The Artisan Soul (4 page)

If this is the process that God chooses with us, if God refuses to mass-produce but insists on an intimate process that in the end forms each of us into the image of Christ, why would we choose a lesser path for our own lives? The work of the artist begins with the care of his or her own soul. Remember, God didn't have to make everything he created good; everything he created was good because he made it.

This is the beauty of the artisan way. Once we've cared for our souls, once we've dealt with the essence of who we are, once our focus is on our being, everything that emanates from us will naturally result in the good and the beautiful and the true. The problem, of course, is that this process takes time and requires touch, like the artisan bread that depends on the artist being willing to wait. Artists understand that the process of fermentation cannot be rushed or hurried. They know that the products they are committed to creating will not happen if they take shortcuts or circumvent the process, and so it is with our soul. For our lives to be works of art, we need to allow a lifetime of work. We must give God the time to make us works of art. We must press close to God and allow both the tenderness of his touch and the pressure of his hands to shape us and mold us into someone we would not be without him. If we want our lives to be works of art, we must be willing to take the time and risk the intimacy required for creating an artisan life. We have to get close enough to allow the hands of God to press against us and reform us.

The creative act began with God creating the universe in which we live. The next creative act begins when we allow God to re-create the universe within us.

In Ezekiel 36:26–27, God says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

The same God who creates, re-creates. And that process of re-creation begins in our very souls. Paul said it like this in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

Years ago I sat with a friend who was an incredibly gifted artist. He was at the beginning of his career and felt an overwhelming angst about what it meant to be a steward of his talent and at the same time make a living. He complained that every job opportunity felt to him like an offer to sell out. He felt that companies offering commissions did not want him to express true emotions through his art. He said they only wanted him as a machine to advance propaganda and advocate emotions that were not authentic or genuine to the human experience. I asked him to give me an example. He quickly said, “They want me to create art that advocates success, happiness, love, rather than true and authentic emotions like anger, betrayal, fear.”

As I listened, I was struck by a powerful realization that has never left me. Every true artist fights for their authenticity. Nothing feels more demeaning or degrading than creating art that is a false expression of the self. I realized in that moment that the only emotions which were real to him, the only emotions that felt truly human, were the ones that reflect our most broken selves. His art most naturally was informed by the dark and empty places of the human soul.

I paused and asked him what I thought was an obvious question. I said, “Is it possible that emotions like love or even happiness could be true human experiences and authentic expressions of what it means to be human?”

He was a very thoughtful person and rarely answered impetuously. I could see him reflecting and processing. It was as if he was going through the catalog of all his life experiences. And after a moment, he looked at me and said, “That thought had never occurred to me.”

I felt the pain of that moment, the honest realization that neither happiness nor love felt like places human beings could speak from authentically. He was a young man when we had that conversation, just past twenty years old. He never made it to forty. In a moment of despair, he ended his life, leaving behind hundreds of friends and family who loved him and believed in his future.

This brilliant artist couldn't find an authentic place in his soul to remind him that life was worth living.

This journey that I am inviting you on, this path that I hope to provoke you to begin to walk, is not an easy one. The journey will demand much of you. In fact, it will demand all of you. All your passion. All your courage. All your talent. All your discipline. All your life.

The way of the artisan is a life in which we risk all for love. The artisan embraces the dangers that come from living an authentic life and still chooses to live unguarded from the pain of the wounds of love.

Artists love without reservation. They give their hearts completely and leave nothing on the table. They are naked and unashamed. They leave no room for pretension. And because they have given all of themselves, they live without regret.

But not without struggle. This path is not an escape from life's wounds and disappointment. To live from our souls is to pursue our greatest passions and expose ourselves to our greatest pain. We cannot live to create and be surprised that we have traveled through failure. We cannot live a life of passion and not know sorrow. To pursue a dream is to invite a nightmare! To live a life of love is to know betrayal and loss. The soul is both fragile and resilient. The artisan soul embraces the essential nature of both vulnerability and efficacy. All creativity emerges from struggle. All art is born out of the pain of labor. The artisan soul must be both tender and tough.

So let me be clear—what I am inviting you to is the path of most resistance, with the most risk and the most reward. It is not for the faint of heart or for those who long for safety and security. The way of the artisan is not an invitation to sit in the sun enjoying a cool summer's breeze, imagining a better life and a better world. It is about embracing our creative power and responsibility to create the life and the world that our soul inspires us to imagine.

This process is both creativity and responsibility. It is both imaginative and pragmatic. The intent of this book is to change both the way you see yourself and your relationship to the creative process. The future is a creative act, and like any creative act, the tools are as essential as the process. This is why in the final pages you will find a section entitled “Anvil and Hammer.” This section is waiting for you the moment you are ready to ask the question, “So what do I do now?” You can either absorb a chapter and then move right to the end of the book to pick up your anvil and hammer or you can work through the entire book first. Once you have embraced your artisan soul, you will begin the hard work of turning your life into a work of art. Don't underestimate the depth of this section because of its brevity. It is through the anvil and hammer that you will fully engage your creative potential.

If you begin this journey recognizing that all art is an expression of your essence and that your most treasured possession is the health of your soul, then I know without question that something beautiful can come from this quest.

