This is the artist's statement that I have out in the Gallery. (It's a one page hand out).
Faith (verb): The pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
Most people will find this definition pleasing, because it is generous to the human spirit, and because it enlarges the “faithful” to include every human. This is because we are innately attracted to the Truth, the Good and the Beautiful. We only need to look at the last five minutes of our lives, to see this.
We can recall that in the last five minutes we’ve made decisions that involve each of these three things. We’ve decided to look at him instead of her, because he is more pleasing, we’ve decided to come to see an art show because it is good for our enrichment, and we’ve decided to say or do certain things because saying or doing otherwise would not be who we are. Regardless of our Philosophical, Religious or other views, we can all agree that Truth, Goodness and Beauty are worthy pursuits.
A Catholic is one who has discovered a deeper level to this definition; that Truth, Goodness and Beauty are a Person and not solely an idea. Recall the first time you fell in love, the kind of love where every bit of your body yearned to be touching them; you just wanted to be near, or even just close enough to see them. The kind of love that possessed you and every thing you did. You probably pursued the person until they were crazed by you, and ultimately they rejected you. The desire to possess and be possessed by the person you love, is natural to all of us, it is only through our lives, and the rejections that we experience that we learn that to possess and be possessed, we must play act as if we did not desire these things.
Yet, I’ve discovered in the pursuit, in the falling in love with this Person, that we’re never rejected, and instead the opposite is true. We discover in faith, that God is more vulnerable to us, than we are to Him. We discover that He is so vulnerable to us and He wants so much to satisfy our needs that we actually find Him “needy”. And just as we do with our human friend and lovers, we act out, we get angry, we try to hurt Him, we turn away, and we behave in ways that we hate. And just like with our human friends, we come back, we apologize, or just try forgetting.
We seek and then reject, and ultimately we return. This is the nature of our faith.
Mother Teresa and St. Francis had faith. They pursued their lives every moment as if their only desire was to grow ever more deeply in love with Jesus Christ. They lived their lives “Faith or Bust”. Yes, they fell; though we may never know exactly how hard they fell or the details of their struggles, their sins and rejections of God, we know they were human. They pursued Goodness, Beauty and Truth so radically, that the more they pursued their beloved, the more and more they became like Him. They became living “Goodness”, living “Beauty”, and they became living “Truth”.
Their lives speak to generations, to cultures and to every individual. They changed the world, by doing something as simple as falling in love. They viewed each second, each bird, each person, each drop of rain, each poverty, each excruciating agony, and each overwhelming joy as love letters from their Beloved. This is why I am an artist.
