Art is not what you see, but what you make others see

–edgar degas

I understand a little better now.

Than I ever did before. About how you stare off with a wondering, wandering mind. How beauty is captured in the net of your imagination. Stored up and tucked away. For a moment while it grows.

Your gift, God given, gifts us all, the receivers of your art. You give us a lens through which to view the world in ways we could never dream. We see through eyes of artist you. And it is beautiful, indeed.

You, artist, writer, poet, friend, are co-creators with the God and creator of all, making beautiful new and offering it into the world. 

Using your eyes, hands, soul and heart you render offerings, take the stale and make it new, breathe new life into the dull, blow the dank and dusty off the weary, light us up with life-giving beauty.

Dear you, don’t stop. Pick up your pen and write us stories. Make us cry or laugh. Cause us to feel human in our loneliest moments, lowest times.

Inspire us when we lie in a place of uninspired repose. Blind to beauty, numb to life. Point us, lead us to every particle of God-beauty. Grace us with your art. Show us Him with paint and words.

Walk us to the very edges of creation and frame His glory with your artful gift.

Pick up keyboard, write a poem, one that aches as it tells of love and loss and life. Whisper into our souls and say I know, I hear, I see, you are not unto yourself, living on this side of Glory.

Pick up your palette and release the paint until it becomes a masterpiece of ships wrestling on the sea or children nestled on a mother’s lap. We will wait for stroke on stroke to flow from your finger tips, tips of brush, the very soul-notes that only you can sing.

And frame it as only you can frame, this life, with the singular vision of your soul. You, you turn kaleidoscope and slant and tilt us toward your art.

The earth is whispering to you sweet things that I cannot hear. Will you share with me?

I am missing out and missing much, but you redeem my blindness with your art.

You see it slant, so beautiful, will you write me songs of all that sailed right by when I was sleeping, lost at sea.

Will you write me love songs of this life, so I can sing and dance and sway my hips into the night.

We are hungry for your special gifts. Would you wrap them up in love, release them into this world. We are dry and brittle to the core and long to read your poems and listen long into the night to stories that you tell so sweet.

And if we fail to say thank you, can we tell you now how truly grateful we are for your art.  The tender workmanship of your hands. When you were flying high or sinking low or seeing life as only you can see, you created, offered your very self to your fellow man.

And we are changed. We are touched. We see life, anew.

Dear poet, will you write as only you can write. And wrap it, send it, share it please don’t hide it where it’s dark. Let light shine on it, in it’s radiant release.

And poet, songwriter, story-teller you, please let your words truly breathe. Then exhale in the light of day where we may smell the fragrance of each syllable and note. Each phrase and fragment of your word choice, the cadence of your heart.

You photographer, our eyes would miss so much if not for brave and beautiful you. You walk soft up on beauty, click in perfected rhythms as the earth breathes in, breathes out.

Dear artist, hold your pen, grasp your brush, hover over keyboard, piano keys, journal pages, canvases for all the art and lay your gift, your offering out before for a very grateful world.

The human heart receives your art and off the lips of all man rolls a chorus of sweet thank yous.

Now artist go make art. Now artist go use your gift. Go find your voice. Go create. We wait.

I understand a little better now.

Joining Laura, Heather, Jen and  Ann