What is Art?

Our ‘conscious’ selves are only a part of who we are. The unconscious is programmed by what we sense and perceive and it can be programmed intentionally by our conscious mind…it then runs most of our lives. The unconscious will assert itself when it’s ignored or repressed. It manifests itself in our dreams, in our language and in our movements. But perhaps it’s greatest manifestation is in our art.

The art of a civilization is often all that remains when it’s people are gone. Their art can tell us what was important to them, what they valued.

I’ve spent hours pondering the questions: ‘What is art?’ and ‘Why is it important to us?’ I have come to the conclusion that art expresses something in us that’s beyond our conscious mind, it's beyond logic. Sometimes it represents what we see, sometimes what we dream, and sometimes it represents the moments in between. Art can take the daily and mundane and uplift it to the eternal and the ideal. Art represents our inner self, pressing itself out. At its best, it is the evidence of our striving for perfection. Just like our conscious and unconscious minds together make us complete, I believe we need art to feel whole.

Art is what flows out of us when we’ve wrestled with ourselves to understand something. When an artist feels love, pain, beauty, redemption, or any of the feelings common to man, in coming to understand what those feelings are, and if he or she has the tools, the answer can flow out of their unconscious in color or form, music or movement.

It takes a great deal of discipline to let something flow, unobstructed, out of you. It takes mastery. Some people take shortcuts, thinking they’re doing the same thing because it looks or sounds the same. To the untrained eye or ear they can appear similar, but they’re not… Anyone can scribble ink on a page, throw globs of mud together, squirt paint on a canvas, bang the keys of a piano, or move to music. But to truly be an artist takes discipline. After learning the skills and techniques of past masters to the point where they become a part of us, we can let them go and let our unconscious use them to express what we feel. Our creative impulse needs the tools to express itself just like we need language to communicate. To simply grunt and hope to be understood isn’t the same as having the tools of language at our command. Like language, the goal of art is to communicate what an artist sees or feels to others.

Art isn’t just one thing, it's many. There is a kind of art even in a daily routine. There is beauty even in the mundane. But it is the the art that transcends the daily and mundane that I'm speaking of...great art. Great art is beautiful and uplifting. Great art has a timeless quality, one that can be sensed centuries after it's produced. It comes from within us and helps us to understand something about ourselves and each other. Great art can be figurative or it can be abstract.

I didn’t used to like abstract visual art. I thought it was just, random meaningless shapes and colors thrown together. I didn’t see any logic or skill in it. Then I walked into a Mark Rothko exhibition. I had never heard of him and, had someone described his work to me, would not have expected to be impressed. Would I have been so wrong! Rothko found a way to use color without form to express emotion and he did it in such a way that a very deep part of me ‘gets it’.

While I believe that much, maybe even most abstract art, is produced by artists with no discipline, I have found in the last few years that some of it is the essence of discipline. I’ve come to love some of it. It occurs to me that, while it doesn’t necessarily represent something in my logical, conscious mind, it seems to be more akin to what goes on in my unconscious mind. Those images that float across the screen when nothing else is in focus. They represent being at ease, being comfortable, to me. I’ve decided they don’t have to make any logical sense, they just have to be allowed to ‘be’ a part of me.

We, human beings often hear several inner voices. Those that we ignore will just get louder until they’re heard. Those that are allowed to express themselves can be uplifting in many ways. They can help us to come to inner peace. If we listen to ourselves and to each other we can all be uplifted. Art can be one such voice…

Politically Correct Faith?

Ever since the Supreme Court decided that the phrase in the Bill of Rights, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" meant the complete ‘separation between church and state’. (A phrase first written by Thomas Jefferson and later reiterated by James Madison and Ulysses S. Grant..) People have used it to push any mention of God out public discourse. [Never mind that those men all publicly endorsed a belief in God, or that ‘The Creator’, and ‘natures God’ are referred to in The Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution.]

What the Bill of Rights referred to was the government not favoring any particular sect or faith. God has always been above any particular religion. But, human nature being what it is, people don’t want to be reminded that they will ultimately be held responsible for their actions so they choose to put God out of their minds for the most part.

