Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making

by Andrew Peterson

But artists often have a sense that their story, song, painting, or sculpture “wants” to become something, often something quite different from what they intended.

Serving the work doesn’t mean we don’t have an agenda, but that the agenda works in partnership with the wild, creative spirit—not

Agenda is bad when it usurps the beauty.

Christian art should strive for a marriage of the two, just as Christ is described as being “full of grace and truth”

Truth without beauty can be a weapon; beauty without trut...

But we’re not merely artistic, creative creatures—we’re rational, articulate creatures, too, so why not bring both to bear?

Christian art, then, might be defined as a work that is, like Christ himself, full of grace and truth.

The beauty, by its excellence, bears the truth to the world in a way that seasons culture and can arrest the attention of the staunchest atheist.

When I moved to Nashville it was cool to say that I wasn’t a Christian artist, but an artist who was a Christian. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the measure of potential snootiness in that statement is an indication of its incompleteness.

I began to understand the peril of asking God to let you write songs that would comfort the lonely and brokenhearted—peril, because the only way to do that is to walk through the dark forest of loneliness and heartbreak. I had to learn that when you’re writing a song, you have to serve the work. You have to remember that the God the song is about knows more than you do about songwriting. Your agenda should be broad: “Let this song be a light in someone’s darkness. Let this song bring you glory, Father. Use it to lead someone home.”

When you cast all mystery out the window because you want to make a point, you’re in essence declaring yourself the master and not the servant. Be humble. The creative act is profoundly spiritual, and therefore profoundly mysterious.

to know God by obeying him. If you want to know the mind of God, do what he says.

The way to push yourself into new territory isn’t about pushing yourself as much as it is allowing yourself to be pulled along.

“Write it like you would say it.”

Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings.

That grace may bring conviction for the self-righteous, or it may be a gentle assurance to the lowly sinner that, despite their worst fears there is a great and graceful Person in the world who loves them as they are and not as they should be. I find myself on both sides of the coin from one minute to the next. Amazingly, both can happen at the same time, to the same person,

Dash all pretense; be who you are; kick down the walls; love the listener.

Lamott’s point is that you can fill pages and pages with what’s in that tiny space. One thought leads to another, leads to another, leads to another, and when that string runs out you can return to the one-inch frame and find another telling element to get you running.

Anytime someone says they don’t know what to write about, I think of this exercise. The trouble isn’t that there isn’t anything to write about; the trouble is that there’s too much.

Whether you’re writing a sermon, a poem, or a mystery novel, you have to do the work of boiling it down. But it’s important to remember that you don’t start with the syrup. You start with the sap, and then you get selective.

Jesus, a concentration of all the thunder of God’s glory, looked us in the eye and opened his glorious heart to his sons and daughters. The gospel is the sweetest thing I know.

Sometimes you have to put away your wants and do what needs to be done, which really means dying to self in order to find life. This is a way of practicing resurrection.

It reminded me how vital it is that Christians bend low and speak tenderly to the children in our lives. These boys and girls at our churches, in our schools, down the street, are living a harrowing adventure.

The secret is that there is no secret. All you need is to force yourself to do it.

our distraction-laced culture, at least in the West, makes what used to be a matter of course into a matter of extreme measures.

“The best thing you can do to write your book is to stop not doing it.

according to G. K. Chesterton, is that all democracies eventually vote themselves out of existence.

The masses—or at least those who don’t aspire to any sense of discernment—tend to choose the path of least resistance,

While it’s important to cultivate discernment, to work as hard as possible to do excellent work, to try really hard to make your song not bad, it’s just as important—perhaps more so, in the beginning—to make something,

The only way to get better at something is to practice. It’s like we all have a quota of bad songs we have to meet before we get to a good one, so it’s best to start chipping away at the quota now.

As long as you’re making something, Jimmy told me, Then failure is a word That has no meaning.

But if you maintain the posture of a student eager to learn the craft, you’ll gradually improve without realizing it.

She says that artists need “resonators.” They need someone who gets what you’re trying to do, who is moved by your work and will encourage you to keep fighting when the battle is long.

Art nourishes community.

The problem isn’t that there aren’t artists emulating the psalmists’ honesty. The problem is that no one seems to pay any attention to them.

In Tolkien’s essay he argues that one of the ways we bear the image of a Creator God is that we are compelled to create.

That’s not what I mean. The point is to love where you are.”

Homesickness is the way home.

to remember that one holy way of mending the world is to sing, to write, to paint, to weave new worlds. Because the seed of your feeble-yet-faithful work fell to the ground, died, and rose again, what Christ has done through you will call forth praise from lonesome travelers long after your name is forgotten. They will know someone lived and loved here.

This is why the Enemy wants you to think you have no song to write, no story to tell, no painting to paint. He wants to quiet you.

Let your homesickness keep you always from spiritual slumber. Remember that it is in the fellowship of saints, of friends and family, that your gift will grow best, and will find its best expression.

The magic is in the details, however mundane they may seem on the surface.

his prolific use of Scripture in his songs gave them a gravitas that worked in wonderful tension with the human aspect.

that the audience wants to work for their entertainment, but not too hard.

So when you’re writing a song or a story, invite the audience to engage with you by not showing all your cards, by setting them up for an “aha!” moment. On the other hand, don’t make them work too hard, or they’ll check out, either because you’ve made them feel dumb or they just get bored.

What’s a focal practice? In the simplest terms, it’s something that doesn’t involve a computer screen.

criteria: (1) it demands discipline and hard work; (2) it connects us with others (and our own hearts); and (3) it puts us in touch with realities greater than ourselves.