Move over Emmys, Grammys, and Tonys…We’ve got the Cānys

We at Cana believe God doesn’t just communicate to the world through the pages of a Bible or inside of the walls of a church. Instead, we see that God reveals himself in all aspects of the world around us — in both the sacred and secular.

Along this line, J.R.R. Tolkien maintained that readers should be able to extract meaning from an author’s work rather than the opposite — having the author force a particular idea or agenda onto the reader. While we would suggest there is certainly a place for an author to convey their faith or beliefs through their work, we rather like Tolkien’s principle of applicability. For, when we apply it to our modern world, we are free to extract meaning from all forms of art — both sacred and secular — and apply them to our lives as we seek Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, not everyone sees how God can or would choose to reveal himself in the secular world and therefore would have no use in trying to integrate various facets of art into their faith journey. This jarring difference in perspective reminds us of something C. S. Lewis once said of a non-reader: “He may be full of goodness and good sense, but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated.”

In the end, our hope at Cana is that we all avoid “suffocating in a tiny world” — that we can experience Jesus Christ as we watch a great film or listen to great music and invite God to use them as tools for shaping and molding us in our faith.

In that spirit, we are introducing the Cāny (pronounced kay-nee), an award that celebrates instances we’ve seen in which God has revealed himself through the arts. When we watch a film, listen to a great song, or read a great book and believe that there’s something truly exceptional about the way God is revealed, we will award it a Cāny.

In the near future, we will be adding a new section to Canawalk which has our running list of Cāny award winners. We hope that you’ll find the Cānys useful as you seek to walk, stumble, and tread onward towards Jesus Christ.