We’ve all heard the term “starving artist.” Everybody wants to think of themselves and be perceived as an artist—but!—nobody likes the starving part. For that reason I have observed that there are not all that many artists.
I am not an artist per se. I don’t do pottery or oil painting… I don’t play music. But I do think of myself as an artist in a different sense. I am an artist in the sense of being a painter and a potter of souls.
Let me explain. I am a follower of the One True God. I think of myself as a masseur of words in His service. It is my pleasant task to search out stories that He causes me to find captivating. Then I use conversational dialog to lift them off the sterile page, and plant them into the souls of my listeners/viewers. I am a sower of divine thoughts and feelings. The field I sow is the human mind, stories are the seeds I sow.
I was in my early 20s when I began to discover a certain amount of talent in the fields of writing and drama. After college my professors encouraged me to pursue these talents further at graduate school—which I did. There, I discovered an ability to take stories and reframe them as stage productions, mimes, or audio dramas and films. After graduate school I was a principal/teacher of a small church school for a couple of years. After that I felt that my talents could be better employed as a Christian playwright/director and so, with God’s providential guidance, I left teaching and leaped into the financial unknown. Been there ever since—sustained mostly by God’s providence accompanied at times by the labor of my mind or hands.
I wrote and produced dozens of stage productions, formed a Christian drama troupe known as Company One, and toured Christian schools and churches sharing my unique insights into the ways of God. Sometimes we went public by renting theaters and performing. We were never rich, never hungry, and only occasionally in debt. Then, in about 1987 I began the rewriting and dramatization of The Pilgrim’s Progress. The actual production took over 2 years and upon completion we had a product that would help support us for the next 20 years or so. Thanks to that we were able to move to the country, raise a family and still take care of our financial needs.
Then, for many years it seemed that God put me into a state of creative hibernation. I still told the children’s story in church, had a teen drama group or two to include my kids but not much else. I produced a couple of short films that you can access here and here, and wrote modernized/dramatized book versions of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress Parts I and II; but nothing else to attract much attention. Was my work done? I often asked myself.
But now there seems to be an answer forming in my mind. God has caused my path to cross some very inspiring and encouraging people. It seems that God is telling me that those quiet years were not years of winding down but rather years of character-building preparation. Time and again I have seen God’s hand pointing the way in all of life’s affairs. My faith and trust have grown tremendously, and with so many evidences of God’s guidance to build on, I am now ready to hit the ground running. Audio, stage, film, books? All of the above? Don’t know yet—except that right now I know that I am to take the script for Joseph: Prince of Pain and turn it into a living reality for listeners all over the world. While I am actively working on that, I am also in the incubation stage for a novel or screenplay based on the story of Noah.
Will there be time to finish the Joseph project? Will I ever write the Noah script? Only God knows. But what I do know is that God is starting to hint at increased resources and collaborative help. So, in conclusion I can only say that I am eagerly looking forward to each new recording appointment, each new brainstorming group, each editing session, and every new idea I put down on paper. Someday those ideas will leap into people’s souls as some great emotion-stirring scene, and one more life will be nudged a step closer to the kingdom. To this vision I can only join Isaiah in saying, “Here am I, Lord. Send me!”
Leave a Reply