Photo of a work in progress, Orange Tulips

I've been attracted to nature themes lately and simple things. I love flowers painted really big! I used both acrylics and oils on this piece. Oils are so expensive. It helps to do the base coats in acrylics first.



It is at the edge of a petal that love waits.
- William Carlos Williams

Unique Gifts, Unique Selves, One Love

We are all born with wonderful gifts. We use these gifts to express ourselves, to amuse, to strengthen, and to communicate. We begin as children to explore and develop our talents, often unaware that we are unique, that not everyone can do what we are doing. ~ Lynn Johnston (Lynn on Ideas) She is an award winning cartoonist and was a close friend of Charles Schultz (Peanuts)

When you see a painting you are drawn into the beauty of its strokes and colors, the scene and story of it. And while you are relating to a work of art, enjoying its beauty, moved by its sadness, you are registering something about the painter, the artist, the author. So it is with you and me. God does not bring us into the family and say, "Well, you were a painting and you are a sculpture, but now that you are Christians, I need you all to be poems." You are a symphony, I am a poem, he is a barber-shop-quartet melody, she is a sculpture in bronze, and God is expressed through each of us. And God does an amazing thing. He puts all of these works of art together, and they form one perfect picture, the body of the Lord Jesus. ~ Alice Bass (The Creative Life)

Love is possible, and we are able to practice it because we are created in the image of God. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

GOD’S LOVING POWER longs to enfold and flood through all that we are — our subconscious as well as conscious selves; our wounded memories; our damaged trust; our fears; our shadow sides; our hidden hopes; the deep gifts within us not yet born or long forgotten; our attitudes toward ourselves, others, the world around us, and God. Perhaps the greatest act of wonder is that as we are healed, made whole, and filled with God, we become more our unique selves, not less. We are not identical products on a factory line; we are each individually handcrafted. ~ Flora Slosson Wuellner, Miracle: When Christ Touches Our Deepest Need

I must give to others not only something that is my own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

Love of neighbor, grounded in the love of God, is first and foremost a responsibility for EACH INDIVIDUAL member of the faithful, but it is also a responsibility for the entire ecclesial community at every level: from the local community to the particular Church and the the Church universal in her entiretly. As a community, the Church must practice love. Love thus needs to be organized if it is to be an ordered service to the community. The awareness of this responsibiity has had a consitutive relevance in the Church from the beginning." "All who believed WERE TOGETHER and had ALL THINGS IN COMMON; and they sold their possessions and goods and distrubuted them to all, as any had need." (Act 2:44-45) In these words, Saint Luke provides a kind of definition of the Church, whose constitutive elements include fidelity to the "teaching of the Apostles", "communion" (koinonia), "the breaking of bread" and "prayer". ~ Pope Benedict XVI

(Page 77 God is Love) ...the building of a better world requires Christians to speak with a UNITED VOICE in working to inculcate "respect for the rights and needs of everyon, especially the poor, the lowly, and the defenseless". ~ Pope Benedict XVI

page 81 (God is Love) The Christian's program - the program of the Good Samaritan, the program of Jesus - is "a heart which sees". This heart sees where love is needed and acts accordingly. Obviously when charitable activity is carried out by the Church as a communitarian initiative, the spontaneity of individuals must be combined with planning, foresight and cooperation with other similar institutions.

page 32 ...it is a unity which creates love, a unity in which both God and man remain themselves and yet become fully one. As Saint Paul says" "He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him" (1 Cor 6:17).



“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ~ (Jesus) Scripture Passage: John 17:20-21

Here is an article about art from a protestant where he is trying to recover art in the church.

http://artfromgodsheart.com/blog/?page_id=9

What I don't agree with is how he said the catholic church was worshipping the art. It was never right for them to raze down churches and burn down and tear up the artwork. The property belonged to God, not man, and God inspired those artists to paint Jesus, Mary, the Apostles, Disciples, Saints, and other bible characters etc... That came from a profound misunderstanding about what was happening in the hearts of the catholics and a lack of knowledge about the directives from God in scripture that involve art, and it also comes from only picking and choosing the scriptures about idolatry which in the bible was referring to pagan gods.

