“We can all create. All of us. We don’t have to be “good”—making art, doing improv, sketching, journaling, crafting, dancing, singing, painting, sculpting with air-dry clay, any of it, all of it—it is ours, and it can be a spiritual practice.”. This quote jumped out at me as one of the most important things for me to remember and share as a practice with those I am closest to. It was very easy with my grandchildren, because it was play. To draw, make up a story, and any number of other things that become “serious” or “work” or even a job or profession in the adult world, were once a mostly fun carefree activity in childhood. We “learn” that art is something “real artists” do, etc as we “grow up”, and that spirituality is mediated by various classes of professionals (Rabbis, etc.). And granting permission to ourselves and others to be creative, even if the results don’t measure up to our or anyone else’s expectations is very important to me. The experience of creation is itself what is important. Thank you for the timely reminder Rabbi Ruttenberg.
I'm not a person who meditates, so for me, when I draw or paint, that is as close as I get to meditation. I feel as if all of my consciousness is at the point of the pencil or the tip of the brush—I often feel as if I'm touching the object which I'm drawing (often something existing only in my mind). Mind you, I'm not so conscious of this while it's happening, only when I lay down my pencil or brush and am making my exit from that state.
The pictures you posted! Beautiful pieces. It was never a question to me that our creativity is a direct link to G-d. We are made in His image and He created the most stunning works of art-- the universe, earth, humans, animals, etc. One doesn't have to be an artist to be creative and G-dly. I remember someone once commenting that even a Wall St. banker is creative-- he has to pick out his tie in the morning. :)
First, thank you for remembering Patti Smith and probably my favorite of her albums, "Easter." Therein you find the two sung poems that really are inseparable - "Babelogue," the lead in to the oft completely (if not willfully) misunderstood "Rock N Roll Ni**er." I say "willfully" because you can't grasp her words without grasping their painful and defiant meanings, her identification with being among those "outside of society" because an unjust and uncreative society isn't worth being in... and because to be an artist so often excludes the creative person from even being considered for inclusion in society just as much as dark skin color has spawned such exclusion in American culture.
"I was lost in a valley of pleasure
I was lost in the infinite sea
I was lost and measure for measure
Love spewed from the heart of me
I was lost and the cost
And the cost didn't matter to me
I was lost and the cost
Was to be outside society"
Patti Smith
"ROCK N ROLL NI**ER"
That "infinite sea," the origin of life and song, a metaphor for the Divine. G-d is, after all, the ultimate stranger... and to draw close to and bear some word or image or meaning from The Divine all too often renders the artist "strange" to the community where they may visit, but all too often will never be really welcomed during their lives. The art may be beloved, but the artist, as one of my professors once said, is rarely someone you want to live next door to. Assuming you, of course, are conventional and comfortable and frightened by anyone who isn't and who wrestles with G-d all night for that one word, that one image, that one name, that one chord.
The poet William Butler Yeats understood this estrangement all too well and how it felt from within. One wonders when he writes here of foregoing a "heavenly mansion" he means in the judgment of those following their very clearly laid out map of the conventional life, the one that allegedly guarantees such heavenly rewards, the outcome of a questionable quid pro quo with G-d.
Sometimes, serving the creative fire is nothing except misery and there is no external reward. One does it because one MUST -- it is the calling, the vocation, inescapable, uncounterfeitable, a thing done purely for its own sake. No external reward to be hoped for... much like a genuine religious experience of G-d and G-d's desires that require one to make real those desires. And the accompanying fear and perplexity that no work was never done right, well, or with proper intention and skill; G-d is G-d: we are merely human. Things that keep many artists awake at all hours or self-medicating in the wake of the damage of a battered, broken soul. Wrestling G-d for meaning always leaves its marks. Beautiful, terrifying marks.
I enjoyed your piece! But...I was expecting/hoping that you would come to explain Judaism's history of restrictions when it comes to certain elements of visual art and your interpretation of that. Would you provide any further comments on that topic?
Apologies for switching topics; I'm writing for advice about a problem looming in the horizon. How do we manage Purim and Pesach when the Israeli government is playing the role of the bad guy on the world stage? How can we celebrate our safety and freedom while our people are denying those to their neighbors?
