Art and Creativity: Healing the Heart and Feeding the Soul

This is the fourtienth piece of devotional worship (15th in total) that I have put together for sharing, during the shutting down of worship due to the Corona virus outbreak. I am posting it before Sunday. If you would like to share it with myself and the two congregations I serve, please feel free to do so. We will worship together but physically apart, either at 10am or 11.30am on Sunday 5th July. All you need is an open heart, mind, spirit and soul. A small candle will be helpful. All are most welcome. come as you are, exactly as you are, but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition.

You can also enjoy a Zoom version of this service at 11am on Sunday 5th July. If you wish to access the serivce the code is as follows: Meeting ID: 841 9082 8195

This is a recurring meeting so it will be the same code each week and for all future

Art and Creativity: Healing the Heart and Feeding the Soul

Invocation

Let us invite a loving presence to be here amongst us and to awaken from deep within us

Light Chalice

 "To worship is to stand in awe under a heaven of stars, before a flower, a leaf in sunlight or a grain of sand. To worship is to work with dedication and with skill; it is to pause from work and listen to a strain of music. Worship is loneliness seeking communion; it is a thirsty land crying out for rain. Worship is the mystery within us reaching out to the mystery beyond. It is an inarticulate silence yearning to speak; it is the window of the moment open to the sky of the eternal."

Let us worship together in the spirit of love

1^st Hymn 181 (Purple) “Wake Now My Senses” Words Thomas J.S. Mikelson music Slane 10.10. 10.10

Wake, now, my senses, and hear the earth call,
Feel the deep power of being in all;
Keep with the web of creation your vow,
Giving, receiving, as love shows us how.

Wake, now, my reason, reach out to the new;
Join with each pilgrim who quests for the true;
Honour the beauty and wisdom of time;
Suffer thy limit, and praise the sublime.

Wake, now, compassion, give heed to the cry;
Voices of suffering fill the wide sky;
Take as your neighbour both stranger and friend,
Praying and striving their hardship to end.

Wake, now, my conscience, with justice thy guide;
Join with all people whose rights are denied;
Take not for granted a privileged place;
God's love embraces the whole human race.

Wake, now, my vision of ministry clear;
Brighten my pathway with radiance here;
Mingle my calling with all who would share;
Work toward a planet transformed by our care.

[Thomas J. S. Mikelson]

Prayer

I invite you now to join me in a time of prayer. 

Let us pray

Spirit of light, Spirit of Love, Spirit of life hear our prayer…help us to see that we are children of this earth, children of God, children of the universe. Help us to see that we are precious and that our world is a precious blessing…still us, help us to be still and to know that we are loved.

If we come here feeling alone, help us to know we are not alone…we are here among friends, some we have known for many years, some we have known for only a short time and some we may never have met before...

If we come here with guilt for what we have done, or failed to do, help us to see we are not alone that we are in the healthy company of others with the same guilt over the same shortcomings…

If we come here wishing our lives were more whole, more satisfying, perhaps even more perfect, help us to see that the honesty of these wishes marks us out as someone who belongs here…here we come to face the truth unafraid, even when we are afraid. Because we know, even when we do not want to know, that the truth can set us free. Perhaps not painlessly, but the truth can set us free…

After all we do know…we just need to remember that we are children of the earth, children of God, children of the universe. We know that we are precious and the world needs our blessing.

Be still, be still and know that you are loved.

Amen.

Lord’s Prayer

Stories

Cold Day

It was a cold winter day, and a heavily dressed man noticed Nasrudin outside wearing very little clothing.

"Mulla," the man said, "how is it that I am wearing all these clothes and still feel a little cold, while you are barely wearing anything, and seem unaffected by the weather?"

"Well," replied Nasrudin, "I don't have any more clothes, so I can't afford to feel cold. But you have plenty of clothes, and thus have the liberty to feel cold."

The Missed Appointment

A philosopher made an appointment with Nasrudin to have a scholarly discussion. When the day came, the philosopher dropped by Nasrudin's house as planned. However, Nasrudin wasn't home. The philosopher angrily took his pencil out of his pocket, wrote "selfish fool" on Nasrudin's door, and then left

Nasrudin finally came home later and saw this. He quickly realized that he had missed his appointment, and he darted off to the philosopher's house.

"Forgive my error," Nasrudin told the philosopher when he got there. "I totally forgot about our appointment today. But when I got home and saw that you had written your name on my door, I came here as fast as I could."

Man Searches for Joy

One day, Nasrudin began talking to a man from another town. The man lamented, "I am rich, but I am also sad and miserable. I have taken my money and gone traveling in search of joy-but alas, I have yet to find it."

