The word integrity has two meanings. The first is "honesty"... We have to be honest in facing our limitations, in facing the sheer complexity of the world, honest in facing criticism even of things which are deeply precious to us. But integrity also means wholeness, oneness, the desire for single vision, the refusal to split our minds into separate compartments where incompatible ideas are not allowed to come into contact. An undivided mind looks in the end for an undivided truth, a oneness at the heart of things. The whole intellectual quest, despite its fragmentation, despite its limitations and uncertainties, seems to presuppose that in the end we are all encountering a single reality, and a single truth.
~ from CONFESSIONS OF A CONSERVATIVE LIBERAL by Joel Habgood
The recovery of faith in our creativity and in the artist within each of us and the artists among all of us is no small thing. It has to do with the rekindling of the spark of hope and vision, of adventure and blessing, that a tired civilization needs...
The recovery of faith in our creativity
and in the artist within each of us and
the artists among all of us is no small
thing. It has to do with the rekindling of
the spark of hope and vision, of
adventure and blessing, that a tired
civilization needs...
If it is true, as Paul says, that "we are
God's work of art," then everything we
have said about art as meditation applies
to the delight, wonder, admiration,
surprise that God takes at our birth and
continual unfolding.
Compassion is a kind of fire—it disturbs, it surprises, it ignites, it burns, it sears, and it warms. Compassion incinerates denial; it especially warms and melts cold hearts, cold structures, frozen minds, and self-satisfied lifestyles. Those touched by compassion have their lives turned upside down.
One hundred years ago the painter and poet William Blake lamented the ever-increasing violence of industrial society with these words: "Art degraded, Imagination Denied, War Govern'd the Nations." The dominance of war and war mentalities... all this is the price we have paid in the West for denying imagination, repressing or forgetting it, and thereby degrading art… To create is always to learn, to begin over, to begin at zero... With art as meditation we truly listen to the cosmos within us and around us and give birth to the ongoing cosmogenesis of our world...
If human beings knew that good and powerful beings were watching us, maybe we would stand up more erect and be more beautiful ourselves. We would be inspired to live up to our dignity.
To study angels is to shed light on ourselves, especially those aspects of ourselves that have been put down in our secularized civilizations, our secularized educational systems, and even our secularized worship system. By secularization, I mean anything that sucks the awe out of things.
We need a deep mystical awakening the likes of which the planet has never witnessed before -- a mystical awakening that is truly planetary, that draws out the wisdom and the mystic, the player and the justice maker from the wisdom traditions of all religions and cultures. Such a mystical awakening would surely birth that "peace on earth" for which creation longs. ... Peace ON earth cannot happen without peace WITH the earth and peace among all earth creatures.
All persons are both artist and mystic because all are called to be in touch with the true self, the deep experience that is theirs, and to utter images from that silent space.
Returning to the source of one's being is rarely an experience that can be expressed in words. Kabir says, 'Those who have had a taste of this love are so enchanted that they are stricken with silence.' Have you ever been 'stricken with silence'? If so, you have tasted the ineffable; you have had a mystical experience. Silence is too often defined as 'the absence of something' when it is much more than that. Silence is also a search for something, a search for the depths, for the source ... Silence moves people. Being, one my say, is silent. We must embrace silence in order to express being. Then -- and only then -- does it speak deep truths to us ...
~ from THE COMING OF THE COSMIC CHRIST by Matthew Fox
