Author: Edith Schaeffer
(Edited and compiled by Louis Gifford Parkhurst, Jr.)
Publication details: Crossway Books, Illinois, 1987.
The outstanding thing about Edith Schaeffer is her earthiness. Her books always suggest an eye on the beautiful things on earth, but these are not uncommon things. They are things which have as a thread running through them the ordinariness that describes most of human life, such as commonplace scenes and everyday events. But for her, they are the stuff of much writing and reflection, simply because she sees in them what she has herself called “hidden art”. Her premise is that the stuff of Art is found in the simplicity and ordinariness of life. The blend of functional, mundane, ordinary, on one hand, and sublime or beautiful, on the other, preoccupies her, so that these routine events are furnished and infused with a general and pervading sense of artistry and liveliness that bears witness to God’s great skill as Cosmic Artist.
The Art of Life is a compilation of Edith Schaeffer’s writings, culled out and selected by Louis Gifford Parkhurst, Jr., and reintroduced as a devotional aid. It is composed of extracts from Schaeffer, followed by a Scripture reading and a brief prayer after every selection, and its reflective intentions are very much drawn along by the exquisite drawings of rustic scenes by artist Floyd Hosmer. Quite the sort of book to take with you on retreat somewhere.
What I have enjoyed most about reading Edith Schaeffer is represented in this small edition: The Art of Life is the attar of Edith Schaeffer, a small but potent concentration of the essence of all her writings. Her theme is evident from the title: Life is Art. The dimensions of Art for her are varied, and good Art occurs at different levels. It is found in the jagged scissoring of a three-year-old’s first attempt at cut-out pictures; it is seen in the stylistically refined pieces of a Picasso, but more commandingly, it is demonstrated through the reality of God’s art gallery, Nature itself. Schaeffer’s focus is two-pronged: “God is Artist; Man is Art” forms the first part of the equation. The second follows from this: “because God is Creator and Man is imago Dei, Man must likewise create.” He cannot deny this essential of his own nature; even where his creativity is warped, Man is destined (or doomed, depending on your preference) to create.
Humans are created to create, in other words, and the raw materials are best used for the cultivation of the psyche, or the human soul and individuality; in the nourishing and flourishing of relationships and family richness and depth; in human thought and culture and expression. Simply, the fact of being human and being alive so excites Schaeffer that her conviction is that a Christian, of all people, must be an artist, should live “artistically, aesthetically, and creatively,” and be “sensitive to beauty, responsive to what has been created for our appreciation.”
Stemming from this view of Life as Art and Man as Artist is a developing branch of much thought and writing, namely her conjoining interest in and concern for the family, something too often overlooked these days as important to the formation of the individual. In family structures and the cultivation of relationships, she sees great potential for much artistry to be at play. Like Virginia Woolf, Edith Schaeffer regards human interaction and relationships to be the canvas to work out transcendent and eternal moments (Art) in life, moments where something of the purity and loveliness of God’s intention for humanity manages to shine through. As a unit, the family is the “formation center for knowing how to love, how to express love, and what love is all about.” Art in the making takes place as children learn responsibility, as parents learn accountability, as all participate in the “deep understanding that people are significant, important, worthwhile …”
Looking at family in this way (a work of art) is looking at life with the same hopeful lens. But life is not only a work of art. Participants come to appreciate that skill and experience are needed to live well, so that there is, too, an art to living. Hidden artistry must be discovered in the journey called life, as we manage our way through easy and difficult terrain, encounter congenial and temperamental people, jump over small hurdles and big. To refuse the challenge is to refuse the artistic impulse, to deny the creative potential, and in effect, the God-directed impulse of the soul. To say “yes” to what is essentially human in this exercise is of course to necessarily bend the will to boundaries, discipline, rules … Schaeffer’s thoughts are all undergirded and bound within the confines of an evangelical and thoroughgoing regard for Scriptural limits and frameworks.
Her perspective therefore balances the interplay between freedom and restraint (or boundaries), spontaneity and discipline, in the learning process of becoming an artist of life that all humans must engage in. That is what I like most about her. The commonsense she exudes, the groundedness of her down-to-earth nature always pins her readers down at points where we acknowledge that each of us is finally responsible and accountable for the ways in which we learn (or do not learn) to be true artists after God’s heart. And if that were not all, Edith Schaeffer makes the commonplace seem so worthwhile, the ordinary so pleasurable, that on reading her, one must sigh with some relief that life could be simple, after all.
This review was first published in a Kairos monograph, Understanding the Modern World Through Christian Eyes: Building Strong Families, June 2003, pp. 25-26.
