Topic Archives: the arts

Our experiences of the arts can be spiritually enriching, opening us to a more full appreciation of who we are and all of life. A contemplative approach to the arts can enhance our understanding our ourselves and the world around us. Doing art – music, film, visual art, creative writing – can help us to communicate with others about topics of importance as well as informing us about ourselves.

heaney and the beauty of creation

The first of the 16 questions my Spiritual Connection in Daily Life book explores is, “Have you been spiritually touched by the beauty of creation?”

A favorite poet of mine, Seamus Heaney, died last week, and it seemed a good time to offer this  excerpt from my book, which includes part of one of his poems.

“Experiences of wonder are there for the taking. They are around us every day. Awe-inspiring colors and sounds and touch-sensations. Signs of and pointers to the transcendent. When we have these experiences, we touch the transcendent as obviously as we touch the chairs we sit on. It may seem even more real. These feelings can provide encouragement to us. When I look out over a lake, watch a sunset from a balcony, see the bud of a flower in a vase in my apartment, watch the flame of a candle, there can be for me a vivid sense of the “more than.”

“What do you see as the beauty of creation? Can you see it in tears? In faces? In the rough and the smooth?

“Poetry, through expert use of language, can capture this well, and call our attention to these experiences.”

Seamus_Heaney Seamus Heaney’s poem “Postscript,” is a great example of this, and I quote it in the book; you can read it now here on line.

After Heaney’s quotation, I continue in my book,

“If we live in the countryside or near water or spectacular scenery, this can seem easier. But even in an urban environment, evidence of this is there for the taking. Parks, the sky, plants in our apartment, the sound of water, the beauty of people’s faces. And on the other hand, we can miss the chance even in the midst of the obvious. While living in a village on a mountainside in Switzerland, the Alps were usually in view, but I could be so consumed by my own preoccupations that I just did not notice this awe-inspiring beauty. These experiences are not defined by the setting, although it may be easier to feel in some places. You may want to go somewhere that helps you to see this beauty. Do you find space in your life for “wow”? There is something about the very substance of life itself that can inspire us, keep our hearts from drying up. When are you aware of it?”

Some Poetry Collections

There is a lot of poetry available on the web, but having the hard copies of the poems in book form can be good as it can separate you some from the attentional tugging of the interweb. Here are some collections you may wish to explore.

The Redress of Poetry, by Seamus Heaney

A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry by Czeslaw Milosz

Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation ed. Roger Housden

The Essential Rumi, Coleman Barks

Ballistics: Poems by Billy Collins

Twenty Poems to Nourish your Soul by Judy Valente and Charles Reynard

Collected Poems of WH Auden

The Collected Works of W.B.Yeats – Volume 1: The Poems ed. Richard Finneran

T. S. Eliot: Collected Poems, 1909-1962

Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

Poetry as Prayer: Gerard Manley Hopkins (Pauline Books and Media)

Poetry for the Spirit ed. Alan Jacobs

Honey and Salt, Carl Sandburg

Selected Poems: Galway Kinnell

Gourd Seed by Coleman Barks

The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers

Human Chain by Seamus Heaney

Philokalia by Scott Cairns

Yevtushenko Selected Poems Penguin Modern European Poets Series, UK

Wislawa Szymborska Poems New and Collected

New Enlarged Anthology of Robert Frost’s Poems ed Louis Untermeyer

Life is Simpler towards Evening, Ralph Wright

Seamless, Ralph Wright

Prayers from the Ark by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold, trans. Rumer Godden

Grooks, by Piet Hein

The Book of Psalms

Everyman’s Poetry: Four Metaphysical Poets

Everyman’s Poetry: George Herbert

The Way of Chuang Tzu translated by Thomas Merton

 

 

Web Links from the Book

There are lots of references in the book to websites: music, poetry, articles and essays, art work. This page gives you those links live, so you can click on them and get to the referenced site.

