Meditative Arts
Dear Friends ~ Since people have such diverse personalities and ways of engaging, it is good that there are likewise many paths to contemplation, many doorways into silence. Two practices that may be nurturing to some are watercolor painting and visio divina. Watercolor painting may seem at first glance like an art project for the grandchildren or a medium only for the fine arts. However, painting as a mindfulness practice can stop the mind from racing, help focus attention on the present moment, and allow one to listen— it can become an exploration for the soul. Watercolors do not yield easily to control—rather they invite play and observation. One can perceive the hue and texture of the colors, but it is the water that gives them movement, light and life; a bit like seeing ourselves as the paint and the Spirit as water. When you allow the dynamic interaction between paint and water to flow without constraint, shapes and images can emerge in unexpected and illuminating ways.
Julia Cameron
WALKING IN THE WORLD
The Great Creator lives within each of us. All of us contain a divine, expressive spark,
a creative candle intended to light our path and that of others. We are shiny, not
tarnished; large, not small; beautiful, not damaged– although we may be ignorant of
our grace, power, and dignity. The human being, by definition, is a creative being.
Practicing our creativity is healing. The more we ground it and regularly access it, the
better off we are. The "healthier" we are. Creative change begins in the heart. When
we start within ourselves and move outward, expressing what we love and what we
value, life gets better, we feel better, and the world gets healthier too.
Christophe Andre
LOOKING AT MINDFULNESS: 25 PAINTINGS TO CHANGE THE WAY YOU LIVE
To meditate is often to move through a land without paths. In the room where the philosopher is meditating there is less light, so you have to open your eyes wider. The same is true inside ourselves—There is less that is obvious or reassuring, so we must open our mind's eye much wider... Mindfulness ...means stopping to make contact with the ever-shifting experience that we are having at the time, and to observe the nature of our relationship to that experience, the nature of our presence at that moment.
Arthur Versluis
THE EGYPTIAN MYSTERIES
Any work of art is ultimately an entry-point into the transcendent, revelatory of not
only subtle, but celestial beauty and power; and if the given work is not so, it cannot
properly be called art at all...All works of art, in other words, are religious, sacred, or
nothing.
Lucia Capacchione
The Soul of Creativity
In embracing creativity as a spiritual practice, we commend ourselves into the Creator's
hands, knowing that our goal is to disappear. And when we do, we become one with
all creation. The divine spirit dances us, it plays its music through us. We become the
instrument through which the divine flows like a river. When your Creative Self calls,
go with it. It is God speaking. Listen to your Creative Conscience, the voice of the
divine guiding you each day. It resides in your heart: your true temple.
James Finley
The Contemplative Heart
A contemplative practice is any act, habitually entered into with your whole heart, as a way of awakening, deepening, and sustaining a contemplative experience of the inherent holiness of the present moment. The critical factor is not so much what the practice is in its externals as the extent to which the practice incarnates an utterly sincere stance of awakening and surrendering to the Godly nature of the present moment.
Thomas Merton
A Thomas Merton Reader
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. The mind that
responds to the intellectual and spiritual values that lie hidden in a poem, a painting, or
a piece of music, discovers a spiritual vitality that lifts it above itself, takes it out of
itself, and makes it present to itself on a level of being that it did not know it could ever
achieve.
Henry Miller
THE WISDOM OF THE HEART
The new work of art does not consist of
making a living or producing an objet d'art or in self-therapy, but in finding a new soul.
The new era of spiritual creativity...and soul-making.
Mary Ellen Robertson
God's Moment
The desire
of your heart
awaits
The quiet
moment of
creative love.
With courage
step into
silence.
Thomas Moore
Care of the Soul
When imagination is allowed to move to deep places, the sacred is revealed. The more
different kinds of thoughts we experience around a thing and the deeper our reflections
go as we are arrested by its artfulness, the more fully its sacredness can emerge.
Matthew Fox
Original Blessing
The recovery of faith in our creativity
and in the artist within each of us and
the artists among all of us is no small
thing. It has to do with the rekindling of
the spark of hope and vision, of
adventure and blessing, that a tired
civilization needs...
If it is true, as Paul says, that "we are
God's work of art," then everything we
have said about art as meditation applies
to the delight, wonder, admiration,
surprise that God takes at our birth and
continual unfolding.
Michel Foucault
Art as a Way of Life
A work of art opens a void, a moment of silence, a question without an answer,
provokes a breach without reconciliation where the world is forced to question itself.
We must open our mind's eye much wider
To meditate is often to move through a land without paths. In the room where the philosopher is meditating there is less light, so you have to open your eyes wider. The same is true inside ourselves—There is less that is obvious or reassuring, so we must open our mind's eye much wider... Mindfulness ...means stopping to make contact with the ever-shifting experience that we are having at the time, and to observe the nature of our relationship to that experience, the nature of our presence at that moment.
Faith in our creativity
The recovery of faith in our creativity
and in the artist within each of us and
the artists among all of us is no small
thing. It has to do with the rekindling of
the spark of hope and vision, of
adventure and blessing, that a tired
civilization needs...
If it is true, as Paul says, that "we are
God's work of art," then everything we
have said about art as meditation applies
to the delight, wonder, admiration,
surprise that God takes at our birth and
continual unfolding.
Finding a new soul
The new work of art does not consist of
making a living or producing an objet d'art or in self-therapy, but in finding a new soul.
The new era of spiritual creativity...and soul-making.
When your Creative Self calls, go with it
In embracing creativity as a spiritual practice, we commend ourselves into the Creator's
hands, knowing that our goal is to disappear. And when we do, we become one with
all creation. The divine spirit dances us, it plays its music through us. We become the
instrument through which the divine flows like a river. When your Creative Self calls,
go with it. It is God speaking. Listen to your Creative Conscience, the voice of the
divine guiding you each day. It resides in your heart: your true temple.
Creative change begins in the heart
The Great Creator lives within each of us. All of us contain a divine, expressive spark,
a creative candle intended to light our path and that of others. We are shiny, not
tarnished; large, not small; beautiful, not damaged– although we may be ignorant of
our grace, power, and dignity. The human being, by definition, is a creative being.
Practicing our creativity is healing. The more we ground it and regularly access it, the
better off we are. The "healthier" we are. Creative change begins in the heart. When
we start within ourselves and move outward, expressing what we love and what we
value, life gets better, we feel better, and the world gets healthier too.
Sacredness can emerge
When imagination is allowed to move to deep places, the sacred is revealed. The more
different kinds of thoughts we experience around a thing and the deeper our reflections
go as we are arrested by its artfulness, the more fully its sacredness can emerge.
A spiritual vitality that lifts it above itself
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. The mind that
responds to the intellectual and spiritual values that lie hidden in a poem, a painting, or
a piece of music, discovers a spiritual vitality that lifts it above itself, takes it out of
itself, and makes it present to itself on a level of being that it did not know it could ever
achieve.
Religious, sacred, or nothing
Any work of art is ultimately an entry-point into the transcendent, revelatory of not
only subtle, but celestial beauty and power; and if the given work is not so, it cannot
properly be called art at all...All works of art, in other words, are religious, sacred, or
nothing.
A work of art opens a void
A work of art opens a void, a moment of silence, a question without an answer,
provokes a breach without reconciliation where the world is forced to question itself.
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