Art is the key to human culture; to beauty, meaning and history. It is war, it is love and it is productivity; indeed, all human endeavor. Most importantly, it is the key to the Divine, as it is the product of human Genius. We can then readily say that Art is one with Gnosis; it is the measure of how we create ourselves and produce soul. All the is our historic church and congregation is about Art, and the art one creates is the record of the Divine speaking through the artist.
Please see the sermon video below, and the notes used to deliver the sermon below that.
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Sermon Notes:
Art
1. A regular spiritual proverb admonishes us to ‘die daiy.’ This suggests that we should constantly be at work in transforming ourselves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole.”
1A. Our art, as Gnostics, is the creation of the self, which is why art, as a discipline, and the study of aesthetics is so vital to us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“What is that abridgment and selection we observe in all spiritual activity, but itself the creative impulse? for it is the inlet of that higher illumination which teaches to convey a larger sense by simpler symbols. What is a man but nature’s finer success in self-explication?”
2. The creative impulse is the L.V.X. descending from the Divine into the human soul. Coming into the soul, symbols emerge from the psyche and mythologies arise to help us to define and create ourselves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Now that which is inevitable in the work has a higher charm than individual talent can ever give, inasmuch as the artist’s pen or chisel seems to have been held and guided by a gigantic hand to inscribe a line in the history of the human race. This circumstance gives a value to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, to the Indian, Chinese, and Mexican idols, however gross and shapeless. They denote the height of the human soul in that hour, and were not fantastic, but sprung from a necessity as deep as the world.”
2A. We have then, a wonderful description of the nature of genius in art! as such, all art must describe the human soul, as it is of the soul exclusively by which we can recognize beauty. We are then, re-cognizing our own soul; inspired by the L.V.X. that descends from the Divine.
3. Every act of art is an act of the soul, which must also be a product of the time in which that particular soul dwells. One may have usch forsight to be on the vanguard of one’s time, which then denotes the proof of being in the ceation of history.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“No man can quite emancipate himself from his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, the religion, the politics, usages, and arts, of his times shall have no share. Though he were never so original, never so wilful and fantastic, he cannot wipe out of his work every trace of the thoughts amidst which it grew.”
3A. As an act of the soul, all art must portray the essence of the character of the artist and his or her soul. Therefore, everything that truly portrays one’s character must be art and also an expression of the spirit that motivates one’s soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“In proportion to his force, the artist will find in his work an outlet for his proper character.”
3A1. Therefore, all human activity expresses our culture; whether it’s dentistry or auto mechanics, or whatever else and it is an art. That one puts the whole of one’s character into it, one shows the L.V.X. of the Divine.
3A1a. Example–my telling jokes at Home Depot.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Beauty must come back to the useful arts, and the distinction between the fine and the useful arts be forgotten.”
4. The old Disney song that says ‘it’s fun to whistle while you work’ takes music out of its box; a beautiful girl or a well-dressed man replaces the portrai painting, as does an evening walk give us exercise and the chance to view a landscape. Even personal adornments and the regular commemoration of those we love gives us poetry.
4A. Art is found in the moment, and as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, art in the moment is the expression of genius in the man or woman that can recognize that art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is in vain that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles in the old arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the field and road-side, in the shop and mill.”
5. Love is the law, love under will. That we must find our essence, ad that is the will, so also it can only reveal itself through love.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When science is learned in love, and its powers are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements and continuations of the material creation.”
5A. And yet, Christian society has lost the Agape (if it ever had it!), and promotes a false pleasure in our modern day consumer culture. Alienation from ourselves, each other and the world is its inevitable result.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“As soon as beauty is sought, not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.”
5B. So that art must be found in all production and all entertainment must express the profound and the marvelous in such a way that everyman and woman can perceive it, for us we know: Every man and every woman is a star.–AL
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The reference of all production at last to an aboriginal Power explains the traits common to all works of the highest art, — that they are universally intelligible; that they restore to us the simplest states of mind; and are religious. Since what skill is therein shown is the reappearance of the original soul, a jet of pure light, it should produce a similar impression to that made by natural objects. In happy hours, nature appears to us one with art; art perfected, — the work of genius.”
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