"All great art is a visual form of prayer."
   -Sister Wendy Beckett 

   Great art is always an expression of Love. This is true regardless of the subject. And this means artistic expression. Art appreciation always enhances a caregivers ability to serve others because it opens our sacred eyes.

   It requires training, skill and sensitivity to appreciate art as well as create it. The same is true of caregiving.

   Mozart said that his enormous gifts of music all came through him because his listened for them not because he personally made them. "Love, love, love, that is the sole of music," he wrote.

   Renoir painted his nudes (above) not to show us a naked woman but to show us Love. Michelangelo sculpted "The David" not to reveal a naked man but to reflect the beauty of God's creation. Accordingly, people who see such nudes as "disgraceful" and are unable to distinguish them from pornography are failing to appreciate art (beauty.) They have miissed the difference between Love and fear. The difference between pornography and art is something like the difference between a fly and a butterfly (although a fly can also be presented as beautiful.) But, these deep distinctions are lost on those who apply judgment with knee-jerk insensibility.

   Similarly, those who see compassionate behavior by a nurse as "inefficient" (a frequent mistake made by supervisors in hospitals) have failed to recognize the healing power of kindness and Love. As the great Harvard physician and medical writer Dr. Arnold Relman has written, "People can be made to feel better by many things, including sympathy and kindness." 

   Liz Wessel, a regular contributor to the Journal, trained as a nurse. She is a caregiver who creates loving caregiving. She also creates beautiful art through mandalas that help other caregivers appreciate the beauty all of us need to see in order to be loving caregivers.

   Consider the wisdom of the great American author, Theodore Dreiser: "Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail."

   I have made my own efforts with poetry, film-making, music and photographs in ways that have sometimes been successful, sometimes failures and sometimes even controversial. Each effort helps me appreciate beauty and simultaneously enhances my ability to understand caregiving.

   "Yes, art is dangerous," Picasso wrote. "Where it is safe, it is not art."

   As we learn to appreciate art (sometimes through creating it) we discover our sensitivity to the needs of others. And we simultaneously come to appreciate the art of caregiving.

   Love inspires great art. May Love inspire your heart and guide your hands as to reach out to meet the needs of others.

-Rev. Erie Chapman  

Painting – Renoir, "Nude in Sunlight" (1875)

Photo – Dane Dakota – "Amy Study #3"