Two medieval mystics, Hildegard and Hadewijch, are models in a distinctive way. Their willingness to become passionately involved with Christ made them alive with love. They are not boring. Their lives teem with intense participation in life. They said yes to being in love, to the dangers and tribulations of that state as well as to its joys and satisfactions ... Each of these women stand as reminders that we are not alone in our choice to live and love with passion. They knew intimately a passionate God who freely and generously invited them to share in that passion. They responded affirmatively and call us to do the same. The passion of God is guaranteed to call us out from the moral security of obedience to the law toward our own deepest humanity. Passion involves a transformation in which service to others, healing, relief, comfort, hope and forgiveness take on a radically new character. The person who has allowed passion to have its way returns to love and life and service with new verve and feeling. The experience of passion wounds with the fire of love and opens the door to the utter fullness of humanity in God.
[Art] is necessary so that we can be challenged out of our siloed ways of thinking and working, and by extension our understanding of how change occurs...
We can understand art as a process of bringing something into the world that was not there before, it can be an artifact but it can also be an idea. That process, Professor Elaine Scarry calls a fragment of world alteration, and so if we can alter the world in fragments, she says, "just think what can be imagined together, what might be possible in community: a total reinvention of the world."
We can understand art as a process of bringing something into the world that was not there before, it can be an artifact but it can also be an idea. That process, Professor Elaine Scarry calls a fragment of world alteration, and so if we can alter the world in fragments, she says, "just think what can be imagined together, what might be possible in community: a total reinvention of the world."