Fruit that Will Remain
“PSALM 1 V 3” by Susan Black
Fruit that Will Remain
By Jessica Gerhardt
In today’s readings for the Optional Memorial for St. Casimir, the Gospel reading from John 15 reads: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain.” As a Catholic artist, the reminder that God chose and appointed me to bear fruit is both encouraging and challenging. Particularly as an artist living in the United States, the pressure to keep up with unbridled capitalism and hustle culture, constantly bombarded by influencers churning out new content, is so overwhelming at times. And when I am seduced by the false spirit to confuse that pressure from the world as being what God expects from me, I can feel crushed under the weight of those expectations. But God does not call us to drive up viewers or prick our conscience about metrics. Rather, God gently invites us to be still, to notice the sacredness in all things, and to respond.
In August of 2024 I pivoted from working as a freelance musician and artist to teaching high school theology full time, and it has certainly shifted how much time I am able to give to my artistic practices. I have been moving through the grief of my former life where I had more time for making and releasing music and producing art, yet, teaching is one of the most creatively fulfilling roles I’ve had.
One assignment I give my students is to draw a peach tree on campus a few different times in the semester. I start in January, when the tree is barren, nothing but a tangled mess of twiggy branches. The students feel puzzled by the assignment saying, “this tree?” and I say, “yes this tree,” and they respond, “this tree looks dead” and I reply, “just draw what you see.” In the subsequent months, the tree slowly burgeons with tiny green leaves and bright pink flowers, which later give way to larger leaves and fuzzy little oblong fruits. Perhaps not the most obvious peaches, but of the same genus nonetheless. This exercise reminds me that we, too, go through similar seasons in our creative life.
Sometimes our artistic output looks like the peach tree’s fruitless branches in January, and our career may even appear to be unimpressive or even dead from the outside. But life is churning within, all around, and beneath the soil during this fallow time. In these seasons, we can keep watch for those first sprigs of green and bright splashes of pink, those glimpses of inspiration or opportunities, which will - eventually - reveal themselves. And during this Lenten season, as we join Jesus in the desert, even in that dry, vast, desolate place, life still abounds.
Maybe the fruits we eventually bear will not look like those that grow on other trees, and yet they are fruits all the same. Whether they reach millions, or are only received by a few, our only job is to respond to the Spirit’s movement in and through us and create as sincerely as possible, trusting that what needs to remain with others will remain.
During this Lenten season, how might I give over my creativity to God with trust and openness? What can I let go of to create more space for the Holy Spirit to make me an instrument and produce art through me?
Jessica Gerhardt (she/her) is a singer-songwriter, worship musician, visual artist, and theology teacher at Immaculate Heart HS, home of the "Rebel Hearts" in Los Angeles. Follow her work at www.jessicagerhardt.com or at @jgerhardtmusic.
Susan Black is an artist, writer and Benedictine Oblate living in Aurora, Oregon. You can find our more about her at www.BlackStarStudio.me