Life Art

I was without Internet for a while, so I have a back log of things I'd saved that I wanted to post.

I can honestly say Margaret Becker is one of my favorite authors of all time! She writes in a way to explain what I'm seemingly unable to express. She's cool like that. (I think we'll be friends in Heaven.) But this excerpt is how she feels about art. We all have an expressions of art, in one form or the other, are you using your talents for Him? Read this and see how it makes you feel. If it excites you, go out and DO SOMETHING TODAY!


"To enable and encourage others with any tool that I can successfully use.

The many irregular pieces that make it up-the details-they are secondary. It doesn't matter if it is with music, or writing, or speaking-or even juggling, for that matter. I will use anything to create a platform and gain a voice. Any means by which I can deliver encouragement.

This is what excites me. This is where I feel like I operate in a frictionless environment. This is where I feel fulfilled and unhampered, as though I am contentedly swimming along with the current in a stream of energy. It is my gift-but not in the sense that I have recognized that phrase in that past-as if what I have to offer is a gift for other people. No, more plainly, it is a gift to me-a private one given to me by God. A simple, figurative place or feeling that gives me pleasure. And when I utilize it, when I enter into it and enjoy it, somehow there is a pebble-in-a-pone effect. The ripples connect to a gift and flow outward, affecting those who are near enough to feel it.

It reminds me of the way art operates and the definition of the art. I heard on National Public Radio in an interview with Sister Wendy, the art expositor. The interviewer asked Sister Wendy what her personal definition of art was. Her answer was loosely this: Art takes you out of yourself, lifts you up and pulls you into something haright for a time, and then places you back at last, changed.

And art, according to Webster's Dictionary, is "human creative sill or its application."

Human creative skill. Creativity. Isn't that when we connect with our most passionate selves, the part of us that is in a flow, an unhampered exchange with the Creator? Isn't that when we connect to our gifts? I am energized as I consider connecting with passion creatively and
offering something that lifts people out of themselves into a stream of possibilities. I want to be a conduit between the mortal and the eternal."

Excerpt from "Coming Up For Air: Simple Acts to Redefine Your Life" by Margaret Becker