An apology for destroying paintings of Jesus in violence, intimidation through persecution and stoning, and burning down churches would be appreciated instead of a rationalization. I have a friend in Canada who is still joyful about the scattered remains of the Catholic churches and bits and pieces of christian statues that were destroyed. Why is it joyful to destroy someone else's property? That is how my cajun ancestors ended up in Louisiana. They were driven out at gunpoint for refusing to give up their Catholicism. How is that Spirit led to drive my ancestors out of their homelands at gunpoint and to confescate their property (theft), and leave them penniless and broke to start all over again in a new land?

Even Martin Luther, one of the Protestant reformers thought that behavior was wacky(the puritanical attitude that our creativity and the creation is evil was the problem, not catholicism...that is an early heretical Gnostic teaching that had taken root where only the unseen spiritual is good and that the seen creation where God expresses Himself is bad.)

Listen to Luther:

“I am not of the opinion” said Luther, “that through the Gospel all the arts should be banished and driven away, as some zealots want to make us believe; but I wish to see them all, especially music, in the service of Him Who gave and created them.” Again he says: “I have myself heard those who oppose pictures, read from my German Bible. … But this contains many pictures of God, of the angels, of men, and of animals, especially in the Revelation of St. John, in the books of Moses, and in the book of Joshua. We therefore kindly beg these fanatics to permit us also to paint these pictures on the wall that they may be remembered and better understood, inasmuch as they can harm as little on the walls as in books. Would to God that I could persuade those who can afford it to paint the whole Bible on their houses, inside and outside, so that all might see; this would indeed be a Christian work. For I am convinced that it is God’s will that we should hear and learn what He has done, especially what Christ suffered. But when I hear these things and meditate upon them, I find it impossible not to picture them in my heart. Whether I want to or not, when I hear, of Christ, a human form hanging upon a cross rises up in my heart: just as I see my natural face reflected when I look into water. Now if it is not sinful for me to have Christ’s picture in my heart, why should it be sinful to have it before my eyes?”

Therefore, I am glad that writer talks about the directives in scripture from God about artists roles in the church. Perhaps one day he will understand the need for illustrating the gospel and apologize on behalf of these zealots instead of accusing the artists for the destruction of what God had inspired and confess the sin of their ancestors, in the same way the Catholic church has apologized for the sins of the dark ages.

Anyway, I am not sorry my cajun ancestors were driven out, because God created something new, creative, spicy and festive in my home state as a result! I loved growing up in Louisiana, and had those Protestants in Canada not drove my ancestors out, I would not exist! There is a very strong Catholic presence in Louisiana and I enjoyed my upbringing at St. Margaret's in Lake Charles and the many festivities! Thankyou Canadian Protestants! While you laugh over the destruction of our old physical things, we party down here in Louisiana, and you are just missing out. Jesus liked to party too (aka the wedding at Cana) He could turn water into wine, and here in Louisiana He knows how to turn water into gumbo!





Here is Amazing Grace in cajun, along with evil nature background images that should be burned and banned because the creation is bad. Right?



The very nature and character of God is seen all throughout His created universe. Job remarked, “But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee” (Job 12:7–8).








The history of Iconoclasm (attacks on christian art)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconoclasm#Reformation_Iconoclasm

Here is an article written by an Evangelical exploring the relationship of art to God, and about human beings being created in the Image of the Creator. As a Catholic I include this because the Catholic Church teaches One Baptism, and that non-catholic christians also have the gift of the Holy Spirit, and to cut them off would be to inhibit the action of this creative action of God that is given to us in the Holy Spirit.

