We are discussing ” Art as Meditation: the Way of the Prophets.” Following is a personal story that woke me up to the power of art to melt hearts as well as frozen ideologies way, back when I was just 28 years old.
In Paris in 1969 I had the privilege of chaperoning seventy American college students on a visit to Russia. When our group was scheduled to meet the seventy-five Russian college students, we entered a large gymnasium and everyone gravitated to one end. The Russians stood frozen at the other end. Nothing happened. It was the worst party of my life.
Separating us in the room was a wall of ice representing all the myths, shibboleths, and hatreds that our respective governments had fed us about each other for decades.
Then someone in our group struck up a song, Peter, Paul, and Mary’s hit “Leaving on a Jet Plane” (this was the first time I had heard it), and all the Americans joined in. The Russians responded with a song of their own, the “Volga Boatmen,” which I recognized. Then another song from our side; then from theirs.
Then the Russians started to dance a Cossack dance; first alone, then with each other. Then the Americans began to dance. And finally, our two groups meshed in their dancing. A party ensued. It was a profound experience for me of the power of art to melt ideologies and hearts.
It was concrete proof of the importance of art as prophecy that has always stayed with me. Art reaches us in a deeper place than does fear. Art very often interferes. Awakening imagination can arouse our creativity to solve problems and move our species to its next level of evolutionary development.
In her book with the stirring title of Imagine Inventing Yellow, poet, potter and painter M. C. Richards defines “imagination” and hints at its consequences: “Imagination means singing to a wide invisible audience. It means receptivity to the creative unconscious, the macrocosmic mind, artistic mind. It makes erotic philosophers of us as we imagine the world in images that make whole. To imagine is to give birth to–to embody the Spirit in word and picture and behavior. The world will change when we can imagine it different and, like artists, do the work of creating new social forms.”
In theological terms, creativity is a matter of letting the Spirit in, the Christ in, the Buddha nature in.
Matthew Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest, p. 94
Matthew Fox, Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet, pp. 199, 230
Banner image: Dancers at a Cosmic Mass. Photographer unknown.
Lectio Divina Practice
Take a phrase or word from this meditation and be still with it, letting it wash over you and through and through you. Repeat it as a mantra. Be with the silence that follows. Be with, be with…
Meditate on the story shared above. Do you have similar stories to tell? Be with this story and similar ones. What are they telling us today?
Recommended Reading
Matthew Fox’s stirring autobiography, Confessions, reveals his personal, intellectual, and spiritual journey from altar boy, to Dominican priest, to his eventual break with the Vatican. Five new chapters in this revised and updated edition bring added perspective in light of the author’s continued journey, and his reflections on the current changes taking place in church, society and the environment.
Because creativity is the key to both our genius and beauty as a species but also to our capacity for evil, we need to teach creativity and to teach ways of steering this God-like power in directions that promote love of life (biophilia) and not love of death (necrophilia). Pushing well beyond the bounds of conventional Christian doctrine, Fox’s focus on creativity attempts nothing less than to shape a new ethic.
5 thoughts on “The Power of Art to Melt Ideologies and Hearts”
Thanks for the great story about your trip to Moscow. I had a similar experience in Africa in 1989. Our group of fifteen had just extracted our British army truck in which we were traveling from a mammoth mud hole, when we saw a bunch of school children watching us and laughing. We laughed, too, as the removal of the truck was a pretty funny sight. We walked over to the group, laughing with them, and asked one child if we could look at her tablet which was tucked under her arm. When we opened it, there, printed on the page, were the words to “When the Saints Go Marching In.” We (being Australians, British, Dutch, and Canadian — only two of us from the U.S.) started singing, and the whole class joined in. What a unifying experience! We shared hugs and smiles at the end of our song, and everyone went on his/her way with a lighter heart. Billie
Dear Billy, Your story about connecting with children in Africa through “When the Saints Go Marching In” has warmed my heart. You had such good fortune to participate in that moment and make the happy connection with others through song = proof that art touches us beyond our fears and calls us to be simply, beautifully human.
Gail Sofia Ransom
For the DM Team
Thanks Matt for your wonderful story. In 1991, just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I traveled to Russia with some 30 people as “peace ambassadors,” bringing the Dances of Universal Peace as a public statement of our wish to bring peace into the world. Our respective governments had indeed, as you point out, chose to convey a different message that kept us from knowing that there were actually Russian government supported peace groups. We met with them and danced outdoors in such places as the Kremlin’s Red Square and other sites of political and historical significance. We invited people who were passing by to join us and they did so eagerly. Offering the Dances of Universal Peace in my own country has often been a different story, where people much prefer to watch rather than participate. I recall “working the crowd” who gathered to watch what was going on. We had cards printed in Russian that explained who we were, inviting people to join us. On one occasion we gathered in the center of a large public square in the city of Tbilisi. As I walked through the crowd of curious onlookers, greeting people and passing our these cards, a woman who spoke English said to me that she had just come from a rehearsal of the Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra and would love to dance with us but could not because of the violin case she was carrying. I said we could keep her violin safe by placing it with the musicians in the center of the dance circle. She joined in the dances and thanked us warmly when she left. Art does indeed carry a prophetic message that is easily understood by “the dancer” who resides in everyone who has a heartbeat to respond to the rhythm of song, dance and whatever the beauty is that creativity brings. – Joe Kilikevice
Joseph,Thank you for sharing your story. It makes me wonder who might be part of such a dancing peace circle these days. Would it be the religious right and left? New immigrants and Trump supporters? Police and inner-city youth? The possibilities boggle the mind. Your story gives me hope.
Gail Sofia Ransom
For the DM Team
Art, music and dance are powerful ways to communicate…often better than words. I have seen that in many of the 40 countries visited.