Culture Care

1. Culture Care: Nurturing the Soul of Society

Culture Care, though a thesis I have developed, is a movement already afoot in culture in various circles.

A vital movement. Culture Care is a conceptual framework and practical response to a broken society, aiming to restore wholeness by reconnecting with beauty for our common life. It extends the principles of "Creation Care" (environmental stewardship) and "Soul Care" (mental and spiritual health) to the broader cultural landscape. This approach is for anyone who feels the cultural divide and desires understanding, reconciliation, and healing through the arts.

Beyond division. The core idea is to shift from treating culture as a territory to be won in "culture wars" to seeing it as a garden to be cultivated and stewarded. This involves developing skills in listening to the wider culture and adopting a loving, servant-hearted posture rather than a combative one. While rooted in a Christian perspective, its principles are universally applicable, inviting all people of goodwill to contribute to the common good.

Feeding the soul. At its heart, Culture Care means providing care for our culture's "soul," bringing beauty into even the harshest environments. It restores beauty as a seed of invigoration into culture's ecosystem, fostering an environment where people and creativity can thrive. This generative approach is meant to inspire individuals and inform a wider movement dedicated to cultural restoration.

2. From Culture Wars to Generative Thinking

Generative thinking often starts out with a failure, like my failure to think and act as an artist.

Personal genesis. The concept of generative thinking emerged from a personal "genesis moment" when the author's wife, despite their poverty, bought flowers, reminding him, "We need to feed our souls, too." This act of generosity challenged his pragmatic focus on survival and ignited a lifelong pursuit of questions about beauty's necessity in life and culture. Generative thinking, therefore, often begins with recognizing personal or societal failures and choosing hope over despair.

Three G's of generativity. Generative principles are characterized by three elements:

• Genesis moments: Fresh starts, often born from failure, leading to new perspectives and creativity.
• Generosity: Fueling generative thinking by valuing beauty and life as gifts, counteracting a mindset of scarcity and utility.
• Generational thinking: Cultivating values and creating works with enduring qualities that speak to future generations, recognizing that culture formation is a long-term endeavor.

Beyond reductionism. Our current culture is fragmented by reductionism, hyperspecialization, and the over-commodification of art, treating it as a means for commercial gain or ideological warfare. This "black river" of culture starves the soul. Generative thinking offers an alternative, moving beyond mere survival to holistic approaches that demand personal growth and point civilization toward a greater vision of human thriving.

3. Beauty as Essential Food for the Soul

Beauty is the quality connected with those things that are in themselves appealing and desirable.

A universal hunger. Beauty is not a luxury but essential "food for the soul," appealing to our senses, delighting our minds, and refreshing our spirits. It invites contemplation, inspires response, and connects us to satisfaction and the "why" of living. While often linked to physical senses, beauty also describes elegant scientific theories and profound knowledge, appealing to us on multiple levels.

Gratuity and stewardship. A Christian understanding sees beauty as a gratuitous gift from a Creator God, not necessary for mere survival but indispensable for human flourishing. Our innate sense of beauty and creativity reflects God's character, making our souls hunger for it. This gift calls us to stewardship, to "sub-create" by working with raw materials, honoring their properties, and cultivating more beauty in the world, much like localism in agriculture.

Justice and sacrifice. Philosopher Elaine Scarry links beauty with justice, noting that encounters with beauty can reveal our errors and spark "repentance"—a turning toward authenticity. The prophet Isaiah connects beauty with comforting the mourning and rebuilding ruins, implying a call to act for justice and renewal. The Japanese ideogram for beauty (美), combining "sheep" (羊) and "large" (大), suggests a deeper connection to sacrifice, highlighting that providing beauty often requires profound personal cost.

4. Artists as Mearcstapas: Leading from the Margins

Mearcstapa is not a comfortable role.

Border-stalkers. Artists, often instinctively uncomfortable in homogeneous groups, are uniquely suited to be "mearcstapas" or "border-stalkers." This role involves living on the edges of groups, moving between them, and bringing back news, fostering understanding and reconciliation. While challenging and prone to misunderstanding, this position offers a new mode of cultural leadership, enabling empathy, mediation, and the reunification of divided communities.

Empathy and adaptability. Artists possess a great capacity to see the "other" as a "neighbor," often because they themselves are exiled from normative tribal identities. They train themselves to inhabit or portray different perspectives, learning to adapt and speak new "tribal languages" without sacrificing their core beliefs. This adaptability, when grounded, deepens convictions and leads to a wider, more perceptive view of culture.

