Last week I attended a sculpting workshop every evening after work. This sculptor from L.A. who does movie concepts and such came up and gave us a quick run through of some of the stuff he does and techniques he uses. Mom wonderful mom was gracious enough to come stay at my apartment and watch the boys after school and all night while I did the class. I didn’t get much sleep last week but I learned a lot. I worked with Wed clay for the first time. That’s the stuff they use to sculpt all those monsters and aliens you see in the movies. (The ones that aren’t computer generated of course.) I also learned some new techniques for Sculpy, which is a polymer clay I’ve been using for years.
Jordu Schell (the instructor) is a really interesting guy. We seemed to get along swimmingly. He has the same dry, sardonic since of humor I do. I took him to Seattle to pick up some supplies for the class on Tuesday, so we got to have a little alone time to talk. He was telling stories about some of the films he worked on, what he didn’t like about some of the creature design on Lord of the Rings, and about what a jerk Tom Cruise is. I told him my dream of having my own studio and developing this whole fictional world. I told him about my lack of creative output at work and how my creativity has been manifesting in my personal projects like the world design stuff, sculpture and a music project. He asked what kind of music it was, so I told him about the Crymsin Hymnal project. How I haven’t heard worship music that expresses the full range of emotion I feel like worship music should. He seemed to be startled that I was a Christian. He dug around in his typical secularist lexicon of religious terms to try to verify his confusion. “So, you’re, like… born again… and stuff?” Yeah. So I quickly summed it up by saying that I believe the fundamentals of Christianity and my faith is the organizing factor of my life. Later he brought it up again, saying he didn’t peg me as a Christian. I asked if it was because of my artistic side. He said that wasn’t it, he know other Christian artists, but he was surprised by me because I wasn’t always “Jesus this” and “Jesus that”. I don’t know to what extent that could form the entirety of his surprise, but it seems like a bit of a stretch. I told him I know what he’s talking about. I’m of the opinion that Christians should be ‘seen and not heard’ most of the time. I told him I’ve noticed a problem with most people, regardless of their beliefs, when they spend more time trying to convince other people that they are right, rather than living right themselves. This happens as much with left-wingers as it does with right. I think the most compelling testimony a Christian can tell is to just live their life and deal with their struggles in an open, honest, and godly way. When other people need advice or want answers to the big questions they are going to go to someone like that. Not a polemic-spewing ideologue.
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