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/artandxn.html

You can compare what this Evangelical says to what Pope John Paul II said in his Letter to Artists and see how they agree. I post these different views to help me to get an overall picture of what all of christianity is saying about the arts and the part we should play in it, and I want to help all christians to not be afraid of expressing their faith through creative means. What he says below sounds awfully close to what Pope John Paul II said:

From the perspective of a Christian world view the answer is found in how we are created. Since we are made in God's image that must include the glorious concept that we too are creative. After creating man, God told him to subdue the earth and rule over it. Adam was to cultivate and keep the garden (Gen. 2:15) which was described by God as "very good" (Gen. 1:31). The implication of this is very important. God, the Creator, a lover of the beauty in His created world, invited Adam, one of His creatures, to share in the process of "creation" with Him. He has permitted humans to take the elements of His cosmos and create new arrangements with them. Perhaps this explains the reason why creating anything is so fulfilling to us. We can express a drive within us which allows us to do something all humans uniquely share with their Creator.

God has thus placed before the human race a banquet table rich with aesthetic delicacies. He has supplied the basic ingredients, inviting those made in His image to exercise their creative capacities to the fullest extent possible. We are privileged as no other creature to make and enjoy art.

There is a dark side to this, however, because sin entered and affected all of human life. A bent and twisted nature has emerged, tainting every field of human endeavor or expression and consistently marring the results. The unfortunate truth is that divinely-endowed creativity will always be accompanied in earthly life by the reality and presence of sin expressed through a fallen race. Man is Jekyll and Hyde: noble image-bearer and morally- crippled animal. His works of art are therefore bittersweet.

And what he said here is very true. There is a scriptural imperative for us in the area of the arts:

What does the Bible have to say about the arts? Happily, the Bible does not call upon Christians to look down upon the arts. In fact, the arts are imperative when considered from the biblical mandate that whatever we do should be done to the glory of God (I Cor. 10:31). We are to offer Him the best that we have-- intellectually, artistically, and spiritually. Further, at the very center of Christianity stands the Incarnation ("the Word made flesh"), an event which identified God with the physical world and gave dignity to it. A real Man died on a real cross and was laid in a real, rock-hard tomb. The Greek ideas of "other- worldly-ness" that fostered a tainted and debased view of nature (and hence aesthetics) find no place in biblical Christianity. The dichotomy between sacred and secular is thus an alien one to biblical faith. Paul's statement, "Unto the pure, all things are pure" (Titus 1:15) includes the arts. While we may recognize that human creativity, like all other gifts bestowed upon us by God, may be misused, there is nothing inherently or more sinful about the arts than other areas of human activity.

Here is an interesting article where Catholic Culture is interviewing traditional sacred artists.

http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=688&CFID=2724224&CFTOKEN=85923606


I don't believe abstract or contemporary art is bad in churches, but I believe they are right in saying that we have pretty much abandoned traditional art in churches in the West. Maybe it's because we are a Go Go culture where everyone is in a hurry and no longer having time to paint detailed art? I don't know, but I'm reading all of the arguments from all sides to try and get an overall picture of what is happening in the christian arts.

My art is all over the place, from abstract to realism, and I'm still waiting to see where God is going to direct me. I'm self taught, so I'm just going to keep studying about this.

Bible quotes to ponder:

Galatians 5:25 says, “If we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”

"I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." (John 14:16-18)

"The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you." (John 14:26)

"When He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come." (John 16:13)

Silent Prayer

Stages of prayer

Spiritual writers note three stages of prayer that overlap. First, there is vocal prayer -- a prayer of the lips, with stress on words recited or sung. The text may already be written, and is often beautiful and inspiring. There is also spontaneous vocal prayer.

The second stage is meditative prayer. This prayer is centered in your mind, which pictures and ponders, reflects and thinks of the Creator God’s wonderful actions. Your mind seeks understanding and insight. In meditation, your lips are quiet and your mind is active.

