ART, ALL ABOUT

I wrote recently about the lack of art in much of America's architecture. Then I came across this collection of U.S. postage stamps I had bought a few years back. And the point I was making in the architecture piece became clearer from a different perspective.



The art in the stamps are not all great art, to be sure...though a few may be considered to be. But the point being made in the stamps to me is that if we but open our eyes, there is art all about us...in a couple dancing, in pomp and regalia, in a woman prettying herself and primping her son, in serene settings and in horseback riders in battle, in a soldier's return from war, in a child's inquisitiveness and a child's loving concern for the health of her doll.

Art and beauty are but one, and it is all about us. It is inherent in the world we live in, and in our individual universes. It can be found in a pebble on the path and in the brilliance of a thought, in the sounds of laughter and in the silence of prayer and meditation. It is in the air we breathe, the sweat on our brow, the love in our heart.

It is invisible only to the closed mind.