“We can all create. All of us. We don’t have to be “good”—making art, doing improv, sketching, journaling, crafting, dancing, singing, painting, sculpting with air-dry clay, any of it, all of it—it is ours, and it can be a spiritual practice.”. This quote jumped out at me as one of the most important things for me to remember and share as a practice with those I am closest to. It was very easy with my grandchildren, because it was play. To draw, make up a story, and any number of other things that become “serious” or “work” or even a job or profession in the adult world, were once a mostly fun carefree activity in childhood. We “learn” that art is something “real artists” do, etc as we “grow up”, and that spirituality is mediated by various classes of professionals (Rabbis, etc.). And granting permission to ourselves and others to be creative, even if the results don’t measure up to our or anyone else’s expectations is very important to me. The experience of creation is itself what is important. Thank you for the timely reminder Rabbi Ruttenberg.
I'm not a person who meditates, so for me, when I draw or paint, that is as close as I get to meditation. I feel as if all of my consciousness is at the point of the pencil or the tip of the brush—I often feel as if I'm touching the object which I'm drawing (often something existing only in my mind). Mind you, I'm not so conscious of this while it's happening, only when I lay down my pencil or brush and am making my exit from that state.
Rabbi, I agree both art and religion try to give insight into the infinite. D
Thanks for your blessing! :-)
The pictures you posted! Beautiful pieces. It was never a question to me that our creativity is a direct link to G-d. We are made in His image and He created the most stunning works of art-- the universe, earth, humans, animals, etc. One doesn't have to be an artist to be creative and G-dly. I remember someone once commenting that even a Wall St. banker is creative-- he has to pick out his tie in the morning. :)
First, thank you for remembering Patti Smith and probably my favorite of her albums, "Easter." Therein you find the two sung poems that really are inseparable - "Babelogue," the lead in to the oft completely (if not willfully) misunderstood "Rock N Roll Ni**er." I say "willfully" because you can't grasp her words without grasping their painful and defiant meanings, her identification with being among those "outside of society" because an unjust and uncreative society isn't worth being in... and because to be an artist so often excludes the creative person from even being considered for inclusion in society just as much as dark skin color has spawned such exclusion in American culture.
"I was lost in a valley of pleasure
I was lost in the infinite sea
I was lost and measure for measure
Love spewed from the heart of me
I was lost and the cost
And the cost didn't matter to me
I was lost and the cost
Was to be outside society"
Patti Smith
"ROCK N ROLL NI**ER"
That "infinite sea," the origin of life and song, a metaphor for the Divine. G-d is, after all, the ultimate stranger... and to draw close to and bear some word or image or meaning from The Divine all too often renders the artist "strange" to the community where they may visit, but all too often will never be really welcomed during their lives. The art may be beloved, but the artist, as one of my professors once said, is rarely someone you want to live next door to. Assuming you, of course, are conventional and comfortable and frightened by anyone who isn't and who wrestles with G-d all night for that one word, that one image, that one name, that one chord.
The poet William Butler Yeats understood this estrangement all too well and how it felt from within. One wonders when he writes here of foregoing a "heavenly mansion" he means in the judgment of those following their very clearly laid out map of the conventional life, the one that allegedly guarantees such heavenly rewards, the outcome of a questionable quid pro quo with G-d.
Sometimes, serving the creative fire is nothing except misery and there is no external reward. One does it because one MUST -- it is the calling, the vocation, inescapable, uncounterfeitable, a thing done purely for its own sake. No external reward to be hoped for... much like a genuine religious experience of G-d and G-d's desires that require one to make real those desires. And the accompanying fear and perplexity that no work was never done right, well, or with proper intention and skill; G-d is G-d: we are merely human. Things that keep many artists awake at all hours or self-medicating in the wake of the damage of a battered, broken soul. Wrestling G-d for meaning always leaves its marks. Beautiful, terrifying marks.
"The Choice
The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse."
William Butler Yeats
I enjoyed your piece! But...I was expecting/hoping that you would come to explain Judaism's history of restrictions when it comes to certain elements of visual art and your interpretation of that. Would you provide any further comments on that topic?
Apologies for switching topics; I'm writing for advice about a problem looming in the horizon. How do we manage Purim and Pesach when the Israeli government is playing the role of the bad guy on the world stage? How can we celebrate our safety and freedom while our people are denying those to their neighbors?