What’s the largest U.S. based international relief and development organization?  Save the Children, CARE?  While both are great mainstream humanitarian organizations, it’s World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian organization, which has 40,000 staff members in almost 100 countries – more staff than Save the Children, CARE and the United States Agency for International Development – combined.

The article also includes quotes from the head of World Vision, Richard Stearns book, “The Hole in Our Gospel” and other insights from columnist Nichols Kristof.  I want to encourage you to read the article and post your comments here. The Art of Helping Others: Art. Awareness. Activism.

When you think of negative spaces what comes to mind?  Cynicism, criticism, pessimism – a lot of “isms?”

I like to step to the side for an oblique perspective and think of negative space like a film negative, which reverses the way I (we) look at things like relationships, community, spirituality, humanity, art and more.  It’s the backdrop of everyday life; honesty, truth and beauty gently nudging us to slow down and pay more attention to perhaps what’s an unknown territory to many of us.

A friend of mine said to me this week, “When something is taken away, it means that space is cleared for something better.”  Those words my friend spoke resonated in my heart and extended truth, beauty and hope to me when I needed it most.

Finding beauty, unexpected beauty in negative spaces attracts and stuns us in ways never imagined before.  Where and in what do you find beauty?  Are there negative spaces around you in need of light to reveal beauty, truth and honesty?

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What a disturbing yet beautiful quote, “Silence is the real crime against humanity,” from Nadezhda Mandelstam. I’ve found that it’s difficult enough being open to life itself but retreating from it brings its own dangers.

The answer isn’t surrounding ourselves with people who are nice and clean while we ignore the pain around us.  That only helps us to lose sight that we actually live in a lost and dying world, among people who have no real idea how much their Creator loves them.

What’s the easy shortcut to remedy this?  Ah – there is none.  But a good starting point is when those around us know that we as Christians truly understand them; then they may well conclude that perhaps God understands them too.

Maybe our silence, inability or unwillingness to act should be considered a crime against humanity.  Or possibly we should endeavor to practice the art of helping others, which in essence is living out the gospel.

That could mean reaching out to someone across the world, or to a neighbor in their time of need and perhaps – even your own time of need.  Giving sacrificially if not from your own resources, but of your time – because that is just as meaningful and worth more than what you may believe.

What legacy will each of us choose to leave behind?  Have we mindlessly bought into a culture more interested in making headlines than history, or one that’s content to do nothing at all?

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I find it interesting and at the same time disturbing that in our culture we seem to have concluded that God chooses to only use spiritual giants; the high gifted, multi-talented, richly diverse, faith-filled people of this world and not the spiritual pygmies. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, God has a well-documented history of working through the broken vessels of this world, “the scalawags and ragamuffins” as Brennan Manning puts it, or as a friend in Ireland says, “the cracked pots.” He has used questionable characters that are of little social standing, ill tempered, liars, adulterers, and murderers to accomplish His good purposes – and He continues to do so to this day.

We find it far more pleasant to be known for and seen for our strengths, and not for our weaknesses. But in His infinite wisdom, God chooses to use ordinary people like you and me, imperfect ambassadors of the gospel that we are, to reach out in faith with compassion filled hearts to those just like us, those that are as equally as needy and wanting, only in different ways.  That’s how this extraordinary God is revealed and encountered in the peaks and valleys of everyday circumstances and the ordinariness of life.

Days later, an email arrives in my inbox from him saying that obviously we see things from different perspectives and approaches, and that he will not share with his audience about what we do.  That was it – done and dusted, no other explanation.  Initially, I was a bit disappointed, but really – mostly perplexed.

I’m okay not getting a mention on his blog, but idealist that I am, what troubled me most is I had hoped that in the arts, culture, faith, current events – you know, wherever or whatever direction your political, economic, geographic, religious, cause-related compass points, that ultimately, there would be room enough for diversity and discussion.  Yes, feel free to pity idealists like me…

What do I take from this as I walk away and glance over my shoulder?  For some people, there may be room enough for diversity in the matter of opinion – as long as it aligns with their own, but unfortunately dialogue doesn’t always seem to be a part of the process, and that is indeed a shame.  Why?  Because if we choose not to dialogue, how will we ever begin to understand one another and where we’re coming from.

If you’re inclined, let me know if there’s something I’ve missed.  Idealistically Yours.

One interesting topic of discussion at the conference that resonated with many of us was the thought of art as a hammer to shape culture.  This comes from the quote, “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”  So what does that mean?  That’s a good question, which I may not have a watertight answer for – but I do have an opinion.

While I believe we should hold a mirror up to everyday life and reveal the reality – even the frailty of the human condition, we should pick up the hammer, be forward thinking, innovative and imaginative enough to be creatively dangerous, and shape our “circles of influence” in our communities, which will eventually affect culture itself.

So, what is the hammer?  I like to think in part it’s the words you write from the depths of your heart that inspire others, the lyric and melody of a song longing to be heard, a painter’s brush wielded with emotion and faith across a canvas, a moment in time captured through the photographer’s camera lens that needs no words yet leaves us in awe.  The dancer that dances first, then thinks later.  It’s the power of the arts to uncover truth.

Disregard what others expect of you or may think and employ the hammer passionately – use it differently than ever before.

As a visual artist, I have often contemplated what empty spaces in life primarily motivate me or that I am desirous to fill.  Perhaps the same is true of you.  Is it the attempt to fill the empty space of a prestigious art gallery, a blank canvas resting on an easel, the space between people’s ears with words, imagery, music – all to evoke emotion or a particular response?

I like the quote from Samuel Beckett because it can be applied to life in general and to those of you that consider yourselves ‘non-artists.’  For you it may not have much to do with artistic endeavours – but we all attempt to fill empty spaces in our lives.  And what of the people God places in our paths everyday that happen to be doing the same, whether conscious of it or not?

I think it’s important for us to first ask and wrestle with questions like these, thenanswer how through our lives and our art we can address people’s deepest longings and their attempts to fill an empty space.