Grace

I have been reading an old issue of the Parabola that explores Grace, Gifts bestowed from Above (Volume 27, No.3, Fall 2002)


from The Burn, ©Jane Fulton Alt


In an article titled Through Beauty by Rebecca Robison, she states,

“In attempting to render the forms of the world transparent to the transcendent, an artist looks at things not as the things themselves but as manifestations of mystery. When we begin to see an “it” as a “thou” our experience changes: the beauty of everything touches us and lifts us to a higher place. When we become so inspired by the glory around us that we attempt to express ourselves creatively, we find that “art attunes the soul to God.” Suddenly, in the creative act, we become so totally absorbed and fascinated that minutes and hours pass by without another thought. We are completely immersed in the present moment, oblivious to time and place, forgetful of our very self. The creation of art can release us from our individual everyday desires and intentions so that we become a unique expression of something that is not of our self or of nature. This creative act, in which the source of beauty flows forth, is the middle space beyond oppositions, a central holy place of the Absolute that forms all turning points. From here, outside of time, the grace of transformation enters into us and passes through us. Only the center unfolds the turning point of transition and transformation.



from The Burn, ©Jane Fulton Alt


It cannot be looked for and cannot be held; in every moment it is creation from nothingness as pure present, independent of the past as well as the future. The artist who turns and is transformed is a medium through which the divine passes and thus becomes its interpreter of symbols and expressions.


from The Burn, ©Jane Fulton Alt


The creative process is generation and birth as well as transformation and rebirth. The perpetual self-renewal and the dependence on grace of the person who opens to create are a human parallel to the eternal rebirth of all that is created. The rapture of the flowing deathlessness of creativity is just as much a work in man as nature; indeed, it is only in our creative flowing that we become a part of nature."

(Erich Neumann, Art and the Creative Unconsciousness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974) p.202.)