On some level we still sense a spiritual aspect of our existence but, instead of acknowledging God in it, we ‘clean it up’…for politically correct reasons of course! Now instead of God, we have a ‘higher power’. Instead of God answering prayers, we send them out into the universe and somehow the universe answers them. Instead of angels sent from God, angels just come and go by their own initiative apart from any god. We still need to feel good about ourselves, after all, and this watered down, meaningless pseudo-faith allows us to be ‘spiritual but not religious’…

I had a conversation recently with two older women, one a former social worker and one a semi-retired clinical psychologist. I told them I used to work in the field as a Clinical Psychologist but now only use my education for writing. I sometimes still counsel but I only do so as a Christian service, not for profit. They balked when I mentioned the word ‘Christian’? I later asked one why.

She first said that a counselor shouldn’t limit their approach to Freudian, Rogerian, Jungian or other approaches and that a ‘Christian’ approach was limited in a similar way. I told her it wasn’t an approach to how I counseled, it was a moral guide to what I counseled. She knew that I had worked for the state, when I was counseling, and was very quick to tell me she hoped I left the ‘Christian’ part of me away from the office. Church and state were supposed to be separate after all! I first said: Of course I did. Then I thought about it…I’m not at all sure what she meant? Now this was a lady that would be quick to tell you she is ‘spiritual but not religious’ but she made a point of saying she was not a Christian several times. It became clear in the conversation that she thought somewhat less of me for my personal convictions.

Her comments were, of course, the politically correct thing to say. But, I consider that somewhere between naïve and moronic… How a counselor is supposed to leave a big part of themself out of a counseling session is beyond me? I have never, and would never, try to convert anyone. I am always ready to answer any questions I’m asked about my faith but that’s different.

What, exactly, people like this lady have against Christianity is beyond me. But, it is a common thing to hear these days. The ‘politically correct’ would rarely say such things about, say, Islam. I wonder what part of my personal beliefs I’m ‘supposed’ to leave out of my counseling? For that matter I wonder what part of their personal beliefs our founding fathers would be expected to leave out of our sacred documents if they were framing them today?

I believe it’s better to be honest than to lie. I believe it’s right to keep ones word. I believe adultery is wrong. I also believe intentionally hurting others is wrong. I could list a page or two of what I believe is right and wrong, and I believe most people would agree with my list. Well, newsflash here, my moral code comes from my faith as a Christian!

This is yet another attack on faith by people who don’t want to be reminded there is a God and He is the only true source of morality for His creation. The politically correct have run amok. They think of themselves as much more ‘enlightened’ than someone who would believe such outdated myths as the Bible! But I think they are a far greater threat to our society than any people of faith! They are working feverishly to save a society that they are slowly destroying!

Now that I think of it…the comment was much closer to moronic than naïve. And, it’s people like her that run our social systems! If that passes for wisdom these days, may God help us!

Reproduction, Sex and a Stable Society

A part of morality consists of controlling and channeling sexual energy into a positive, uplifting, and stable force. Societies that have been unable to do so have historically never risen to become great nations or they've become unstable and collapsed. Our society is in a transitional period wherein the traditional values that have controlled and channeled sexual energy into a stable social structure have become unfocused for lack of a moral code to guide us. This is a time of decadence and moral decay. If we are to come through it and survive as a viable culture we need to make some radical changes, first in our spiritual values, then in our cultural institutions and legal system.

Recently making the national news was the next legal argument resulting from the legalization of abortion. Now, it seems there are men that want to divorce themselves from any responsibility for fathering children. Their argument is that they didn’t ‘set out’ to produce a child, they only set out to have sex…and what that produced isn’t a baby, it’s only a cluster of cells. In the terms of our law that was the next logical step.

The blanket legalization of abortion based on a woman’s right to control her body was a bad ruling. It has been responsible for the killing of millions of the most innocent lives simply because they were inconvenient for their irresponsible mothers. Now, men (and I hate to use the words ‘mothers’ and ‘men’ in describing these people..) want to be released from any responsibility from their sexual actions too.

An unborn child is a child, just ask any mother waiting to meet her new son or daughter. Why ‘right to lifers’ feel the need to defend them is completely understandable to me. While I don’t agree with some of their tactics, or all of their platform, I respect the fact that they revere the lives of God’s children. Fighting for the rights of unborn children is a noble fight. It is a legal and a cultural fight and it should be fought on those grounds. Those that kill doctors or blow up abortion clinics only damage the positions of honest, sincere people when they commit murder themselves. These extremists see the struggle as a war and framing it in those terms only inflames a legitimate struggle in very damaging ways. Terrorism is terrorism no matter who engages in it.

