Healing Art
My life has been the poem I would have writ But I could not both live and utter it. ~Henry David Thoreau
When I consider how the hearts speaks, I believe it is in sighs and longings for beauty. Life truly is not intended to be one utilitarian march forward, day after day of progress and consumption. Our hearts need to pause for art to express its longings, its need for beauty. And our brains and overall well-being need art just as much.
Making and appreciating art, alone and in community, are necessary parts of living well. When we experience the making of, or appreciating of, art we experience a neuro-chemical exchange, what Aristotle called catharsis, that allows us to feel more connected—to our self, to God, to others.
Consider this—we don’t have to work or strain to find more connection. We could listen to beautiful music, arrange flowers, or play with a canvas of paper and find our way into beauty, deeper connection, and healing. In fact, studies show that regularly experiencing art is just as essential as exercise and good nutrition for long term health.
The authors of Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, Susan Magsaman and Ivy Ross, tell us, “The arts are being used in at least six distinct ways to heal the body: as preventative medicine; as symptom relief for everyday health issues; as treatment or intervention for illness, developmental issues, and accidents; as psychological support; as a tool for successfully living with chronic issues; and at the end of life to provide solace and meaning,” Through art, all of the centers in our brains that process emotions and senses light up, as well as the spaces that initiate connection with others.
Art is being used to heal trauma in children and in veterans of war. It is used to create opportunities for connection in senior centers and colleges. Beauty is essential, connection is essential, and art is a way into both.
The past few days I’ve been attending a retreat in a beautiful place in Pennsylvania, a home I’ve dreamed of seeing, with gardens and intentional, thoughtful places of beauty and rest woven throughout the grounds and interior. The retreat has been led by my spiritual director, Summer Joy Gross, as well as artist and writer, Kris Camealy, who led us in a collage activity. She made sure we trusted her and believed that everyone is an artist; spoke of the necessity of art for our souls, gave us prompts to consider on the interior of our soul and on our experience of identity, and then, with music playing and instructions to not use the time for long conversations, she set us loose in a tent full of magazines, old books, stamps, stickers, scraps of paper and fabric, tape, pastels and chalks, scissors and glue sticks.
What came from this experience was richer than I could have imagined, and far more fun than I’d ever have predicted. In the same way that I enter my body through movement, through prayer and meditation, I dropped deep into my heart, deep into the ground of my being. I collected materials as my intuition guided and then I set to work playing with tearing and cutting and arranging all the materials into something my brain hadn’t thought of.
It truly felt like my heart and soul were speaking, not in words, but in sighs, through beauty. I had wondered over the heart as a fountain opening up into images of love, into the experience of beauty and wonder, into the discovering of renewal and joy. And my heart, I think, spoke outwardly onto a page with scraps of paper and pieces of old book layered over pastels and old words that have held onto my identity under it all.
After, we shared our experience with a small group of women, spoke of what we were considering or wondering over as we created. We spoke a bit about what is on our hearts, and then we listened and allowed their reflections to give us deeper pause in the creation. We are made to create and we are made to connect. These kind of experiences offer both, I discovered.
There is more to this that I will consider and write perhaps next week. But for now I offer this: find a way today to retreat into art. Share it with someone perhaps. Be it music or making food or perhaps finding a piece of paper and collaging your way into your soul. It is Sunday, after all, a fine day to pause for beauty. And for art.
Where does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End? by Mary Oliver There are things you can’t reach. But you can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God. And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier. The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily, out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing from the unreachable top of the tree. I look; morning to night I am never done with looking. Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around as though with your arms open. And thinking: maybe something will come, some shining coil of wind, or a few leaves from any old tree– they are all in this too. And now I will tell you the truth. Everything in the world comes. At least, closer. And, cordially. Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake. Like goldfinches, little dolls of goldfluttering around the corner of the sky of God, the blue air.