When I want to absorb a quotation or some kind of message, I sometimes make a piece of art from it, playing with the lettering in creative ways. This one is a reminder to me when I become impatient with myself. “Patience is the smile of the soul”. As I made this drawing of these words, they worked their way into me, and then I stuck it up in a room with tape on the wall, and I run into it as I move about in my home.
I feel the impact of something written out by someone else in calligraphy or artistic lettering more strongly when the presentation is creative. I appreciate the art of Corita Kent and her playful approach to words. This one is part of a series of alphabet letters from 1968.
Digging through old handwritten letters from friends and family that I have saved reminds me how the handwriting of someone can carry something more than emails and texts. I connect more with the person writing, even if it is just a brief note, or a signed card. I handwrite some letters still these days dominated by email and text instant-ness. No spellcheck or correcting mistakes, but that’s ok, I keep telling myself. Machine-created art or text cannot provide the human-to-human connection as well as hand-lettering does. Various empirical studies have shown that how a viewer evaluates an artwork depends on her/his knowledge of its creator or the process of creation. The same applies to our handwritten letters to and from another person.
Each morning, I write in my journal. I use fountain pens with various coloured inks and nib sizes. I enjoy the feel of the pen on the paper, and the shape of letters, even if much of what I am writing about is mundane. I write the date and day at the beginning, somehow commemorating it.
I am no great calligrapher. My work would never have made it into the Book of Kells. and there is nothing perfect about my handwriting. I rarely re-read my journals, but there is a satisfaction in writing things down on paper.
I often write out poems or quotes I want to remember, like this one by Bernard of Clairvaux. It was good for me to do, mistakes and all.
Research has shown that when we write something long-hand, pen or pencil on paper, it is good for us. It helps things sink in, in a way beyond typing into a phone or computer. I still take notes on paper when listening to a talk, or even sometimes when hearing words from a friend on the phone.
Do you write things out with pencil or pen? Have critical ‘handwriting’ teachers from your childhood spoiled the joy of handwriting for you? If so, can you reclaim the joy of writing, of making beautiful letters, or even rough ones? Do you think handwriting a note to someone might sometimes be better than an email or text even if it is imperfect and takes longer to arrive by mail? If you cannot find a stamp, you can always take a photo of it and text it to them.
Are there any quotes you want to stick up on your wall or put on your table, not in typeface, but in your own hand?
What art fuels your ability to love? Fans the flames of love in you? In a lecture at the Chautauqua Institute in New York on compassionate love, I shared some arts resources that do that for me. One of them was the film, 
Here are some web-links to poetry and music from the Spiritual Connection book that I gathered up to post. I hope some of them can help to provide fuel for you in these days.
Recently I have developed a passion for mending. I was invigorated by reading the books 
One of the reasons I go to our local farmers market is to get lost in the visual beauty of the fruits and vegetables and flowers. I take in all the smells too. It is a high spot of summer for me. I bought these beets even though they looked rather unattractive. When I got home, I decided to sketch them. At first, they just looked brown and muddy, but as I drew them, I detected subtleties. I thought about how things in our lives that do not look great on the outside, can reveal beauty and goodness nevertheless. And I haven’t even cooked them yet.
When we have experienced emotional or physical or relationship damage in the past, it can continue to feel frustrating at best and irreparably harmful at worst. I so often look at the broken places as problems, limitations, and inadequacies. Or I try to ignore them. But the kintsugi approach actually highlights the beauty in repairs.
The poet WH Auden said that the artist feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship. To be fit homage, he said, this rite must be beautiful. We do not always achieve our goal to create something beautiful, but our desire to do so is good in itself.
I ‘listen’ to poetry to hear what speaks to me. Each of us hears a poem in a different way. I have been finding nourishment in these lines from the poem “Somewhere” (from Laboratories of the Spirit, Macmillan 1975) by the Welsh poet R.S.Thomas.
One of the things that holds me back from creating things is the fear of making mistakes. When doing this drawing, my reddish pen ran out of ink, and then the yellowish ink i changed to ran unexpectedly. But in the end, something unfolded that I could not have imagined from the start. Life can be like that too. Things we think are bad mistakes can lead to unexpected and good outcomes.
I do not like conflict. But we just cannot avoid some of it in life. Others can be aggressive, we can feel outraged, or we can just have strong disagreements. The words in this drawing of mine are from a set of translations/interpretations from The Way of Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton.
I have always loved to dance, and to watch others dancing. There is something about dancing that can express joy in fantastic ways, connecting our feelings of joy to how we feel in our bodies. I have enjoyed a video recently, of the TU Dance Company in a collaboration with the singer Bon Iver, and I enjoyed sketching the dancers, entering into their experience while doing so (
In so much of life I see words obscuring truth. Here is something that reminds me that words don’t necessarily hide the truth, but can liberate it.
Flowers grow out of dark moments.
Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects
the whole. Life is a succession of moments and to live each, is to succeed.
As I reflected on the days here in the northern hemisphere getting darker and darker, this quote from Merton seemed just right. This is from my advent calendar.
…Humbly,
“People who place their small time into the heart of eternity, which they already carry within, will suddenly realize that even small things, have inexpressible depths, are messengers of eternity, are always more than they appear to be, are like drops of water in which is reflected the entire sky, like signs pointing beyond themselves, like messengers running ahead of the message they are carrying and announcing the coming of eternity, like shadows of true reality that are cast over us because the real is already very near.”—Karl Rahner (trans. Annemarie Kidder)
I have been part of a group of scholars these past few months, discussing suffering from the perspectives of literature, philosophy, theology and psychology. During our weekly conversations I have found that drawing people in the group, as always, helps me to focus. Although ideas are so often the center of academic discussions, it is the human beings that speak to me. Each person has a depth of being, a fullness of life, that I want to capture somehow. Doing this brings me to appreciate them more.
My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other’s presence, each other’s wonder, each other’s human plight.
There is always
As I feel the first nip in the air, summer is coming to a close, but there are still memories of many things that made this summer wonderful – including the farmers’ markets and the Lake Michigan beach. And opportunities to draw them, from life and from memory and imagination.
I have spent a lot of time in various meetings over the last couple of months. When I am not speaking, there is lots of time for listening. I find that by drawing people, it helps me to focus, and also to ‘get’ people in a more 
complex way, to hear them beyond their words or silences. Here are a few sketches of lovely people from a recent meeting.
The world both vivid and lit, each element
MUSIC
As I get ready to attend a workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to revive my life-drawing skills, I was reminded of the following excerpt from the book Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation by the German philosopher Josef Pieper:
