A Soulful Journey

“If you steal a little, it's plagiarism; if you steal a lot, it's art.”   unknown

When Pablo Casals was quite aged, feeble and frail, he arose every morning barely able to take single halting steps.  His young wife had to assist him as an aide.  After his morning ritual of paying Bach, he was like a new man, rejuvenated and like a man having shed twenty years from his life.  - told by Norman Cousins Follow your dreams and loves.  Practice the gifts with which God has endowed you.  Use them often and well and joy will be yours.

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature.  He becomes interesting to other people.  He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and open ways for better understanding.  Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible.  – Robert Henri , “The Art Spirit” We are all artists as we imagine how life can be different than it is presently.  Every time we conjure up a new way of doing things we are crafting a new art.

“The truest expression of a people is in its dance and its music.  Bodies never lie.” – Agnes DeMille

“Actually a root word of technology, teche, originally meant “art.”   The ancient Greeks never separated art from manufacture in their minds…”   -Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Perhaps the race toward greater automation is best looked at through the lens of art.   It then becomes an object of man’s creativity and less a crutch or fearsome adversary.

  An American couple found themselves in Paris and decided to visit the Louvre. As they walked from gallery to gallery, they would comment on each work of art. They would stand before a painting and say: this one's nice - that one not so   much… this painting is too dark, that one is boring, there is something wrong with the proportions in that painting. Now, you should know the guards who work in art museums are not just ordinary guards. They spend many hours with the masterpieces and have a very personal relation with these works of art. As the visitors stood in a gallery passing judgment over one particular work, a guard came over and said: "Excuse me but you have it backwards. You are not here to judge these works of art; they are here to judge you. They were here long before you came to the Louvre and they will be here long after you're gone. How you see them is a measure of your character, your vision, your insight. -   Rabbi Mark Greenspan

A scribe writing a sefer Torah walked into Rabbi Elimelech’s study to show off his art. “Nu, Rabbi, how do you like my penmanship?” the scribe asked. Rabbi Elimelech peered at the Torah. “The penmanship? To tell you the truth, Reb Yankel, the penmanship is nothing to get excited about.   But the language – such beauty, such meaning…” -Israel Jacobs