My Faith in Jesus — Jency Griffin Hogan

Last weekend I dove into a vulnerable painting workshop; I call it vulnerable because I hadn’t painted since junior high. An amazing artist, Loretta Owens, was coming to Baton Rouge to train us. A Shreveport native, she paints in styles of abstract folk-art, and she had taken the challenge of teaching a bunch of beginners how to create our own self-portraits. Loretta inspired us to not think about what we were going to draw, but to just look at ourselves in the mirror and draw shapes. What a novel idea that I could just look in the mirror and draw shapes and something would come out of it. My first attempt at drawing myself after I had sketched on the pad, I pulled it back and showed the group, and everyone said it looked like Jesus. I said, “Oh gosh, let me try again”. My second attempt still looked like Jesus but looked a little more feminine.

Funny, my whole life all I’ve wanted to do really is act like Jesus. Be like Jesus. I became a Christian when I was 3 years old when I heard about the love of Jesus and what he had done to save me from my sins. It has taken me 40 years to unpack what that truly means to me. I take a simple approach in my faith: love like Jesus loved. And I find that when we open our arms to all people and genuinely walk in love we can’t go wrong. He was uniquely gracious and accepting and loving to everyone. I remember in college, when I met people who had never fully experienced the love of Jesus, I would cry at the thought of not fully being acquainted with such all-encompassing love and forgiveness.

When it comes to playing different characters and creating film, I would hope that my work as an actress would always keep a pulse of spiritual connection to the truths I carry as a woman who loves Jesus. Because when you are in a relationship with God, there are three parts of God (God, the Father; Jesus the person; and the Holy Spirit), and I have found that the mysteries in this trinity keep me engaged to always want to learn more about each. When creating characters, I ask the Holy Spirit, which is the more feminine aspect of God, to show me insights into the character that I might not otherwise see. I also ask the Holy Spirit to join me when teaching, to be a conduit for comfort and love to all that walk through the doors of my acting school. I don’t talk about this often with my students because I hope that they feel unconditional love, and if they ever ask me where it comes from, I will tell them about the source.

The source is ever abundant. There’s room for everyone. The plentiful fruit is there for the picking— anyone who desires to learn more about God. When I’m in tune with this fruit I am living within the content, magical place of creation and bounty. When I walk out from under the shade of that fruit tree, I find myself living in anxiety, depression, and self-loathing, with an unquenchable thirst for more of worldly gains and comparison/jealousy. Sometimes we fall into the trap of self-absorption and self-promotion in this Hollywood career, but I always think this: God give me enough that I would always thank you, but not too much that I would forget you. My prayer is that I’d always stay close to my first love, that I found in my childhood, my deep love for Jesus.