“True art is impserishable and the true artist finds profound delight in grand productions of genius.”
“Continue to translate yourself to the heaven of art, there is no more undisturbed, unmixed, purer happiness than may thus be attained.”
“Truth exists for the wise, beauty for the susceptible heart. They belong together, are complementary.”
Rembrandt – The Holy Family (detail) – WGA19129 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Beauty of God , Theology and the Arts edited by Daniel J. Treier, Mark Husbands and Roger Lundin
In this wonderful book I found a comparison of two paintings of the Holy
Family one by Rembrandt and one by Nicholas Poussin.
While Poussin presents the viewer with idealized figures in a harmoniously balanced and orderly setting. Rembrandt renders the image of the family in terms of the household of a Dutch working family. From the academic point of view as informed by its then notion of beauty, Rembrandt’s work falls far short. But does it? scholar Jakob Rosenberg observed many years ago, in Rembrandt’s work spiritual truth-with roots in the Bible_trumps a classicist sense of beauty based on a fully controlled order. Rosenberg argued that since for Rembrandt the essence of truth about man and nature lies in the ultimate relationship of everything created to the Creator, Rembrandt accepts all things, beautiful or not, their mere existence makes them worth while, as issuing from God. This according to Rosenberg, also explains the formal quality of Rembrandt’s art. Forms, in his compositions are not allowed to become too definite or to have finality, since this would break their contact with the life process. if Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro has any deeper purpose, it is this to suggest to keep alive these mysterious relationships, so true yet so impenetrable for the purely rational approach, so strongly felt by the artist’s intuitive and religious mind yet closed to the view of the aesthete and the classicist who insist upon beauty and a fully controlled order.”
These thoughts come after reading principles in a letter by Pope Francis.
Peace is greater than conflict,
the whole is greater than the parts,
action is greater than ideas and
time is greater than space.
Albert Bloch, Munich (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Waif of that elder world of space and glamour
Outcast within this other world’s confine,
You fashioned from its chaos and its clamour
Your world of wonder, leaving it to shine
Pale radiance on the world, and to draw near it
Those whose wild laughter, muted to a smile
Wan-broken, wakes to tears when you beguile
With your immortal waywardness their spirit.
Singer of numb despair and mad release,
Always the sun throbs through your melancholy,
Always the rain sobs through your gayest folly-
You who knew never peace bring always peace.
And solace always to my bleakest mood
And benediction on my solitude.
This sonnet to Chopin appears in Portraits and People and was composed by Albert Bloch
Nederlands: Overgenomen van :en:Image:Ampersand.jpg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Wabi & Sabi
Affirmation & melancholy
Sacred & tarnished
Evanescent & tentative
Ephemeral & earthly
Refusal of transformation
Irregardless of delectation
English: Seascape Polski: Krajobraz morski (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is a blessing of Macrina Wiederkehr
O colors of earth, anoint me and robe me with all the attributes I need for my life work: purple for wisdom, meditation , transformation, and spirituality. Red for passion, energy and courage. Blues and greens for calm restfulness, balance, healing, hope, serenity, and contemplation. Golden yellows for optimism and joy, lucidity, compassion and illumination, and orange for animation, creativity and enthusiasm. Black and white for death and life, power and innocence, mysticism and truth.
All of nature send your mystical energy upon my work. Rocks, precious stones, pebbles, air, wind, breezes, storms, earth, flowers, trees, plants, water lakes, ponds, rivers oceans, streams, brooks, fire, moon and stars, sun volcanoes, bonfires, burning candles, quiet lights, and bright lights
O let everything that is good bless my work.
English: A portrait of John Coltrane by Paolo Steffan (amateur painter, Wikipedia user), 2007. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is another offering from the Journal of Poetry and Jazz. Maybe listen to some Coltrane while reading it. The author is Cheryl Whithead and is from a poem called Impressions.
