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Art & Prayer (Interaction, connection and relationship with God) have lots in common both are rooted in an intense encounter involving a surrender of willfulness, openness to inspiration addled to a deep engagement with mystery.

Engaging in the Arts:

Helps us develop ways of deeply listening to what is stirring with us.

• Art helps us release layers of inhibitions that have covered originality and beauty.
  The process of incorporating art into our spiritual journey is that the process of many art forms plummet the very depths our body, mind, spirit and emotions. And they have the ability to bring the body, mind and spirit to the center of our essence if we allow it.
• Rational analysis is not required to validate the insights gained.
• Artistic knowing its different from intellectual knowing, engaging us symbolically and in embodied ways, stretching us beyond the limit of the rational, liner thinking that we used to.
• Art affords us insights into life and the Spirit within us, presenting alternatives possibilities not available through cognitive ways of knowing/learning.
  Through the arts we learn to take risks and slow down and discover more about ourselves.
• Art is a process to discovery about ourselves and God.

Working with the imagination in the expressive arts is about cultivating receptivity and openness to the space of darkness where it is often uncomfortable to rest.

In working with the arts be it written, storytelling, movement, visual, creating or manipulating, we must remember it is a pilgrimage, a process much like our spiritual journey.

• We live in such a product orientated society that if we don’t have something to show for our time then it is not valuable and productive.
• We often measure our own worth by how much we accomplish in a given amount of time and how many goals we’ve reached or check marks beside items on the “to do” list.
  In the arts like in prayer, it’s about the process-what is happening within the very soul, not the end result.
• Art helps us to  see the beauty of the expression of our being.
• Be free from expectations!

In art like prayer (connection and interaction and relationship with God), we risk entering the unknown depth of ourselves/spirit with the hope of being transformed!

Through different art mediums we can reach a place of deep meditation which puts us in a place of vulnerability with the Creator as well let ourselves be free we then become more aware of Him and more connected.

We can arrive at the depths of our true selves if we take the journey within and don’t resist due to fear, control, expectation.

• God is at the center of our true selves-transforming us from the inside out.

Through the expression of the senses and through mediums of art we can discover and experience our spiritual journey at a different level.

God is the ultimate artist and we are the beauty of his artistry:

God is the Composer.  Your life is His musical score.

God is the Painter.  Your life is His canvas.

 God is the Architect.  Your life is His blueprint.

God is the Writer.  Your life is his manuscript.