Steve Scott: Crying for a Vision

The best books I've read didn't end up in my hands by random selection, but they were recommended to me by a friend or teacher. Without the friend who sent me Crying for a Vision and Other Essays I most likely would not have set eyes on the book. The performance artist Steve Scott was unknown to me (I’ve never run across him in the underground music scene); and who would have expected a rock-n-roller to have much to say about religion and the arts? Steve Scott has a message, and he delivers it well.

The primary audience for this book is the Christian artist. That said, I am Christian but not an artist (at least not in the traditional sense); I work as a software engineer; but maybe I am a poet at heart: because Steve Scott's book nudged at my heart and mind. His book needs to be widely read.

The book titles itself a collection of essays, and you could pick and choose which to read in whatever order; but there is a flow and order in their presentation, and the collection is best read from beginning to end ... like a book of chapters. Some of the text toward the beginning was the driest for me (how to look at art so you can form a response, or rather, how different personalities and cultures respond to art). But don't stop too soon. This chapter is important background. Read it and move on to the meat.

You can consider the Crying for a Vision book to be a guidebook for the Christian artist. Not a guidebook with all the answers, but an aid for you that asks so many questions. And if Steve Scott's writing doesn't provide you with all the questions, then the study guide appendix should satisfy. It is not a book to be blown through like a bestseller novel. Take some time to chew on it.

One thing that I took away from reading this book is the importance of a sense of wonder. The writer who has most influenced me, G.K. Chesterton, had this sense of wonder in his life and in his art; so this element is often in my mind. Scott's book reminded me of the need for Christians to evangelize through this sense of wonder (the apostolate of wonder??) when he wrote: "I believe that Christian artists can take on the prophetic mandate in their work, and confront more deeply than others who try."

It is needed in our post-grunge world.

P.S. You can read an interview with Steve Scott, conducted by editor Gord Wilson, online at A Living Dog.

[originally posted at veni.sanctespirit.us on Aug 16, 2007]