If we are to change our world view, images have to change.
The artist now has a very important job to do.
We are not little peripheral figures entertaining rich people.
We are really needed.
-David Hockney-
I’m sticking with my view that everyone is an artist; but most of us don’t know it and those that do have a difficult time owning it. As artists, we make things out of nothing. We invent from our experiences and imaginations. We see with eyes that are both rational and beyond the rational into a world that is both known and unknown. We are the visionaries that see beyond what is to what can be, and often times, make it so.
We do all this through picture, story, drama, music, healing, wonderment, silence, voice, instruments, experiment, walking, sitting, moving, sculpting, building, tearing down, reconfiguring and exploring every discipline that can be imagined and is beyond the imagination. We do not settle for what someone else dictates. We are not afraid to fail because we know that failures are portals to new discoveries and possibilities.
We change the world through our varied perceptions of all that is and is not. We do not allow ourselves to be dumbed down. If necessary, we go underground, but eventually we have to let the art that lives within come out into the open. We finally stop being intimidated by our own critical thoughts and those who look over our shoulders. Waking up to who we really are and our mission to enlarge the views of the conditioned masses; we do what we must with passion, spirit and verve because we cannot not do it.
We recognize the importance of the artist in the world. We challenge the status quo, the images of how others see the world, which is no small thing but a very big thing, a very important thing and an essential thing for the conscious evolution of the global community. We make life together and discover a humility that is often the door to mastery and surprising accomplishments. Often our progress is made in baby steps that we fail to see and know. Healing comes through our work in visible and invisible ways!
We carry on in spite of the battles we fight with ourselves and our culture. We learn to gently embrace the obstacles as we find allies along the way. We discover community where we thought there was none. We learn to share our gifts. We come together in strange and wonderful ways with the most unsuspecting characters and begin to recognize a fellowship of creatives. Waking up and doing our work becomes easier, more fluid, more free from the oppression we’ve suffered as artists of new creations.
If any of what I’m saying touches you, give thanks and recognize that you are waking up to the ‘Who That Is You’, the ‘Thee that is We.’ You are awakening to the Wealth, Opportunity, Wisdom and Well-being of an artist in the 21st century called into companionship and conscious contact with the power of the Divine, the Essence of Being, the Source of Light drawing us Home… Blessing All Ways and everywhere!!!
Fr. Rick Meyers+