Page 10   Title: Had I Not Been Awake  Author: Seamus Heaney

Page 33   Title: Hubble Photographs  Author:

Page 34   Title: Postscript  Author: Seamus Heaney

Page 38   Title: Dust  Author: Dorianne Laux

Page 39   Title: Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey  Author: William Wadsworth

Page 47   Title: Longing  Author: Stevie Smith

Page 48   Title: Even in the Quietest Moments  Author: Supertramp

Page 48   Title: Hymn 101  Author: Joe Pugh

Page 49   Title: There Is Some Kiss We Want  Author: Rumi

Page 52   Title: Our Lady of Vladimir  Author: Theokotos of Vladimir

Title: Patience  Author: Rabindranath Tagore

Page 78   Title: Vespers  Author: Monteverdi

Page 78   Title: Trío para piano, violín y violonchelo en Sol mayor K496  Author: Mozart

Page 78   Title: King without a Crown (Live from Stubbs)  Author: Matisyahu

Page 78   Title: The Cave  Author: Mumford and Sons

Page 78   Title: 2080  Author: Yeasayer

Page 78   Title: In the Morning  Author: Nina Simone

Page 79   Title: Landscsape: Wheatfields under Thunderclouds  Author: van Gogh

Page 79   Title: Kadinsky Art  Author: Wassily Kadinsky

Page 79   Title: RichD Dancing in the Rain Oakland Street  Author: Yak Films

Page 86   Title: Spiegel im Spiegel  Author: Arvo Pärt

Page 86   Title: Claire de Lune  Author: Debussy

Page 86   Title: Köln Concerts  Author: Keith Jarrett

Page 121   Title: St. Kevin and the Blackbird  Author: Seamus Heaney

Page 125   Title: Mercy  Author: Jessica Powers

Page 130   Title: In Our Talons  Author: Bowerbirds

Page 134   Title: 3055  Author: Olafur Arnald

Title: On Being Called to Prayer While Cooking Dinner for Forty   Author: Patrick Donnelly

Page 135   Title: Ubi caritas et amor  Author: Maurice Duruflé

Page 135   Title: Ubi caritas et amor  Author: Taizé

Page 136   Title: Shoveling Snow with the Buddha  Author: Billy Collins

Title: To the Mistakes   Author: W. S. Mervin

Page 146   Title: Wrong Day-Go Back  Author: Richard Tipping

Page 155   Title: How to Truly Listen  Author: Evelyn Glennie

Page 156   Title: A Spiritual Journey  Author: Wendell Berry

Page 165   Title: Dear God  Author: Monsters of Folk

Audio of Lynn reading from the Flow of Love chapter

Here is Lynn reading part one of the Flow of Love theme chapter from the audiobook of Spiritual Connection in Daily Life. The audiobook, published in has been substantially revised and enhanced from the 2013 print edition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

metaphor and the self

Metaphor and the Self: A Role for the Arts in Understanding Suffering and Treating the Person in Distress, Lynn Underwood, International Neuroethics Conference, Brain Matters 3: Values at the Crossroads of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Psychology, October 24-25, 2012

Abstract:

Research shows that the metaphors we use affect our behaviors and attitudes in significant ways. (Holding a cup of hot coffee rather than a cold drink can cause us to have a more friendly attitude towards those we meet; Boroditsky’s work showing how reading about a description of crime as a virus rather than a beast can influence our decisions on the best ways to control the same criminal behaviors.) These effects usually happen implicitly – we are not aware of them. The machine metaphor recurs in our descriptions of the brain and the overall functioning of the body and has become an automatic default. It can be useful in simplifying complex systems, and medical training encourages this. Even efforts to promote humanism in medicine slide in this direction, as communication, empathy and ethical decisions are formulated in mechanistic terms.

This kind of thinking can get in the way when we treat conditions for which no “physical” cause can be found. Self-reports made by the person and their experiences of suffering are essential to the identification of the roots of the problems and opportunities for treatment. However if one buys into the machine metaphor too much, the experience of the person is given less weight in the overall assessment, while objective features such as brain scans, blood chemistry and physiologically evident symptoms are given the final say. Measurements based solely on a machine model lead to interventions that presuppose a kind of person that is incongruous with the way we live our lives, and what is most important to us.

Visual art, film and literature can give insight into the nature of the human person that offers alternative metaphors for the human person, and opens opportunities for creative approaches to treatment and evaluation of outcomes. This presentation would elaborate on those, and give specific examples of how they can help yield more effective treatments and decisionmaking.

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enhancing spiritual connection through poetry in a secular context

Enhancing Spiritual Connection through Poetry in a Secular Context. Lynn Underwood. University College London. Institute for Advanced Study, Senate House, June 29, 2012.