There are two other areas involving the sexual aspects of our nature where legal arguments have been made that could potentially change the landscape of our society. The first is more philosophical than legal, but could have profound legal ramifications on the fabric of our society. The argument that homosexual behavior is determined genetically or bio-chemically before birth is a precursor to arguments involving pedophiles and those who engage in sexual acts with animals. The homosexual community is intent on making the argument that their sexual orientation is predetermined to remove any personal responsibility from their behavior. Once the legal precedent has been established that sexual orientation is based on these grounds it will only be a matter of time before it is used as a defense for any deviant sexual act.

The second area involving the sexual and reproductive aspects of our nature is in changing the definition of a marriage from being one man and one woman to being open ended. A legal argument, proposed on constitutional grounds, is being simultaneously attempted in many states by groups wanting to give homosexuals the right to marry. Once a legal precedent has been established here it would open the door to ‘group marriages’ like polygamy and other social experiments.

All of these are moral arguments that have crossed over into the legal realm. All of them have the potential to destabilize and weaken the fabric of our society. None of them are rights originally guaranteed by the constitution but, given the overstepping of authority that the Supreme Court has engaged in the last few years, the court could very well interpret them to be constitutional rights as it has in the case of abortion.

The law is logical, if not moral, in its application. Once a legal precedent has been established it can be used in any case where a similar argument may be made. That’s why it is important to have thoughtful and moral men and women on the bench. It’s also why the legal ramifications of every decision a court makes should be thoroughly considered before a ruling is handed down.

With no moral compass, like the Ten Commandments, to guide us there is no social cohesion and no telling what kind of free-for-all society we could end up with. Because its’ citizens aren’t self-policing, the only force that can keep such a society in place is physical force. Where there is no moral code that guides its citizens, the void is usually filled by a strong, over-reaching government to bring external stability where none exists internally. That’s a lesson of history…

In many ways, we are already on that ‘slippery slope’ that we hear so much about. The irony of all of this is that every time the court guarantees another ‘freedom’ it relaxes the concept of personal responsibility; it chips away at the moral code that has held our society together and it takes us one step closer to a totalitarian state.

An Eye for an Eye...

While I believe strongly in the dignity of human beings and in the sanctity of human life, I also very strongly believe in the death penalty. Some people see that as a contradiction. My answer to that is that human life is so important that if someone takes it unlawfully they should pay for it with their own life. That’s recognition of the sanctity of human life, not a contradiction.

I am always surprised to see Jewish and Christian clergy among those gathered at death penalty protests. Judaism and Christianity are based on the Bible. They should be true to the teachings of it. The Bible is Gods revelation to mankind. It says that the death penalty is necessary for justice and for a stable society. The first five books of the scriptures, the ‘Torah’ in Hebrew, are the books laying down God’s law. The one law that is found in all five books is the injunction to take the life of someone who has taken human life unlawfully.

While the legal system laid out in the Torah bears little resemblance to our form of government, there are some aspects of it that our founding fathers incorporated into our law. A study of the history of our founding fathers will reveal that they believed in the moral code laid down in the Bible. They considered it so final that they didn’t feel the need to reiterate it in our law. Our constitutional law nowhere says: “You will not commit murder”, like the sixth commandment, what it says is: ‘If you do commit murder, the government has the right to try you and to punish you’.

The principles of justice in the Bible are clear. Justice should be universally applied, there is to be no special treatment for those with rank or position. The penalties should be applied swiftly and with full knowledge, and in many cases the participation, of the public.

Unfortunately the death penalty is not universally or swiftly applied in our system. It has often unfairly been administered along racial or other lines. And, perhaps worst of all, it only happens after years of legal wrangling. It seems like every year there is some new legal defense that allows someone to get away with murder. The length of time between the crime and the punishment is usually so long that the death penalty is often, correctly, cited as not being an effective deterrent to murder. For it to be an effective deterrent it must be applied swiftly, and to all murderers.

People should be held responsible for their own actions. Provisions are made in the law for negligence, accidental killing and self-defense where they are appropriate. But, if anyone commits murder…they should be put to death. The issue is not about rehabilitation, as some would have us believe. And it’s not about revenge. That's why the death penalty isn't carried out by vigilantes...it's only carried out by lawfully constituted governments. It’s about punishment and about justice. The issue is about the sanctity of human life.

