“…as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday, far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

(thanks, Kim, for sending us this amazing quote)

The ancient narrative of Genesis affirms that we were created in the image of God, who is the ultimate artist (Gen. 1:27) We were made for creativity and freedom, to be collaborators with God in the ongoing work of creation. Our creativity and freedom are often blocked by dark imaginations and the shadows of selfish will. If we were made to work on the open canvas of creation, we have too often exchanged that canvas for a coloring book, assuming that is all comes down to whether we color inside or outside the lines. Continue reading →

The loss of creativity is where many of us most feel our spiritual need. Visit an art museum in any large city and you will see that it has become a temple where the artists are saints and deities and their collected works are objects of ritualized ceremony. We enjoy the unbridled liberty of the “rock star” artist, who is able to channel inspiration like an epiphany. I wouldn’t be the first to suggest that the quest for artistic freedom is a veiled hunger for God because, as an imprint on our being, creativity is closely linked to spirituality.

– Mark Scandrette in Soul Graffiti, p. 122

“First, the Bible is a great literary work filled with poetry, songs, stories, parables, history, apocalyptic drama, and wisdom literature. Second, the very people who pride themselves on being focused on the Word often come perilously close to practicing a form of Gnosticism that overvalues the spiritual and eschews the material. But the Word became flesh! The Incarnation proves that the divine can be communicated through the material — color, sound, texture, words printed on paper, the movement of the body.”

from Chasing Francis by Ian Morgan Cron