On the nights I’m loneliest, I listen to a recording of Coltrane and Dolphy
playing a concert in Copenhagen with Jones,
Workman and Tyner. After a false start,
Trane speaks to the audience. thank you very kindly,
ladies and gentlemen, he says, and the South
pours over the stage floor like a river cresting its banks.
When the applause stops, he starts to play__
slightly arching his back, he looms, tall
and wide-bodied, tenor in his hands.
Through that horn, he calls to Eric D.,
who answers him note for note on the alto,
the knot on his forehead bulging like a root
pushing at muddy ground.
Trumpet with paper straight mute inserted; below are (left to right) straight, wah-wah (Harmon), and cup mutes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Jazz at the Plaza (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is a poem found in a journal of Jazz and Literature called “Brilliant Corners”. The author of the poem is Joel Dias-Porter I put in ( ) what scripture it suggested to me
“Did Miles mute his horn, because
a breeze can carry kites a gust might mutilate?”
(He did not even bend a reed)
Call him poet, professor. Call me shaky grasper of the chisel,
caught in a run-on rush to hammer it all.
(I ran a good race, to the end)
Finally, finally, I come to believe in loss as a way of knowing.
(I consider all loss as gain)
How long does it take to hear what silence can say?
(Be still and know)
I stand at a stoplight, waiting for the colors to change.
At forty-five one has to deal with eyesight fading.
(I see dimly through a glass)
Not fading like blue from the knees of your favorite jeans
or lights on a stage above a silenced microphone,
but like a goateed poet in a stingy brim hat
covering the bets of a hooded man with holes for eyes
and blades of scythes where his fingernails should be.
Finally, finally, I come to believe in loss as a way of knowing.
If the Blues is a river, doesn’t it carry in and wash away?
(What have you come here to see)
LEDs are replacing halogen and incandescent lamps,
so the headlights of some approaching cars are slightly blues
as his velvet tone joins the voices of all my fallen fathers.
(Father forgive them)
And I tremble ever so softly, softly, like a kite in a breeze
or the reed in a Harmon mute during a note’s last linger.
(All these things will pass but love will remain)
Finally, finally… I come to believe in loss as a way of knowing
(follow him)
Finely, finally.
Allegory of hope; Oil on canvas, Francesco Guardi, 1747 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Turn everything over in the interior garden. Leave everything in the care of Christ the gardener. cultivate hope in the living garden.
Hope is the bridge from faith to love. The new self is open to delight in all earthly and heavenly things, preparing us to take on God’s feelings for the universe.
The self is silently being worked on beyond the self experience that blocked encounter with the other. We have the capacity to be allured by the future.
We don’t see clearly but we see joyfully. We see the promise that comes to us from the future.
Hope is the key through the impasse. When memory becomes a silent place, hope takes over. The burden and pleasure of the past can inhibit creative response to the present. The past is replaced by renewed confidence and purpose and potential. God is the goal of all human hoping. It is God’s doing but we must do all we can.
Deutsch: Burg Hohenzollern Türkçe: Stuttgart yakınında Bisingen belediyesinde bulunan Hohenzollern Kalesi. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Wisdom comes in a box with 750 pieces. These Autumn nights leave me with the compulsion to work on the Hohenzollern Castle. Maybe I will learn about patience.
I have learned that I can be easily encouraged by the smallest successes.
I have learned that I must look closely, very, very closely.
I have learned that if I persist in only one way I will fail to see things from another perspective
I trust that I have not been sold a puzzle that has missing pieces.
There is a big picture and it is fun to discover it.
Astronomy For Beginners (Photo credit: AndyRobertsPhotos)
At dusk at the moment when the sun disappears, The night is bathed in stillness and the immensity of sky, waves and stars take over. I went and sat down at the dock and contemplated the luminous moon trail over the water for a long time. It seemed like a path of grace to guide me. I made the promise never to leave this path that would lead me to the eternal shore.
Lavender Turquois 