God absolutely and totally enjoys being God, and part of God’s joy is expressed in creating. I believe my being an artist is a share in that joy. My ministry is to serve others with my art by sharing my vision and creativity with them as they share their vision and creativity with me.
Whenever I meet people who enjoy creating, whether it be sacred art, liturgical art, or art like none of these, I believe that these people are serving everyone in deeply responsible and valuable ways.
What can some of these ways be? Art ministry can provide people with spirituality through creative growth in the arts. It can encourage them to discover their own giftedness. It can free people’s spiritual hungers in beautiful and glorious ways by teaching them new awareness, new being.
An Art ministry can quench people’s thirst for God and God’s graces through music, poetry, and play. In some cases, art actually enlists people to focus their energies, to expand their circle of life, to gather in the poor and deprived for whom the arts are often only a distant dream.
We all need to invite one another to give art a place in our lives. In order to cultivate discerning hearts, some good questions to ask ourselves might be these: Does creating bring more joy and beauty into my heart? Does it make me more participatory and selfless? Does doing art slow me down so that I may savor the present moment? Has any artistic thing I have done grown out of my prayer life? Does the time it takes to be involved draw me away from spiritual laziness and death and toward spiritual energizing?
Additional questions might be these: Does my kind of art entice me to adventure into wisdom, leaving clichés, lukewarmness, and mediocrity behind? Does art help me to change my priorities? Does art bring me closer to my neighbor and my God? Finally, does it draw me closer to the mystery of Jesus and His gift of deep peace?
Recognition of our needs, hungers, wishes, and dreams, must come from within us in order to arouse our energy to serve the “dear neighbor”.
Using art to witness to the sacredness of life is one of my priorities. In prayer alone with God and the Scriptures, unusual things happen. I believe that my art rises out of my prayer life and the pieces that mean a lot to me are the ones that continue to haunt me in my daily choices.
It is an amazing thing to put something together in a new way, something that has never existed before in such an arrangement! What is often more amazing are the responses of viewers as they bring their inner richness to the art and see what I have not yet seen.
In the midst of the current spiritual darkness in society that could depress us, we must continue to surround ourselves with life-giving art that challenges us to keep going on our journey; art that may not be soothing or harmonious but rather sometimes harshly enlightening; art that turns on the spiritual light. This is what I aim to do no matter how constrained I sometimes feel by limitations of life and laws.
No artist is ever fully satisfied with the way the art turns out, but I like to think that someday when I arrive in heaven, God will surprise me by having some of my best art there waiting for me. In fact, I think that we will be truly overwhelmed by all that our generous, loving, and creative God has in store for all of us. A fragment of scripture that stays with me is this: “Without Him was made nothing that has been made.”
