我曾经听毕德生这位牧者兼学者，提到一名古怪的妇女，名叫丽辰姐妹。在毕德生的儿时教会，每周聚会都鼓励大家发预言。这位瘦弱的妇人总会站起来，说些「神已经启示我不会看见死，他会在荣耀里接我在空中相遇」这类的话。
有一天，妈妈要毕德生送一些自家烘焙的饼干给丽辰姐妹，他老大不情愿，但只好战战兢兢去敲门。干瘦、苍白、青筋毕露的丽辰姐妹亲自应门，还请他进去一起吃饼干，给他倒了一杯牛奶。紧张的小男生在几近全黑中吃饼干，因为丽辰姐妹的窗帘永远是拉下来的。
毕德生说，后来他有个奇想。他幻想自己冲到丽辰姐妹家，扯下所有的窗帘，高声说：「你看，那里有一棵杨树，枝头上有一只鱼鹰！还有一只白尾巴的鹿。丽辰姐妹，外面有一整片美好世界呢！」
就是这整片美好世界，不下于任何事物，带领我重回基督教信仰。我怀着扭曲的上帝形象挥别童年：上帝是皱着眉头的超级警察，谁想找乐子就把谁踩扁。但是之后我发现上帝是俏趣的艺术家，以豪猪、鼬鼠、疣猪充满这个造物界，也以比美术馆的设计品更美丽的野花、热带鱼华丽装点这个世界。
前「人类基因体计画」主持人柯林斯 (Francis Collins) 在DNA双螺旋的壮观密码看见上帝的手。普立兹奖得主安妮․狄勒德 (Annie Dillard) ，则于维琴尼亚州蓝脊山脉 (Blue Ridge Mountain) 的汀客溪 (Tinker Creek) 中泅泳的生物，看见上帝的手。从约翰․谬尔 (John Muir)、法布尔 (Henri Fabre)、艾斯里 (Loren Eiseley) 、路易斯․汤玛斯 (Lewis Thomas) 这些生态作家，我领略了他们自己不见得相信的那位「艺术大师」。这些作家精确、庄重的观察，帮助我拉开了窗帘。
我在巴林遇见一位牧师，凭着目测就可以辨认出两千种贝壳。哥斯达黎加有位宣教士搜集的蝴蝶与飞蛾是世界一流的收藏。教会历史学家马克․诺尔 (Mark Noll) 说「当转眼仰望耶稣」这首诗英文歌词写道：「在荣耀与恩典光芒中，地上万物皆趋黯淡」(译注：中文译词与原句有出入)，根本就错了。他认为，在基督的光芒中，世界会更见清晰，而不是更见黯淡。上帝创造了物质；在耶稣里，他参与了物质。
上帝的子民汲取教会墙外的资源，有圣经例证。列王记下有一则故事，撒玛利亚城被围困，发生了致命的饥荒。不被社会接纳的麻疯患者情急之余，冒生命危险到城外觅食，结果目睹一幕奇观。军兵消失，留下大批物资。他们把被弃的供给品带给缩在城里的以色列人。有时我们必须到教会墙外寻求灵感与养份。奥古斯丁也提到，以色列人使用埃及金子建造了上帝的会幕。
日裔美国艺术家藤村真于九一一惨剧发生后，有个极不寻常的机会。藤村是世界级的艺术家，也是深具反思力的基督徒。他就住在爆心点不远处，附近住了很多艺术家。九一一之后，很多纽约的艺术家关起他们的工作室与家，但是藤村却成立了一间公用工作室，作为「爆心点艺术家团结合作的绿洲。」
那时候，很多艺术家的创作为了故作惊人，充满了亵渎与暴力。骤然间，现实压过创意：就在他们住处附近发生了比他们想像中更亵渎、更暴力的事件。在藤村工作室的安适环境中，这些艺术家重寻其他的价值，诸如美丽、真情、温文，而且反映在他们的作品。有一名前卫艺术家葛瑞晨․本德尔 (Gretchen Bender) 原先旨在「解码性别」，却开始创作不一样的作品。她摺了上千个白色的纸蝴蝶，以九一一之后飘佛过她脸上的一只蝴蝶为灵感，摆列出美丽的图案。葛瑞晨称此为她的「复活瞬间。」
有六个月时间，艺术家在这个安适的地方开画展、表演、朗诵诗、聚集祷告。藤村后来说：「我们的想像空间承担着医治的责任，正如承担着描绘忧惧的责任。」教会曾经热爱文化，领导文化，是文化的传承者。我们若是忽略墙外的世界，遭受的后果会跟墙外的居民一样。 | .. | I once heard pastor-scholar Eugene Peterson reminisce about an eccentric woman named Sister Lychen. Almost every week, in the church of Peterson's childhood—which encouraged words of prophecy—this frail old woman would stand up and say something like this: "The Lord has revealed that I will not see death before the Lord himself returns in glory to catch me up to meet him in the air."