As the man continued speaking, Nasrudin grabbed the man's bag and ran off with it. The man chased him, and Nasrudin soon ran out of the man's sight. He hid behind a tree, and put the bag in the open road for the man to see.

When the man caught up, he located the bag, and his facial expression immediately turned from distress to joy. As the man danced in celebration of finding his bag, Nasrudin thought to himself, "That's one way to bring joy to a sad man."

The Weight Lifting Contest

One day, as Nasrudin and some other locals chatted at the town square, a bragging contest soon developed among the group.

One by one they spoke of amazing feats they accomplished, each tale seeming more outlandish than the last.

Finally, after hearing everyone else, Nasrudin stood up and took his turn. "A long time ago, all the strong men in town wanted to decide who was the strongest. There was this massive tipped-over pillar near the grocery store, and they decided to see if anyone could lift it. One by one, each of them tried, and one by one, each of them failed. Keep in mind that these were massive, muscular guys. Then I stepped up. I rubbed my hands together, and gripped the pillar as all the others watched."

"Yes, go on!" the others remarked. "And then what happened?"

"And then I found out I couldn't pick it up, either!" replied Nasrudin.

Reading

Taken from the book Letters to My Son by Kent Nerburn:

I can measure my life by the moments when art transformed me—standing in front of Michelangelo’s Duomo pieta, listening to Dylan Thomas read his poetry, hearing Bach’s cello suites for the first time.

But not only there.

Sitting at a table in a smoky club listening to Muddy Waters and Little Walter talk back and forth to each other through their instruments; listening to a tiny Japanese girl play a violin sonata at a youth symphony concert; standing in a clapboard gift shop on the edge of Hudson Bay staring at a crudely carved Inuit image of a bear turning into a man.

It can happen anywhere, anytime. You do not have to be in some setting hallowed by greatness, or in the presence of an artist honored around the world. Art can work its magic any time you are in the presence of a work created by someone who has gone inside the act of creation to become what they are creating. When this takes place time stands still and if our hearts are open to the experience, our spirits soar and then our imaginations fly unfettered.

You need these moments if you are ever to have a life that is more than the sum of the daily moments of humdrum affairs.

If you can create these moments—if you are a painter or a poet or a musician or an actor [or a dancer]—you carry within you a prize of great worth. If you cannot create them, you must learn to love one of the arts in a way that allows the power of another’s creation to come alive within you.

Once you love an art enough that you can be taken up in it, you are able to experience an echo of the great creative act that mysteriously has given life to us all.

It may be the closest any of us can get to God.

2nd Hymn 280 “Morning Has Broken” Words Eleanor Farjeon Music Bunessan 55. 54. D

Morning has broken
Like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing,
Praise for the morning,
Praise for them, springing
Fresh from the word!

Sweet the rain's new fall
Sunlit from heaven,
Like the first dewfall
On the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness
Of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness
Where his feet pass.

Mine is the sunlight!
Mine is the morning
Born of the one light
Eden saw play!
Praise with elation,
Praise every morning,
God's re-creation
Of the new day!

Readings

Matthew 26 vv 6-13

6 Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,^* 7a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. ⁸But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, ‘Why this waste? ⁹For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor.’¹⁰But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, ‘Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. ¹¹For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. ¹²By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. ¹³Truly I tell you, wherever this good news^* is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.’

From “Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul” by Shaun McNiff

"When a person is ready to acknowledge an image as a living partner in dialogue for the first time, it often goes something like this:

"(Speaking to a picture) 'I don't know what you mean. You're a puzzle I can't solve. What do your symbols and colors mean?'

"This challenge to the image sounds like interrogation. It suggests that the person doing the talking is still operating from the vantage point of translating pictures into concepts. The imaginative discourse has not yet begun.

"James Hillman says, 'Do you ask the person who arrives at your door, "What do you mean?" '

"In extending hospitality, we greet the person, spend time together, talk, enjoy each other's company and afterward feel enriched or ensouled by the visit. Can't we extend this courtesy to the images we make?

"Solving a picture is not likely to open the soul. As Jung said, 'the bird is flown,' when we try to explain an image. The 'puzzle perspective' on art keeps us stuck in our heads. Even when this process is moving in a lively way, it is still little more than mental gymnastics.

"Rather than interrogating images and trying to decipher 'what they mean,' I suggest welcoming them and simply reflecting on their expressive qualities, saying something about what we see and how we feel in their presence. When someone begins to talk with pictures in this more intimate way, the conversation moves from the head to the heart."

