, Asher Lev is blessed (or cursed) with an extraordinary gift to draw and paint.

This gift was unasked for and in many ways undesired. His artistic ability made him suspect in the conservative religious community where he was raised.

Yet Asher Lev could not deny the call to his art. He knew his father didn?t understand it. He felt his mother?s pain as she tried to encourage him without angering her husband. He bore the taunts of his classmates. He did so because he could not deny the powerful force that was his artistic talent. When, for a short period, he gave up his art, it almost killed him. Only when he answered the call could he become whole and grow into his humanness. But it did not come without a cost.

At the end of the book, he finds he has to leave his religious community, at least for a while. Potok writes, in the voice of Asher Lev, 'I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. There was in that hand the demonic and the divine at the same time, ... two aspects of the same force. Creation was demonic and divine. I was demonic and divine. Asher Lev paints good pictures and hurts people he loves.'

He then hears the voice of God reply, 'Then be a great painter, Asher Lev; that will be the only justification for all the pain you will cause. Journey with me, my Asher. Paint the anguish of all the world. Let people see the pain.'

Asher Lev does so, even though to answer the call of his art is excruciating. Asher Lev discovers that through his call to creativity he becomes fully human, and also fully connected to the divine. He learns that authentic art is not always beautiful or easy. He learned that his spirit could only be whole when he lived his creativity.

I know that most of us are not born with this kind of artistic gift. But all of us are blessed with the ability to create, the ability to be creative. It is an essential part of our humanity. How our creativity manifests itself is as unique as our individual spirits.

It is tempting to hide our creativity in a box, and never take it out for others to see or experience. But I believe that taking the risk to share ourselves with others in creative ways is a profoundly spiritual process. Our spirits cannot grow if we don?t take risks.

The Rev. Deborah Scott is pastor of North Bethesda UMC.

A DEVOTIONAL
for the Discipleship Adventure

Celebrate: Set aside a Sunday for a sacred art celebration. Invite children, youth and adults to fill the sanctuary with their holy art: visual art, poetry, music, etc. Invite them to share how their creations express their faith and to reflect on their feelings at creating an offering to God.

Connect: Schedule a caf? for young adults, inviting some of the artists of the congregation to share their creations and reflections as mentioned above. Create an atmosphere where those who come to listen and see will also share their feelings of how the art connects them to each other and with God.

Serve, Connect: Take plentiful art supplies to the soup kitchen where you are planning to serve. (Be sure to clear this with the people in charge.) Set up a couple of stations for the guests to express themselves creatively, perhaps on a pre-selected theme of how they meet God. Then mount the work for display.

Develop: Using a Bible dictionary or encyclopedia, research those named as artists in the scriptures or in the church. What did they do? On the Internet, explore the guilds of sacred artists still in existence today.