These are dry times. Summer slips away faster than you can catch it – a dime down the drain. The sky hangs damp and icy today. Across the globe, powerful little men toy with the world’s future like it’s a game of chicken. Hurricanes have ravaged large parts of our earth. Families will suffer the effects for years to come. Terrorists won’t let London sleep.
This planet can get so ugly. So broken. So disordered. So many of our mirrors are shattered.
There is order in beauty. A divine order, I believe, but whatever your theology you can feel it. The affirmation of disparate parts falling into place.
Jennifer Berkenbosch’s Cultivar matters because the world needs beauty today. We need to be reminded that there is goodness. There is a solid bed beneath this wild river.
You may be well on your way to a year of good reading or you may need a little nudge. Here are 11 quotes to draw you toward a cozy chair under soft orange light. 11 reminders that reading is important. Reading transforms us.
You have something to say–why not say it here? Email your blog post idea to dave@bleedingheartart.space and let's chat.
Here, in the gathering dark, can I share some sparks of hope? Can we build a fire to warm ourselves with wise words as our kindling?
Here are eleven little lights for this eleventh month. Eleven quotes from eleven creative voices. May each bring you hope this morning.
You have something to say–why not say it here? Email your blog post idea to dave@bleedingheartart.space and let's chat.
It’s hard to believe summer–that Edmonton ‘Unobtanium'–is half over. Or for the optimists among us, half begun.
Of course, our summers are longer than we give credit for. It could hit plus 27 many days in September. It may not snow until after Halloween. But still. If we cannot wallow here in the frozen north, what have we got?
I’m here to save you from aimless wallowing. To take my big blogging hand and point you in five wonderful directions–towards art, faith, hope and love–this Friday.
You have something to say–why not say it here? Email your blog post idea to dave@bleedingheartart.space and let's chat.
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.”
To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.
Leonard Bernstein (via 99u)
Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
go throw your TV set away,
and in its place you can install,
a lovely bookshelf on the wall.
If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
Ivan Turgenev
And when people cease to believe that there is good and evil
Only beauty will call to them and save them
So that they still know how to say: this is true and that is false.
Czeslaw Milosz, One more day from New and Collected Poems, 1931-2001 (via Edward Van Vliet)
If the word of God were proclaimed in the modern world no one would hear it; there is too much noise.
Therefore create silence.
Soren Kierkagaard
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?
You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.
George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah
... the one thing you can do right now is keep going. And when you keep going, eventually, you will be able to look at a piece of your work, step back and say,
“That’s beautiful.”
Ian Harber, writing for Socality
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
You have something to say–why not say it here? Email your blog post idea to dave@bleedingheartart.space and let's chat.
It's #ArtsTalkTuesday. This week I want you to dig deep and find the best art – or arts and faith – quotes you can manage. Are there words that have formed you? Words you are still wrestling through?
I'll start with this revelatory bit of prose written by dancer Martha Graham to her friend, Agnes de Mille. Read it, and take a deep breath.
There is a vitality,
a life force,
a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique.And If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.
The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine
how good it is
nor how valuable it is
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly
to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate YOU.
Keep the channel open...
No artist is pleased...
There is no satisfaction whatever at anytime
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction
a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes "us" MORE alive than the others.- Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille
shared by Over The Rhine at Glen Workshop, summer 2014
More at http://marthagrahamletter.blogspot.ca/
Your turn!
You have something to say–why not say it here? Email your blog post idea to dave@bleedingheartart.space and let's chat.
