That Thing That Makes Us Human

From the art directors'

Every few months here at CONSP!RE, we enact a strange form of community. Across the wire. Through the air. Connecting organic chemicals in our bodies via blips of zeroes and ones. To be sure, living on opposite coasts presents a challenge. But still we connect. We submit and surrender, discuss and arrange, ponder and rearrange to compose an artifact. Thoughts. Content. Image. Art.

You hold in your hands the end product. Stories sifted through, images to stir the soul.

This magazine is an exercise in community on several levels. First, there is the grand community of creation that we are all a part of. We try to draw in experiences and reflections from across the world. Second, there is a more self-selective community at play. We circle around a common faith tradition, sometimes dancing closer, sometimes spinning away, trying to make sense of it all. Doubting, hoping, praying, believing, and doubting again. We write in hope that someone out there will be moved, encouraged, helped along.

Then there is the even narrower aspect of community—that which is composed of the editorial and design teams. Sure, YOU COULD SAY THAT WE "JUST WORK TOGETHER," BUT IT'S RICHER THAN THAT. We each bring something unique to the table, and every quarter we attempt to learn from each other, trying to check (at least some of) our baggage at the door.

What is community? Some ideal? A simple organic reality? The cure? The cancer? Something we find? Something that finds us?

In the last few decades of U.S. Christianity, if a single word has risen to the fore, community has been this word. People have latched onto it, hoping it will help us all find our way. For some, it's merely a rewriting of earlier language—what used to be termed "fellowship," "friends," "family." But for some, it's a seemingly new concept. And for others, it's a retreat to how things "once were."

Our own bodies contain communities of communities. Simple organisms bind together to form larger organisms which are slightly more specialized. From here we get tissue, organs, systems, and the whole human body. Nature organically arranges itself within the rubric of communities. We might prefer to think of community as something more noble—and perhaps even as some sort of newfound way to follow more truthfully after God. Maybe it is. BUt it may also be the very thing which makes us human and part of creation.

EACH TIME WE PUT TOGETHER AN ISSUE OF CONSP!RE, WE DREAM ABOUT HOW WE CAN CREATE A VISUAL ENVIRONMENT TO BEST RECEIVE THESE GIFTS of words and image. For this issue, we connected concepts of community with trees and bacteria. (A little out there, right?) The thought of being rooted in the wild, amidst other rooted ones, was inspiring. Trees do not strive for community. Life in community is simply their lot, a mode of survival. Bacteria also came to mind. We considered how they live in colonies and flourish everywhere, good cells, bad cells. These are things that sustain us.

You may wonder if the layout of CONSP!RE is purposeful or arbitrary. For the most part, we try to infuse each detail with some meaning, implicit or explicit. For this issue, the backgrounds are all photographs from a series we took in a forest, looking up through pieces of glass covered in bacterial colonies. We processed the images using a sort of "digitizing" filter, and then drew upon rich color to set out our text.

In a similar fashion for many of us today, richly organic experiences—and even relationships—are filtered through digital mediums. There are those who might want to demonize this trend, but I feel such digital translations are neutral. Certainly technology can fake people out, causing them to think they're "really connected," but it can also truly assist in connecting us to each other in real, human ways.

So here it is. Issue three. For you, for us, for the community. Enjoy.

ryan & holly sharp
art directors