Becoming what I am ...

Tuesday 26 August 2008


What the....
Originally uploaded by pyjama
It is one of the mysterious happinesses of the creative life that when we become willing to listen, the "still, small voice" seems to grow louder. The web of life is interconnected and an artist's prayer in Omaha is as clearly heard as the same prayer uttered in Manhattan. "Help me become what I am," we pray - and we do ...

Not all dreams will come "true," but there will be truth present in all our dreaming. The Great Creator made us. We are ourselves works of art, and as we work to bring forward the art within us, we express our inner divinity. Perhaps this is why so many artists' stories abound with miraculous coincidence and "inspired" hunches. Art may be the finest form of prayer. Making art is quite literally a path "to our Maker." In the act of creation, the creator reveals himself or itself to us and we, too, are revealed to ourselves as something of the divine spark from which we ourselves are made. It is this primal fact of connection, artist to artist, Great Creator to us as creator, that the truest sense of our own identity is born. We make art not merely to make our way in the world but also to make something of ourselves, and often the something that we make is a person with an inviolable sense of inner dignity. We have answered yes when our true name was called.
Julia Cameron, Walking in this World

But not only medicine, engineering, and painting are arts; living itself is an art.
Erich Fromm

Love alone of all things is sufficient unto itself. It is its own end, its own merit, and its own satisfaction. It seeks no cause beyond itself and needs no fruit outside of itself. Its fruit is its use. I love simply because I am love. That is my deepest identity, what I am created in and for.

For me to love others "in God" is to love them for their own sake and not for what they do for me.

Richard Rohr


++++++++++++++++++++++++

All three of these quotes resonate so strongly for me, and they all swell from the same place, the place where art and love and life all live together. None of those three things are separate to me. They are all strands of the same Creator and whenever I walk once again in that space, what I do or what I create becomes secondary to the spacious beauty of being. It's a beautiful thang.

10 comments

  1. they resonate with me also, Thx so much for sharing them

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wonderful, Sue - putting those three together was just the kind of 'miraculous coincidence and "inspired" hunch' Julia Cameron was talking about!

    Thank you!

    Mike

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lou - thanks for dropping into the discombobulated land of my head :)

    Mike - so they did fit together, did they? I wasn't sure - it was definitely a hunch. Obviously one that worked for you hehe :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Catch Artscape last night?

    Its also often forgotten that art is usually at the prophetic edge of the wedge aswell

    "if we reject art, we will, in the end, because of the power of art, eliminate a major source of understanding our culture and communicating with our age.." - John Smith

    ReplyDelete
  5. Monk - yeah, saw that. I hope those people find a new space to do their stuff. I loved that 70 year old red haired woman's chutzpah :)

    (I painted for the first time with acrylics on Monday. It was exciting).

    Good quote.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Awww.. your an acrylic virgin... not any more... good for you!

    ReplyDelete
  7. now, you know I would love this!

    art is prayer, prayer is art
    and art is a path to the Creator
    yeah!

    how much fun you must be having trying all these different art mediums out

    ReplyDelete
  8. Kel - it's so much fun. It's really got me out of my funk. I can't wait till next time ... and I might go blow my budget at the arts supplies shop in the meantime :)

    ReplyDelete

Newer Older