Embodying Wholeness

A manifesto of sorts about our quest to walk and work like the whole artists we already are

Photo by Jamie Templeton on Unsplash

In stewarding this work, a very frustrating discovery I have made is that there is a gigantic difference between understanding something and being able to clearly articulate what you understand to others so that they come to understand what you understand as clearly as you understand it. Even more overwhelming is the process of distilling that understanding and capturing its essence in a statement, slogan, or short phrase.

As I brave this journey of learning to clearly and compellingly communicate what we do, I learn more and more about the essence of what we do. And I want to share that with you as I make these discoveries. So, in lieu of a slogan, I give you an essay. Hahahha!

Yes, I’ll admit it - it has been a struggle to find a simple, concrete, accessible way to describe how we serve artists. Everything has felt too ‘woo woo’, too abstract and ethereal. Unfortunately, the best language I’ve found is language I have a very embattled relationship with: helping artists “integrate their faith and art.” I have gone through different seasons with this phrase, integrating faith and art.
I have refused to use it.
I have used it but put my own spin on it.
And now I use it but loathe its presence.

Yes, I use it. In fact, it’s plastered all over our website. But that’s just to attract you because it’s the language you’re using in the questions you’re asking. But helping you integrate your faith and art is not exactly what we do in KAI. 

So, what do we do?

Well, in the broadest, most abstract sense, we help artists tackle particular questions and support them as they put their discoveries to work. This is a critical part of the way we help artists because I believe in the power of purposeful questions to guide a work, journey, or experience in the right direction and to the right destination.  

So even though I use the language (and I’m grateful that it’s helped you and I find one another), I will confess that I believe asking How do I integrate my faith and art? is asking the wrong question. I believe it's a bad question built on a faulty and erroneous foundation. I explain why in Episode 34 of our podcast:

The phrase "integrating faith and art" puts our focus on trying to fix or change our faith or art instead of on us and our task to align ourselves with the spiritual reality that we are already whole and complete in Christ. 

Your work is not to try to integrate your faith and art. Integration was Christ's work, which He already completed. And you are already whole and complete in Him (Col. 2:10). If you're trying to integrate your faith and art, you are needlessly duplicating finished and settled work.

Instead, your work—and really, all our work in this experience—is to 1) receive that wholeness, and 2) let the Spirit of God teach us how to cooperate and move differently in wholeness and as whole artists. 

Some context and clarification—

Being complete in Christ applies to our entire lives and every facet of them. But in the Kingdom Artist Institute, we only explore how that wholeness impacts a specific part. 

The experience.
In KAI, I am only talking to you about the experience of being an artist in Christ and building an art career, business, or practice from and within that relationship. So anytime you see or hear me use the phrase this or the experience, this is what I'm referring to.

All parts of you.
In KAI, we are learning to walk and work as the whole artists we already are. Therefore, you will often hear me use the phrase “all parts of you” or “showing up completely.” When I say that, I am only referencing the three parts that are most active in your experience of being an artist in Christ and building an art life:

• The spiritual part of you: the part of you in communion with God

• The creative part of you: the part of you that makes and shares art

• The career / vocational part of you: the part of you building a creative business, career, etc.

Getting back to what we do
Our work at KAI is to help you walk and work as the whole artist you already are. It is not to help you integrate your faith and art—even though I use that language to help us find one another. It might seem like I’m splitting hairs, but the distinction between these two is HUGE. Let me explain.

I had an exchange with Chat GPT about the difference between being whole and integrated. It explained that being integrated is “the blending or merging of [disconnected] parts into a unified whole.” The analogy Chat GPT gave me for integration was a picture of two jigsaw puzzles—in which I take pieces from each of the two puzzles and fit those pieces together to make a different puzzle that is unified in its own way.

Working to “integrate our faith and art” would mean that we believe the spiritual, creative, and vocational parts of ourselves are initially disconnected. That they come from separate spaces and origins. That they initially do not belong together. And from that belief we would seek to take pieces from each of those disconnected parts and manufacture some kind of cohesion between them, like a functional Frankenstein.

