Listening to the Artists

A terrific quote on why we need artists, and why we need to listen hard to what the artists of our time are saying, and the questions they are asking-
it's a good antidote to living in the Land of Already-Having-All-The-Answers that is the Christian experience today.

"Art can warm even a chilled and sunless soul to an exalted spiritual experience. Through art we occasionally receive- indistinctly, briefly- revelations the likes of which cannot be achieved by rational thought.

It is like the small mirror of legend: you look into it but instead of yourself you glimpse for a moment the Inaccessible, a realm forever beyond reach. And your soul begins to ache... "

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from "the Nobel Lecture on Literature"

Also, I remember reading a review of that Christian movie starring Kirk Cameron, Fireproof. the reviewer said that it was a solid movie, as far as moving making goes, but that it wasn't a great movie, and that no Christian movie could be, because this religion does not allow for the kind of honesty that real Art requires. Hmmm.