What Was I Thinking? I'm Terrified!

I absolutely adore the name of our new blog. Dimensions: Art and Eternity. Sounds like the sort of profound, spine-tingling, spiritual and artistic quest-type blog I'd love to read--if C.S. Lewis or Madeleine L'Engle were writing it.

Unfortunately, it's just Kristi and me.

Kristi just got out of college so maybe some of that deep thinking is still ingrained in her. But me? Yikes! What have I gotten myself into here?

Actually, it's the word "art" that scares me. Dimensions and eternity--well, that's stuff that God is in control of. I can have fun exploring, thinking about it, but in the end I know that none of us can really grasp it. No need to pretend.

But art? Am I saying that my poor little romance novel is art? Am I saying that I understand art? Do I even really know what it is? In my experience, "art" is something you stand in awe of, that you spend years studying and that requires a special vocabulary, and that professors can write hundreds of books about and still not really grasp. Art hangs in museums and when you go visit it, you speak in hushed tones.

Will people who do know about art visit this site, lured in by the title, and then laugh their heads off when they see my little musings?

Fortunately, just as I was reaching panic level, I opened a nifty little book I'm reading which is called, oddly enough, Art & Fear. I am not making this up: in the first paragraphs of the introduction, authors David Bayles and Ted Orland say, "This is a book about making art. Ordinary art. Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. After all, art is rarely made by Mozart-like people--essentially (statistically speaking) there aren't any people like that. But while geniuses may get made once-a-century or so, good art gets made all the time."

This is a blog about art like that. Art made by ordinary people. By folks like me, who love to tell stories or string together beads, because arranging the stunning colors of jade and quartz and agates lets me participate in God's handiwork. Because the brilliance reflected in a row of golden glass beads reminds me that Heaven is real and beautiful. Because my funny romance novel tells me that He made us for joy and that for those of us who love Him, there really is a happily ever after.

I want this to be that kind of blog.

And since their book fortified me to actually start blogging, I've decided that the first week's give-away is going to be a copy of Bayles' and Orland's book, Art & Fear. I'll hold a drawing at the end of this week for the book, so be sure to post a comment to be entered. (And make sure I know how to contact you if you win.)

As always, subscribers to the blog automatically receive an entry in the drawing. But every comment you leave between now and Sunday will get you one more!