Art as Redemptive
In her essay, ‘Reflections on Working Toward Peace’, Alice Walker had this to say about the creative process, and perhaps more importantly, life in general.
“All we own, at least for the short time we have it, is our life. With it we write what we come to know of the world…I have learned to accept the fact that we risk disappointment, disillusionment, even despair, every time we act. Every time we decide to believe the world can be better. Every time we decide to trust others to be as noble as we think they are…The alternative, however, not to act, and therefore to miss experiencing other people at their best, reaching toward their fullness, has never appealed to me.
I have learned other things: One is the futility of expecting anyone, including oneself, to be perfect. People who go about seeking to change the world, to diminish suffering, to demonstrate any kind of enlightenment, are often as flawed as anybody else. Sometimes more so. But it is the awareness of having faults, I think, and the knowledge that this links us to everyone on Earth, that opens us to courage and compassion…”
“Sometimes our stones are, to us, misshapen, odd. Their color seems off…Presenting them, we perceive our own imperfect nakedness. But also, paradoxically, the wholeness, the rightness, of it. In the collective vulnerability of presence, we learn not to be afraid.”
Let us take this opportunity, this time, to come together not just in the experience of what it means to be human, to be mortal, but to come together in our creative expression and interpretation of that existence. In this way, we can become better. We can become one with the greater human family. We can become whole once again.
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