The Artisan Soul (7 page)

This morning, before I began this chapter, I was thinking that when we find our authentic voices, we discover our authentic selves and begin to live our most authentic lives. I reflected on how we mirror the nature of God. I thought to myself that through the Word of God all things good are created. The power of this voice is our way to freedom. As I reflected on the narrative that guides, Aaron sent me a note from New York with no explanation, only these words: “His words spoken into existence alter humanity forever.”

That in a nutshell is exactly what this chapter is about. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). When God speaks, life happens.

2012 will go down for me as one of the most difficult and painful years of my life. It will also always be the marker of the beginning of a better and more beautiful future.

I was a successful entrepreneur in the world of fashion and film, art and story, committed to building a brand that would influence faith and culture for generations. Adding to that the opportunity to work as a futurist and thought leader in multiple domains allowed me access and influence to a broader world than ever before.

Kim and I were able to be so generous in a season of great success and wealth. We built homes for the homeless, dug wells in Africa, helped young girls find freedom from the sex trade, literally helped orphans and widows in need, and were able to invest deeply in the work of Mosaic as it reached Los Angeles and touched the world.

I was on an amazing journey weaving together spirituality and creativity. It was all about beauty, story, and meaning. Clearly this was the life I was meant to live. I was living the dream.

It became a nightmare.

I woke up one day to a painful betrayal where I saw years of work and millions of dollars lost. A future I thought was certain was lost in a moment, and my life felt like it had been turned into rubble. My dreams and hopes turned to ashes and dust.

I had to fly home and tell my wife Kim that I lost everything. I was devastated. I couldn't eat or sleep. I lost twenty pounds from stress (which looking back worked out well for me). More than once I felt as if I would simply fall into the fetal position and stay there for life. Some days all I could do was breathe.

Feeling such deep loss and an overwhelming sense of failure I was reminded of the words of a dear friend of mine, Mako Fujimura. At the beginning of this venture I understood the risks involved in such a huge undertaking. I shared with Mako that I didn't know if I would succeed, but I knew it was worth the risk.

Without hesitation he looked me dead in the eyes and said with absolute certainty, “You have already succeeded.” I asked him why he would say that and his response was just as sure. “Because you have a story to tell. You have a story worth telling, and because of that the outcome is irrelevant to your success.”

I never forgot those words. They mattered then, but they matter so much more now.

Our story is what we have to offer the world. So much more important than being heard is having something to say. Without a voice our words are just sounds. I wish I had a different story than the one I just lived through, but I am so grateful for the story that has made me who I am today.

Even the pain. Even the wounds.

The sadness was real.

The brokenness deep.

The scars mine.

It's my story.

It's who I am.

It's how I'm becoming.

Artists are not only great storytellers; their lives tell a great story. In them the word becomes flesh. They hear the voice that calls them to their destiny.

When God speaks universes are created.

What is His voice creating within you?

O
ver the years, I've been asked quite often who my favorite communicators are. Although I know exactly what the questioner means, I always answer by naming a film director. There are an endless number of great speakers that I admire and appreciate deeply, but it is inescapable that the best storytellers of our time are filmmakers. Who tells a better story than Steven Spielberg or Ridley Scott or Kathryn Bigelow? That's without even mentioning Christopher Nolan or Quentin Tarantino.

One of my personal favorites, though, is Terrence Malick. I am intrigued both by the stories he chooses to tell and by how he tells the stories. In 2011, I was invited to be on a panel at one of the preview events for Malick's
The Tree of Life
. The theater was filled with connectors and influencers from every field of religious and philosophical thought. If I remember correctly, the panel consisted of a Jewish rabbi, a Muslim man, a Catholic nun, an Evangelical pastor, a film critic, an atheist, and me. I'm not really sure which demographic I was invited to represent. One of the unique aspects of a Malick film is how wonderfully obscure they are. His films are more aptly described as visual poetry than simply narrative storytelling. So one of the central questions in the Q&A after the film was, what in the world does this movie mean? It's rare to see a movie with Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, and dinosaurs.

The title clearly invites us to grapple with the deepest questions of human existence: Why are we here? Does life have any meaning? The film even presses deeply into the role and place of God in the story of man. During most of the Q&A, I found myself enjoying listening from the stage. The questions and insights were so varied. It was fascinating.

Eventually, though, I was pressed to express my thoughts on Malick's meaning. What was my interpretation? What stood out to me was a scene that could be perceived as innocuous or even irrelevant to the whole, but which struck me as the central metaphor of the film.

Brad Pitt plays an old-school Texas father whose relationship to his family is cold and distant. I imagine that if interviewed, his family would describe their relationship more in terms of fear and respect than love and admiration. In this scene, we find Brad Pitt's character sitting in his chair with a lighter on the table to his right, clearly within reach. He grabs his cigarette, but then we see his son walk briskly past him. He abruptly asks his son to come and hand him his lighter. There is an awkward pause during which his son seems to hesitate, then moves toward his father and picks up the lighter. He hands it to his father without saying a word and quickly turns to go back the way he came.

Brad Pitt's character abruptly asks, “Didn't you forget something?” and the son hesitantly returns and kisses his father on the face. Then Brad Pitt's character asks him, “Do you love your father?”—the kind of question that if you have to ask, the answer is clear. But his son, out of fear, answers with a yes, more as a means of escape than an attempt to find an emotional bond with his father.

