In Art...

“ In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.” 
Ralph Waldo Emerson 

About Art...

“The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.”  
Auguste Rodin 

...the meaning of life and art...

"In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love."  
Marc Chagall

Luther's dictum on the poor and beauty

“The poor need beauty as much as bread because they live in the midst of ugliness.”

N.T. Wright on art, excerpt from Surprised by Hope

"To make sense of and celebrate a beautiful world through the production of artifacts that are themselves beautiful is part of the call to be stewards of creation, as was Adam's naming of the animals. Genuine art is thus itself a response to the beauty of creation, which itself is a pointer to the beauty of God."

Excerpt from Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright, a New Testament scholar and the former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England

"God has made everything beautiful for its own time."

"God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart." Ecclesiastes 3:11

Eternity and beauty are echoed in the same verse. Make no mistake; this is no coincidence. The two concepts belong together because God, the Eternal One, is also Lord, the Beautiful One.

Everything he does lasts forever, and everything He does is beautiful. He plants his Spirit of eternity in the hearts of his people, creating in us a spirit of beauty that will reflect his own forever. ...we see that forever is intricately associated with beauty, and both are gifts from God.

The Daily God Book: A Year of Listening for God by Erin Keeley Marshall

Beauty was created by God for a purpose

“Beauty was created by God for a purpose: to give us the experience of wonder. And wonder, in turn, is intended to lead us to the ultimate human expression and privilege: worship. Beauty is both a gift and a map. It is a gift to be enjoyed and a map to be followed back to the source of the beauty with praise and thanksgiving.”

Eyes Wide Open: Enjoying God in Everything  by Steve DeWitt

Beauty...

The definition of Beauty: "Goodness made manifest to the senses."
Dallas Willard

Creativity as spiritual...

"One experience we may easily overlook as spiritual is our creativity; the inspiration behind a drawing, a poem, a play, a dance, a painting, story, a weaving, a gourmet meal, a product of our design and/or manufacture, or a speech that can come from God. The whole creative process can be guided by God, and it can change the style and intent of the product and process. Even creativity can be enriched by simply letting go." 

 The Critical Journey, Stages in the Life of Faith by Janet O. Hagberg and Robert A. Guelich 

Finding ourselves in art...

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” 
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

"The liturgical celebration should be an “experience of beauty as well as of faith and prayer.”"

In an article written for Worship in 1980 entitled, “The Vesting of Liturgical Ministers,” Robert Hovda reminds us that the liturgical celebration should be an “experience of beauty as well as of faith and prayer.” ¹ Referencing Harvey Cox, Hovda goes on to say that liturgical celebrations demand that vesture “incarnate” the “conscious excess of festivity,” because “dressing up in an uncommonly beautiful and colorful way” is part of the service of the liturgical minister to the assembly.² The chasuble, says Hovda, helps the presiding celebrant recognize that he is “wearing something important, something that urges grace and dignity in movement, something that serves the festival excess” of the liturgical ministry.³ The chasuble’s “design and form and texture help to focus the action of the assembly” and its “massive color relates to feast and season and festive celebration.”⁴ Like lilies in full bloom, “liturgical vesture has a considerable impact on the feelings of the assembly“⁵ as well as the liturgical minister. Members of the assembly need the “massive color” of the chasuble or dalmatic to remind them that something very big is happening right before their eyes, that God’s love, lavish and breathtaking in its vastness, is accessible, ready-to-hand in Christ, in Word and Sacrament. This is what we join together to celebrate. And this is what vesture must help the People of God to do. Unabashedly beautiful vesture is what the Eucharistic gathering requires. (Of Lilies and Chasubles by Fr. James Palmigiano)

1 Robert Hovda, “The Vesting of Liturgical Ministers,” Worship 54 (March 1980) 99.
2 Ibid., 101
3 Ibid., 109-110.
4 Ibid., 109.
5 Ibid., 104.

"We do not want merely to see beauty,..."

"We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves."  C. S. Lewis