It is never a joyous occasion for the government to exercise its authority and take a human life. The death penalty should never be carried out in a carnival-like, or lighthearted fashion. It should be carried out with the appropriate amount of sobriety. The issues of justice and punishment should always give us pause. They are issues that are important to every member of society. They apply to us all. The death penalty reminds us all that to find justice we have to apply a firm, and unwavering, hand.

That's how important human life is…

Stem Cells and Human Dignity

The current debate over the use of embryonic stem cells is yet one more battle in the fight for human dignity. The legal issues surrounding abortion, the most readily available source of embryos that could be used in research, are complex and thoughtful people, of good conscience, will sometimes disagree. But, they should at least seriously ask the questions. Also complex are the issues surrounding the use of cloned embryos as a source not involving abortion. The argument over whether or not an embryo is indeed a human life lies at the heart of the battle. That is THE question that should weigh on all our minds.

What we know is this: a human embryo doesn’t grow up to be a palm tree, an armadillo or a chimpanzee…it grows up to be a human being.

We know too that the founding fathers considered the right to life to be the first right mentioned in our sacred documents. A legal argument can be made that, if we had a constitutional right to make a journey of, say, a thousand miles, that to keep someone from taking the first step would be to deny them that right. In the same way, to deny a child from being born is to deny the right to life to a human being.

The two sides involved in the debate talk at each other and rarely to each other. They won’t even agree to a set of terms. The ‘right to life’ and ‘the right of choice’ are not opposites, they address different aspects of the issue. I will state here that I believe some abortions should be legal. If abortion is indeed a sin in the eyes of God, then it is no more a sin than adultery. And adultery, like most other sins, is legal. The real issue to me is whether a right in the eyes of the law is handled with responsibility or it becomes a license to corrupt behavior.

The latter is what worries me about abortion and stem cell research. Terminating a life should be seriously and responsibly considered. Instead, making it legal was the first step in giving many people license to abuse the right. The right to have an abortion has become a license to use it as a means of birth control for many women. If a pregnancy is inconvenient for some women, they simply kill the embryo.

I believe in the dignity of every human being and I believe in the right to life of every innocent human being. Stem cell research requires the use of potential human beings and that’s a very dangerous area to me. I know, from being an observer of human behavior that, if science finds that stem cell research can indeed cure some of the ailments and diseases of our age, the demand for embryos will drastically increase. And it is a fact, borne out by history, that the supply will be met some way. Some women will be encouraged to abort their babies to supply the demand. They may even be encouraged to become pregnant and then abort to supply the demand. That would clearly be unethical. For that reason, I believe it's an area of research that shouldn’t even be considered. Just because something can be done, doesn't mean it should be done. Even cloning embryos to use for research cheapens the life of the innocent. Cloning human beings denies human dignity. The kind of society that would do so is not the kind of society I want to live in.

We all have the right to life. And we all have the right to choose. We don’t have the right to use each other. We especially don’t have the right to end someone elses life for our own use…

A human embryo is a baby human being, just ask any mom or dad waiting to meet their new child.

Symbols over Substance

There was a time in America when, though our citizens held different faiths and came from different cultures, we were bound by a set of ideas that defined America. Those ideas are stated in our sacred writings: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the Gettysburg Address among others. Increasingly, our nation finds its citizens at odds with the ideas and ideals of those writings. They no longer bind us like they once did. For example, it was once a common value that we believed in God, the Creator mentioned in those documents. That’s not to say that every individual believed in God, or that everyone believed in the same god, but we commonly held that there was a God watching over the affairs of men, one that we would answer to one day. It was important to hold that as a common value because it meant that ultimately we would be held accountable for our actions.

Since a common set of ideals no longer binds Americans, about the only thing we have in common, the only thing that now binds us as a culture, is exposure to the same media that enters our homes every day. Every day in America we are bombarded with images of the Hollywood elite and Washington ‘beltway’ politicians…and those that make their living watching and commenting on them. Slowly, and with an almost imperceptible intent, these images have altered the values that we once held in common as a culture.

The enemies of moral standards, the enemies of decency, know that to affect change in our culture they must affect a change in the hearts and minds of its citizens. To accomplish that, they must utilize the popular media. It’s no longer as important that our public figures actually are decent people, so much as it’s important that they ‘appear to be’ decent people. Real agendas have become hidden. Everything has become about appearances. We’ve developed a culture of symbols over substance.

