Golden Fleece

I have been away gathering fleece, but now I am back with a quotation that says a thing I believe with all my mind and heart:

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”  ~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Sometimes I think we get it backward. 

I have often heard artists refer to the act of creation as a spiritual expression whereby the great spirit (some might say the muse) works through the artist as an instrument.  This may be wrong; it could be the other way around.  Maybe our spirit swells up and spills out our humanity in color's passion, line's seductiveness, tone's modulation and design's intelligence.     

When considered from this angle, maybe the artist is the image.  That might account for how precious a gift of art is.  To take such a gift deceitfully is more than theft.  The deceitfulness is the theft, but the actual receipt of the gift is rape.

I once knew a woman who wanted to be cremated and her ashes incorporated into a painting.  When I first heard this I thought what a neat and unusual idea.  But the more I have pondered it, I realize the profound spiritual poverty such an idea reveals.  What an artist pours onto the canvas is her own revelation of humanity, not the human debris of another.   To do so would be an invasive violation of spiritual energy and a disgusting attention seeking desire to grab attention in a physical way even in death. 

Or as Sipsy says in Fried Green Tomatoes, "A lady always knows when it's time to leave."

I think it is high time for me to recognize the precious humanity revealed in my art as an expression of the spirit I am.  It is mine, it is enough and it is wonderful.  Realizing that is golden fleece.