Art is not a sermon, and the artist is not a preacher.
Art accomplishes by indirection. The beautiful refines.
The perfect in art suggests the perfect in conduct.
The harmony in music teaches, without intention, the lesson of proportion in life.
The bird in his song has no moral purpose, and yet the influence is humanizing.
The beautiful in nature acts through appreciation and sympathy.
it does not browbeat, neither does it humiliate.
It is beautiful without regard to you.
Roses would be unbearable if in their red and perfumed hearts were mottoes to the effect that bears eat bad boys and that honesty is the best policy.
Art creates an atmosphere in which the proprieties, the amenities, and the virtues unconsciously grow.
The rain does not lecture the seed.
The light does not make rules for the vine and flower.
The heart is softened by the pathos of the perfect.
-Robert G. Ingersoll. (From: Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book)
This is a path that I long to see explored within our spiritual community and my ministry more and more. To seek to encounter the Lord through this kind of ministry. A ministry that is quick to hear and slow to speak and slow to anger (James 1:19).
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