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24518 |
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Date: September 29, 2023 at 09:04:31
From: Nevada, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Sacred Art can be found in every breath... |
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Sacred Art
Barbara Holmes identifies sacred space beyond our usual
holy environments:
We are told that Jesus hung out with publicans, tax
collectors, and sinners. Perhaps during these sessions
of music, laughter, and food fellowship, there were
also sacred moments when the love of God and mutual
care and concern became the focus of their time
together. Contemplation is not confined to designated
and institutional sacred spaces. God breaks into
nightclubs and Billie Holiday’s sultry torch songs; God
tap dances with Bill Robinson and Savion Glover. And
when Coltrane blew his horn, the angels paused to
consider.
Some sacred spaces bear none of the expected
characteristics. The fact that we prefer stained glass
windows, pomp and circumstance … has nothing to do with
the sacred. It may seem as if the mysteries of divine-
human reunion erupt in our lives when, in fact, the
otherness of spiritual abiding is integral to human
interiority. On occasion, we turn our attention to this
abiding presence and are startled. But it was always
there.
Dr. Holmes finds a welcome and fertile space for the
Divine in the arts:
Art can amplify the sacred and challenge the status
quo. The arts help us to hear above the cacophony in
the midst of our multitasking. The arts engage a sacred
frequency that is perforated with pauses. Artists
learned … there were things too full for human tongues,
too alive for articulation. You can dance and rhyme and
sing it, you almost reach it in the high notes, but joy
unspeakable is experience and sojourn, it is the
ineffable within our reach.
When you least expect it, during the most mundane daily
tasks, a shift of focus occurs. This shift bends us
toward the universe, a cosmos of soul and spirit, bone
and flesh, which constantly reaches toward divinity.
Ecclesial organizations want to control access to this
milieu but cannot. The only divisions between the
sacred and the secular are in the minds of those who
believe in and reinforce the split….
All things draw from the same wellspring of spiritual
energy. This means that the sermonic and religious can
be mediated through a saxophone just as effectively as
through a pastor…. How can this be?... [Can] tapping
feet and blues guitar strokes … evoke the contemplative
moment and call the listener to a deeper understanding
of inner and outer realities?... The need to create
impermeable boundaries between the sacred and the
secular is … a much more recent appropriation of
western values….
Historically, most efforts to wall off the doctrinal
rightness and wrongness of particular practices failed.
Instead, hearers of the gospel inculturated and
improvised on the main themes so as to tune the message
for their own hearing. Given Christianity’s
preferential option for the poor, the cross-pollination
of jazz, blues, and tap with church music and practices
could be considered the epitome of missional outreach
and spiritual creativity.
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Responses:
[24595] [24519] [24520] |
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24595 |
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Date: November 02, 2023 at 20:25:05
From: Kat, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Sacred Art can be found in every breath... |
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‘At Last’ by Etta James! I love her singing! Talk about taking me away
from it all! USB port in my car has the best of her.
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Responses:
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24519 |
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Date: September 29, 2023 at 19:28:24
From: chatillon, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Sacred Art can be found in every breath... |
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Sacred spaces and "zoning out" pulling weeds in the
garden--and all sorts of places in between. It is
becoming one with the Presence, with the All That Is.
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Responses:
[24520] |
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24520 |
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Date: September 29, 2023 at 20:47:03
From: Nevada, [DNS_Address]
Subject: It is becoming one with the Presence... |
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...fascinating how simple some complicated concepts
really are.
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Responses:
None |
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