THOUGHTS ON ART and SPIRITUALITY

Genuine spirituality, like art, is open and dynamic...both are the hope of a world so badly in need of transformation. “The world is charged with the glory of God...” Spirituality is at once very simple and very misunderstood. As the above lines by Gerard Manley Hopkins tells us, the world is "charged with the glory of God" shot through with beauty and terror. As I see it spirituality is not something apart from everyday life. It is an experience that occurs in the midst of, and gives depth and integrity to our lives as people who live in a particular culture, in a particular place and time. It is the spark that glows beneath all physical existence, and which catches fire in communication with a divine nucleus of existence.

Spirituality involves challenge and transformation and it is the opposite of mass imagery dedicated to a culture of consumption and instant gratification, "the exaltation of signs based on the denial of the reality of things." This is why art offers a way to a genuine spirituality. Art should be an affirmation of life, not an attempt to bring order...but simply a way of waking up to the very life we are living, which is so excellent, once one gets one's mind and desires out of the way and lets it act of its own accord.

It also links us to existence as a whole, since it is part of the reflective perspective which mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. It is this image making and openness to existence which makes the world holy, shot through with the beauties and terrors, challenge and tender cherishing of the Divine. Nothing is commonplace or boring since everything that lives is holy and full of possible significance.

Art reminds us that life is stranger, more beautiful, demanding, joyous and painful than common sense knows. The holy then, is mysterious So genuine spirituality, like art, is open and dynamic, opening out truer possibility. In this sense both are the hope of a world so badly in need of transformation.

Tribute to Father Don Huntimer From James Kavanaugh

“The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.” — Albert Einstein,The Merging of Spirit and Science