Professor Jerram Barrs’ book, Echoes of Eden, has 11 beginning criteria for judging the arts. For example: “Is giftedness from God evident in the work of a particular composer or performer of music, poet or novelist, painter, sculptor, or filmmaker? We should ask this question about the presence of giftedness for all artists, whether Christian or not.”

Reader TWS requested a picture of fighting from the Tivoli Fest in Elk Horn, Iowa. This is the best one I got. Unfortunately the selection is small, because my camera batteries ran down.

I suspect there are many followers of Christ who are called to the arts (they may not believe they are qualified to be labeled Christian artists) who feel out of place in the church or maybe at home or maybe everywhere. In this post, Philip Ryken lists many reasons artists feel uneasy in their churches. He says, “…Christians called to draw, paint, sculpt, sing, act, dance, and play music have extraordinary opportunities to honor God in their daily work and to bear witness to the grace, beauty, and truth of the gospel.”

We may be discouraged by other believers who commodify all art or praise cheap or bad art regularly. Some never offer to pay for the artistic work they want, but they also praise successful artists as if material success validates their artistic call. I’ve felt the tension of thinking of art only in terms of evangelism or pre-evangelism. But to requote N.T. Wright, artists “have a vocation to re-imagine and re-express the beauty of God, to lift our sights and change our vision of reality.” I want to climb that ladder, but I fear I will never leave the ground.

John Chadwell of Skjaldborg lectures on Viking combat.

I’m happy to report that, to the best of my knowledge, I made it to Elk Horn, Iowa for the Tivoli Fest and returned undamaged. That also goes for Mrs. Hermanson, my Chevy Tracker. The town of Elk Horn is located in southwest Iowa, and hasn’t moved any closer since the last time I was there (I checked), but I made it.

The Tivoli Fest, like so many celebrations this past weekend, was marred by the Bergen-like weather we’ve been having on the Great Plains. But the rain held off most of Saturday, which is the main day. I sold and signed books in the Danish Windmill Museum gift shop for about an hour and a half, and then retired to the Viking encampment (pretty small this year, alas) where most of the other Vikings (the Skjaldborg group) put on a combat show (pictured above).

Friday and Saturday nights I stayed in a nearby town with Ian and Buffy Barrs and their family. The Barrs are L’Abri people, and we sat up until 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning having one of those long, discursive conversations one associates with one’s college years (considerably more recent for them than for me). It was an experience of discovering sudden good friends of the sort that happens all too rarely in life. I’m richer for it. Saturday night we cut it off merely at midnight.

Saturday brought more rain and fewer visitors, but I actually sold more books, putting in all my time at the museum gift shop.

On the way home I spent Sunday night at my brother’s house in northeast Iowa.

Thanks to everyone who invited me and extended themselves for me (particularly Lisa Steen Riggs of the Windmill Museum). And to anyone who prayed for Mrs. Hermanson to hold up.