In “My Bright Abyss”, Christian Wiman writes about the tension he felt between art and “the hunger for an experience of life that was immediate, unmediated”. It made me think of the great labor chant, “our life is more than our work, and our work is more than our job.”

For me, this resonates deeply with additional layers. Wiman goes on to talk about this in terms of one’s experience of God. For me the layers are even more complicated.

Over the past few days, as I’ve driven to work, looking at the beautiful scenery, the mist and the clouds, I’ve been listening to my Spotify playlist of 2015 Falcon Ridge Emerging Artists. There are some beautiful songs on the playlist. I especially like the songs that tell stories, the ballads. Mediated experiences of other people’s lives. It strengthens my empathy. It broadens my perspective. While the songs are telling their stories, I’m living out mine in the car. Do I have time to stop and play a little bit of Ingress along the way? Can I take in the scenery as I think about the work for the day?

In a few weeks, I’m planning to take time off to go see several plays as part of the New York Fringe Festival. There, I will live out my story again, as I experience mediated versions of other people’s stories.

I plan on writing about the songs I like from the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Emerging Artists. I plan on writing about the plays I like at the New York Fringe festival. This will be my experience too, as I write my thoughts about other people’s art about other people’s experience. Underneath all of this, is the experience of God’s love, the beauty of God’s creation, contrasted with suffering, and times that God feels remote, far away, like an abstract concept, or perhaps even non-existent.

So, I get up early and go to work. I try to find time to write. I try to find time to experience life unmediated. I try to find time for family. I try to find time for God. Yet I also must try to find time to relax, to keep the Sabbath holy, “for He gives to his beloved rest.”