I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Christine Lee Smith’s reflection “Contemplative Presence in Creative Practice.”
One afternoon while serving as a TA in an introductory photography course during my MFA program, a student asked me about the thesis body of work I was making. As it was my final year in the program I was already deep into the making of the project, but not yet full of articulate language around what I was pursuing in this photography-based portrait project. So I paused, and considered how I wanted to share about this deeply personal body of work on parental estrangement with this seemingly delightfully free college freshman.
I decided to take the direct approach. I told him I was making a body of work, using large format film, to photograph individuals who had experienced (or were still experiencing) estrangement from their parents in adulthood. With a clarity of thought like lightning, after only a beat this young man said: “So, you like to make work about good hard things, don’t you?” I was awestruck at the simple clarity and precision of his words — good hard, huh? Hard experiences that were worth talking about anyway; yes, good hard was correct. It was so spot on to my internal experience of making this work, and of my practice in general, I was shocked it hadn’t occurred to me until this young person articulated it for me.
Four years later and these words still help me frame my work as an artist monk in the world.
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Years prior I had the opportunity to attend a seminary program focused on spiritual formation and soul care. There I was introduced to many saints and monks within Christianity’s long history. Ignatius of Loyola quickly stood out to me — both for his focus on learning to discern well, and for the Jesuit order that followed his understanding of vocation. Jesuit monks often work out in the world, outside of their local order. And quite often their vocational work is dedicated to the service of justice. At the time I couldn’t quite put words to why this resonated so well inside of me, so I tucked it away for later.
Towards the end of my seminary journey, while finishing Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, my spiritual director, Larry, interrupted a vocational existential crisis I was explaining to him and asked me an exceedingly timely question: Don’t you think it’s possible God wanted you to be a photographer and to come study spiritual formation on purpose? The precision and purpose of his words was like lightning — how had this not occurred to me before? My career as a commercial photographer up to that point felt very abstracted from where my life was taking me at that time. I had felt an impulse to scramble and make the pieces fit. However, with that timely and knowing question from my director I felt as if Jesus had made the perfect chiropractic adjustment in my soul. I didn’t yet see clearly where it was all headed, but I was comforted that a path was indeed emerging in my creative practice and vocation.
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My life up to that point had been good-hard. Lots of good; lots of really, really devastatingly hard. But it wasn’t until that student made such a succinct statement about what he observed in my work that it clicked — just like my spiritual director’s question to me all those years before. Sitting with those questions and observations over the next few months as I worked toward completing the project Portraits on Estrangement, I began to see God showing me, in the faces of my project participants emerging in the tray of developer, all these pieces of my own story being stitched together with a clarity of purpose and some much needed time and distance from some of the hardest moments in my life.
God was, and still is, inviting me through my creative practice to be a sort of Jesuit in the world around me: to investigate, and ask good questions, and to become a truth-teller about the hard things of life that we (often) just would prefer not to talk about. Portraits on Estrangement was my first formal foray leaning into this greater understanding of my vocation as an artist. Thankfully, it has not been my last.
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These days I find myself in the classroom more than ever. I like to think of my classroom akin to my “cell,” the kind which Abba Moses said about: “Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” God often reminds me in my classroom, as I tell my students over and over: make work from what you know, do it with awareness of your internal and external realities, and to trust God with the outcome. Sometimes in moments I will become aware of God winking at me as I say these words to a student, as I sense God reminding me not to forget these truths in my own practice. So I continue on, making work about good-hard things in life.
My most recent body of work, Womxn without Children, explores through photographic-portraiture the various experiences of not having children from the perspectives of people with uteruses. Their stories, through the participants’ expressions, reminds us all that no one’s experience in life is monolithic, and that perhaps we would all be better served through more compassionate listening rather than declarative legislation.
Christine Lee Smith, MFA, is a photographer, spiritual director, and educator. She lives in Anaheim, California with her husband and their two-dogs. Her work, including Womxn without Children, can be viewed on her website at: ChristineLeeSmith.com. Follow her on IG @christineleesmithphoto.