Meditation

Music for meditation

3^rd Hymn 42 (Purple) “From the light of days remembered” words Jason Shelton music “The Fire of Commitment”

From the Light of days remembered
Burns a beacon bright and clear,
Guiding hands and hearts and spirits
Into faith set free from fear.

When the fire of commitment sets our mind and soul ablaze
When our hunger and our passion meet to call us on our way;
When we live with deep assurance of the flame that burns within,
Then our promise finds fulfilment and our future can begin.

From the stories of our living
Rings a song both brave and free,
Calling pilgrims still to witness
To the life of liberty.

When the fire of commitment sets our mind and soul ablaze
When our hunger and our passion meet to call us on our way;
When we live with deep assurance of the flame that burns within,
Then our promise finds fulfilment and our future can begin.

From the dreams of youthful vision
Comes a new prophetic voice,
Which demands a deeper justice
Built by our courageous choice.

When the fire of commitment sets our mind and soul ablaze
When our hunger and our passion meet to call us on our way;
When we live with deep assurance of the flame that burns within,
Then our promise finds fulfilment and our future can begin.

Poem

“Monet Refuses the Operation” by Lisel Mueller

Doctor, you say there are no haloes

around the streetlights in Paris

and what I see is an aberration

caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life

to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,

to soften and blur and finally banish

the edges you regret I don’t see,

to learn that the line I called the horizon

does not exist and sky and water,

so long apart, are the same state of being.

Fifty-four years before I could see

Rouen cathedral is built

of parallel shafts of sun,

and now you want to restore

my youthful errors: fixed

notions of top and bottom,

the illusion of three-dimensional space,

wisteria separate

from the bridge it covers.

What can I say to convince you

the Houses of Parliament dissolve

night after night to become

the fluid dream of the Thames?

I will not return to a universe

of objects that don’t know each other,

as if islands were not the lost children

of one great continent.  The world

is flux, and light becomes what it touches,

becomes water, lilies on water,

above and below water,

becomes lilac and mauve and yellow

and white and cerulean lamps,

small fists passing sunlight

so quickly to one another

that it would take long, streaming hair

inside my brush to catch it.

To paint the speed of light!

Our weighted shapes, these verticals,

burn to mix with air

and change our bones, skin, clothes

to gases.  Doctor,

if only you could see

how heaven pulls earth into its arms

and how infinitely the heart expands

to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Address

A few weeks ago I went for a social distance walk with a friend around Dunham Massey. It was lovely to walk and talk as we took in the beauty of place. We talked about lots of things, about life, art, history, politics, family, relationships, spirituality and religion. My friend is a poet, a working poet, it is not an easy life. Obviously “Lockdown” has meant he cannot perform and speak about his work, well not in front of a live audience at least. Like all of us it has impacted on his ability to share his work in the physical environment. It has been the same for all types of live performance as well as the visiting of museums and art galleries. The arts in general are struggling and they will struggle to survive the economic turmoil that has accompanied the devastation that has come with the “virus”.

We are told it is safe to come together for some activities, from an appropriate distance, but not live entertainment. We cannot go to music concerts, or live theatre, singing seems to be most dangerous thing we can do in our current climate. Gosh how this diminishes my soul.

Museums and art galleries are allowed to begin to re-open this weekend. I know how much I will need to feast my eyes on such things. Next week as I enjoy a few days off I want to spend a little time staring out to sea. I will go on a cold rainy day perhaps when no one else wants to go and I would like to also feast my eyes on something creatively beautiful, my soul needs it so much. I need to be reminded of the incredibly beautiful things we humans can make with our hands, hearts and imaginations.

Now as you all know I have a love for poetry and as I was walking with Oliver the poet the other week we discussed putting on a simple poetry night. Just folks getting together and sharing words of creativity, either their own or that created by others. It has been running for four weeks on Zoom now. It has been wonderful and has helped me feel more alive and connect both beyond myself and to those deeper aspects of my own being. I know others have appreciated it too. I know it is not the same as attending a night out, but it is helping feed a few souls.

The creative arts have a transcendent quality, they take us beyond ourselves. They connect us to a greater reality and yet somehow to those deeper aspects of our own being, they awaken something within and without. Singing does this for me. When singing I can feel totally connected and yet at the same time completely free. I have seen some wonderful choirs and community groups finding ways to sing together, while being physically alone. This is not easy as we have found on our own Zoom services and yet groups of highly gifted people have created some wonderful choirs. It has touched some deep places in me, it has lifted me up at times, when I have felt a little fallen. Just beautiful.

