Soul searches always for its sense of "home"

Carol Gregor describes the influence Thomas Moore has on her explorations of architecture. She writes, "In the 90's, Thomas Moore wrote a book that changed my life called, Care of the Soul. I had had no idea that the soul was different than the spirit and no way of knowing Tom would become a guide and mentor for me. It was a long time ago and as I kept researching this idea of soul, and many of Tom's words resonated around this idea of Home. So much so he is featured in my film called, It's About Home."

She invites all to a screening at Urban Re Think, Orlando, Florida, Sunday, 5 June 2011 at 7 p.m.

Gregor suggests, "It appears the soul is about ordinary life. Our physical life and all the things that support life and wellness are part of the soul. The other parts that are important are the need for beauty and magic. These are soulful qualities. According to Tom, the soul needs home more than anything else. This is where our paths meet and our thoughts merge."

Jesus teachings for any community or tradition

Carol Buxton Hamon, Artist in Residence with University United Methodist Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina  offers a review of Thomas Moore's Writing in the Sand: Jesus and the Soul of the Gospels. She quotes Moore's introduction in which he writes that the book "... reveals a Jesus whose teaching is for anyone in search of meaning, not just Christians. It shows a Gospel message that belongs to no church or community or tradition. It suggests that Jesus’ purpose was not to form a religion but to transform the world, not to exploit this life for a heavenly reward but to establish heaven on earth.” 

After listing the four key images that Moore's explores in the book, Hamon writes that "Moore poetically expresses this dynamic" as:

Change of heart
brings you into the kingdom
where you discover the power of love
to heal.

A Joyous Outpouring celebrates beauty and soul

For The Tennessean, Michelle Jones writes "Twist Art Gallery shares Lauren Krusso's pretty flowers", describing Krusso's exhibition, A Joyous Outpouring that showcases her printmaking and sculpture. Jones describes the show: "An overwhelming sense of beauty emanates from a floating garden of 10 handmade flower sculptures suspended in one corner of the gallery. In combinations of cream and deep red, purple and teal, orange and red, blue and white, each flower sits on its own bed of leaves. She includes,

"Kussro also likes to counter what she sees as a trend in contemporary art of downplaying the relevance of beauty. Quoting a Thomas Moore essay, she talks of the necessity of nurturing the human soul. “My work has always been about beauty,” Kussro explains. “I think it’s necessary for beauty to exist. … I feel like it’s my responsibility as an artist to use my gifts to benefit others.”

Jones writes, "Kussro also explores the negative side of beauty in A Joyous Outpouring in that she was inspired by the negative spaces and pieces left from where she cut shapes for her sculptural work." The artist says, “I was throwing away all these beautiful scraps, so I started saving them all,” she says. She began repurposing them in small, colorful resin-covered collages, or cut out even smaller leaf shapes in various green hues and applied them to gauzy fabric stretched over plywood frames."

Meditations: Monastic values for everyday life

John Miedema writes "Meditations: On the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life, by Thomas Moore" for Open Reading. Miedema includes a quote in his presentation that continues to guide Thomas Moore's vision and writing, more than fifteen years after the publication of this book: "What I envision is a rebuilding of monasticism without the need for monasteries, a recovery of sacred language without a church in which to use it, an education in the soul that takes place outside of the school, the creation of an artful world accomplished by persons who are not artists, the emergence of a psychological sensibility once the discipline of psychology has been forgotten, a life of intense community with no organization to belong to, and achieving a life of the soul without having made any progress toward it."

Miedema describes Moore's monasticism: "It takes a person out of the usual path. It is inconvenient, incomprehensible, isolating, uncomfortable, and non-conformist. In short, none of the pat answers."

Blogger suggests community includes passion

Mary Beth Coudal answers the question What is Community? with three things: hard work, passion and diversity. In her description of passion, she shares:

"I’ve been reading Thomas Moore’s A Life at Work. The guy’s good. He talks about following your bliss and paying attention to the stories you tell about yourself – your archetypes and night dreams.

Note to self: Moore says it’s okay to have a whole lot of passions (or 4 blogs!) – for work and life. When I heard Moore speak at Marble Collegiate Church years ago, he said the one word he couldn’t advise as a guiding principle in life is “balance.” Moore said, “If you have to choose between two things — do both!

I’m with him. I’m up for following my passion and following my bliss..."

Coudal also mentions liking Joseph Campbell's writings about the hero's journey.

Images of Narcissus speak to transformation

Yesterday's post, "Daffodils in Mythology" on Rosemary's Blog tells the story of the handsome youth Narcissus after whom the daffodil is named narcissus in Latin. The entry quotes Thomas Moore's interpretation of the story in his book, Care of the Soul: "Here we see the hard, rigid marble narcissism transformed into the soft, flexible texture of a daffodil, the narcissus. A Renaissance magus would probably suggest that in moments of narcissism we should place some fresh daffodils around the house, to remind us of the mystery we’re in. The story begins with rigid self-containment and ends with the flowering of a personality." Rosemary includes a delicate watercolour and ink sketch of the flower.

Moore promotes value of "educating the senses"

Joy A. Kirkwood blogs about Shaun McNiff's book, Earth Angels: Engaging the Sacred in Everyday Things (2001) in her post "Earth Angel" today. She paraphrases Thomas Moore in the book's foreword to say "in our quest for knowledge we have lost enchantment and the sense of the wonder of the world we live in." Kirkwood responds, "To this I say, Amen. For me the key is in what we treasure and why and to look again at the common things around us and to let ourselves be awed by life." In his foreword, Moore also states:

"I'd like strongly to affirm Shaun's interpretation of the Epicurean value of "educating the senses." I have no doubt that we have reduced experience to our mental life. We think of education as a mental exercise, and we even undergo therapy as though it were a way toward self-understanding. It's about time to broaden our notion of education, realizing that we have widespread illiteracy in the realm of the senses. Otherwise, how could we fill our cities with ugly buildings, and allow airlines to shut off all avenues to sensation as we travel the airways, and let businesses keep us away from rivers and lakes, and spend our days and hours of leisure in front of a television screen? Clearly, we need remedial education in the senses, to begin with. We need to learn how to live from the heart, the hands, the stomach, and the feet. And, close to my heart, we need to educate our ears so that we will no longer tolerate the soul-wounding noises that dominate modern life."

Kirkwood shares that she "has been involved in arts and education for adults and children for over thirty years. In 2008 to 2009 [she] also taught Expressive Art classes at Wellspring Calgary, an innovative cancer support centre in Alberta."