Reconcilers of fragmentation. By embracing the mearcstapa role, artists can become reconcilers of division and fragmentation. They can inject diversity, nuance, and paradox into cultural conversations, moving beyond caricatures to teach society a language of empathy and reconciliation. Like Strider in The Lord of the Rings, they can become indispensable guides, supported by community, to unite divided kingdoms and release great generativity.

5. The Power of Empathy and Storytelling

Reminding people of our common life—that we are neighbors first—is a task of Culture Care.

Defusing conflict. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird exemplifies the power of empathy in defusing conflict. Scout Finch, by innocently reminding Mr. Cunningham of their shared humanity and neighborly "entailment," disarms a lynch mob. This act highlights how stepping into conflict with determined innocence, rather than argument, can re-humanize a situation and provide a generative path for its energy.

Songs for a movement. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, prompted by Mahalia Jackson to "tell 'em about the dream," illustrates how artists can reveal the heart of a movement. Artists provide the "songs to sing to," creating universal beauty that connects justice with emotion and draws people into a cause. Their work acts as a powerful form of nonviolent resistance, illuminating paths of empathy and inspiring collective action.

Leaders through stories. Psychologists like Howard Gardner note that creators and leaders are similar, both engaged in persuasion and embodying stories. Artists lead not always through direct speeches, but through their awareness, observation, and the language and symbols they create. Their persuasive influence can illuminate the "world that ought to be," fostering a culture where love for the "other" is cultivated and modeled organically.

6. Beyond Utility: Art's Indispensable Value

Art is ultimately not 'useful.' It serves no practical function. This is why it is indispensable, especially in the modern age.

The trap of utility. Our modern age often evaluates everything, including art, by its "usefulness" or economic metric, stripping vision of transcendence. This utilitarian pragmatism leads to a culture where anything not immediately valuable is disposable, impacting education, human dignity, and even the perception of the disabled or elderly. This mindset calcifies into a dogma that one is only worthwhile if useful, leading to dehumanization and fragmentation.

Indispensable for humanity. Art, precisely because it serves no practical function, is indispensable. It challenges constricted visions, giving birth to expressions that defiantly reach beyond closed boundaries into the mystery of existence. Dana Gioia argues that arts education aims not just to create artists, but "to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society," fostering better teachers, doctors, and parents.

Calling beyond pragmatism. Artists, like Emily Dickinson and Vincent van Gogh, often follow an internal compass, a deep calling to create, even when their work finds no immediate audience or is deemed "impractical." Their intuition senses cultural realities before they manifest, speaking a prophetic language of reconciliation. Their art, born from necessity, becomes an antidote to utilitarian drives, offering unfading bouquets of enduring beauty to a dying culture.

7. Two Lives at the Margins: Dickinson and Van Gogh

One reminder from Emily’s life is that one needs nothing more than a small and dedicated space to make a significant impact in culture.

Quiet rebellion. Emily Dickinson, from her small Amherst room and seventeen-and-a-half-inch desk, created a vast body of poetry that spoke against dehumanization and the rigid categories of her time. Her "dashes" symbolized the liminal space between life and death, reflecting her deep wrestling with faith and suffering, and her refusal to conform to revivalist movements. Her life demonstrates that profound cultural impact can arise from protected, dedicated creative spaces, even without public recognition.

Spirit in nature. Vincent van Gogh, rejected by the church for his unconventional devotion among coal miners, turned to art to express his compassion. His Starry Night depicts a dark church building amidst a vibrant, swirling natural world, suggesting the Spirit's departure from institutional structures into nature and life's margins. He painted a "superior and changed condition of existence," envisioning a transformed future and bridging our current reality with a generative, post-Resurrection world.

Prophetic voices. Both Dickinson and Van Gogh were "mearcstapas," operating in the margins, their art speaking eloquently to universal human longings. They intuited the fractured realities of emerging modernity and responded with prophetic language of reconciliation. Their works, created from a deep internal calling, serve as integrated visions of beauty against injustice, offering remedies for the poison in the river of culture.

8. Opening the Gates: Embracing the Wider World

I am the Gate. Anyone who goes through me will be cared for—will freely go in and out, and find pasture.

Beyond the sheepfold. Jesus' parable of the Good Shepherd, who is the "gate for the sheep," implies safety both inside and outside the sheepfold, for the purpose of going "in and out" to find pasture. Many churches, however, have created rigid boundaries, keeping their "sheep" (members) culturally starved by providing only "Christian" fodder. This forces young, creative individuals to choose between conformity and cultural nourishment, hindering their flourishing.

Guided exploration. Leaders and parents are called to open these gates, accepting a loss of control and exposing children to the wider world, trusting the Good Shepherd to guide them. Mearcstapas, like the author's son C.J. who explored hip-hop and created diverse creative communities, can learn to navigate cultural currents and inform the flock of dangers and opportunities. Their journey, though unconventional, reveals green pastures beyond tribal norms.

