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On Becoming an Imaginative, Female Theologian Who Loves the Arts, Continued

January 31, 2008 By 10 Comments

I left you yesterday at my mental breakdown of sorts. I said that I had tried to force the jigsaw pieces. That’s not true. No, I hid pieces. They slid between sofa cushions, beneath the fridge, under the candy dish on the TV.

My jigsaw puzzle picture was incomplete.

Every Friday night, I went to the Dallas Symphony (the seminary provided free tickets through some donor or something). And every Friday night, I left full and empty at the same time. Full of music. Empty because it wasn’t me anymore. I wasn’t up there playing.

Midway through my second semester, I realized that something wasn’t working. I had to collect the pieces. There wasn’t a single turning point. I didn’t sit down one night in front of a good movie and put together the puzzle. I found a piece here and a piece there, and when I walked by, I’d fit in that one piece.

To some extent, I’m still fitting in pieces one by one.

A professor here and there would give me the opportunity to write and record a song rather than a short paper.

Wait. I could express my theology in my creativity?

I began to meet other people, artists. Soon enough, a group organized a one-day arts festival on campus. We musicians put on a concert. Dancers dance. Painters displayed their work. A professor did a booth on storyboarding.

I wonder now if more than being able to use my music and creativity was the simple acknowledgement that I’m a musician, that I’m creative, and that’s good.

Then the culmination: for my thesis, I asked, please, please, what do you think about me writing a musical? Oh, yes, they said. What a great idea!

I had hit the motherload.

I studied musicals (which meant going to musicals–what a shame), bringing back my college musicology training. I studied story form–Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler–and how to write a screenplay. I dug out my old orchestration books and reread biographies on my favorite composers.

And I doubted. What on earth did I think I was doing? Composing a musical? Lyrics, melodies, harmonies, orchestrations? Since when did I have the talent for this?

Simple answer: I didn’t. I wrote it anyway.

I wrote a musical. The entire thing. I discovered story form. I rediscovered music. I rediscovered creativity.

Along the way, I learned something crazy–my creativity doesn’t just affect how I express theology, it affects how I do theology. I look at the Bible and I see a story and stories. Perhaps all these other stories in our lives, fairy tales and Greek myths and Pulitzer Prize novels, give us a taste of the Ultimate Story, the Story that holds every element of a good story.

And that’s beautiful.

Now, this discovery breathes within me. Because I’m part of that Story. My creative, imaginative, art-loving self is part of that Story. Can you see it? When I dance? When I play piano? When I write short stories and novels and Bible studies? When I eat? When I knit? When I watch a musical? When I meet a friend for coffee? When I do Pilates? When I cuddle next to my husband? When I worship with other believers at church? When I fold laundery–which, yes, happens occasionally? All of me is part of that Story, not just my theology. No, that’s not right. My theology is part of all that, comes from all of that, influences all of that.

Yesteryday, I told you I didn’t know where this would go. I knew that in this journey, my theme songs have moved from "La Vie Boheme" from Rent (with my favorite line, "to being an us, for once, instead of them," and which I still can’t hear without dancing) to "TwentySomething" by Jamie Cullum with its confusion to "I’m Gonna Live Until I Die" by Frank Sinatra with its embrace of life and every part of it. I know that I couldn’t delete any part of my journey without becoming someone else entirely.

I look above my computer and see pieces of me, chalk drawings of prayers for my future, pictures of my past, tickets of my two favorite musicals–Rent and Sweeney Todd–artwork of a lighthouse, a map of Africa, a map of Prague (one of my favorite places in the world), notes for my WIP, a working list for when we go camping, and a periodic table of chemicals (okay, so that’s my husband’s).

Created by God.

I have yet to talk about my journey to feminity, which is how this started. But my personality feeds who I am more than my gender. The gender warrants discussion, though, probably more in how others see me than how I see myself, so I guess I leave this

To be continued…

Filed Under: anthropology, being, femininity, theology

On Becoming an Imaginative, Female Theologian Who Loves the Arts

January 30, 2008 By 3 Comments

As I sit to write this, I don’t know where it will go. I don’t know how the threads of the story will weave. I admit, it’ll be rough. But stick with me as we figure out from whence came this imaginative, female theologian who loves the arts and how she came to accept that.

Growing up, I wanted to sit at the man’s side of the table when our family went out to dinner with another family. The woman’s side talked about raising kids and, well, I don’t remember what else (although I’m sure there’s much else). But the man’s side, now they talked about theology and occassionally football. I wanted to be in on that conversation.

Before I go any further, let me say this: raising kids is theology. Or it should be. But to a twelve-year-old mind, that connection isn’t clear. And my mom and I had and have more theological conversations than a toddler has opportunities for trouble, but at those dinner tables, my twelve-year-old (or however old I was at each time) didn’t hear it.

I wanted to talk theology.

You also need to know that I grew up loving Anne of Green Gables and Nancy Drew and later, I voyaged to the worlds of Dickens and Austen and rode the train with Agatha Christie and painted revenge with The Count of Monte Cristo.

And that when I entered seminary, I had spent a lifetime preparing to go into the music world.

So I enter this new world at 22, a world where I get to talk theology whenever I want, but a world where most of my colleagues come from world’s of engineering, a world where my music and my imagination had no place.

At least, that’s what I understood at the time.

It was a world dominated by men.

Where did I fit? A woman? A musician? A girl with pixie dust on my wings?

I adapted well enough. I taught flute lessons to help pay bills, so I had my music, even if I kept it separate from my theology.

Even if I had to pack Anne in a box.

Even if I tired of the questions, "So you must be here for women’s ministry?" and "Wow–you’re doing this program as a woman?" which I know they meant as a compliment but really, it’s an insult.

I was fine. Just fine. I liked the Greek and the Trinitarianism and the Missions studies. That side of me hid in my music world for the past four years.

Until midway through the second semester of the first year, I pulled my car on the side of the road because the tears blurred my vision. I couldn’t force the pieces anymore–the jigsaw puzzle had no picture.

To be continued…

Filed Under: anthropology, being, imagination, theology