Adorning the Dark
Peterson, Andrew. Adorning the Dark. B&H Publishing Group, 2019.
In Adorning the Dark Andrew Peterson combines his journey and experiences as an artist with the life lessons that he learned along the way. He used his own story to emphasize his lessons and reflected on how the lessons continued to feed his story. A poignant example of this is when he talked about his obsession with Fantasy novels as a teenager - he couldn’t get enough of dragons and elves and the realms they inhabited, but these books were like salt water to his soul - they offered temporary relief but only made him thirsty. He had a radical encounter with God where he realized that the adventure he longed for in his favourite books could be found in a relationship with Jesus and he was changed forever. At first he abandoned his Fantasy novels, but on a lark one day in college he picked up the Narnia series and was hit by the power of story once again. “The reintroduction of fairy tales to my redeemed imagination helped me to see the Maker, his Word, and the abounding human tales as interconnected.” Such integrated imagination is an example of what Peterson sees as necessary to Christian Artists.
I appreciated his unique approach to the definition of “Christian Arts.” He cited L'Engle's work in Walking on Water when she states that “all good art is Christian art” but offers his own caveat: “Agenda is bad when it usurps the beauty. Christian art should strive for a marriage of the two. Just as Christ is described as a being full of grace and truth.” Christians should feel the freedom to express their worldview in their art and to come at their artistic practice with a set of beliefs and a way of understanding the world, but that should not be an excuse to create bad art. He also clarifies that there is a difference between artists who are Chrsitians and Christian artists - citing people like Bach and Michelangelo who were specifically called to create art for Christians, and that their calling was no less important than a christian simply called to create excellent art.
He also offers a refreshing amount of humility and practicality to the work of the Christian artist. He emphasizes the importance of community in the nourishment of art, and the equally important role of art to nourish community. His experiences with a group of friends who go on a Christmas tour every year led him to the profound belief that we flourish when we are in community. It was only because he had found a group of like minded song writers that he was able to continue writing the music he felt called to write when the labels and the radio stations started to shift to “all worship music all the time.” He and his friends were able to support each other’s careers, sell each other CD’s and find each other concerts, their rag tag community kept them all afloat and Peterson was so affected by that experience he founded a Christian Arts organization called “The Rabbit Room” for the same reason.
He also finds it nearly impossible to separate art from non-artistic work that stewards the earth and creation. He bought an old farmhouse so he could have a place his grandchildren would want to visit and he is constantly at work improving it. He’s built a stone wall with an arch in it, he’s made maple syrup, and he keeps bees. He recommends all artists to find work that they have to do with their hands, work that grounds them and connects them to a home and to the earth.
His deep sense of place compelled him to invest time and money into learning about his ancestral home in Sweden, hoping that what he would find there was a true feeling of home, but even after all of his work on his farm, after his pilgrimage to Sweden, he still has yet to find home. Reflecting on this longing with God he heard the words “use that.” He has been called to use the longing he has for a home he has never yet known. In the final chapter of the book he keeps emphasizing that the homesickness is the story he has been given to tell the world, because it points to the reality that we are not home, but that we were created for the Kingdom of God that we will one day inhabit. He encourages all artists to find the story they have been created to tell, and to tell it beautifully.