Common grace. Culture Care emphasizes that the Holy Spirit is active beyond church walls, making "green the grass outside the fold" through God's common grace. Holding the gate shut not only starves one's own, but also becomes a barrier for Jesus' "other sheep" whom he promises to bring in. The Gospel, in its full depth, is about the never-ending restoration of all things in Christ, encompassing all of creation and history, not just personal salvation or church programs.

9. Cultivating Cultural Estuaries

Much of the Hudson River, like all the intricate waterways around New York City, is an estuary. In an estuary, salt water mixes with fresh, bringing together multiple ecological layers and habitats to form the world’s most diverse and abundant ecosystem.

A model for culture. The estuary, where diverse waters mix to create abundant, resilient ecosystems, serves as a powerful model for Culture Care. It represents a complex cultural system with dynamic influences and tributaries, containing nurturing but not isolated habitats. These habitats prepare individuals for interaction with the wider environment, fostering diversity and strengthening participants for the overall flourishing of the greater cultural ecology.

Diverse habitats. Within this framework, some artists might be "oysters," rooted and filtering cultural pollution, turning irritants into "pearls" of beauty. Others might be "salmon," spending a season in a nurturing habitat before venturing into the wider cultural "ocean." This model acknowledges that different callings require different types of care and habitats, rejecting a single agenda in favor of vigorous diversity and healthy competition, all contributing to the system's health.

Historical precedents. History offers examples of such cultural estuaries, like 16th-century Japan with its blend of local and foreign influences, or early 20th-century New York City birthing Abstract Expressionism and the Harlem Renaissance. To cultivate these today, communities must deputize, form, train, commission, and support potential mearcstapas. This involves providing spiritual and artistic "weight rooms," fostering interaction, and encouraging exploration of cultural boundaries, ultimately releasing the full generative efforts of creatives.

10. Stewardship and Sacrifice: The Custodian's Role

One person with the courage to be demoted, one person willing to sacrifice for the restoration of beauty, created a ripple effect in culture with immeasurable generative influence.

The Fred Danback parable. Fred Danback, a factory worker demoted to custodian for blowing the whistle on his company's pollution of the Hudson River, became a real-life parable for Culture Care. His "punishment" gave him keys to every room, allowing him to gather evidence that led to significant fines and cleaner waters. His story teaches three lessons for Culture Care: willingness to sacrifice, remembering one's first love, and taking copious notes.

Courage and love. Culture Care requires a willingness to endure "demotions" and become "custodians" of culture, gaining humble authority to clean up and observe. This sacrificial attitude, rooted in human decency and generosity, stands out in a world often driven by ego. Like Danback's unwavering love for the river, artists and creative catalysts must remember their "first love" for beauty and creation, which fuels their perseverance against despair and cultural pollution.

Generative ripple effects. Just as Danback's actions led to cleaner rivers, attractive parks, and ultimately, the building of schools that saved lives on 9/11, Culture Care actions create immeasurable generative influence. These effects cannot be measured by typical metrics of efficiency but are manifested in the thriving of future generations. We are called to be a community of "Fred Danbacks," boldly declaring our love for culture and sacrificing for its restoration.

11. Business Care and the Generative Artist's Path

In order to start a movement, you need three elements. 1) An artist-type with creative capital, 2) a pastor (or community organizer) type with social capital, and 3) a business type with access to material capital.

Creative catalysts in business. Culture Care extends to "Business Care," where creative catalysts—non-artists like CEOs or custodians—contribute to rehumanizing their fields. David Fuller, a bank executive, exemplifies this by fostering a "Team Fund" that empowered employees to perform acts of generosity, like buying a car battery for a single mom. This merges business discipline with divergent, intuitive thinking, creating hybrid microcosms where human values and multiple bottom lines thrive.

The movement triangle. To launch a generative movement, three types of capital are essential:

• Creative capital: Provided by artist-types, offering vision and innovation.
• Social capital: Contributed by pastor or community organizer-types, building relationships and fostering community.
• Material capital: Supplied by business-types, providing resources and sustainability.
  Having two out of three can sustain an endeavor, but all three are needed to launch a truly generative movement.

The artist's calling. For artists, sustaining their calling often means embracing a "generative path," whether through a day job that enables art-making or by raising support through "genesis moments" with collectors. Artists are called to lead in generosity, reflecting the gratuitous nature of creation, and to think generationally, creating works that lay foundations for future thriving. Their art, born from a deep, undeniable calling, becomes a fragrant torch of truth, justice, and beauty, infusing all of life with Christ's presence.