Let’s have a new conversation, shall we?  Let’s talk about the power of art to move and change and improve the quality of our lives and the lives of others all around the world.  If we really want to engage in a conversation around something that can more fully save lives, offer shelter, open windows, eradicate poverty of the mind, body, and spirit and free us to savor the liberties Americans espouse … then let’s talk art.
 
Over the week-end, I had the privilege of attending two artistic events. The first was the Louisa County Public Schools Arts Festival.  No longer held at the High School which was lost to the 2011 Earthquake, this event took place in the Middle School which served as a fine exhibit hall. And among the hundreds of pieces of art displayed, I encountered throngs of people. There were grandparents and babes in arms.  There were children pulling parents by the hands to show where their own art was displayed.  There were teachers and nurses and computer wizards and plumbers and farmers… all walking around witnessing beauty and skill and patience and imagination and possibilities.  Oh, and by the way, you could create art of your own while you were there.  You could lose yourself as you made a basket or wound paper into shapes or created a colorful abstract to hang in your window.  People showed up for the love of art and for the love of children, and my friends, art and children should always walk hand in hand.
 
In the evening, I attended the Ashland Musical Variety Show.  It was a fundraiser for the Hanover Arts and Activity Center which is in need of a new roof. Want to know what I found there? I, again, found folks of all ages and all walks of life both in the audience and on stage.  There was singing and dancing and entertainment filled with so much fun that I would imagine even Eeyore, Oscar the Grouch, the Grinch, and Cruella Deville finding their happy places.  Grown men in flowered swim caps reenacting the best of synchronized swimmers, women reminding themselves and all of us of the work and fun that only women can fully appreciate as they belted out “I’m a Woman,” a barbershop quartet (made up of about 20) singing harmonies that surely touched those honored at Heaven’s gates… songs out of the 60s made fresh with new boots and new voices as we all tapped our toes to “These Boots are Made for Walking”.  And sweet young faces of children singing great Americana songs as they waved their red, white, and blue flags.

And so… how might events like these make a difference in our world?  What true merit is there to songs that hang in the air and canvas covered in paint that could readily be shoved to the back of a closet?  What does it matter that events like this take place all over the world in fancy theaters and small mud huts?  It’s that people decide to reveal themselves in their purest.  It’s that something in me wants to connect… to my own truth and to the truth that lives in you.  It’s that we were created out of the imagination of a Divine Source to be more than facts and figures, more than our smallest thoughts, more than the horror we are also capable of.

Art is alive and it gives us life.  It takes us back to something that we often cannot name or articulate.  It sends us into action so that we can bear what we cannot bear.  We throw the paint, we bang the drum, we rise to our toes, we hum, we sculpt, we pour out words that simply must breathe air, and we find ourselves.  And in doing this, we feel capable.  We feel safe. We grow wiser and deeper and more compassionate.  We figure out how to sustain ourselves when nothing else sustains.  And last but not least, we ignite joy.
 
Still, some will ask how art actually evokes the virtues most needed in the world.  How, literally, does art transform war to peace, illness to health, or poverty to well-being?  How can we prove the merits of something so esoteric? We prove it by imagining life without it.  We prove it by honoring and acknowledging the artistic moments that take our breath away, that stir us to tears, that cause our bellies to hurt from the laughter that has been evoked by the sheer willingness of art to delight.  We prove the merits of art by embracing the fact that we are a people of creative minds and hearts and this world and the lives we live in it are so much more than what can be proven.  What is true is that when we shut out the most alive parts of ourselves, when we fail to touch or be touched, when life is narrowed to only this way or that… our humanity is lost to that which keeps us from truly knowing one another.
 
There are lots of debates taking place in our world. The right to bear art… simply shouldn’t be one of them. 
Art, in its finest efforts, is a bridge of understanding that can reveal the answers this tired, worn world seeks. 
May it be so. May it be so.

We all come into this world in a similar fashion… warm from the womb, all covered in the sticky blood through which our mother fed us.  We come through her into the light, into life anointed by the passage from what is known to what is unknown.  We travel these winding paths over and over again as we live our days… from what is safe, known, and undisturbed to what is mysterious, gracious, and unraveling. And as we meander from here to there, God spreads wide the crevices where our humanity softens and draws more eagerly toward the Divinity we knew prior to light and breath.
 
