[Personal Note]
I don't know if you recall, but I wrote an inspirational message to
everybody a few months ago. I have this thing, you see: I like making
people feel good about what they do. Weird, huh? Anyway, I found this a
few weeks ago and I want to share it with you to inspire you. OK?

[Introduction]
Did you know that the Pope has written to me, to Ken, to Lance, to
Gilles, and all of us here? Yes. The Pope wrote a letter to Artists this
year. I read it. I like it. I would like to share a few lines of it here
that touched me. It doesn't matter what religion you belong to. These
lines are universal. I have cut them randomly from the letter, so there
might not be too much continouity. I hope you like these thoughts as
much as I have. They are good. Please take your time when reading this.
Give yourself time to reflect on each one. If you can't read them all
now, come back later, the message won't go away.

Well, here we go:

//Begin

The human craftsman mirrors the image of God as Creator.

The artist has a special relationship to beauty.

None can sense more deeply than you, artists, the ingenious
creators of beauty that you are, something of the pathos
with which God at the dawn of creation looked upon the work
of His hands.

With loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the human
artist a spark of His own supassing Wisdom, calling him to
share in His creative power.

Those who perceive in themselves this kind of divine spark
which is the artistic vocation feel at the same time the
obligation not to waste this talent, but to develope it,
in order to put it at the service of their neighbour and
of humanity as a whole.

Artists, the more conscious they are of their gift, are led
all the more to see themselves and the whole of creation
with eyes able to contemplate and give thanks, and to raise
to God a hymn of praise.

We are speaking not of moulding oneself, of forming one's
own personality, but simply of actualizing one's productive
capacities, giving aesthetic form to ideas conceived in the
mind.

In producing a work, artists express themselves to the point
where their work becomes a unique disclosure of their own
being, of what they are and of how they are what they are.

For him art offers both a new dimension and an exceptional
mode of expression for his spiritual growth.

The link between good and beautiful stirs fruitful reflection.
Beauty is the visible form of the good, just as the good is
the metaphysical condition of beauty. This was well understood
by the greeks, who, by fusing the two concepts, coined a term
which embraces both: kalokagathia, or beauty-goodness.

Within the vast cultural panorama of each nation, artists
have their unique place. Obedient to their inspiration in
creating works both worthwhile and beautiful, they not only
enrich the cultural heritage of each nation and of all
humanity, but they also render an exceptional social
service in favor of the common good.

The particular vocation of individual artists decides the
arena in which they serve and points as well to the tasks
they must assume, the hard work they must endure and the
responsibility they must accept.

They must labour without allowing themselves to be driven
by the search for empty glory or the craving for cheap
popularity, and still less by the calculation of some
possible profit for themselves.

All artists experience the unbridgeable gap which lies
between the work of their hands, however successful it
may be, and the dazzling perfection of the beauty glimpsed
in the ardour of the creative moment: what they manage to
express in their painting, their sculpting, their creation
is no more than a glimmer of the splendour which flared for
a moment before the eyes of their spirit.

The world in which we live needs beauty in order not to
sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the
human heart and is that precious fruit which resists the
erosion of time, which unites generations and enables
them to be one in admiration!

The Church refers to artists having "a noble ministry"
when their works reflect in some way the infinite
beauty of God and raise people's minds to him.

The Church needs art. Art must make perceptible, and as
far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of
the invisible, of God.

Art has a unique capacity to take one of the other facet
of the message and translate it into colours, shapes,
and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look
or listen. It does so without emptying the message
itself of its transcendent value and its aura of mystery.

Artists are constantly in search of the hidden meaning of
things, are their torment is to succeed in expressing the
world of the ineffable.

With this Letter, I turn to you, artists of the world, to
assure you of my esteem and to help consolidate a more
constructive partnership between art and the Church.

The creation awaits the revelation of the children of God
also through art and in art. This is your task. Humanity
in every age, and even today, looks to works of art to
shed light upon its path and its destiny.

The Spirit is the mysterious Artist of the universe.
Looking to the Third Millenium, I would hope that all
artists might receive in abundance the gift of that
creative inspiration which is the starting-point of
every true work of art.

Every genuine inspiration contains some tremor of the
"breath" with which the Creator Spirit suffused the
work of creation from the very beginning.

Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to
transcendence. It is an invitation to savour
life and to dream of the future. That is why
the beauty of created things can never fully
satisfy. It stirs our hidden nostalgia for God.

May the beauty that you pass on to generations still to
come be such that it will stir them to wonder!

//End

--
Anthony L. Bennett
http://welcome.to/TonyB

Graphics rendered
by the Dreamachine.

Post a reply to this message