Finally, there is contemplative prayer. This is prayer of your heart that reaches out to God’s presence. The lips and mind come to rest as you simply gaze at God as your heart reaches out and your will seeks to be one with your Creator.

In The Cloud of Unknowing, a 14^th century treatise from the monastic tradition, contemplation is described as: "The awareness of God, known and loved at the core of one’s being."

When we seek this awareness and find it in faith, we speak of acquired contemplation. When God gives us the awareness in real experience, we speak of infused contemplation.

Compare vocal prayer to contemplative prayer. In vocal prayer, we say the words, "Our Father in heaven," but in contemplative prayer we go beyond words to an awareness of God’s presence deep within us, and we dwell in that presence.

If we compare meditative prayer to contemplative prayer, we find that instead of running over the truth reflectively, we come to a halt and gaze at the truth, awakening to God’s presence within.

Meditation can be compared to the activity that goes into painting a picture. Contemplative prayer is then a quiet looking at the completed picture, seeing it as a whole, becoming aware of the reality of the artist’s vision it portrays.

http://gbgm-umc.org/Response/articles/meditation.html




Galatians 5:25 says, “If we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”

Keeping Up With God by Mark Shea
http://catholicexchange.com/2009/01/04/113937/

Exodus 3:13-14
Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO AM.”

Yesterday we talked about time. Today’s Scripture points us to the only time that matters: the present. The ancients tended to be people who worshiped the past and constantly compared it favorably to the present In many ways, this was wise of them since it kept before their minds the gigantic reality of the Fall and of the constant decline of man in sinfulness. However, the worship of the past also could blind them when God was doing a new thing such as sending a prophet or His own Son. Conversely, we moderns are a people who worship the future and constantly compare it favorably to the present and, most especially, to the past. But God directs us primarily to the present. He names himself I AM not I WILL BE or I WAS. That is, all time is now for him and we, who cannot know all time as now, are bidden by him to pay attention to the bit of “now” that we do have access to. So our sins and glories of the past are best handled here, in the present, with repentance or thanksgiving. Likewise, our wisest response to the future is to abandon all worries about it, make prudent plans, trust Providence, and say, “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Then turn to Jesus who loves you — now — and remain with him moment by moment. Do that and you’ll get to heaven — one day at a time.

Celeste Zepponi talks about Art as Prayer on Sacred Heart Music Hour

http://www.celestezepponi.com/bio.html

She is completely right on!

This is sad

This is sad! Currently 80% of Catholics do NOT believe in the Real Presence in the Eucharist, even though that is the central part of our faith.

http://www.aquinasandmore.com/index.cfm/title/Christ-The-Miracle-Worker-in-the-Holy-Eucharist/FuseAction/store.ItemDetails/SKU/8297/

I've even talked to Protestants that DO believe in the Real Presence.

Go read John 6:66 in the bible!

If you can believe Jesus turned water into wine, and multiplied fish and loaves, healed the blind, the lame and lepers, brought Lazarus back from the dead, and also himself rose from THE DEAD, why not this too? Why turn away from him at that point after coming so far with him?






Jesus first repeated what he said, then summarized: "‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’" (John 6:51–52).

His listeners were stupefied because now they understood Jesus literally—and correctly. He again repeated his words, but with even greater emphasis, and introduced the statement about drinking his blood: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him" (John 6:53–56).

No Corrections

Notice that Jesus made no attempt to soften what he said, no attempt to correct "misunderstandings," for there were none. Our Lord’s listeners understood him perfectly well. They no longer thought he was speaking metaphorically. If they had, if they mistook what he said, why no correction?

On other occasions when there was confusion, Christ explained just what he meant (cf. Matt. 16:5–12). Here, where any misunderstanding would be fatal, there was no effort by Jesus to correct. Instead, he repeated himself for greater emphasis.

In John 6:60 we read: "Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’" These were his disciples, people used to his remarkable ways. He warned them not to think carnally, but spiritually: "It is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life" (John 6:63; cf. 1 Cor. 2:12–14).

