The Power of Image
The eyes are the window to the soul. “Images” influence you and me everyday through advertising, entertainment and news shows, magazines, etc and everything we look at in daily life. These images speak to us and influence our lives, as individuals, as a culture and how we “picture” life. This cultural imprinting affects you and me … regardless if we are aware of it or not!
The Visual Arts
All art has the same effect on us, but in this blog I’m focusing on visual art. When you look at a particular piece of art, an emotional response is generated. It could be good… it could be bad… or maybe you might feel indifferent. Sometimes you might give a verbal response. A pastoral landscape may cause you to feel a sense of peace and you might respond verbally concerning the beauty of the painting. A picture of war may cause fear, or a sense of injustice or a number of other negative emotions.
Spiritual Art
I like to use the phrase “art created from the heart for the heart,” as a simple way to describe spiritual art. Painting an original work of art is the transaction that brings the spiritual into the visible.
Visio Divina – Divine Seeing
Visio Divina is a Christian prayer practice that opens your heart to another way of experiencing God’s presence of love and revelation. This “divine seeing” comes from Lectio Divina (divine hearing). Lectio Divina is an early Christian church practice of meditating on a passage of Scripture, listening to the Holy Spirit speak to your heart, then responding in prayer and allowing that Word to shape your life.
During the first several centuries of the early church, most Christians could not read, and only the very wealthy owned books. The people learned by looking at pictures and listening to the Scriptures that were read out loud. If you go to early European churches today, you will see many of the walls covered in paintings. These walls were the peoples books.