But they were never disconnected.
They, in fact, come from the same source and exist in the same space.
And they’ve always belonged together.

You have a spiritual life because God created you to commune with Him and initiated the restoration of that relationship (through Christ) when you were separated.

You create art because that is a gift and ability that same God gave you.

And you are pursuing an art career or business because it is the vision that same God filled you with.

They come from the same source, and they are designed to work together in the same life. This is why, instead of integrating our faith and art (trying to make something functionally unified out of disconnected pieces), we are working to walk and work as the whole artists we already are.

Being whole, Chat GPT explained, is about being “complete, undivided, and unbroken.” It speaks of a “state of entirety, where all parts are present and functioning harmoniously together.” It went on to give me the analogy of a completed jigsaw puzzle in which all the originally included pieces are “present, put together correctly, and form a complete picture.” 

The KAI Foundational Question

So, in helping you walk and work like the whole artist you already are, the foundational question we are here to help you answer is: 

How do I embody this wholeness and allow all parts of myself to fully participate, partner, and flourish together in the experiences I have walking with God, making and sharing art, and building my career/business?

Another way to ask this is:

How do I show up completely (all parts present and working well together) when I’m interacting with God and Kingdom community, when I’m making and sharing art, and when I’m building my career or business?

To help you answer this question, we address two relationships in your experience:

• The relationship between you—the artist—and God
  The Holy Spirit is the only one who can lead you fully into the creative vision He gave you and show you how to maximize the gifts He gave you. If you don’t feel free and safe to share every part of your creative heart and life with Him and to receive and follow His leading in it, you will not be able to bring your whole self to the whole experience of building an art life as an artist in Christ.
  

• The relationship between your faith, art, and career
  When the spiritual, creative, and vocational parts of you are working well together, they nurture, support, mature, and expand one another through their interaction. If you are suspicious or don’t feel comfortable allowing them to interact, you will struggle to show up completely.

The real work in what we do.

As we are already whole and complete in Christ, we are not here to help you integrate your faith and art career because there is nothing to integrate. 

When Christ redeemed us, He redeemed every single thing about us. So there is nothing, not one thing about us that exists outside of that redemption. Every aspect of us is united in His redemption, and we have been made whole and complete in Him. From Ep. 34

Now you may be wondering, Then what is going on, Marlita—because I sure don’t feel like my faith and art are united.

If we are already whole in Christ, then our work is not to integrate. It is to stop separating. Or stop trying to keep ourselves separated. Here’s what I mean…

Warning: TMI Share Incoming

I was married at 30. Sadly I was divorced before 32. I was a virgin when I got married and we had difficulty consummating our union—to the point where I thought I might need surgery. My husband and I went to the doctor and she examined me. When she finished, she looked at me and tenderly said, “Honey, there’s nothing there.” 

“Wait, what?” I asked.

She repeated herself, “There’s nothing there.”

“So this is me? This has all been me?”

I started sobbing as I realized that the source of our struggle had been me. Here I was thinking that there was something so strong and present stopping us from consummating that I was going to need surgery.

But I didn’t know my own strength. 

I didn’t know the strength of my fear and tension. I was holding on so tight because I was afraid that it would hurt. I didn’t know what to expect. And because of that fear, I was physically creating a barrier to something I wanted just as much as my husband. 

Nothing physical had to be removed for us to move forward. There was nothing there but my fear, tension, and hesitation creating a barrier. And when I was able to overcome that, the natural engagement was allowed to go forward without issue. (Sidebar: Religion and family silence send women into marital intimacy woefully unprepared. Can we please stop doing that?)

The Reason for my Oversharing

I tell this very vulnerable story because it is the same for your relationship with God and the relationship between your faith, art, and career. 

There is nothing there separating your faith, art, and career. 

There is no barrier between the artist part of you and God.

There is nothing there stopping them from flowing, working, and thriving together. 

There is only your fear, tension, and hesitation about what might happen. 

And as soon as you overcome that, they will flow together naturally as they were designed to do.

