The following is a quote from Joan Chittister which I feel is very relevant to our
pursuits as artists.
" Beauty is the most provocative promise we have of the Beautiful. It lures us and calls
us and leads us on. Souls thirst for beauty and thrive on it and by it nourish hope. It is
beauty that magnetizes the contemplative and it is the duty of the contemplative to
give beauty away so that the rest of the world may, in the midst of squalor, ugliness,
and pain, remember that beauty is possible.
What we do not nourish within ourselves cannot exist in the world around us
since we are its microcosm. We cannot moan the loss of quality in our world and not
ourselves seed the beautiful in our wake. We cannot decry the loss of the spiritual and
continue ourselves to function only on the level of the vulgar. We cannot hope for
fullness of life without nurturing fullness of soul. We must seek beauty, study beauty,
surround ourselves with beauty.
To be contemplatives we must remove the clutter from our lives, surround ourselves
with beauty and consciously, relentlessly, persistently, give it away until the tiny
world for which we ourselves are responsible begins to reflect the raw beauty that
is God." ILLLUMINATED LIFE
