I’ve been remiss. I attended the Trinity Arts Conference with inspiring folks like Gregory Wolfe and Jeffrey Overstreet two months ago, and I’ve failed to tell you about it.

In conferences like these, it’s partly about what you learn (in addition to the main sessions, I went to a writer’s workshop what was oodles of fun), partly about the people you meet (a couple of fun writers, although, let’s be honest, probably not lifelong friends from here on out), but mostly about knowing you’re not alone. You enter this group of people who understand you, and that gives you the comfort of going back to your world, sitting at your keyboard, and typing words and paragraphs and stories.

But let me tell you the things said at the conference for which I cheer:

Art finds habitations for mystery like dreamcatchers, and it catches mystery fleetingly. To do so, we, as Emily Dickinson said, "dwell in possibility." What does it meant for me to live in the question today when I prefer predictability?

Side note: it’s interesting to rethink these things just two months later. My husband and I have been in limbo for seven months, now. For a while, that was okay, but we’re getting tired. We want stability. We want predictability. But God forces us to live in the question. I wrote a note in my green journal (green in color, that is): "What can this stage of our lives do for my faith and my art?"

Indeed.

To continue, in our art, we muse over questions rather than answers. This is hard because not only do we want answers in our lives (perhaps why Rent has been running through my mind–"How we gonna pay? How we gonna pay?"), but in our art, sometimes we want to give answers.

But Richard Rodriguez says, "Books should confuse people." Artists are stewards of mystery and need to let go of control. It’s not about getting the point but raising questions and allowing others to get something different than we do. We invite in the struggle and allow our art to be a living thing.

Jeffrey Overstreet said it’s not just about showing v. telling. It’s about showing and hiding. What do we hold back?

Side note 2 (or 3, I’ve lost track): Have I blogged yet about making readers work? I need to do so if I haven’t.

In art, we wrestle. It brings both a wound and a blessing.

Also, the point is not whether we’re called to be an artist or minister or janitor. We are all called to follow Jesus. The question is how do we best do that?

Amen.

Personally, I feel that at this point in my life, I best do that through loving and serving my husband, through knitting scarves and making meals for girls at a halfway house down the street from me, and through writing. (I should add that I’d like to start doing this through simple tasks such as vacuuming, but baby steps.)