Thank you for joining us!
First, this week Iām celebrating ONE YEAR on Substack, and I can hardly believe it!
Iāll have more to say on that later this week, but I wanted to share with everyone that longtime The Wildroot Parables community-member
is now writing on Substack at her new newsletter, Holy HSP! She writes about the trait of High Sensitivity from a strong biblical basis, and I really think you would all enjoy her calm and encouraging space over there.Sheās been here from the beginning and I know she has touched so many hearts in this little corner of the Internet, so go check her out!
Before we begin our devotional, I wanted to share a Comment Highlight from last week:
On our essay last week, when I bared my soul about my own āfalse startsā in my writing this year,
commented:I have often found, ideas for which I have great ambitions, God will tap my brakes for me. The idea won't die, but will be dormant, until He warms the cold creative soil of my mind and allows the idea to sprout. His timing, not mine.
Phew! Deeply convicting, Scoot, and thank you for the timely words! Scoot writes a deeply insightful and creative Catholic-based newsletter here on Substack called
. Check it out!If you want a chance to be featured in next weekās Comment Highlight, all you have to do is post a comment on any of this weekās posts or threads. Thatās it!
Now, on with this weekās devotionalā¦
what is art but an expression of breath of thought, movement of hand eye feet and color; art, then is the thing we make when we fall helpless before the sheer force of Creation; Creator breathes life into the nostrils of our first father and (on instinct) he exhales a song.
Visual art is not something I spent much time playing with. I drew as a child, like most children do. I doodled all through school and well into my twenties. But I convinced myself very early on that I am a writer, not an artist (as if it would be anathema to do both).
My mom is an incredible visual artist in various media, most notably watercolor (I know Iām biased, but really, check her out). And growing up I was friends with the āart kidsā in school, but I wasnāt one myself.
And no one told me that I wasnāt an artist. I wasnāt bullied or pushed out of art. Iām not an undiscovered genius. The closest I ever came to being discouraged from artistic endeavors was when a teacher in a drawing class at community college made an offhanded, well-intentioned critique that my style was, āA bit cartoony.ā But honestly, that didnāt even really sting. I didnāt have aspirations to be an artist, so I didnāt take it personally.
I think, like so many of us, I was doing the very grown-up thing of looking around, realizing that I didnāt want to āpursue artā as a career, and therefore decided that it wasnāt worth pursuing or practicing at all. No money? No passion? No point.
But thatās not how humans are wired deep down, is it?
I think humans have an echo of creation deep within our bones, and it lurks in various guises. When itās frustrated, it can even come out as destruction. But we all have the desire to create simply for the sake of it, even if itās hard to justify it in our āmake money to liveā world.
Even though writing is my passion and my craft, art was always lurking under the surface, simply for the joy of it. It just took me a while to find my medium. Turns out, an impulse purchase of a twelve-pack of cheap oil pastels changed all that for me and lit a flame I didnāt realize I was waiting for.
These quickening days of spring I find myself pulling out a sheet of paper and playing with pastels, enjoying the forgiving nature of them, the way colors blend together, the textures and forms you can make. I feel like a kid again, but with an adultās gratitude for the gift of art as magic, as ceremony. An offering on an unexpected altar.
But Iām human, and infected with self-doubt. So over and over again, I ask myself, āWhy am I dedicating time to making this? Will I sell it? Will I pursue this as a craft? What is the point?ā
But the answer comes back, every time the same:
What does it matter? All Iām doing is lending my voice to the sound all children of Creator-God have deep at our core: the song of creation, purely for the sake of singing.
Thank you for reading!
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Congratulations on one year, and thanks as ever for the shoutout!
A programming note, I am reading on the app and your link to Megans HSP substack appears to be broken. The link to her profile works fine and i checked out her stack from there.
God bless you!
Congrats on one year on Substack S.E.!
Doing writing and art at the same time can be tricky. It's hard to find time to do both. Then with art it's hard to market it.
I wrote about my journey through art and the different ways I tried to do it and succeed. It was staring right at me the whole time.
If you haven't read my journey through art yet, here is the link:
https://matthewmurray.substack.com/p/my-journey-through-art