The following are a couple of quotes from Harold Best's letter to young artists (written for inclusion in Michael Card's book Scribbling in the Sand: Christ and Creativity).
"Your authenticity does not depend on proving to people or to God--with pitches, paints, or pen--that you really are quite a piece of work. Rather, I pray that you are discovering that your authenticity lies in who you are constantly becoming in Christ [. . . .] The only reason for doing our very best, despite any cost, is the infinite worth of Jesus, for making art this way is where authenticity lies."
"Be simple and straightforward about your art. Don't mysticize it; don't mysticize your relation to it. Love it, yes, just as God loves a zebra. But don't outstep him by saying that you are your art when he can't say that he is a zebra."
I doubt I can truly call myself an artist (though, honestly, I'd love to). Creativity is, however, woven into the fiber of who I am. I've made the mistake that Best warns against--the mistake of binding my creative endeavors too tightly to my being. In fact, I've bound all my endeavors (especially the ones I fail at or fail to attempt) too closely to my identity.
This past birthday I tipped over the line between twenty and thirty (no, I didn't turn thirty, I'm just closer to it than twenty, now), and I am only just realizing how flawed my thinking about adulthood has been. I thought I was failing at it. I thought I was morally devoid of the "oomph" necessary to achieve a respectable place within this new world. See, in childhood, others are charged with helping you develop into something. When you grow up, the props are removed and you see if the glue has hardened enough for you to be a freestanding structure. I suppose this is exhilarating if you feel like a granite arch or something. It is another matter entirely if you feel like a kindergartner's gooey graham cracker house.
The thing is, though, that we don't make our own place, not really. We may set up an apartment, eventually buy a little residence--but as Christians, there is a part of us that is never really home here. We taste home now and then, like licking off birthday cake beaters, but the real thing is still coming. God, watching me set off on my own, was not standing back with folded arms saying, "She's grown now. Let's see if she sinks or swims." I suspect the change in self-reliance didn't seem momentous at all to Him. The Bible says that He has compassion on us like a dad does because He knows our frailty.
I suspect that growing up is not an abandonment of dependence, but a change from second-degree dependence to first-degree dependence. As little ones, we rely on our parents who rely on God. Growing up, we learn to rely more and more directly on God. Adulthood is a chance to see--not if I am enough--but if God is.
Elena, I like the quotes on art and being a Christian. But on the transition from childhood to adulthood, I have a different take. When I was 21, I took a 25 mile walk through California farm country to my uncle's house, thinking about whether or not I would think of myself as an adult. I decided, no. I liked who I was and didn't want to change. Having God in my life was a very big part of my identity, and I didn't want that to change. I never "grew up." I have continued to depend on God the way I did when I was a child. My parents always encouraged independence, so I didn't have that sense that at some point I was on my own. When they stopped giving me $100/ month for living expenses at college, I lived under a tree. That was my transition. But I think my conclusion is the same as yours. As adults we are dependent on God.
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