But he knew some did not believe. (It is here, in the rejection of the Eucharist, that Judas fell away; look at John 6:64.) "After this, many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him" (John 6:66).

This is the only record we have of any of Christ’s followers forsaking him for purely doctrinal reasons. If it had all been a misunderstanding, if they erred in taking a metaphor in a literal sense, why didn’t he call them back and straighten things out? Both the Jews, who were suspicious of him, and his disciples, who had accepted everything up to this point, would have remained with him had he said he was speaking only symbolically.

Beautiful Christian Art Link!

http://studiobrien.com/site/index.php?option=com_ponygallery&Itemid=91

Art as Prayer

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines prayer as "the raising of one's mind and heart to God" (613) Art as prayer, therfore, is communication and expression in the form of a visual metaphor which is directed with the intention of our mind and heart toward God. To shift from art to art-as-prayer is a shifting of intention. It is not enough just to call it prayer and proceed. One must enter into the activity with a sincere, single-focused intention of seeking God. The overriding purpose is not to make art but to reach out to God. It is also not just to God, but with God, who is invited to share in the process of making, to guide and direct our efforts while we are working. It will be important to listen for God in the process as well as in the final product. ~ Jeri Gerding, Drawing to God, Art as Prayer, Prayer as Art

Unique talents

When you see a painting you are drawn into the beauty of its strokes and colors, the scene and story of it. And while you are relating to a work of art, enjoying its beauty, moved by its sadness, you are registering something about the painter, the artist, the author. So it is with you and me. God does not bring us into the family and say, "Well, you were a painting and you are a sculpture, but now that you are Christians, I need you all to be poems." You are a symphony, I am a poem, he is a barber-shop-quartet melody, she is a sculpture in bronze, and God is expressed through each of us. And God does an amazing thing. He puts all of these works of art together, and they form one perfect picture, the body of the Lord Jesus. ~ Alice Bass (The Creative Life - A Workbook for Unearthing the Christian Imagination)

It is in living and acting that man establishes his relationship with being, with the truth and with the good. The artist has a special relationship to beauty. In a very true sense it can be said that beauty is the vocation bestowed on him by the Creator in the gift of “artistic talent”. And, certainly, this too is a talent which ought to be made to bear fruit, in keeping with the sense of the Gospel parable of the talents (cf. Mt 25:14-30). Here we touch on an essential point. Those who perceive in themselves this kind of divine spark which is the artistic vocation—as poet, writer, sculptor, architect, musician, actor and so on—feel at the same time the obligation not to waste this talent but to develop it, in order to put it at the service of their neighbour and of humanity as a whole. ~ Pope John Paul II..

Abstract Art is NOT EVIL !

So, I'm doing my studies into religious art today, and many of these articles that I'm reading have writers who think that abstract art is evil or a degradation of creativity. I would like to pose a parable of Jesus rephrased in artistic terms.

The realist, the cubist, the symbolist, and the many other christian artists are standing around argueing who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus looks at the finger painting children and pulls them to his side and says "See to it that you do not despise one of these little ones, because the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these".

Y'all (yeah we say y'all in Texas)....YALL better watch your pride, because there very well might be a giant refrigerator in heaven with lots of finger painted abstracts on it, just like my refrigerator at home! I'm not gonna tell the kids their art is EVIL! What the heck is wrong with you people! What are you trying to do! Crush the little bud coming up through the soil before it has time to unflower?

Now I will be posting my children's abstract art soon. It's 'sacred art' TO ME! We sat and talked about God while they painted it, and about how God splashed around color in the heavens out in space. Don't you dare tell my children their art is evil or you are gonna be dealin' with mother bear!

Some folks can get so religious, that the religion replaces the Savoir and there is no charity left. Charity out of a pure heart is all God requires, and a little finger painting kid is capable of it!

Now throw your idols in the dust, and imagine this scene!

