Music Making and Stained Glass

The Artist's Way

I was at the AGO last week with my daughters ostensibly to see the “Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody” exhibition. And although his creative expressions intrigued me, I was drawn back to the show “Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now.” There was something about the combination of photos (including a young Bob Marley shot of the singer browsing in a Leeds shop, circa 1974) and the colourful and soulful paintings of day to day island life. One that caught my eye particularly was a music making jam session taking place in a local salon. It struck me as fun, joyful, authentic.

A second stop at the AGO was a little-visited chapel off in the “miniature” wing. The chapel is diminutive, softly lit, featuring stained glass pieces promoting a sacred ambiance. A respite from the hustle and bustle of the visiting exhibitions. The sacred space also features two single seat pews facing in opposite directions so the wearied soul can gather a few meditative breaths of peaceful silence.

The connection for me in the middle of our Lenten journey is the creative impulse that both music making and visual beauty instills in the active listener and viewer. A spark flows from the creative force lighting a candle within all who enter the simple vestry. Music and art have a power to speak to the searching soul in a manner that the rigidity of words cannot attain. The great theologian Karl Barth found the music of Mozart to be such a source of spiritual animation. Out of great respect he pens a note to the exalted composer:

Whenever I listen to you, I am transported to the threshold of a world which in sunlight and storm, by day and by night, is a good and ordered world. Then, as a human being of the twentieth century, I always find myself blessed with courage (not arrogance), with tempo (not an exaggerated tempo), with purity (not a wearisome purity), with peace (not a slothful peace). With an ear to your musical dialectic, one can be young and become old, can work and rest, be content and sad: in short, one can live. (Karl Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

Perhaps in this Lenten season space can be offered to some music maker or visual artist who can speak into your world and ignite new flames of spiritual passion? It might not be Mozart, or Bob Marley, but I am sure an artist is waiting to light new candles of love in your life (and mine) so that together we might push back the darkness of our day.