Books

Metaphorical threads
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Metaphorical threads

I brought small pumpkins into Monday’s class at the Sophia Center. I had everyone close their eyes and hold out their hands to receive their pumpkin, so they wouldn’t immediately know what it was. Holding/touching something with eyes closed is evocative—we don’t immediately rely on our mind to recall pre-stored ideas about the object. We…

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“To know a thing is to awaken to its depth and presence”

  To create is always to learn, to begin over, to begin at zero. — Matthew Fox   In John O’Donohue’s book The Invisible Embrace of Beauty, O’Donohue mentions St. Thomas Aquinas, who believed that beauty was the perfection of a thing. “To know a thing is to awaken to its depth, complexity and presence.”…

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Paying attention is an act of love

In many respects, all we have in this life is our attention. We’re shaped by what we pay attention to. Our lives are the result of what we pay attention to. My current favorite read is Eric Booth’s book, The Everyday Work of Art. Booth writes on page 61: “If our experience of being alive…

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The aesthetic is what holds the world together

In Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards brilliantly shows us the importance of background or negative space when we draw a contour of any object or person. By noticing the negative space and drawing the edge that defines that negative space, we shift into right-brain mode and can much more accurately…

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