Day 24: February 22
The thought for today is HARMONY.
Painting is all about contrasts and transitions and the variations of those: thick/thin, soft/hard, light/dark, red/green, blue/orange, texture/no texture, definition/vagueness, sharp transitions/soft blends, positive/negative, etc. When they are successful – that is in harmony – everything flows. And the opposite too; when they are out of sync, it is a struggle. – Jack Dickerson
Frank Zappa once said, “The creation and destruction of harmonic and statistical tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition or improvisation which remains regular throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only ‘good guys’ in it or eating cottage cheese.” You need the right amounts of consonance and dissonance to create harmony. If there is too much of one, the listener will find the experience unsettling and aggravating to the senses; too much of the other is bland and boring sameness.
In art, as Jack pointed out, it is the right amount of variations of opposites that create harmony. I learned in my art training that what you leave out is sometimes as important as what you put in, much like a rest in music. Life is like that, too. It’s the contrasts and transitions of life that give it interest. When it’s out of balance, there is discord and tension. When yin and yang – the dance of opposites – are in harmony, life works. You can’t have mountains without the valleys and you can’t have light without the dark. It all creates a harmony of being.
God expresses Itself in countless ways through us. Do you find more differences anywhere in nature than among human beings? Yet, we have many similarities as well. We must honor those similarities and differences in one another for there to be music in our families and communities.
Our similarities help us understand and connect with one another. We all desire to connect to Love; we laugh, we grieve loss, we feel hunger, we have an innate need to grow and reach higher. We have families and friends who are there to ground us and Spirit within us to help us soar. The differences between us, however, are what add spice and flavor to our lives. Whether those differences are cultural, ethnic, physical, philosophical, spiritual, or social, they make us uniquely who we are in the world. Our diversity is what gives beauty and interest to the Master Artist’s creation.
I honor the differences between others and myself as I realize that it’s all God expressing Itself through Its creation. I cannot expect everyone else to be like me nor should I want them to be; my life would be bland and boring otherwise. I know that our differences are there to challenge me to experience more of Who God Is, while our similarities help me recognize myself in others. When I can see myself in my neighbor’s eyes, I know Oneness and Peace. I say, “Thank You, God, for the beautiful harmony of life!”
breathe Peace ~
Rev. Rebecca
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