Best 53 quotes of Michael Gungor on MyQuotes

Any religious, philosophical or political idea that doesn't lead one towards love ought to be forsaken

Art, along with all work is the ordering of creation toward the intention of the creator.

Art is the body's pronunciation of the soul.

Art matters. It is not simply a leisure activity for the privileged or a hobby for the eccentric. It is a practical good for the world. The work of the artist is an expression of hope - it is homage to the value of human life, and it is vital to society. Art is a sacred expression of human creativity that shares the same ontological ground as all human work. Art, along with all work is the ordering of creation toward the intention of the creator.

Burnout is what happens when you try to avoid being human for too long.

Creativity is simply the human brain forming new connections between ideas, and we all are engaged in this process every day. The common idea that there are some people who are creative and some who are not is a myth. On some level, we are all artists. We are all creators.

I don't want everybody to try to sound like something; I think that God has given us each unique talents and passions. The things that come out of me will be different than my neighbor, because I have a totally different set of relationships, totally different set influences and personality traits.

I do think that Christians will make music that oh should have some of the grandest visions of why we should create music and why we should seek to create beauty world.

If anyone should have a reason to not be afraid, to move beyond the expectations of culture, that is kind of the whole message of Christianity.

If leading worship is just about bringing a group of people into a room so we can get goosebumps and sing songs together, there's not much value in that. But if leading worship is a means to an end, that we leave this place as a different kind of people, as part of a new humanity that God wants to create... then that matters.

I kind of grew up a guitar nerd and I tried to figure out how to shred on an acoustic guitar as a kid, while listening to jazz or whatever. So that is kind of a different thing and my church background, growing up with worship kind of the ground that I learned how to play music from. Those are all odd ways of growing up, compared to most people, so I think the music has plenty of uniqueness in that.

I think everybody is different. We are trying to be ourselves, and other people are trying to be themselves. We all share commonalities with each other, but all of us have different thumbprints. We all have our own unique things.

I think I'm just trying to be myself and write songs that are honest. That's what I hear in artist's that I like.

It's hard to make a living in music, so a lot of times in the arts it's safer to kind of fit into a box.

I used to flirt with fundamentalism, and I had this idea that creation was something that happened. Now I see creation as something that is happening. Hundreds of millions of stars are still being born every day. Creation is an ongoing process. The Artist has not yet cleaned out the brushes. The paint is still wet. Human beings are the small clumps of clay and breath, and we have been handed brushes of our own, like young artist apprentices. The brushes aren't ours, nor the paint or canvas, but here they are in our hands, on loan. What shall we make?

I've found that limitations can be an artist's best friend sometimes.

Money is not the root of all kinds of evil. The love of money is. It’s also the root of a lot of bad art.

Not just in Christian music but also in a lot of Christian culture there is a lot of pretending that everyone is perfect, nobody is really going through much.

One of the things I love about art, is that it can say number of things to people. I broad hope is that it would just open people's hearts and that they would experience love, and that that would experience God.

Pain is as common as skin, we all experience it. It unites us all. Fortunately, that's not the whole story.

Spend your energy on things you believe in, and do them honestly and to the best of your ability.

The danger of art created to rise above the noise is that it may end up being noise itself.

The more successful the work, the more people will step in to try to influence and manipulate the work for their own benefit.

The noise around us determines how we speak. And how we listen. Just as a conversation suffers in a war zone, art suffers in a culture built on noise. So does our enjoyment of it.

The person who creates from the noise simply adds to the noise. The person who creates from a place of listening, however, can actually make something worthwhile and enjoy his work in the process.

There is a reason we used to build Cathedrals that drew the eye upwards.

The whole idea of worship being associated with music, it gives you an impotence to make art that is true, that is honest and that opens the human heart to God and to reality.

This kind of passionate faith can be painful. Not caring is easy. Caring hurts. Caring costs you something. But without this sort of faith, you will never create to your fullest potential. Faith is a gift. Like I've said, felt belief is not necessarily something that you choose to have or not to have. But it is a gift that you can open yourself to receive.

To me, God is the basic Reality of the universe. God is what is. That's how Moses wrote that God introduced Himself, isn't it? "I am that I am." God is. Whatever is, that is God.

