Consolidation: Beauty, Course-Correction, and Peter Pan

As missions and ministries go, I find those that seem to grow or make progress with their devotees over time to be the most engaging. As the congregation’s needs develop over time, a ministry’s mission can be more beneficial to its community if it is responsive to those needs as they change and grow. For my part, I do still consider my vocation to beauty to be a ministry, although the focus has narrowed as my life has become more consolidated. Years ago, when I was pursuing music full time, my focus had more to do with the Via Pulchritudinis, or the “Way of Beauty”, and the church’s many exhortations on artistic creation. I felt then, and still do, that my past and current experiences as a performer, a “hired gun”, a teacher, and as a composer were used to help those in similar positions find their own voice, or at the very least be able to identify with my personal journey and seek solace in that sense of community. Such paths can be arduous if you are isolated. These days, in my vocation as a husband and in my wealth management practice, the “Way of Beauty” in my life has had to evolve and has become a little more complex in it’s day-to-day meaning. I’ll explain a bit more about how in the next few paragraphs, but I write now with the intent to exhort my community as I used to, only with a more concentrated perspective. I want to appeal to anyone who feels and struggles with the tension that can exist between the missionary-style life they’ve lived for so long (and thought they’d live forever) and the unknown ahead. There are those, too, who simply just don’t know what to do with their life because, all of a sudden (after years of school, tons of debt, and a few years removed), they don’t really know what they want to do with their lives - or may be avoiding that change altogether. I have been there too, and I want to share what it has been like to receive grace from a faithful God, and how the joy of relying on him has far exceeded the pains of letting go of plans of which I thought I was certain.

Before I get started, I must say that I intend to build my message on personal experience, which deals specifically with my art, my marriage, and my career in wealth management over the last two plus years. Perhaps you chose to go back to school, enter into real estate, sell insurance, teach, start your own business, etc. Perhaps you got married and needed to enter the work force in a different way, or have just grown tired of not being paid enough by a church, gig promoter, or school. I have had to be creative in the ways that I pursue beauty as my priorities changed over time, and those who seek to do the same after devoting so much of their lives to art and beauty will also need to be creative, regardless of what they choose to do moving forward.

To me, Beauty has a single definition: It is the self-sacrificing, consummate act of Jesus dying on the cross. A more broad definition might differ by defining beauty as something that satisfies the mind by giving pleasure to the senses. This is probably the context most people consider when using this term. Instead, I view the broad definition more as a by-product of beauty’s true definition. For example, one may find the Bach Cello Suites to be beautiful in the way they sound, whereas I think they are made beautiful by hours of sacrifice in the practice room and a vulnerability that the cellist exhibits in performing them. (Believe me, I have heard plenty of Bach where the cellist should’ve practiced more). Christ married the church by exposing his humanity to the world and by making the gift of himself the means for us to know salvation. The musician exposes himself to a listener and makes the gift of himself by his expression and interpretation of the music, all so the listener may know the creator of the music more, as well as the Holy Spirit’s creative and discrete intercession in that process. My point is that Beauty has a clear definition, and it should be applied to all creative endeavors in a vocational way. 

When God entrusted the dignity and well-being of another human to me on July 8^th, 2017, he opened my life up to the continuous opportunity of expressing, receiving, and promoting beauty in the most substantial way. Up until this point, I knew beauty in my music. I knew it in the way that it guided the careful construction and interpretation of my own compositions and the music of the great composers. I knew beauty when I struggled with music, became apathetic to it, and came to love it again. I knew it in the responses and unions I experienced with my audiences, almost like a marriage. Well, now I’m married, and God took the whole thing up a notch. Beauty in the context of my vocation today, compared to beauty as a musician, is no longer immaterial. The thing that I make sacrifices for has an actual body and soul. My decisions have more implications and consequences now. Rather than spending hours in a practice room and creating spaces for people to receive my music, I need to direct that desire to creating a space for my bride to receive me - a home. I no longer create a space of beauty for a large audience on a regular basis, instead, I create a beautiful space for an audience of one. My bride has made known to me that she likes food and shelter, so my practice room is the trading desk, my score studies are the Wall Street Journal, and my Carnegie Hall is the home for which my job pays. In that home, while I still have many actual instruments, the ones I use to perform for my wife are the pots and skillets . . . and the mop. This may sound like a very poor trade, the guitar for the mop, but I think that’s something the world would have you think. It’s something that we tell ourselves to assure us that there is no greater thing than the art we create. In reality, there’s no greater thing than laying one’s personal desires down for the good of another. Sure, it’s hard to go to sleep some days thinking that I should have written something or played something today, but that satisfaction is fleeting and it leaves me wanting more. On the flip side, it makes the gigs I CHOOSE to do all the more special. The instruments you use to bring life to your vocation may be different, but the life itself is real and indissoluble. I should say that my life isn’t totally devoid of music. Quite the contrary, I feel like I am doing more now than I used to because focusing my energy on fewer projects with more intentionality requires more energy than playing random gigs.

