About a week ago fellow blogger Ryan Stander blogged about the art of Alexey Titarenko here and his lifelong commitment to photographing one place. As a result of contemplating this Ryan asked, “How many people commit themselves to living in one place, pursuing one thing for their entire life?” This then got me thinking about the responsibility of the artist to his community and the subject of faithfulness. But over the holidays the thought took a back seat to the frenzy of work and travel. On the conscious level I had forgotten about it.
But leaving home to spend thanksgiving with family and friends in Oklahoma has me traveling back to Kansas City and thinking again . . . of place. We are creatures given to the realities of time and space. We live and breathe in certain places at certain times. This is the gift of our existence and its limitation. As stewards of this life we are thus in position to ask “What is my responsibility in this reality?, How should I live and . . . where?”
My family has always been somewhat nomadic. My parents were raised in Carolina, moved to the Philippines and finally landed in Oklahoma where they have spent their remaining lives, but not in one place. While growing up my dad was a pastor and our family moved from town to town and church to church. From Lawton to Hollis, Binger to Oklahoma City the communities in which we were rooted so often changed. Our homes were mostly parsonages, temporarily given. Perhaps this is why movement has always seemed natural to me. I have always wanted to move. I like to move. I like to discover new places and things. So my wife and I moved from Oklahoma to California, from California to Kansas, from Kansas to . . .itching. My mind is wandering.
But I am considering the notion of faithfulness to place, and I am contemplating rooting myself in this community as a matter of fully being. So I think of staying more than leaving and making Kansas City my home as I consider what it will mean to faithfully contribute to this community as an artist.
1 comments:
I love his work too. I appreciated your response as well. It is a challenge to me too. Not only to live incarnationally, but to live in Grand Forks. I moved up here this summer from Sioux Falls SD. We both miss SF, but GF isn't that bad (though i might think differently in january and february). what does it mean for me to live incarnationally in GF as an artist and theologian? i know that i cannot live for the next move 3-4 years from now. i must try to root myself and/or allow myself to be rooted here for the time being.
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