It’s harder to write a meaningful radio song than a thoughtful album; when you have only three minutes to make your point, it’s easier to be catchy than deep.
It can be harder to write a short story than a novel; you need to accomplish the same things – character development, rising conflict, resolution – in less than 1% of the space.
It is unlikely that you will change someone’s mind in a single argument, no matter how brilliant and beautiful your rhetoric; so debates often come in sets of three.
In the ordinary course of things, the longer you have with your audience, the more likely you are to leave them with something meaningful. Time and repetition are an artist’s friend.
And then there is parenting: Eighteen years to love, to communicate, to share beauty, to try, and go back and try again – and again, and again. It’s a phenomenally potent art. Not despite all the time it takes, but because of it.
He occasionally blogs at jamesdwitmer.com or @jamesdwitmer, spends his free time digging in the garden with his wife, and is pleasantly surprised to find that loving his family makes meaningful change in the world.
- Cowardly Clyde - November 11, 2020
- Ember’s End: a Review - April 15, 2020
- Ember’s End: An Interview with S. D. Smith - February 26, 2020
It’s a phenomenally potent art.
True enough. And it’s all hard, but really worth it.
Bono’s line in Cedars of Lebanon keeps coming back to me:
“The worst of us are a long, drawn-out confession; the best of us are geniuses of compression.”
Sometimes this feels like a call to be still. So much of our efforts are striving after (or generating) wind, when really, a simple heart-response would do the most good.
LOVE this idea and the quote “The longer you have with your audience, the more likely you are to leave them with something meaningful.”
Thanks, Jean! I’m very glad you found it helpful.
God’s art is generally of this potent sort with us, His ‘masterpieces’. He spoke the first creation but He is so patient, repeating HImself often, fashioning the New. Your posts are always well worth reading and rereading.
Yes! I love the idea that God’s patience goes beyond tolerance or even long-suffering to encompass an inefficient, relational, life-long act of craftsmanship.