That is a hard reality to accept—that you’re the one separating them, or at the very least maintaining their separation. God is not doing it. Your family is not doing it. The church is not doing it. The art community is not doing it. Nobody else is separating your parts, even though their comments, actions, or behaviors may legitimately be the reason you started separating them in the first place. And even though they might legitimately be the reason you struggle to stop separating yourself.

So, on the way to answering how we show up completely, we have to first answer the gritty question: What is the benefit of keeping them separate? What is the benefit of keeping God out of our creative lives (or trying to anyway)? What is the benefit of trying to keep our faith, art, and career from interacting?

And we unpack this idea of benefit with two smaller questions: What am I trying to preserve? And what am I trying to avoid? The answers to these questions are different for each of us, but we all have to deal with them if we are truly going to be able to walk and work as the whole artists we already are. 

What we think we’re preserving

So, what do you think is being preserved by separating yourself?

Are you preserving the integrity of your art? Are you preserving the integrity of your faith? Are you preserving relationships and others’ opinions of you? Are you preserving access to resources? Is it your creative vision? Is it your pride? What do you believe separation is preserving?

What we think we’re avoiding

On the other hand, what do you believe you’re avoiding by maintaining the separation? Are you trying to avoid ridicule from your church community? Or being made fun of by the art community? Are you trying to avoid your art being dismissed and minimized? Are you trying to avoid being kicked out of or excluded from certain spaces? Are you trying to avoid disappointing God? Are you trying to prevent your art from becoming cliche or your faith from being compromised? What do you believe separation is helping you avoid?

I want to share an excerpt with you from Module 1 of The Kingdom Art Life Course, which I hope you go through at some point.

When I first started creating [the Kingdom Art Life course], the Lord gave me the image of pruning. Pruning involves removing dead, diseased, and decayed parts of a tree to facilitate its growth.  It also involves removing its weak parts that are prone to damage. One day, God posed this question to me: Does pruning the tree cause it to grow? The answer is no. Pruning does not make it grow. The tree already has the natural capacity to grow, and it will grow as long as nothing is hindering it from growing. Pruning removes the hindrances so the tree can do what is natural for it to do.

In the same way, harmony is a natural process within us. In God, a harmonious, mutually-honoring relationship between our faith, art, and career will happen in our lives as long as there is nothing hindering it from happening. The problem is that there are things hindering this natural process from progressing within us.

As career-minded artists, we struggle with carrying divisive, unfruitful beliefs about how God sees us and about the relationship between our faith and art careers. And we all know the million reasons why. Regardless of those reasons and their causes, it is our beliefs that create the hindrances. How we see ourselves as artists in God, and our image of God in relationship with us as artists are the things that sustain and deepen the fragmentation and wrestling we so desire to be free of. So, those beliefs have to be pruned so harmony can thrive. Because here's the thing: there is no hindrance actually separating our faith and art career. We only have to address our hindering beliefs and perceptions.

We separate because of what we believe the separation is enabling us to preserve or avoid. We separate because of what we believe—regardless of how that belief came into being. But if the belief is making you think you have to divide yourself when God has made you whole; 

if the belief is making you think you have to hide or exclude parts of yourself or your life from God, like Adam and Eve did;

then that is a belief that has to be pruned because it is blocking your ability to show up completely and walk in wholeness.

I end Episode 34 by talking about Mia from The Princess Diaries. The Princess Diaries is not about us watching Mia become a princess. She was already a princess before her grandmother informed her she was. The movie is about us watching Mia learn how to walk and live as the princess she is. It is us watching her embody what she already is—to express it, act like it, move like it, think like it, and engage in the world and with other people like it. 

In the Kingdom Artist Institute, it is the same for us. This is not about integrating ourselves or undergoing some process to be made whole. You are already whole and complete through Christ’s finished work.
Nothing missing.
Nothing broken.
These parts of you working together to complete the whole picture of who God has made you as His artist.

And all you and I are doing is learning how to embody it—to walk like it, talk like it, think like it, move like it, and work like it.