How art and healing relate—one of my favorite topics! Working towards and article on it! Thanks for your kind patience as i do….just some raw seeds of contemplation here:

What art can teach us about living well; how can we view art as a practice of empathy! How art appreciation relates to healing the planet and one another!

Don’t underrate perception in the healing process! As I see you, i will treat you! If I see you through my wounds, i will interpret you like that. If I see you more as God does, i will find myself loving you, and working towards your wholeness. Jesus saw the hearts of people, and acted accordingly. He did not judge by surfaces.

Most writers talk about being surprised by the perspective of their characters. I didn’t know they felt or thought like that. Something about entering into true empathy with others is one of the roles of art in spiritual development, and appreciation of art. Art is not superfluous to spiritual development! It’s a basic way of learning to be better people.

“Looking at art and beauty well, teaches us how to look at one another better! The practice of appreciating art from the heart, is a spiritual practice which teaches us how to treat one another as those “in God’s image”, which is our most basic human ethical imperative!” From a great book I’m reading on Christian/Jewish dialogue called, “For the Sake of heaven and earth”.

Or, as Martin Buber, the great jewish poet philosopher, might put it, “To the degree I engage others in Love, I will see them as they truly are, and know them into or towards wholeness. I can only know even a piece of art, to the degree that I risk my “I” in encountering and calling forth, their “thou”!

I still think this is true in art and life! To love our neighbors as ourselves, or to love the stranger, (which is a command in judaism, and implied in christianity, as Christians were the originally implied strangers-as were all gentiles)- who in our times is everyone, as we have become so inter-connnected- requires another level of ethical spiritual technology, or formation or incarnation of His Spirit in us, as MLK put it!

Viewing art and others well is one spiritual practice towards learning to love our neighbors as ourselves. Another level of the “heart of Christ” in us! Let’s implement that heart tech! So we can appreciate the art of others around us!

This is how looking well at art becomes an ethical practice for treating others as neighbors and family! In this sense, aesthetics, isn’t just for breakfast anymore-learning to see the beauty of other, the image of God in them, leads to how we actually treat one another.

It’s an imperative ethical practice to see well these days (sight comes before speech!)-good spiritual aesthetics, or seeing others and art more as they actually are through the lens of Love. For, if I see you more as God does, i will perforce, find myself loving you!

To see one another well—i.e. more as God sees us and them-is to help repair and heal (make more whole) our friends, cities, nations and planet. Let’s be participators in that grand reconciliation of true sight, friends!

Let’s be better art appreciators with one another. Sometimes, it just starts with looking at art well, as a practice. Empathizing our way into His Loving Vision of one another. In this sense, art becomes our learning to enter into God’s empathy for His Own Creation! Let’s! Aesthetics are underrated as a spiritual practice!

Learning to look well at art and one another displaces a pornographic vision of life-looking through our wounds versus looking through His.

It heals us, as we look well at art and one another-this is how viewing art can become a spiritual practice, rather than a superfluous luxury activity. To learn to see is penultimate to learning to Love well!

That’s my thesis anyway. We come into a deeper fellowship and communion with His vision and suffering by looking with Him at art, others and life, rather than viewing things only from our own vision. Art, in that way, becomes perceptual communion. We join His Sight of other. And our orientation shifts by conjoining with His!

In doing so, we become better people, art and life appreciators! Looking at art well is a practice for looking at others in God’s image and living well.

This is why aesthetics still matter as a spiritual practice. Art’s not just for breakfast anymore people! Our view, and interpretation of the world around us, is how we end up treating it! So let’s nurture our lenses well! And pick the right ones!

When we look at art with God, it helps us see more of how things actually are, or, will one day be. We then, become collaborators in seeing and being healed and healing (making more whole others and ourselves) what’s around us through the depth of our collaboration of sight! See well, to be well.