Embracing soul diversity

The Parable of the Swimming Snake

My friends saw her before I did: a large green snake, resting in a contented coil on an island in one of the ponds at Shinsennuma Marsh in Niseko, Hokkaido.

We admired her together, but my friends, Karen and Christina, expressed relief that she was on the island, where water separated her from us. But she got there somehow, and she could just as easily come back, I thought to myself with a smirk.

I got out my telephoto lens and photographed the snake. She looked gentle, framed by last summer’s dry grass. My friends continued along the boardwalk while I switched my lenses. I looked back at the pond, and saw that the snake was now swimming. I had never seen a swimming snake before. Ripples spread out in an elegant s as she approached the shore. She was at least two meters long.

I caught up with my friends. “The snake can swim,” I enthused. “I saw her!”

They were not impressed. “So . . . the snake isn’t on the island anymore?”

“Ah . . . no.”

As we passed the pond on our return journey, I spotted the snake resting in the grass beside the boardwalk. Her intelligent eyes gazed up at us. I turned around and saw my friends huddled together, frightened. I explained that the snake was a harmless aodaisho (Japanese rat snake) and not poisonous, trying to coax them to walk by.

Meanwhile, as my friends warily eyed the snake, other hikers came along.

“Look, there’s a snake!” I said, pointing, looking for someone to share my delight. An older couple, seasoned hikers, glanced at the snake with bored expressions and kept going. Two young women shrieked and ran back down the boardwalk. Then a middle-aged man approached with a large camera. I could see the excitement in his eyes as he found a good angle and started snapping one photo after another.

Finally, to continue our walk, I stood on the snake side of the boardwalk and convinced my friends to squeeze past on the other side. As we left the boardwalk and turned into the forest, we could still hear the two young women screaming all the way at the other end of the marsh.

Later, at the trailhead café, we enjoyed coffee floats and discussed our snake encounter.

“Am I the only person who thinks snakes are cute?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Karen.

“That’s a lot of wildlife in one animal,” said Christina, shuddering.

I’m . . . different.

I’ve pondered this experience for over a year now. Not only was it a special bonding experience with two colleagues, but I began to think of it as a parable of my life as an artist.¹ I am different. Everyone is different, but I seem to be more different. I often see and respond to the world in unusual ways. This extends to the way I connect with God and the way I worship him.²

Years of experience in church ministry have given me a front row seat to others’ spiritual lives. Gradually I have grown in my appreciation for the ways God has gifted his people in vast, beautiful diversity. I realized that I connect with God through the Gospels and Psalms, nature and art. Our pastor, on the other hand, prefers Paul and private study; his wife likes to share the Psalms (and sourdough bread) with everyone around her; and my husband doesn’t care what language or part of the Bible as long as he can open it and talk it over with others, Christian or not. This is my team; I love the gifts and insights each member brings.

Diversity of gifting and spiritual experiences brings challenges as well as joys. Ministry might be easier if we were all the same, but not nearly as rich, interesting, or beautiful. Since, as I mentioned, artists can be extra-specially different, I will share some hints to help you connect with and empower the artists in your church community.

How to love the artists in your community

Be intentional about the aesthetics of your worship space. While we can and should be able to worship anywhere, the space—the way it is built, arranged, and decorated—is in itself an act of devotion and a means of drawing people into deeper communion with God and each other. Ugly spaces, by contrast, can be distracting.

Likewise, pay attention to the aesthetics of your worship service. Communal worship is a reflection of the worshiping community, so I do not suggest aspiring to an impossible level of quality. Rather, plan your service so that its parts make sense and form a beautiful flow while also empowering those in the community to serve and honoring the traditions and symbols of the community. This balance is difficult to achieve. But since communal worship is vitally important to our life as Christians, it is important to give time and effort to overcoming this challenge.³

Do not wish that your artists would give up their art and do something “useful” or do the useful things first (I’ve been there, and I burned out). Likewise, don’t treat art as “wasteful.” Work with your artists to find creative solutions where resources are scarce.

Many professional artists work on weekends. If there is a consistent schedule conflict with Sunday worship, look for alternatives. Although there may be unhealthy situations from which a Christian artist may need to extract him/herself, do not immediately assume that this is the case. For many, our art is deeply connected with our spiritual life; giving it up would be like losing a limb.

Give your community’s artists ideas to inspire their work. What themes will be coming up in your preaching? What is the church’s yearly or seasonal theme? How can you invite the artists in your community to express these same themes in their art?

Encourage your artists to have fellowship with other Christian artists, even those from other churches and denominations. Art, like the spiritual life, thrives in community.

Artists, especially performers, are highly visible. For this reason, we are often accused of pride. Some artists do struggle with pride, but often that results from working in a competitive field and constantly being compared with others. Dig deeper and encourage artists in your community to find their self-worth as God’s beloved children and image-bearers.

Some artists dislike being used to draw people to church events where their art is unrelated to the rest of the program. This can feel dishonest to us, both as artists and evangelists. I feel ill at ease unless my art is in harmony with the program of an event because I see art itself as part of the message, not only a vehicle to carry a message or a means of getting people through the church door. Including artists in the planning of an event can help solve this issue.

