The Arts as a Pathway to God

Byron from Hearts and Minds emailed me when this book, Creating Change, hit the shelves of his (awesome) bookstore. I picked it up an immediately connected with several of those who contributed to this book: Thomas Merton, Diana Butler Bass, and Henri Nouwen to name a few.

The first paragraph in the Introduction has a personal letter from someone you might have heard of before...

April 12, 1888

My dear old Bernard,

Thanks for your kind letter and the sketch of your decoration included with it, which I find really amusing. I sometimes regret that I can't decide to work more at home and from the imagination. Certainly - imagination is a capacity that must be developed, and only that enables us to create a more exalting and consoling nature than what just a glance at reality (which we perceive changing, passing quickly like lighting) allows us to perceive.

A starry sky - for example, well - it's a thing that I should like to try to do...

~Vincent van Gogh

That really intrigues me. He wrote this letter before he painted the famous painting we're familiar with. What inspired him? A conversation with his dear old friend, Bernard? Vincent confesses that he would like to work more out of his imagination than he did (that's my take on it from this excerpt, anyhow). That encourages me to no end.

As I've stated before, I can't seem to draw anything from my imagination. I need inspiration then my imagination can engage. If I'm really honest, I know inspiration is all around me - just waiting for me to "see" it - really see it.

Any how, I digress. I also wanted to share an excerpt from Keri K. Wehlander, the editor of Creating Change. She writes, "...engage art for the sake of mystery instead of a message. Art reaches toward God, where humanity touches divinity, and where the intellectual fades to apprehending beauty. Art is important because it is a pathway of mystical experience with God."

I had a very special experience the past two Monday evenings with a group of women in our Spiritual Direction program. I led the ladies through two spiritual exercises using the arts, one focused on Visio Divina and the other - Visual Prayer. It was awesome and the sharing time afterwards made my heart sing. We experienced that mystical pathway to God and it was moving.

In the days to come, I'll share what these two classes looked like. Even those who said they don't have an artistic bent really enjoyed the experience.

We are creative spiritual human beings. Made in His image. Can you consider that you could engage God intimately through your creativity and through the arts? Even if you aren't "artistic"?

More to come...

grace & peace ~ deAnn