Abstract:

Poetry can open the mind to better grasp the complexity of the divine, the holy, and help make connections in down-to-earth ways, integrated into daily life.  The language of poetry and the use of metaphor and apparent paradox can expand our conceptual understanding.  The concreteness of poetry can also help ground this in the substance of our days.  This paper will give examples of specific poetry from Seamus Heaney, Billy Collins, Rainer Maria Rilke, R.S. Thomas, Jessica Powers and others, and point to specifically religious poetry from a variety of faith traditions, describing how they have been useful in the classroom for enriching capacity for sense of communication with the divine for those from specific faith traditions and those who call themselves “spiritual but not religious.”  Poetry provides words that can open doorways without reducing the spiritual to a meaningless common denominator – leading instead to the depths and richness of religious traditions.

Poetry can help those of faith and those not comfortable in a religious tradition to enhance sense of connection with God and become increasingly aware of that connection in daily life. It can bridge traditions and beliefs and has been used effectively by the author of this paper in a variety of secular college classroom settings and in small group work.  Approaching poetry in a contemplative rather than analytic way facilitates this engagement, and journaling encourages direct encounter with the poems themselves in written conversation.  Structured group discussion of personal responses to the poems can also provide mutual illumination of contexts and invitation.

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neuroethics, the arts, and the nature of the human person

Neuroethics, the Arts and the Nature of the Human Person. Lynn Underwood. Medical Humanities Conference, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, September 29-30 2011.

Abstract

The arts and humanities are essential to effectively grapple with the questions that arise from advances in neuroscientific technologies and treatments. They are essential for medical practitioners as they make treatment and policy decisions. But even those not professionally involved with health care need the arts and humanities as we make decisions about what kinds of pharmaceutical and neurosurgical interventions are appropriate for ourselves and those we care for, policy decisions regarding issues such as human responsibility within health care and criminal justice, and decisions about how to regulate and respond to marketing of neurotechnologies of various kinds.

Also, neuroscientists and interpreters of neuroscience make claims about how ethics operates and the nature of the human person. The humanities can provide us with tools for doing the kinds of reflection necessary to effectively accept or discard these claims. The arts can help to reveal qualities and issues in novel and useful ways.

This presentation will lay out the scope of the problems, and highlight some particularly thorny issues.  Also, it will outline some of the ways to engage students, those in the health sciences and others, with these topics using the humanities and arts to better equip them for the particular challenges neuroscientific knowledge and technologies have brought to the fore. In this context the presenter will draw on four years of classroom experience teaching both Neuroethics and general medical humanities using these methods.

Examination of how we envision the nature of the human person is essential to adequately address many of the issues that increasing knowledge and technology in neuroscience has raised. Film, memoir and poetry, as well as insights from philosophy and religious studies, can usefully inform our decision-making and attitudes.  The visual arts, particularly portraiture and self-portraiture can give us special insight into the nature of the human person. The emergence of popular and scientific appreciation for the complexities of decision-making enable us to see why approaching a complex topic through the arts can give insight that can complement and enhance other kinds of analysis. The arts can enable us to enter into situations in ways beyond merely speculating on how we think we would feel in a given situation. Empathic engagement as well as enhanced sensibilities can result from the inclusion of the arts and humanities in these discussions.

The presentation will outline some of the issues and give specific examples of humanities and art resources that have been effectively used in teaching situations.

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the human person: possibilities for flourishing in dire circumstances

The Human Person: Possibilities for Flourishing in Dire Circumstances. Lynn Underwood. Hellenic Research Foundation, European Research Network. Athens, Greece, September 21, 2007.

Abstract:

Even in the midst of suffering there can be opportunities for the human person to flourish. Of course we do not seek suffering and continually seek to relieve the suffering of self and others. One positive aspect of dire circumstances is that various false illusions and assumptions do not hold up once exposed to situations such as disability, chronic disease, extreme suffering or experiences at end of life. These include various assumptions about apparent self-sufficiency, functionalism (seeing ourselves as “human doings” rather than “human beings”), the place of suffering, our delusions of control, and the fact of mortality. The exposure provided by dire circumstances illuminates the actual situation in such a way that the core or “heart” of the person can be more fully revealed. Science, the arts, theology, philosophy, personal experiences and relationships with others can also provide insights into the nature of the human person when in extremis that can not only help to bear the burdens found in these situations, but actually help to enable human flourishing. There emerge implications for actions that we might take to improve the lives of those in dire circumstances, help us to learn from these situations, and also better handle dire circumstances when we encounter them ourselves.

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