A Few Quotations about Art

As you probably know, I love quotations, and I post them often on this blog and my Christians in the Arts blog. Today I'm thinking about beauty in art and wanted to share these thoughts with you:


Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
--Andre Gide

We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.
--Madeleine L'Engle

All writing is a form of prayer.
--John Keats

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
--W.H. Auden

I write with intensity, discipline and constancy, because this is the work that calls me, the vocation of my heart.
--bell hooks

Personal essayists converse with the reader because they're already having dialogues and disputes with themselves.
--Phillip Lopate

Never lose a holy curiosity.
--Albert Einstein

Strawberry Pickin'

I love strawberries, and so does my family. Last Friday, my parents, my daughter, and I went strawberry pickin' at a farm near my parents' house. My folks had gone with my sister and her girls the week before and she had brought home big bags of berries. I wanted to go too--not just for the spoils but for the experience. My daughter and I have never picked our own strawberries before, and I wanted the two of us to have that memory with her grandparents.

The rows of strawberry plants went on and on. We chose two rows at random and started. Those first few berries, hidden under the leaves of the plants, were small, red, and perfect. I was surprised somehow. They weren't the huge, mutant-looking things we usually find at the grocery store. We worked our way down rows next to each other and then spread out a bit when we realized the berries in that area had been picked over. After about 30 minutes, my daughter started asking how much longer it would be. She reminded me of myself at her age. Whenever we gardened--whether at my grandparents' house or at our friends' place--I couldn't wait to go inside or go home.

Fortunately, before long, we had two large bucketsful of ripe red berries. As we went inside the building to pay for them, we passed a long bench full of kids under seven stuffing berries into their mouths with sticky fingers and sporting red-stained smiles. On the way home, the sweet fragrance of the strawberries wafted through the car, reminding me of a day well spent with my parents and my daughter, doing a little bit of labor for a lot of goodness. Making me grateful, yet again, for the beauty and variety and provision of creation.

Favorite Pieces

To enjoy beauty, you have to be aware of it, and that's one of the purposes of this blog--to build awareness about beauty. We so often walk right by beauty without noticing it, especially if it's part of our everyday landscape. Today, to wake myself up, I thought I'd list just a few of my favorite items of beauty in my house:

* the "jar of clay" painting we bought on our first anniversary trip
* the multi-colored glass bowl he gave me for my birthday
* the "Narnia" painted door
* the purple frosted glass water bottle with the delicately-turned lip
* the tall vase with the Raku finish

Now, what about you? Leave a comment listing or describing some of your favorite items of beauty in your home. Look around before you do so and enjoy your things again.

Gold and Gems

Last week, I went on a field trip with my daughter's class to the largest hardrock gold mine east of the Mississippi River, the site of America's first gold rush. During the excavation period in the late 1800s, approximately 4,000 tons of dirt, debris and ore were removed from the tunnel system. During the tour, our guide talked about the geology of the gold belt, including quartz and pyrite formations, where early miners found gold.

Before we took the underground tour, though, we did some gold panning and gem grubbing. My favorite was the gem grubbing, which involves taking a wooden box with a mesh bottom, filling it with sand, and dunking it into a stream of running water. As the sand washes away, it leaves gems behind. Apparently it's possible to find emeralds, rubies, and sapphires but I didn't wash up any. I did walk away with a bag full of colorful gems, though, including quartz, adventurine, sodalite, carnelian, citrine, blue calcite, a desert rose, a chunk of fool’s gold, and more. When she panned for gold, my daughter found nine pieces, the most of anyone in her class but unfortunately not enough to make a dent in her college fund.

My gems now sit in a small mason jar on my desk to remind me of a fun day with my daughter and my early fascination with rocks and geology. We're planning to go back and take my husband with us. Maybe next time we'll strike it rich.

Why Beauty?

I try to seek out beauty wherever and whenever I can, and I want to help other people do that too. Click here to go to one of my first posts, which explains why. May your eyes be opened to the beauty around you. Thanks for reading.

To Openness

So much escapes our notice. So much depends on our openness--openness to God and to the beauty He has created. I like this quote and thought you might too.


"There is ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness, a sign that God is implicit in all of creation." Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

The Hope of Beauty

“This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart.” Pope John Paul II, “Letter to Artists,” Easter Sunday, 1999.

We are living in challenging times. Bad news seems to be all we hear and many of us are experiencing financial troubles, job loss, major illnesses, and other crises. When bad things happen to us or our families, what do we do? We focus on our circumstances.

But the Bible tells us in Hebrews to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith” and to “hold unswervingly to the hope we profess.” Hope is defined in the dictionary as “to look forward to with confidence or expectation. To expect and desire.” We have confidence in God, the Creator of the universe (Who is bigger than our circumstances) and we have confidence in our salvation through Christ’s death and resurrection.

Years ago, I went through a difficult time. But as God was comforting me and reminding me that He was my help, He also gradually opened my eyes to beauty. I began to see it everywhere: in my home, in my baby girl’s face, in art, creation, music, words. Beauty had been there all along while I was struggling but I didn’t see it, didn’t fully appreciate it. When my eyes were opened to it, beauty reminded me of God, reminded me that Jesus was my hope, and it made me worship Him--my Creator, my Savior--even more.

Beauty can pull you out of yourself and put your focus on the Creator, who can comfort and soothe your aching heart. It can remind you of the hope you have in Jesus if you have committed your life to Him. And in spite of what’s going on in the world around you, you can know that because you are His, you have hope not only for the future in heaven but for life right now.