You Will Set the World Ablaze

The following is an email sent from Art to Will and Joe on 29 March 2016.

Captain Nemo playing the organ aboard the Nautilus

I'm trying to remain positive, but I haven't been in a naturally positive place.

Saw my uncle yesterday and we talked about a young recording artist that he knows—and about the near impossibility of breaking in to anything with that style of music. Then he brought up his usual question, what is your niche, what are the three things that you can do that no one else can?

And while questions like these tend to bounce off of me like so many cannonballs off the hull of Captain Nemo's Nautilus, I suppose he has a point.

Maybe those are the right questions to ask. Maybe those questions miss the point entirely.

Maybe we need a different category of question. One other possible category is what positives does the project engender, both in our own lives and in the lives of others? One thing is that the project has gotten me to read a lot more, practice a lot more, stay in touch with others a lot more. I'd even say it's deepened my faith life. I honestly don't know what others get out of it.

That brings me back to the question from before: what are the three things that we can do that no one else can? Just speaking for myself, I won't be remembered as a musician, songwriter, playwright, performer, philosopher, or theologian. Those are not my niches and it's too late to catch up at this point.

As I think about it, I see a key to this question in the story of Arthur White. Arthur White was a mystic whose brother tried to fry it out of him with ECT. How many mystics have had their mysticism fried out of them by our electronic age!

I think our niche may be that we believe our primary job is to penetrate the mystery of our lives. That none of the facts of our existence are mere coincidences, that God has a special message and mission for each one of us. And that everything will follow from penetrating to the core of that message written into the very substance of our being. Thus, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt 6:33).

I say penetrating the mystery of our lives is the same as seeking the Kingdom of God because of Luke 17:20. Tolstoy's translation for his book is “The Kingdom of God is within you.” The New American Bible is “The Kingdom of God is among you” (Luke 17:20). Obviously, the latter is more Catholic in that it implies that the Kingdom of God is found in community, not in each separate individual.

That confirms for me some of the best things that have come out of the project. It goes along with the Married Couple's Prayer ideal of a “holy rivalry.” Just to keep up with you all, I've read a lot of the books you've read (I'm reading The Power and the Glory now). Now Liza is introducing a new standard, that of being a true artist and contemplative.

So, I'm getting some ideas about our “niche.” One is a belief that God has a special message and mission for each one of us, written into the very substance of our being. Two is a belief that the Kingdom of God is found among us, not in our isolated individuality.

We necessarily steer this question of niche back to the issue of God's will. The niche emerges insofar as we penetrate the mystery of our lives. I would say that's true for everyone, but most especially for us. On some level, we've always held that as our criterion. What does this mean for the project? Liza models this for us in her dispersed excursion to the Keweenaw and in her countercultural lifestyle generally.

I recall John Paul's Letter to Artists:

Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.

Not to mention this:

...if you are what you should be—that is, if you live Christianity without compromise—you will set the world ablaze.

I've got to get to bed, but I'm beginning to think that the next step in the project would be to go on retreat and ratchet up our spiritual lives. The power of the project lies in rivalry.