Our Sacred Duty

"The duty of the artist is to send light
into the darkness of men’s souls."

Words: Vasily Kandinsky
Image: Photo by Diane Walker

Be The Change

Video by Kat Edmonson.

Creativity

Creativity becomes possible
insofar as man can forget
his limitations and his selfhood
and lose himself in abandonment
to the immense creative power
of a love too great to be seen or comprehended.

Words: Thomas Merton
Image: Photograph by Diane Walker

We Proclaim The Interconnectedness

We mean peacefully to weave our own strand into the web of life as it exists here and now in our neck of the woods. We repudiate the dualism—and the myriad forms of power-over that it spawned—which has pervaded our human culture for so long. Instead, we proclaim the interconnectedness of all beings and claim being for all manifestations of creation. We claim our authentic voice as self-reflective beings—we have something to say about how we shall live on the Earth.

Words: From The Bluestone Manifesto by the Community of the Holy Spirit

Image: Photograph by C. Robin Janning

I Will Question You

Then the Lord answered Job out of
the whirlwind:

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
so that a flood of waters may cover you?
Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go
and say to you, ‘Here we are’?
Who has put wisdom in the inward parts,
or given understanding to the mind?
Who has the wisdom to number the clouds?
Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens,
when the dust runs into a mass
and the clods cling together
Can you hunt the prey for the lion,
or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,
when they crouch in their dens
or lie in wait in their covert?
Who provides for the raven its prey,
when its young ones cry to God,
and wander about for lack of food?

Job 38, 1-3 and 34-41. NRSV

Image: Photograph by Robert Epley

Give Thanks

Found this video thanks to Sarah Eagle Heart (TEC Program Officer for Native American/Indigenous Ministries).

Video is by Teddy Orii (Redsun).

Compose Yourself

Composition communicates, and "...even though the conscious foundations of this idea may have originated in the sculptures and architecture of ancient Greece and Rome and later in the Renaissance, this concept is really rooted in something more primitive. It is rooted in the very nature of how we perceive and respond to the light, space and shapes of the universe around us. It is because of this that abstract art can speak to us through the universal language of light, shape, color, line and space. Abstract art is essentially visual music."

Words: Bill Buchman in "About Abstract Painting"
 
Image: Just Beyond by Bill Buchman

Seek Ye First

O bless this people, Lord, who seek their own face
under the mask and can hardly recognize it ...

O bless this people that breaks its bond ...

And with them, all the peoples of Europe,
All the peoples of Asia,
All the peoples of Africa,
All the peoples of America,
Who sweat blood and sufferings.

And see in the midst of these millions of waves,
The sea swell of the heads of my people.
And grand to their warm hands that they may clasp
The earth in a girdle of brotherly hands,
Beneath the rainbow of thy peace.

Words: by Leopold Sedar Senghor* in An African Prayer Book, Selections and with Introductions by Desmond Tutu.

*noted French poet and essayist, president of Senegal, West Africa, in the 1960s.

Image: "Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God," Found-Object Assemblage by Roberta Karstetter

Go Find It

" ...God has spread a whole lot of spirit around out there, and we don’t always recognize it. We’re supposed to go find it and figure out how to bless it and join it, and keep spreading it around."

Words: The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori: Sermon at Closing Eucharist of Montana Diocesan Convention; Holy Spirit, Missoula, Proper 21B

Image: "The Blessing Cross" by C. Robin Janning

Kyrie