Essay: Creativity is the Language of God

SUNDAY HERALD SUN
By Bryan Patterson

AUSTRALIA - All great art -- not just great music -- has the ability to touch us on the deepest parts of ourselves.  Faith has always sought to interpret its understanding of existence through art. Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, said French author and Nobel Prize winner Andre Gide, and the less the artist does the better. Writing in the 12th century, theologian Meister Eckhart urged humanity to embrace and practise art as a way of unveiling ``the truth of our deep, creative selves''. He warned that the creative process could be as destructive as it was inspiring if it were practised only by those who did not have compassion. Writer Virginia Woolf said the whole world was a piece of art and we were all parts of that work. She also noted that religion had in the past century generally denied creativity its rightful place in the spiritual life and that art had, therefore, become a servant of the material world.There is something of the poet, painter, musician, dancer or architect in all of us. It must be so if we are created in the image of God. [link]