This scene illustrates the central human dilemma in our search for God. God is seen as a cruel taskmaster—cold, aloof, and indifferent. Our only interactions with him occur when he arbitrarily invades our lives and commands us to do his bidding while he sits idly by and watches us work. At the same time, it seemed like Brad Pitt's character's awkward attempt to draw his son closer. He obviously could get his own lighter. He was a hardworking man and clearly wasn't so lazy that he couldn't lean over half a foot. By calling his son over to grab his lighter, he was in his own awkward and sublime way inviting his son to come near. It wasn't the lighter he wanted; it was the kiss. And it wasn't the kiss that was his ultimate desire; it was the affection of his son.

I wonder if this is the difference between religion and worship. Religion is our response to God from a perspective of coercion and compliance. We fear God, so we do his bidding and risk coming near him, all the while waiting to put distance between ourselves and our Creator. God is, however, profoundly misunderstood. Worship is not something we are called to so that God can reinforce his status. It is his way of calling us near. He asks us to grab the lighter and set the altar on fire—not because he could not do it himself, but because he wants us to come near. He wants us to realize that while we thought all he wanted from us was the work, it was actually an invitation to come near and know his love.

You could imagine my surprise when
The
Wall Street Journal
picked up this story and spread it across the country. Frankly, it's somewhat ironic, since I have no idea if this is what Terrence Malick meant at all. It was just my interpretation, my translation, of his story. I have to wonder, though, if this wasn't Malick's artistic intent and if he perhaps tells a story in such a way that we do not simply hear his interpretation of the human story but begin to discover our own interpretation of the meaning of everything.
The Tree of Life
is either filled with contradictions and seemingly disconnected narratives or it is filled with windows into the human soul.

Films like
The Tree of Life
,
Life of Pi,
and even
Avatar
force us to face an important insight about human nature: truth is not nearly as powerful as interpretation. I hope you bristled when you read that line. I bristled when I wrote it. I want us to take a deep breath and exhale, to notice that my statement works from the assumption of truth. I resolved a long time ago that truth exists only if there is someone who is trustworthy. The truth is an extension of someone who can be trusted. The truth exists because God is trustworthy. There is a truth upon which we can build our lives, but that truth, contrary to how our modern minds want to work, is not about data. Truth is not a piece of information but a person. Jesus said it simply: “I am the truth.” I have become convinced over a lifetime that the human spirit lives in the fullness for which we are created only when we live in truth. The farther we move from truth, the more unhealthy we become. The more we live in truth, the more we find wholeness and become our most authentic selves.

That said, I still hold to my earlier statement—interpretation is more important than truth in that all truth, all human experience, every narrative and every story, in the end changes us only after we have engaged it and interpreted it through our own story. Truth finds its way into the inner recesses of our soul only through interpretation. In the end, only we can decide if another person's story will cause us to believe in God. In the end, we decide which story becomes our story.

We are interpreters. This is the way we are designed. We are translators of meaning, and thus everything we see, hear, smell, touch, taste, and experience is processed through all our previous experiences and perceptions. We don't see people for who they are; we see them through the filter of everyone we've ever known. We don't see circumstances as they are; we see them through the filter of everything we've ever experienced. No experience is an experience in isolation. Every experience is interpreted by the overarching story of our lives, and those experiences give us greater clarity.

Art is an interpretation of life. At its essence, reduced to its most simple expression, art is our translation of all human experience. More than that, it is the artist's personal interpretation of their experience of life. Art is an expression of our emotions; art is an interpretation of our experiences; art in its highest form is a mirror of life. If life is a work of art and life is to become our most creative act, then we must realize that our lives will be our most profound interpretation of what it truly means to be human. Through our lives, we paint a picture of what we believe and what we have experienced.

Have you ever noticed how many artists are informed by the darkest and most painful human experiences? I find the overwhelming majority see tragedy, suffering, and pain as essential to their creative process. I would go as far as to say that many, if not most, feel it is impossible to create when life is going well. I remember once hearing my daughter, Mariah, who is an incredibly talented singer and songwriter, explain that she simply couldn't write because she was too happy. She mused that she might need to break up with her boyfriend to be able to get back to work. I tried to convince her that you never need to hurry pain along. Pain and suffering will find you soon enough.

The creative process is far too often inspired by our most painful experiences rather than our most inspiring ones. It would not be a stretch to say that for many artists, authenticity and tragedy are inseparable. The darker you are, the more honest you are. If you are hopeful, it means you haven't fully embraced your humanity. Optimism is superficial; despair is what honesty looks like.

For years I wondered why it was that even I found darkness a more powerful creative space than light. Why was it that I was somehow more inspired to write, to create, to take time to express my deepest human longings when my soul felt empty, hollow, and estranged? I have come to realize that if the artistic process demands anything from us, it is that the artist must always tell the truth. For the academic, truth can be an objective reality observed and examined. For the artist, truth must be more than that. Something isn't true unless it is both experienced and profoundly subjective. Only that which changes us is true to us; that is the mantra of the true artist. This can be the material for both an ever-expanding universe of creativity and the paralyzing limitation of subjectivity. This relationship to truth often leaves us too little space to travel. If we travel alone, all we know to tell is the story of our profound aloneness. If all we've known is pain and we can only create out of what we know, then this is all the material available to us.

I remember when Mariah was fourteen. She wrote a song that would be used years later in the season finale of
Grey's Anatomy
. One line stood out to me from the very beginning: “Give me a match and I'll burn it all down.” You can only imagine how Kim and I felt as Mariah sang her song to us in the living room, a song filled with so much pain, despair, and anger. I think Kim felt a bit betrayed. We had tried so hard to be good parents. I felt really confused. Mariah seemed like such a happy child. In fact, I had described her as sunshine wrapped up in skin.