Arts and an Arts Pastor

Readers who enjoyed Matthew Milliner’s The Neglected Fireplace: Protestantism in the Arts , which we posted yesterday, may want to check the discussion (in which the author participated).

You may also want to check out the weblog of the editor of the book reviewed: David Taylor’s Diary of an Arts Pastor . The latest two entries as I write offer seven things that are beautiful and the top 41 biographies of artists. In the latter, he writes something I quite like and commend to your reflection:

Over the past few years I have taken up the habit which St. Paul recommends as the “putting on of Christ” (Col. 3:5-9). In actual practice, I have ended up putting on St. Paul more often than I have put on Christ, and more regularly than that I have put on Cliff, Geno, Jeremy and Steven. One could call it the law of association at work.

I put on Christ by putting on St. Paul. I put on St. Paul by putting on these friends. And so these friends become for me the concrete example of men who embody the virtues of Christ in ways that I wish to imitate.

. . . The point is, if I find myself in any of these situations, it works for me to “put them on.” It works not pragmatically, it works formationally. What I am putting on, of course, is a Christ-like virtue: forgiveness-giving, compassion, generosity, courage. And by putting these virtues on, enfleshed in the life of friends, I find myself growing more like Christ.