Little Offerings to God

I was watching an interview with Rick Rubin and he was talking about how he knows whether or not something is good. About trusting himself and doing his best, and discovering after 30 years of doing this that what he was making were little offerings to God. 

His best and most true expressions were not for customers or listeners. 

They were his way of giving thanks to something greater than himself. 

It really hit me hard because I’ve had such a long and strange relationship with the idea of God. 

I grew up religious, going to church twice a week. Reading my Bible every night. Working each day to be a better person. An honest person. A kind person. A loving person. 

When I lost my faith I found religion to be judgemental. 

I discovered that my kindness and love came with conditions. It was a truth that was hard to face.

I lost my relationship with God; rejected it even. 

I really sort of lost myself if I’m quite honest and through that whole experience I turned inward for answers and truth and art was one of the ways I processed what I was going through. 

You don’t just lose your faith in God. You lose your faith in the systems that you leaned on your whole life. 

I still don’t trust authority. 

I definitely don’t like being part of groups. 

I wouldn’t say that I use my art as therapy anymore or at least not in the same way but my connection to my work is stronger than its ever been and really forms the entire basis of my identity at this point. 

If I were somehow not allowed to make art I’m not sure how I would live. 

My life is measured in art. How long it takes to finish a painting. How good a painting is, how much it’s improved over the last one or the ones I did ten years ago. 

How well I communicated an idea. Whether or not this idea is a thread worthy of pulling and unraveling to discover more. 

I don’t really know life without art at this point. I don’t know life without working towards some art goal. I don’t know a morning that’s not spent wrestling with my work in some way or another. Solving some problem or adding a new one to the list. 

People used to ask me how I knew a painting was finished and I’d say when I was sick of working on it. But it was far more complicated than that. 

There comes a point where you’re needling the painting without any real return. At some point it’s the best that you can do in that moment. It took me a long time to understand that the best I can do right now is not the best that I can do. 

I think one of my greatest joys in life is knowing that my best work is still ahead of me and knowing that the journey is going to be full of discovery and invention and trials and failures.

For me that’s exciting.

I don’t want to know what my best looks like yet.

I want to keep finding out what I’m capable of. Some days I make leaps and some days I barely inch forward.

But I keep working.

I never found my faith… not the faith I lost. 

I have something… 

I don’t know what it is and I think I’m actually afraid to name it. I don’t want to know it. I like that it's a mystery. 

But all this time I thought I was just trying to be a better artist for myself. And after watching that interview it made me think that maybe all this time I’ve been making little offerings to God. 

Whatever that means.

It hit home. It felt real. It feels like a worthy pursuit.