Translating the Invisible Wind

by Geoff Hall
Part 3 in the 4-part series Spiritual Direction in a Postmodern Landscape

Translate calls the artist to reject institutional subservience and form part of a living artistic community. Jacques Ellul warns us that if we pursue the methods of propaganda, we will become like any other ideology and lose the essence of our faith. Do we collaborate with the powerful? Can we resist the temptation to conform to the spirit of the age, so that we can transform a fractured, disintegrated culture?

A Spirituality of Resistance works in a subtle, subversive way, not through the edifice, but underground, in a way undetectable by the censors and prohibitors of our faith. In this way we can capture the imagination of those outside our common-unity and thus cause the ultimate downfall of the opposing ‘stronghold’ or edifice. Art works best in the margins, not at the soft-centre of some institution or other. If you want to support such activists, then don’t drag them into the Church, support them where they are culturally situated, as one would a member of the resistance!

Table of Contents

Is this a Time of Cultural Exile?	13
Collaboration?	19
Resistance?	23
Cultural Collaborators	27
Transformation	31
Propaganda	33
Critical Times	37
Artistic Responses in an Age of Propaganda	41
The Art of Changing Perceptions?	47
A Response to Despair – the Language of Lament	53
The Art of Perceiving	57
The Art of Conception	61
Art is a Spiritual Discipline	65
Redemption Narrative – The Plot Thickens when Stirred	77
Translating the Invisible Wind by the Water it Sculpts in Passing	81
In Conclusion!	91
Also in this series	110
About the author	112
Notebook	122