A Breath of New Life. Awakening Beauty
Courtesy of Luther Seminary © Genesis+Art
Holden Village, Washington
Article For Holden Village Voice, Written While The Executive Directors
“Be still and aware of God’s presence within and all around.”
– C E L T I C P R A Y E R S F R O M I O N A
The ancient stories tell us that the Holy One breathed into clay, creating life from the place where breath and earth meet. From that place Spirit takes form, connecting us to our creator, to creation and to one another. Our creation story of mystery, relationship and love is rich with possibilities for engaging communities and offers the capacity to transform our world.
Words when used in imaginative ways can paint images that bring depth to our existence and connect us with the living God. Words that also exist between the lines of text, whether it be Hebrew poetry of the Psalms that help us pray or poems with their surgical precision, can bring us new meaning. “They help us to see not only truth and possibility but the beauty as well in the stories of other religious traditions, in the spiritual journeys of very different kinds of people, and in our own journeys, journeys that may well have lost the intensity of their earlier meaning in our lives.”1 God’s creative spirit is manifested in both the human account and the mystical proclamations found within the Scriptures. The narratives reach into our heart of creative imagination and transcend time and meaning. The scriptures are a life of their own and continually reveal mystery and meaning in our seemingly chaotic world.
Artists help stir our imaginations and enable us to turn off our judgmental filters, and they help us create an environment for creativity and the nurturing of human connections. In Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, he offers not only deep encouragement to the young poet, but also sensitive and divinely inspired spiritual direction. Art, words, and the spirit are so eloquently entwined it is hard to tell one from another. As former creative directors charged with the development and nurturing of young creative talent, we find these letters simply inspirational. “I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn’t disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.” 2 Rilke’s advice is to mine the depths of our own creative spirit, divinely planted, and bring to the surface and then share with the world. From the creative depths of our imaginations comes the hope to reveal something new about creation.
Both of us have spent decades in the company of artists. We have watched and been inspired by our friends giving birth to images, words, and music, trying to articulate the not yet seen, the not yet heard. We have personally painted our way to new thoughts and ways of working together. We have used art as a tool to begin new conversations in places of conflict, and to create things together we could not create alone.
We believe the world can be changed if we start listening to one another again and find beauty in diversity. Through art, we seek to find what binds us together as people and illuminate pathways of hope to what we might become. We invite you to join our conversation and engage your imagination to reveal, heal and renew your creative spirit, our communities and our world.
1 Kimberly Vrudny, & Wilson Yates, Arts, Theology, & the Church (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 2005) 68
2 Rilke, Rainer Maria, Letters to a Young Poet (New York: Vintage Books, 1984) 11
See more conversation in SPIRIT and WORKSHOPS