Always, we yearn to return here.  Our minds may not always realize this or find ways to articulate such need, but our souls are drenched enough in the Holy that we find our way instinctively and primally.We may not even know this is what we most need or want.  We may not know it until we are there, peering into this open space.  We may not grasp the messages, teaching, or healing until years later when something wild and mysterious stirs again.  But we are changed in these sacred moments.  We are uncovered.  We are revealed.  We are made new.
 
The priest with the holy oil.  The hands that reach to touch.  The ancient scent of dust and light.  The way our friend cups our shoulders.  The rain on our cheeks.  The sighing.  The dancing. The birdsong present every day, but heard today.  The rising up from sleep.  The tearing, the fire, the deepest dark.  The pain that will not leave.  God stands ready, close to our ears, close to our hearts.  Like a mother wiping her hands from the kitchen sink, God comes close to us, strokes our brows… she comes away with us from what is ordinary and holds us close to what is extraordinary.  Her love.  Her belief in us.  Her knowledge that we are created out of beauty and joy and generosity for beauty and joy and generosity.  She wills us to follow the tiny threads that lead us home… to her.

This is all we ever want or need.  This is the anointing that sustains our living and our loving.  And by this we are whole.  By this we are inhalation and exhalation.  By this, we are lost and found and lost and found until all of it is where God is.  All of it… is where God is.  Fear not the coming close.

I have wanted to write about this image all week. I was driving to work one morning just craving space and silence and presence… to my own life, to my own soul. I was on the edge of tears mostly because I love people so much, and yet, my own existence is sometimes lost in such love.  (And even as I write those words, I think…what a beautiful lostness!)  I know myself well enough to know that when I cannot find space for walks in nature, when I grow too tired to pray, when I choose television over Mark Nepo, Mary Oliver, or Anne Lamott… I am in
trouble. And that was one of those mornings… I realized the trouble, but I still had to go to work, I still needed
to tend others, I still needed to give the next 10 hours over to that ‘something else.’
 
But then, I came upon these cows standing out in an open field.  They were black, and the field was covered with snow.  And bam… there it was… space and silence and presence.  I stopped my car.  I stood there just breathing in their puffs of smoky, cold air.  I listened to their sighing, their calling to one another.  I let the extremes of black against white turn something in me.  And I thought to myself, “I see these cows in this field every day.  But
today the snow brought me present to them.  The gift of tiny, tiny snowflakes merging together into this wide angle lens of heaven has helped me see, has helped me live my life in this small moment.”

And as I drove home at the end of that busy day, I stopped here once again and took this photograph.  Since then, I have looked at this image many, many times.  I could do for a big, fat chunk of time all to myself.  I would really appreciate the magic elves showing up while I sleep and cleaning my house. I would love to share my life with that mysterious man who has yet to arrive all soulful and generous and grounded. My art studio is lonely for my imagination and my books are stacked waiting for my eyes.  But as this busy, giving, sometimes lonely woman, I am thankful that I am still wise enough and open enough to be nourished by sights like this.
 
The other thing I have been pondering is the gift of black and white.  I like living in the grey.  I believe there are very few matters in life that are either white or black.  Oh, yes…and you know I have to say from my bright-eyed self…that there are a multitude of colors in which to stand.  But there was something that morning about the black and the white and the fact that together they got my attention, how they together had something to say to me.  I don’t know that I have completely worked this through, but there is a divine spark here that has something to do with coming together.  The black and the white do not need to merge, perhaps. They do not need to give up their own identities and become grey.  They simply need to be present enough to one another that they bring forward the absolute beauty in each.  The white holds out the glory of the black, and the black raises up the wonder of the white.  And in all of this is my lesson.  The lesson is: If I can just show up, if I can keep my heart and soul tender enough, if I can decide that what is before me is everything… I will find life enough to sustain and yes… to overwhelm… and to bring the peace that I seek.  Everywhere is grace.  Everywhere there are answers.  Everywhere, God stands ready and eager to hold us up, to bear our sorrows, to bless us with beauty and love and life.

I am praying that you and I together can just look, just open our eyes and see that what we seek is always available to us. And if the urge ever comes your way to pull your car over on the side of the road and watch the cows… I highly recommend it.