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Art-as-Meditation
The art forms may include any of the following: painting, improvisation, arts as healing, clay, writing, walking in nature, drumming, singing, Eastern chants, massage, dancing, and more. No matter which of these practices a person chooses to take, there is a common experience to them all. They are all experiences of prayer, and no one way is "Roman Catholic" or "Protestant" or "Buddhist." Art is deeply ecumenical -- that is, universal. No church can lay claim to owning art as process. Art is not only the most appropriate language for expressing mystical experience; it can also be the process that elicits the experience of mysticism in the first place. When art is entered into as process and not as product, art becomes a "Way," a path to the Spirit.
But we do not stop there -- rather, by accessing the depths of the experience we also access the means out of the depths of awe and grief into the light of day, namely creativity. By journeying into our experience by way of art-as-meditation, we come in touch with our images once again and our power for imagery: this is empowering. It gives us our souls back, and our responsibility to express them. In the process, the Spirit returns -- through our imaginations and through our hands, bodies, voices, songs, color, clay, words of poetic truth. Visual design by Eyerarts
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Art-as-Meditation is the primary form of prayer in the creation-centered tradition. Ritual itself is a practice of art-as-meditation.
The question that arises about the Spirit is not so much where is the Spirit -- for the Spirit is everywhere. A more pressing question is how do we make an inner journey into the Spirit. We believe that the most accessible route to the Spirit, the least elitist and the most available route, the deepest and most authentic route, is that of art-as-meditation. Through art-as-meditation, we come in touch with our own experiences of depth -- our experiences of joy and our experiences of suffering.