There is A GIANT TOWERING HUGE refrigerator in heaven with finger painted abstracts on it, and cute little handprints and footprints! Chew on that for a while! (Yes sweetie, your art is beautiful! Wow, what a great job!) or (get that finger painting out of my kitchen, it's evil) Which is the right approach for a Father or Mother to have towards their childrens creative efforts???????



Play is re-creation. the enormous range of depth of such recreation is often overlooked. Many see playing as a superficial or trivial act. I see it as a life-giving act. It
makes us young when we are old and matures us when we are young. ( Jerome Berrym)

“Notice the playfulness of nature: gurgling streams,
dancing light, humming birds, fluttering leaves, twinkling
stars. All creation wants to play with you.”
(Michael Joseph , Alive Now, 2007)

Tips from the Sisters, Servants of the Imacculate Heart of Mary on reconnecting with your childlike sense of play:

*Take some time and engage in your
favorite form of play.

* How does playing make your life more
abundant?

* List your favorite forms of entertainment.

* How does your “style of play” as an adult
differ from how you played as a child?

* How might you recapture the former
sense of play?

* What aspects of the Creator are mirrored in
your creativity?

* In what ways do you find yourself
unable to let go of your busy schedule
and just have fun?

* In what ways do your leisure activities help
you experience the world?

* In what unique ways have they helped you
experience God?



And here is an exherpt from Imagine - A Vision for Christians in the Arts, by Steve Turner

In my set of cirlces the outer ring is made up of art that doesn't suggest an obvious worldview, particularly if it's experienced out of the context of the rest of the artist's work. It could be someone playing bassoon in a school orchestra or dancing in a chorus line. It could be a nonsense song written for children, a portrait painting of a neighbor or a sculpture made out of an interesting piece of wood.

Of course, we may be able to detect a different slant; we may think that we can hear the accent of Jesus, but it is not overt. In the case of nonesense songs, we may point out that nonsense writing, by its very nature, reinforces logic, sense and order, but usually this sort of work is carried out in the spirit of play with no thought of any higher meaning.

This sort of art is justified by the things God himself made. Presumably marine ecology would be a simple science if all fish had been made in one color, and one design, but God, as I have already pointed out, likes to EXPERIMENT, embellish and impress. The different shapes and shades of leaves, the textures and smells of wood- all point to a God who loves design for its own sake. They are unsigned pieces of handiwork that give us insight into his character but tell us no more than that. They were made in a spirit of SHEER DELIGHT, and the fact that we do things in the same spirit should not surprise us. God could, of course, have left written messages all over creation, but he didn't.

Here is a favorite scene from a movie from my childhood. Here is a classical ballet dancer learning how to loosen up, go with the flow, and have fun!



And YO YO YO, Check it out! Check it out! Here is Pope JPII joining in with some hand jivin' If he can loosen up, you can too!



And I'm posting this just for the heck of it! I'm sick of the focus on who is the most talented artists! I think I'm gonna vote for these guys!



OTAY! Now, I hope you still don't believe abstract art is eeeevillll. If you still do, maybe you need to go back to Art 101 in Preschool, and start again!



Ahhhh! Peanut Butter Sandwiches! That's much better! Now that hit the spot!



Good day! Toodle doo!

I found a stained glass instructor on You Tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP7emsI35Yc

I want to take a class in making stained glass art one day.

There was something she said in this video about cutting glass that gave me an insight. She said that glass likes to fracture and break a certain way and really does not like to be cut against it's nature.

It made me think about how when God shapes us in order to allow his light to shine through us he respects our personalities. You can see this in the disciples that he chose. All of these various personalities of the disciples he chose seem to tell a story about our lives.

He would have shattered them in the same way glass is shattered if he would have stripped them of their unique personalities. Each of those personalities is like a color that God used to put a work of art together. The early disciples were the first Body of Christ as they partook of His Divine Presence in the Eucharist.

