Art, have you noticed any?
Art is not limited to professionals who display their designs in studios. Truthfully, if art is limited to professionals something is lost. And yet it is art, Fine Art, that elevates and keeps life from becoming boring or irrelevant.To live is to be creative. Life is the greatest work of art there is. Our soul is a masterpiece. To live is to continue to express the art from within one's own soul. Our souls are a work of art that continues to reveal the artist in every detail of life.What is truly captivating in any work of art is the attention to detail. Far too often we are captivated by the big moments of our lives and miss those ordinary moments that have a far more profound effect on our souls than we could ever imagine. Many a soul has limited art to a museum, when in case and point real art is very much alive.Art, good art, invites me into the mystical, contemplative realm of the Spirit of God. This is a rare event in most human lives. And yet it is in these moments that life is intensified, magnified, perhaps even revealed to us in it's fullest.Art can provide vision... vision that enables us to see more clearly. Art can open up life to us and things that, moments ago were unknown are suddenly within our grasp. We can taste it, see it, know it... goodness, beauty, truth all come flooding into those deep places of our soul.The emptiness is gone. The art, the music, the sound.... opened my soul to the eternal, invisible, Love of the One who created all things.We live in a world where beauty is an accessory. In the cold reality of budget cuts, it is the arts that lose. Now, don't get me wrong I love sports, (just ask anyone). But our soul is nurtured by beauty! When we neglect our soul we insure our demise. Just remember when you watched that sunset over the water, or that water fall cascade over the mountain. Beauty fills and floods the human soul.Just as food sustains your physical body, images sustain your soul. If we lack beauty in our lives our souls will shrivel up! Our souls crave it and in the absence of beauty our souls will develope symptoms that can paralyze our lives. We must recover our appreciation for beauty, for the arts.Each of us have been captured by a view. We've pulled to side of the road and looked over a view that fed our soul. This is the arresting power of beauty! We must give in to these moments that pull us into those deep places of our being.I have become increasingly aware of these moments, the smile of a grandchild, the laugh of an old saint, the sun as it rises over the trees.... Glimpses of Grace contained in the ordinary! The unseen Glory of the God of Heaven reveals Himself to me in His Handiwork. His art, His beauty, His goodness, His truth, floods the world around me if only I take pause.... and rest in His beauty!Awe, at last I might be old enough to say yes I appreciate art!