To me music is music. A person of faith, a person that calls themselves a Christian, they are the Christian and they make music. Some music has more to do about God than other music, but in reality what makes the difference between "secular" and "Christian" music is simply a marketing channel.

We are all creators. Whether or not we create is not up to us. We are human, and creating is what we do. Every interaction, movement, and decision is creativity at work. We are all artists. We all order creation around us into the world that we want to make.

When I think of Spirit, I think of that mysterious force that pulls us into being, into becoming, into love. That can get political rather quickly.

You don't have to be afraid, even death itself does not have power. In Christ, everything is becoming new, everything is different.

You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of the dust

All human creativity depends on something deeper than itself.

Art has been around for a really long time. Music has been around for a really long time. Painting and sculpture and plays have been around for a really long time. But it's only in the last fifty years that there's been an industry . . . that's new . . . It used to be, you didn't become an artist to become rich, you became an artist because you had an idea to share, cause you had an emotion to share.

Capitalism tends to do to art what value meals do to cuisine. Think of what the food industry in our nation has done to our food. When dollars and cents are the sole purpose for the manufacturing and distribution of food, the food suffers. We suffer. The mass production, hormones and pesticides that have allowed the food industry to make more money have made our food less nutritious than it ever has been. Animals are treated cruelly. People get fat and sick and die.

Creator, if what you are creating has grown insipid and dull, perhaps you ought to take a step back for a moment. Before you go back to your instrument, your pen, your brush-take a breath and remember how to listen again.

In cultures like these, entertainment often becomes paramount. When a culture's greatest enemy is boredom, its greatest savior is entertainment.

It is the nature of market economies to render everything a commodity.

I used to flirt with fundamentalism, and I had this idea that creation was something that happened. Now I see creation as something happening. Hundreds of millions of stars are still being born every day. Creation is an ongoing process. The Artist has not yet cleaned out the brushes. The paint is still wet. Human beings are the small clumps of clay and breath, and we have been handed brushes of our own, like young artist apprentices. The brushes aren't ours, nor the paint or canvas, but here they are in our hands, on loan. What shall we make?

Money may be the primary standard of value in our culture, but it also has an uncanny ability to cheapen things.

Not every artist has to make a living making art. Millions of people who play guitar would do well to keep their day jobs. Plenty of people make incredible art "on the side". William Faulkner wasn't any less of an artist for writing As I lay Dying on the back of a wheelbarrow during breaks in his job shoveling coal for the electric company.

One atom is capable of producing an atomic explosion that can unleash unfathomable destruction. What if this nearly infinite potential exists in everything? Maybe this explains the full emotional potential of music. Perhaps a single note truly and completely heard would overwhelm us as completely as the voice of the Creator himself, entering our consciousness through processes of intricate complexity . . . the crafting of instruments, perfecting of skills, vibrating air and eardrum, nerves and synapses and understanding, and my God, it is all so magnificent!

Our cultural conditioning is so ingrained in us that we often see these customs and taboos as inherent to the fabric of the cosmos. We spiritualize them. Legalize them. And when someone else doesn't follow them, it can feel to us like an attack on our very personhood. This kind of cultural blindness affects how we order creation.

Our deepest beliefs about the universe filter their way up through the soil into the tiny aesthetic decisions that the artist makes. How we make our records. Which color feels right. Rhyme schemes and word choices. These kinds of decisions are rarely made out of purely analytical comparison. They come from the guts. From faith.

Selling your soul for money, recognition, or any otherworldly good is like selling your hearing for a music collection. It's pointless. What good is the music if you can't hear it? No amount of money or power is worth even a shred of the human soul.

She didn't even insult me. She just didn't compliment me. This is how fragile the ego can be in connection with our creative expressions. The critic's voice is so powerful because it resonates with the voices of our deepest fears, those voices speaking from the inside of us, telling us that we are not good enough. The critics confirm our repressed and terrified suspicions that we don't measure up, that we are unsafe and unlovable.

The guitarist is dependent on the guitar, which is dependent upon the creation, which is dependent on whatever creative forces or realities are responsible for its existence. If you call this creative force or reality "God," then art really could be thought of as the language God speaks. All art is rooted in whatever is the foundation of everything.

The value of the art must be indicated by something more than how many people like it or how much money it earns. This can be particularly difficult for Americans, who so often find their identity in what they are paid to do.