In the same way, God respects each of our personalities. Sin tarnishes our true personalities so that the light cannot shine through. The personality is not what is wrong, it is the dirt obstructing our unique color and tone of light. So, when Jesus restores us, we are able to shine together with our various unique colors and shapes as the Body of the Lord Jesus.

Which disciples personality do you identify the most with? There are times when I identify with Paul the Zealot, other times John that stayed with Jesus through his crucifixion. Those two I identify the most with for the most part because I tend to gravitate towards them. I wonder what color that would make if you mix the colors of Paul and John? Ha Ha!

Anyway, these are just thoughts out of the mind of a visual artist. This is just how I think.

I love this artist's work!

I'm going to show this video below to my kids when they get home from school! I've been teaching them about abstract painting, and gave them a 'class' yesterday. Taught them how to just go with the flow, play, and experiment and that they did not have to create a perfect copy from nature, but to rather paint with colors and shapes that want to flow out of them while they play with the paint. They fingerpainted and splashed paint around and pulled various objects through the paint to see what happens. Next, I want to show them how to move up the next step and make shape and forms and outline them like this guy does using that same 'go with the flow' approach. I will post our art lesson session later, but for now I want to post this to show you some art that is very cheerful and energetic. Art does not have to be realistic to play on our emotions and feelings and lift our spirit. I think this is why children are drawn to cartoons. We could all use a little bit of a return to what it was like to see the world through the eyes of a child.

Inspiration from a Jellyfish ;-)

www.amokarts.com

Worshipping God with all of our mind, heart and soul, INCLUDES right brained creative playful inventive imaginative activities

An exherpt from the Creative Call by Janice Elsheimer

Instead of enjoying the creative life God intends for us to have, we may be spending a great deal of time and energy burying our talents so we won't be distracted from the sensible business of life - our careers, friendships, families; our school, church, social, and financial obligations. Without realizing it we have wrapped up our imaginations and talents into neat little packages and stored them somewhere out of our range of consciousness. Paying attention to those important obligations in life is reasonable and responsible, and we'd be remiss if we didn't attend to them. But by not acknowledging that our gifts are a part of God's purpose for us, we stop exercising our playful, inventive, imaginative selves and instead focus only on the necessities of making a living, a home, a family, and a place for ourselves in the grown-up world.

Sometimes our closets, attics, and garages get so full of stuff that we no longer know what we have, and if we do, we no longer where to find it. By the time we need something, it has been shoved so far behind our more current vintage possessions that we have to disassemble our entire closet, attic, or garage just to get to it. Similarly, when we bury our talents, we let more urgent activities and responsibilites pile up in front of our creative lives until the artist self is shoved to the back of the closet. Burying our talents is not something most of us have done on purpose; it is just something that gradually happens.


And a quote from Pope John Paul II:

It is in living and acting that man establishes his relationship with being, with the truth and with the good. The artist has a special relationship to beauty. In a very true sense it can be said that beauty is the vocation bestowed on him by the Creator in the gift of “artistic talent”. And, certainly, this too is a talent which ought to be made to bear fruit, in keeping with the sense of the Gospel parable of the talents (cf. Mt 25:14-30). Here we touch on an essential point. Those who perceive in themselves this kind of divine spark which is the artistic vocation—as poet, writer, sculptor, architect, musician, actor and so on—feel at the same time the obligation not to waste this talent but to develop it, in order to put it at the service of their neighbour and of humanity as a whole.

And four songs to inspire my creative friends to take their creativity out of that attic or closet, dust it off, and use it!

Melody of You
http://www.youtube.com/wat....ch?v=Noqsmbq84VA

The Painter Song
http://www.youtube.com/wat....ch?v=4t-gKP-BOyo

Art in Me
http://www.youtube.com/wat....ch?v=x_9-npiaZoc

Add to the Beauty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBhaX0eDBbY

And a video about right brain education: (God made this part of us too...it's not useless)