Art deals most directly with the nature of what is Real. It also invites us to empathize and deal directly with human suffering. When it avoids suffering, it is bad art; when it brings light into suffering, it enlightens.

The imagination is a part of knowing. When we engage our creativity and understanding, we begin to encounter more of what is seen in the unseen.

Art is part of healing or making things more whole, or what they truly are. This applies to Nature, people and even our image of God. Good art teaches us to see things more as they truly are.

How we see things matters. To see things empathetically, through a lens of love and compassion helps heal what we see, and we, who perceive them. Art works in both of these directions. Creativity transforms our “I” as we encounter other’s I’s! Art is then, the ultimate risk of Love. On the cross Jesus saw humanity most clearly, through the lens of Love’s suffering for us all. God is Love, and incarnated into our sufferings. The Cross then is the highest fine art ever in history.

Our little art offerings are in this way just imitations and participations in The Cross as art. We create in collaboration with His creativity, which was His direct dealing with our sufferings! So art deals with theodicy or the problem of human suffering. It invites us to suffer with one another in care, and Love into our particular pains.