Our symbols mean what we want them to mean. We infuse them with power like we infuse them with meaning. We wear symbols to signify our affiliations. We fly our symbols on flagpoles. We wear symbols to identify with our religious beliefs. Simply wearing a cross, or Star of David is more important to some people than actually living the principles those symbols represent. We represent wealth with the symbol of money. Never mind that real wealth can’t be measured in money. Many have come to see it as an end in itself instead of a means towards an end. Criminals steal our symbols then attack the symbols that maintain order in our society, the police, because they cease to see them as people. Our enemies have attacked the symbols of our system of economics and military might, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, because they know the power of our symbols and they see the decadence that hides behind them.

Make no mistake, we are in a cultural war. On one side are those who see freedom as only existing when there are no moral standards except the ones handed down from Hollywood, or some other phony, pretentious source at the moment. You can be a person of absolutely no moral values as long as you jump on the bandwagon and appear to be for ‘saving the trees’, or whatever the cause of the day is. These people believe freedom exists apart from responsibility. Personal responsibility is something they want to eradicate. They’ve distorted the freedoms that our country was built on into a license to engage in any form of decadence that one can imagine. The very acts of decadence themselves have become symbols of freedom…symbols without substance.

Prostitution is illegal in most parts of our country, unless it’s being filmed, then we call it pornography and it becomes a symbol for freedom of expression. We’ve let murderers go free when they’ve become symbols of racism. We allow the most base, vile language to fill our airwaves because it’s a symbol of our freedom of speech.

On the other side are those who recognize that freedoms demand responsibility if they are to have real substance. Responsibility demands a strong sense of right and wrong. For our culture to produce anything of real value…it must have values. For our culture to last it has to nourish its citizens and give them a sense of real values. There is no freedom apart from a strong moral standard…there’s only debauchery. If men and women of good conscience don’t act now that’s where we’re headed…

The founding fathers of this nation understood the need for personal responsibility. When they wrote: ‘You have the right to freedom of speech’ what they saw in the statement was ‘You have the right to responsible freedom of speech’. A study of the history of our sacred documents will bear that out. I doubt they could even envision a time when the freedoms they ensured for us would be turned into the license for decadence that we’ve made them.

It’s time to stop our decline into moral decay. It’s time to repent as a nation and turn back to God who made us strong. He is watching. It’s time to put His Ten Commandments in every public square, every church, every school building and every courtroom in the land. If we are to survive as a positive force in the world we need to write them into our hearts. They too are symbols…symbols that have been ignored because of what they represent…real values. And real freedom only lies within real values.

Honest Tears

A friend of mine and I were talking about the subject of grace recently. It was fresh on my mind, having written a blog on the subject. I shared with him how I experienced grace in the death of a friend last year. He shared with me how he experienced a true moment of grace in the death of his newborn child. His eyes welled with tears while he smiled and told me how he was given the gift of being able to hold his daughter in his arms while she drew her last breath... There is something pure in the tears of honest emotion.

Everything in our nature tells us that it's contrary to the way the universe should work to experience the death of ones child. We expect our children to outlive us. That is the way. But, this is earth and life is sometimes a veil of tears. Human tears have fallen like rain in our history. Like rain, they have nourished new growth in human hearts. They may be all that preserve us sometimes.

If there is anything positive in the death of a child, anything redeeming at all, it is that it strips away everything unnecessary in life. For those with the eyes to see, it allows them to glimpse the essence of what is important in life. No ego exists in that moment; no pride; no pettiness, only the simple, pure feeling of love for a life cut short. And, while it breaks our hearts to see our children, the most innocent among us, suffer and die...we can remember that a broken heart is also an open heart. Open hearts are the hope for our race; they preserve it. In the tears of a broken heart are true moments of grace. Often it is through such tears that we can see God the most clearly. Blessed are those with a broken spirit...

My faith calls on me to open my heart. It calls on me to realize the connection that exists between all of us. My friends' tears touched my heart and it went out to him. The death of his daughter was my loss too...it was a loss to all of us. We are all family.

Never have I’ve seen it more beautifully put than in the prose of the poet John Donne: (Excerpts from: Meditation #17, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1623), XVII: Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris)

“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Amen.