How my soul has craved beauty these last three months or so. Life is not just about prosaic fact. We need more than our basic physical needs meeting. Our souls crave beauty or they whither away and life just seems like a chore, a drudge. Life is not just about surviving procreating, it is about truly living and engaging in the creative interchange that is life.

We need beauty and not merely natural beauty, but beauty created from our mutual imaginations. We need to engage in the creative interchange. We need to be a part of the beauty of creativity.

Beauty awakens one fully to life, beauty makes you feel alive and thus a part of life and thus act in more loving ways. Beauty awakens the soul of me in so many indescribable ways and it compels me to act in such a way as to pour out that beauty within on to all I engage with.

Beauty manifests itself in so many ways in the world in which we live and breathe and move. It awakens all our senses and thus feeds and nourishes our souls; it awakens our souls and it fills our hearts to overflowing. We not only drink from the well of beauty, we also fill it too. Beauty truly is about the heart, about filling the heart to overflowing.

In "Beauty: The Invisible Embrace" John O’Donohue  wrote 

"The heart is the place where beauty arrives; here is where it can be felt, recognized and shared. If there was no heart, beauty could never reach us. Through the heart, beauty can pervade every cell of the body and fill us. To use a word that feels like it sounds: this is the thrill of beauty through us. Perhaps this is why we sometimes feel the absence of beauty in our lives; we have allowed the prism to become dull and darkened; though the light is near, it cannot enter to have its inlay of beauty diffused. Sometimes absence is merely arrested appearance. Compassion and attention keep the prism clear so that beauty may illuminate our life. Prayer of course is the supreme way we lift our limited selves towards the light, and ask it to shine into us. "

We feel alive in the presence of beauty, it awakens the soul and fills the heart to overflowing, it certainly compels me to pour my heart out on the world in loving ways. In fact perhaps true beauty, certainly in a human sense, is to act morally. As John O’Donohue has pointed out Plato believed that Love was born of beauty and that it tapped into our basic human drive and desire for Good, that it was not a private or self-indulgent act of pleasure and that “the ability to love beauty has created all the good things that exist for gods and men’.

Earlier we heard a passage from Matthew’s Gospel (Ch 26 vv 6-13). It is a much debated primarily because it has been used by some as a justification for tolerating poverty. I believe that to focus on this is to fail to recognise the central message of Matthews Gospel, the abundant blessing of love.

The power in this story is in its recognition of abundant love. The woman loves and cares for Jesus. She anoints him with oil because she loves him dearly. It truly is an act of loving, nay gracious abandonment. She is overflowing with love and wants to anoint those she loves with this. This is beauty in action, bringing us to life, making us feel alive. This is a soul awakened by beauty and inspired to act lovingly. Her heart is over flowing with love and she wants to pour out this love onto Jesus who will soon no longer be with her or the disciples.

Thus, it is with works that are crafted from our own hearts. It is an outpouring of love for so many to share in, in whatever form of expression it comes. This loving beauty has the same ability to transform something within each of, something that needs to come alive. We whither as human beings if we do not engage and share in such expression of human love. Every one of us is an artist, a craftsperson and we consume the same too, all a part of the incredible creative interchange, a web of mutual love.

By the way such expression can just as easily come out in nature. Some of the greatest artists of them all create their works in gardens. There are beautiful gardens all around us. Something again I am going to take time feasting on next week.

This brings to mind the following little anecdote by William McNamara:

“I once lived near a mansion where only one of the many gardeners employed had succeeded with every one of the roses. I asked him the secret of his success. He told me that the other gardeners treated all the roses not unwisely, but too generally. They treated them all in precisely the same way; whereas he himself watched each rosebush separately, and followed out for each plant its special need for soil, manure, sun, air, water, support and shelter.”

To act beautifully is to pay attention to the individual needs all around us. Creative expression has the capacity to bring what is beautiful within us to life, so that we can can share what we have with each other and thus create something even more beautiful. Is there anything more Divine than this creative interchange?

The Unitarian process theologian Henry Nelson Weiman (1884-1975) defined God as a process that leads people to act in ways that sustain and nurture life. Creativity is at the heart of this. Whenever we create we turn ourselves inside out. This enables us to do two things. Firstly is helps us become aware of who we truly are, thus revealing what sustains and nurtures us. Secondly in creating we allow others to see deep within our humanity, thus enabling them to widen their view of human need and possibility.

Whenever we create something new it is not yet complete until it has been shared with others. The worship I create each week does not exist until it is shared with you. A creation is made to communicate beyond itself. Weiman called this “Creative Interchange”. We all create and we all pay attention to the creations of others; we are all craft workers and craft consumers. This is a creative interchange.