“Ok, so you made some changes. I’m thinking about making some changes too, what does your life look like now?” First off, as for my career, let me put to rest some of the misconceptions about your financial advisors. Most of us aren’t millionaires, we are not in crowded rooms screaming “buy!” and “sell!” all day, and most of us aren’t just trying to sell you something for our personal gain. The financial advisors I know are dads waiting with their kids at bus stop, moms trying to catch after school baseball games, people in front of me in the confession line, and people that sacrifice a great deal of their own comforts to put their clients first. Sure there are bad apples, and even influential power houses that your parents laud, like: Suze Orman or Dave Ramsey, and even your Uncle Jim who made it big trading stocks all day. There are some who may have even had a bad experience with an advisor, others may have had great experiences. There may even be some disconnect between what one advisor tells you to do, and what you read in a book or online. There are many resources out there for us to use in planning, but my point is that advisors, in general, are not unlike your physicians, mail carriers, or your friendly neighborhood Spidermen (and women). For my part, in trying to grow my business, my experiences with people have landed across the board. In two-plus years I have made over 3,500 phone calls and had over 600 meetings. You really don’t get a better chance to see what people are like. You also get a great chance to redeem your role for people who have been hurt or have had bad experiences with advisors in the past. All of that said, it’s important to realize that, if you decide to make a career adjustment to fill a need, it can both be beneficial to your life and also create some new challenges you didn’t anticipate. While my business, for example, has helped me grow, it’s also had some had some interesting impacts on my social life, and I have sometimes struggled with that. The important thing to remember is that God is not only faithful in the way that continues to make your life beautiful when you “course-correct”, he is also faithful in the way that he carries you through your struggles. The key is to remain faithful, and re-commit when you forget to do so.

As I mentioned before, I have had to be creative in how I fill my daily life with beautiful things. I think the single greatest fear of any musician entering corporate America is that their day-to-day lives will become sterile - I think the word “cubicle” gets thrown around a lot to describe these “dystopian” realities. Well, I had a cubicle for a short time, and there was nothing sterile about it. I made generous use of the company copy machine, and covered every beige inch with my favorite impressionist and renaissance paintings. I had rosaries and images of my favorite saints watching me work. When people walked by, they take one look and left with a smile. Beauty does its greatest work in the smallest ways! If I am idle at my desk, music is always filling the backdrop, making all menial tasks purposeful.

There is a very real human experience in my line of work as well. The bulk of my time is spent sitting across from someone developing a relationship. Some would think that such a relationship would be used in a utilitarian way for my gain, as a means to an end (that being some kind of sale). I don’t deny that sales are a component of my job description, but I will say that a sale or advice comes as a result of the real purpose of the relationship (and btw Luke mentions somewhere in his gospel that the laborer is worth his wage . . . free Oreos to whoever finds it for me). You see, for someone to sit across from you and unlock their desires, vulnerabilities, and goals is no small feat. The real purpose of the relationship is for me to create a space for my client to be vulnerable and intentional about their goals, struggles, and ideas. That’s not easy in our world today. I reverence the gift of that transparency by listening and learning about what makes that person unique, and THAT is a BEAUTIFUL experience. I also try to fill in any gaps of knowledge someone may have relevant to financial planning. It’s interesting that something so important in our lives as financial planning isn’t taught in school, but I digress. If there is a victory, it is in the ability to share in the victories of others as they commit (and re-commit when they fail) to plans that strengthen their own vocations and influences. The Lord’s victory is the real and romantic way he carried through my selfish attachments and allowed me to see the vocation to beauty in a way that is relevant to my job. Our victory, as the laity, is our humility in making leaps of faith.

            In closing, I want to reiterate above all that God is faithful. That single fact is so much bigger than the “concentration camps” of our comparison complexes and the “I still don’t know what I want to do with my life” tunicates. Some of us are called to serve the Lord in big and magnificent ways for our whole lives. Many of us are even called to serve the Lord in wonderful big ways for a short while, but most of us are called to continue to serve Him in smaller ways when we are so called. Remember, the victory of the laity is our humility, and our fundamental responsibility to create and nurture life. As for jobs, when it comes down to it, you’re just going to need to find something and stick with it, whether it gives you the same joy that the occupation or lifestyle you had before did or not - and if you don’t know if the job is going to provide that for you on the front end, then just do it. Find that thing that you can do for thirty years, do it faithfully, and God will make it the thing you’re glad you did for thirty years. There just isn’t a sustainable place in this world for “man-children” or “Peter Pans”. Further, he will use your artistic and missionary gifts for needs you didn’t even know needed filling. Serve the bigger purpose and support your family. Don’t put all your chips on trying to affect as many lives as you can. It’s not a numbers game. Finally, I move that, regardless of what occupations you hold and regardless of what need you fill or what people you serve – regardless of whether or not the dream panned out – you have been given a sense of what is and isn’t beautiful. Your current circumstances have not diminished your responsibility to bring beauty into the world.

God love you,

James