It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard

Feruccio Busoni (1866-1924) was an Italian pianist who lived during a time when he met many of the famous composers whose works he performed.  Here you can hear him playing Franz Liszt's La Campanella (Bells) Etude.

It's been quite a week.  Last Sunday, I received a call from one of my sisters that my father had fallen and knocked himself unconscious.  It was serious and he ended up in ICU for the weekend.  My mother has macular degeneration and can no longer drive.  Therefore, I packed up myself and my bird and began the ten hour drive to my parents house on the Gulf Coast in Florida.

I was pulling out of the driveway when my other sister called to let me know that while my dad was back home, my mother was now in ICU for a racing heart.

My mother has had stage four lung cancer for five years now.  She has been on three different chemo drugs, all taken orally, but this last has been hard on her heart.  The doctors shipped her off to Pensacola for a cardio ablation.

This is a procedure where they insert a needle through the thigh and work their way up to the heart and burn two holes in it.  The next three months, as the heart heals, the holes scar over and these scars prevent the heart from fibrillating.

Who discovered that is what I want to know?  Who came up with the idea of burning holes in the heart and figured out it would keep the heart stable?

Both parents are home and I and my one sister who flew down had a lovely visit with both parents as they recuperated.  I hated to leave and I'm certainly going to miss those sunsets on the water, which is how we ended every day.

Grandma loves her grand bird and Hercaloo was quite put out with me when we returned to Texas.

But enough about my adventures.  Here is my latest book review.  I found this book in the library in Golden, Colorado when I was visiting one of my sisters.  Naturally I wasn't satisified with only reading it, I had to own it.  I don't understand my pyschology but I must own the books I hold dear.

You may or may not be a Christian, but I think the writers of this book had some interesting insight into the history of art and what place does religious belief have in the expression of it.





It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God by Ned Bustard

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It was Good is a collection of essays by various international artists who have reknown in their field. These fields vary from oils, to sculpture to mult-media. The book includes several photographs of their work, something I find to be one of the valuable attributes of this book.

Besides art, all of these artists have one other thing in common: they are believers in Christ. Though their particular denominations and creeds vary (some are reformed, some are Baptist, some non-denominational and at least one is Roman Catholic) they each offer something as to what sort of philosophy a Christian should have when expressing themselves through the visual arts.

They are all in agreement that Christians were once the powerhouses of art as is evidenced by the Cathedrals and millions of paintings housed in museums all over the world. In fact if one took away religiously inspired art from Europe there would be a significantly smaller amount of art and architecture to see, largely limiting the tourist trade to good restaurants and nude bathing. And we are not even including classical music.

Somewhere along the line, Christians not only lost their standing in the artistic community but seem content to embrace a limited vision of how art should be expressed by believers. This is obvious if one visits any number of churches where the theologically rich tradition of singing hymns, some of them hundreds of years old, sacred music played on the organ and other classical instruments have been tossed in favor or a more "contemporary" sound which has more in common with pop songs on the radio then deep, meditative worship.

Each artist in this book contributes an essay providing their own opinion, insight and philosophy of what art means to Christianity. What purpose does it serve and how should it be expressed.

Some write about the definition of beauty and offers a time line of how that concept has changed over the decades and centuries, including the twentieth where it was deemed undesirable to make works of art that were beautiful.

Another gives a historical account of what art meant to religious figures in the past two thousand years.

Still others contemplate how art should be expressed by believers. Should Christians only create art with an overt Christian message or is their world view implicitly expressed simply because as Christians, they cannot escape expressing this view through their chosen mediums. Is one a Christian artist, or an artist who happens to be Christian?

Should Christians only give happy, sentimental views of life or should they make art that exposes the grime as well?

These and many other ideas are explored throughout these essays.

While I found much of what they said to be valuable, although I did not agree with everything and found one or two of the philosophies esoteric, I think that many would benefit from hearing what they have to say whether you are a Christian or not.

I found that all the writers were people who may have their eyes toward God, were firmly grounded in the realities on earth.



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Herc and me back home.  Tired but glad to be back in Texas.