To all you artists out there...

A word from Rory Noland:

My fellow artists, whether you realize it or not, you need your art. Your skill level is not important. For most of us, playing our instruments, singing, writing, painting or creating is like therapy. When David wrote, "My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God." (Psalm 84:2), he was using music to express the depths of his soul. As it was with David, our art can be cathartic. It can help us sort out our deepest thoughts and feelings, and it is critical for our spiritual health and well-being. It can sustain us through struggles and hardship...

I recently toured Buchenwald, the former Nazi concentration camp outside Weimar, Germany. It was a sobering experience. Take all the atrocities you've ever heard about what went on in those concentration camps, and multiply it by a thousand to get a sense of the depth of evil that pervaded these camps.

Before the tours, everyone watches a video that features WWII survivors talking about their experience while interned at Buchenwald. One of them mentioned that on Sunday afternoons the prisoners would gather together, recite poetry to one another, share their drawings, and sing. I quickly pictured them reading their poems or singing in hushed tones so as not to be overheard by the guards. I imagined them sharing their crude pictures made with makeshift pencils and paper. With their lives hanging in the balance, these desperate people turned to their arts as a source of strength and comfort. The quality of the art didn't matter, but the pursuit of art preserved their sanity and gave them hope in a disparagingly insane world. Hearing how the inmates at Buchenwald drew courage from their arts made me extremely proud to be an artist.

If you've put your talent on hold for one reason or another, I invite you to take it up again, if for no other reason than the fact that you need your art.

--Rory Noland, Thriving As An Artist In The Church

I've been reading this book, published in October of this year. It's a great follow-up to his Heart of the Artist, written back in 1999. That book was one of the pieces of my personal puzzle that helped the rest of my fragments begin to fit together.