One day, to Eugene's dismay, his mother asked him to take some homemade cookies to Sister Lychen's house. Trembling, Eugene knocked on the door. Sister Lychen herself, with pale, veiny skin and a bony face, invited him in to share the cookies. She served him a glass of milk, and the little boy nervously ate his cookies in near total darkness—Sister Lychen kept her blinds drawn all day long.
Later, Peterson said, he had a fantasy. He saw himself rushing into Sister Lychen's home and yanking open all the blinds. "Look outside!" he cried. "See, there's an aspen tree, and an osprey on the top branch! And a white-tailed deer. Sister Lychen, there's a whole good world outside!"
It was this whole good world outside as much as anything that brought me back to Christian faith. I emerged from childhood with a distorted image of God: a frowning Supercop looking to squash anyone who might be having a good time. I have since come to know God as a whimsical artist who fills the world with creatures like the porcupine and skunk and warthog, who lavishes the world with wildflowers and tropical fish more beautiful than any design on display in an art museum.
Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project, sees God's hand in the magnificent coding of the DNA double helix. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard sees it in the creatures that swim and dive in Tinker Creek in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. From nature writers such as John Muir, Henri Fabre, Loren Eiseley, and Lewis Thomas I gain appreciation for a Master Artist they may not even believe in; their precise and reverent observations help to raise the blinds for me. The rest of the world grows clearer, not dimmer, in the light of Christ. God created matter; in Jesus, God joined it.
I have met a pastor in Bahrain who can identify by sight 2,000 species of seashells, and a missionary in Costa Rica who has assembled a world-class collection of butterflies and moths. Church historian Mark Noll remarks that the song "Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus" plainly errs when it says, "And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace." No, he says, the rest of the world grows clearer, not dimmer, in the light of Christ. God created matter; in Jesus, God joined it.
We have biblical examples of God's people drawing on resources beyond the walls of the church. In a story recorded in 2 Kings, the city of Samaria lay under siege and deadly famine. Desperate, outcasts with leprosy risked their lives by venturing beyond the walls in search of food. They found an amazing sight, remnants of an army that had vanished, and brought back the abandoned supplies to the Israelites cowering inside. Sometimes we must go outside the church to get inspiration and nourishment. Similarly, Augustine of Hippo wrote of the Israelites using Egyptian gold to build the tabernacle of God.
The Japanese-American Mako Fujimura faced an unusual opportunity in the wake of the World Trade Center disaster. A world-class artist and thoughtful Christian, Mako lives a few blocks away from Ground Zero, in a neighborhood populated with artists. After 9/11, with many of New York City's artists shut out of their homes and studios, Mako opened a communal studio and dedicated it as "an oasis of collaboration by Ground Zero artists."
At that time, many of these artists were producing works intended to shock, mostly filled with obscenity and violence. Suddenly, reality trumped creativity: what happened in their own neighborhood was far more obscene and violent than anything they had imagined. In the safety of Mako's studio, these artists rediscovered other values—beauty, humaneness, gentleness—and their works began to reflect them. Gretchen Bender, an avant-garde artist who had worked to "decode gender and sexuality," began making a different kind of creation. She folded hundreds of white origami butterflies and arranged them into a beautiful pattern, inspired by a real butterfly floating across her face days after 9/11. Gretchen called this her "resurrection moment."
For six months the artists held exhibits, performances, poetry readings, and prayer gatherings in this safe place. As Mako later commented, "Our imaginative capacities carry a responsibility to heal, every bit as much as they carry a responsibility to depict angst." The church once stood as a steward of culture, its patron as well as its guide. If we ignore the world outside our walls, we suffer as much as its inhabitants
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