When we interact with one another’s creations we are deeply engaged with one another and all life. When we create we open windows into each other’s humanity. As we do so we create windows that can lead to a deeper understanding of what sustains all life. This can lead us to living a life that is for the good of all and not just ourselves.

We are all born with the ability to create and to appreciate the creativity of others. We are all craft workers and craft consumers. As we create and consume we experience a sense of interconnection with all of life, which enables us to nurture and sustain our world. For it is up to us to do so as we dance our dance with the divine creator.

As we engage in this creative interchange we truly come to life and we help bring one another alive as we pour out our beautiful love. For we are more than mere “lumbering robots”, just skin and chemicals, made mainly of water, cucumber with anxiety. We have the capacity to moved and wowed by life, just as we have the capacity to create a wow in life. Creative expression enlivens our senses. It does something that touches the more of our mere human being. We need it so much, we need to be wowed by life. We all need to have our breath taken away by that deep love that is incarnated and poured out in creativity, artistic expression. Isn’t it just breathtaking. I remember many years ago watching this tiny Chinese flautist playing in the round at Cross street Chapel, the sound she created was incredible, but I was moved just as much by the effort her body was engaged in to create that work, how many years of dedication must have gone into create that moment of beauty, power and grace. It was Divine, it took my breath away. It was a beautiful transcendent experience as I got lost in the time and space.

The beauty of art is that it is transcendent, it connects you to the invisible to the eternal. In his incredible work “The Night” Eli Wiesel described it as 'that time when question and answer would become one.' Eli Wiesel witnessed and survived the horrors of the Nazi death camps and yet created such beauty. A beauty that comes alive in all kinds of human creative expression. The beauty of the artist is that they bring the beauty and love in life to life, they pour it out abundantly for anyone to share. They bring that which is unseen by most of us to life.

To quote the wonderful Anne Lamott in “Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers”

"In museums, when we behold framed greatness, genius embracing passion, obsession, discipline, and possibly madness, our mouths drop open. For a short time, we see past all that is jumbled, mysterious, marvelous, and ugly. Instead, we glimpse life, beauty, grief, or evil, love captured and truth held up to the light. Art makes it hard to ignore truth, that Life explodes and blooms, consumes, rots and radiates and slithers; that eternity really is in a blade of grass. Jethro Tull sang that the same God who made kittens also made snakes in the grass. We stand before Monet and Rothko and the Sphinx and Georgia O'Keeffe and are speechless, in awe. Awe is why we are here. And this state is the prayer: 'Wow.'

Creative expression brings something alive in us, this beauty moves us and creates something within us that wants to pour our own love out of us, to share this beauty. We need it to be wowed. It allows us to reach beyond the limits of the mere material, for we are so much more than “lumbering robots”.

We need beauty, we need love, just as much as we need food, water, mental stimulation and loving support. Yes our economic and health needs, must be provided for, but we should not neglect our souls, for if we do we will whither and die. We need creativity and we need to create in our own ways. We need to share this. Perhaps we are going to have to find new ways to do this, people are finding new ways already. The arts also need support too, so much is under threat in this our current economic climate. It needs our support, just as we need it.

May we find ways to experience the beauty in this world. Whether it be the beauty of nature or that crafted from our hearts, minds, souls and hands. May we truly become a part of the creative interchange, to share our gifts with one another and to have hearts open enough to experience that created by others. May we be open to receive all that is offered and may be pour out our own love on world that truly needs it.

May the beauty of life awaken our souls to act.

Amen

4^th Hymn 209 (Green) “A world Transfigured” Words Jacob Trapp music Blaenwern 87. 87. D.

Wonders still the world shall witness
Never known in days of old,
Never dreamed by ancient sages,
Howsoever free and bold.
Sons and daughters shall inherit
Wondrous arts to us unknown,
When the dawn of peace its splendour
Over all the world has thrown.

They shall rule with winged freedom
Worlds of health and human good,
Worlds of commerce, worlds of science,
All made one and understood.
They shall know a world transfigured,
Which our eyes but dimly see;
They shall make its towns and woodlands
Beautiful from sea to sea.

For a spirit then shall move them
We but vaguely apprehend—
Aims magnificent and holy,
Making joy and labour friend.
Then shall bloom in song and fragrance
Harmony of thought and deed,
Fruits of peace and love and justice -
Where today we plant the seed.

Closing Words of Blessing

May the God of Justice and Mercy unite us in compassionate solidarity with all those in need, that our lives may be just and merciful, and a source of Her blessings to many.

And may we carry a vision of that love with us in all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do

Amen and blessed be