Remember that artists are humans, not resources. We can contribute greatly to our communities, but like all humans, we have limitations and we may need to say “no” to some opportunities. Although missionary artists usually receive a living allowance from their mission agency, Japanese Christian artists do not. Professional artists, who depend on art for their living, may not be able to volunteer their services for church-related projects. An honorarium or fee will help them continue to serve God through their art.

Speaking in parables

Artists may struggle with direct or verbal evangelism. I have come to realize that this is not lack of zeal but difference of gifting. We are more suited to a different “language”: symbols, stories, and parables. This style of evangelism draws in the listener by leaving the conversation open and making space for contemplation.

I went to seminary and learned to preach. When I burned out in 2017, that part of my self-expression dried up. Thankfully, I can still work with others who have preaching gifts to express the same concepts in a different way, which may reach people who struggle to connect to sermons. While my husband preached through Mark’s parables, I chose similar themes and wrote my own parables using stories and symbols from everyday life in Japan. Several of these I read at the close of those sermons, allowing the church members to reflect on Mark’s parables from a different angle.

I’d like to close by showing you what this looks like: two parables about communion. When God draws my attention to a certain theme, I find that it is important to pay attention. The first parable I wrote in response to a conflict at a previous church, and the second touches on the issues of aesthetics in worship. I hope these bless you with space to ponder.

Cast Your Bread Upon the Water

When our church still had a pastor, he used to feed the ducks. But only on the first Sunday of each month.

On the morning in question, Fukui-san⁴ would cut up white shokupan bread into even, crustless squares. She always prepared more than we needed in case all the church members actually came and some guests from other churches too. But I can’t remember a time when everyone showed up, not even on Christmas; there were people who had quarreled with someone or who had grown distant. We always had leftovers.

During the service, the pastor gave thanks and lifted the bread, designating it for holy purpose. We ate and drank in silence, contemplating our sins and the grace of God.

Fukui-san put the leftover bread cubes into a plastic bag and tied it shut with a loose knot. She handed it to our pastor with the bottle of grape juice. After all of Sunday’s activities finished, he and his wife headed for Momijiyama Park, where there is a big pond fed by an ugly fountain made of just a pipe. But there are sakura trees there, and ducks.

Our pastor stood on the bridge and scattered bread into the pond. The ducks came and received it gratefully, jostling and gobbling. There were no leftovers. The ducks saw the bread for what it was: the grace of God in the form of shokupan cubes. Humans may turn up their noses at such a gift, but no duck was going to refuse.

And so it happens that in the pond of Momijiyama Park, you can find a flock of consecrated ducks.

eCommunion

The smell of bread wafts into the living room where I am working on PowerPoint slides for the upcoming OMF Hokkaido conference.

I made this bread using Hokkaido flour and eggs and our 15-year-old Canadian sourdough starter. I assembled the dough yesterday, and it rose slowly all night long. Early this morning, I shaped it into a loaf and let it rise in a basket, which gives it spiral impressions. Finally, I turned it onto a baking sheet, cut a cross with a bread knife, and baked it for 30 minutes at 210 degrees Celsius. All this was for a photograph, in which I arranged the bread on a communion plate next to a matching ceramic wine goblet. This photograph, in turn, was for a PowerPoint slide. “Communion,” says the slide.

I have heard that the cash-strapped sometimes bring plain rice balls to yakiniku (BBQ) restaurants, park themselves by the exhaust vent, and eat the rice while imagining that they are eating meat. We conference attendees, on the other hand, will look at my communion slide and imagine the taste and smell of fresh-baked bread while eating a tiny plastic-wrapped wafer individually packaged with preservative-laden grape juice that tastes like cough syrup.

We are not alone. Most churches these days seem to use these ingenious little packets. They are sanitized, safe from viruses and human tampering. They are also impersonal and cut off from the natural world.

I grieve that this symbol of Word-became-flesh, which preaches to us of the goodness of the created order, has been reduced to preservatives and plastic. Communion packets say, “It’s just a ritual. Say these words and consume this spiritual medicine and you will be okay until the first Sunday of next month.” There is no beauty, no flavor, no “homemade,” no “grown in Hokkaido.” Who knows where this wafer and grape juice came from?

There’s so much shikata ga nai (it can’t be helped) in this pandemic—“If we’re having communion, shikata ga nai, we have to use communion packets. It’s safe that way.” I’ve grown tired of this pragmatism, when meaning gets lost. Symbols only have power because they remind us of the meaning behind the symbol.

I eat our communion bread for breakfast, still warm, slathered in cream cheese and ume jam and accompanied by green tea.

“The gifts of God for the people of God,” I say, lifting the bread. “Thanks be to God.” My voice echoes through the empty dining room. If only I could have shared this bread, not just its picture, with my community.

1. In this article, “artist” refers to all people with artistic inclinations and gifts, not only professionals.
2. I have drawn many of the ideas in this section from Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul’s Pathway to God by Gary Thomas (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002).
3. This subject is an article in itself, so I apologize for my brevity here. Please contact me if you would like to talk further about the aesthetics of worship.
4. Name changed for privacy. But 福井さん—well of blessing—seemed appropriate.
Photos submitted by author