Ok, I think I have just been convicted of a sin!
In sculpture Jessica Stockholder brought up the Harvard study that shows that we live in an economy fueled by experiences. I knew ours was a service economy rather than industrial (Reich, Work of Nations). We trade in lifestyle, we sell buy and sell experience, rather than objects. Some say art has been trending toward the same goal. Artists create experiences rather than objects. This resonates with the goals I have had for art that I have made- to capture experiences I've had and recreate them for others to experience. They are spiritual experiences and they are profound and meaningful, and I would like everyone else to have the same spiritual and meaningful experiences, even to reveal God to people. But to put that in the language of commodity made me realize that in doing so I have commodified God. I criticize mega churches and some charismatic-type evangelical worship for their commodification of worship, packaging it and selling it to people as something that will make them feel good and make their lives better. But I realize that in many ways the decisions I make in life are driven by the quest for the commodity of worship. I seek the experience of God. Is this wrong? Is it wrong to seek to be in the presence of God? To look forward with joy to Sunday mornings at Messiah Episcopal and Tuesdays at Marquand Chapel, to run through the woods ecstatic with joy, to take a week out of my summer to do grunt work at a camp so I could worship for an hour a day with the Urbana worship team? If I make the worship an idol, it's wrong. If the experience is what matters and not worship of God, it's wrong. So if experience shouldn't be my goal, and if spiritual experiences gained through beauty or nature are not God's self revelation and could never be that, then what is my purpose in making art? How can I be a witness to the love that has been bestowed on me?
Once again, God, be my God.