He who is the Creator God is the creative God, and he created us in his image and likeness. He created us with imagination and curiosity, with the capacity to hope and dream, and he placed within us all the material necessary to live an extraordinarily creative life. The proof is that more than anything else we are a soul, and that soul is the divine material with which we are made to create. The difference between humans and every other species on this planet is that humans are artists. This is our uniqueness—we were created to create.

Somewhere along the way we forgot this. We became convinced we were something less. It is time to become more.

I have seen the future, and it is filled with beauty and wonder.

That's what happens when humans embrace their artisan souls and begin to create.

To create is to be fully human.

We stand at the precipice of a revolution of creativity; the beginning of a new renaissance.

We live in a world of artists.

W
hen I was a small boy living in El Salvador, a painting hung on the most prominent wall of our home. It was a singular work of art that my grandparents seemed so proud of. When I asked where it came from, they explained that it was a masterpiece painted by my aunt. It was a beautiful painting with deep religious sentiment—a painting of Jesus with his twelve disciples sitting around a table sharing the Last Supper. I remember looking at that painting time and again, wondering how my aunt imagined such a beautiful scene. You can imagine my dismay when years later I discovered it was actually Leonardo da Vinci's painting
The Last Supper.

It seems my aunt was given a paint-by-numbers art kit when she was younger. In its preeminent place in our home, it reflected more her parents' admiration of her than any sense of the quality or uniqueness of the original. All she had to do was apply the right color to the right numbered section, carefully staying inside the lines, and then leave it out to dry. Ironically the frame was probably worth more than the painting. I'm not saying my aunt didn't have talent—in fact, it may be that this was only a first step in the expression of her own artistic soul—but even the uninformed novice would understand that there is a universe of difference between Aunt Alma's
Last Supper
and the one that came from the imagination of Leonardo da Vinci.

There is a stark difference between art and imitation. Not that imitation is a bad thing. Even an authentic creative journey begins with imitation. It's how we learn everything. It's how we learn language: we hear sounds and begin to make the connection between sound and meaning. At first all language is just imitation. It is echoing others' voices and embracing without reflection the meaning the sounds hold.

My first language was Spanish, passed on to me mostly from my grandparents during my years in El Salvador. My primary language is now English. That came later, while going to school in Miami, Florida. The first language came more naturally. It would be fair to say that our first language comes to us almost unconsciously, as a result of natural human interaction.

My second language came with a bit more struggle. It was as if my voice was out of sync with the voices around me—they made sounds, but our sounds did not share the same meaning. If I remember correctly, my brother Alex, who is only eighteen months older than me, said the first word he understood in English was
green.
There is something exhilarating about that moment when a sound takes on a more profound meaning, and something deeply intimate about the moment when two human beings understand each other for the first time. That first stage of connecting language with meaning is no small thing, yet it pales in comparison to the moment when we begin to understand another human being, when another's voice carries meaning. There's often a stage between the ability to understand and the ability to communicate thoughts and feelings. I don't know if there's any feeling more frustrating than desperately wanting to communicate what is inside to another human being while knowing we lack the language to express our deepest thoughts.

However we define mastery of a language, its profound significance is revealed when we progress from knowing the right words to having our own voice, which is the point where we enter into the journey of the artisan soul. Whether we choose to express ourselves through art or literature or struggle to find a career that uniquely expresses who we are and brings us personal happiness, a critical aspect of the journey to express our lives as a creative act is finding our own voice. This seems like an easy part of the process, but it is much harder than we could ever imagine. Like language, our internal voice begins as an echoing of the voices of others. Before we speak for ourselves, others speak on our behalf. Before we are able to declare who we are, our soul forms around the declarations of others telling us who we are.

The soul is that material in us humans that distinguishes us from animals and reflects the divine in us. It is designed to be shaped by our passions, experiences, and values. For whatever reason, the soul is made of malleable material. It forms itself around whatever material is informing it. Unfortunately, the people who have the greatest influence in our lives rarely understand the power of their words to shape who we become. They never fully understand that what informs us forms us. Words spoken into a soul are like the hands of a potter pressed against wet clay.

All too often we use our words carelessly and even at times recklessly. In an ideal world, the voices in our lives place within us the material to become our best selves. The healthiest people I know were raised by parents, families, and communities where the truth was always spoken in love. In an ideal world, the voices that teach us language teach us self-respect, self-confidence, and self-esteem. Those same voices also form in us humility and gratitude, and as those voices inform our inner voices, they also pass on wisdom.

All too often, though, the voices that speak early and deep into our souls are more destructive than constructive. I meet so many people who carry an internal narrative that they have no value and no worth, and are not worthy of love. Some forty-year-old men are still fighting off voices that spoke to them when they were four years old. Over the years, I have come to realize that the crises most people face are less because of their circumstances than because of the narrative inside. Our demons rarely come at us from the future; most often, they chase after us from our past. Far too often, when we think we are frightened by mystery, the fact is that we are haunted by history. This is the tension of the present. There are voices that call us into the future and voices that call us into the past. Eventually, somewhere down the road in the silence of a paralyzing moment, we have to decide what voice will define us and what story we choose to be in—which is the narrative that guides.