As in creating some significant work the artist first experiences something akin to dream awareness that becomes clarified in the creative process itself, so we must first have a vision of the future sufficiently entrancing that it will sustain us in the transformation of the human project that is now in process.
Interpretation
The creative process begins with a dream-like vision that inspires the actual work, emphasizing the importance of a compelling future vision to guide transformation.
This quote by Thomas Berry highlights the parallel between artistic creation and the pursuit of a significant future. It suggests that just as artists often start from a vague yet powerful dream that gradually becomes clearer through their creative efforts, humanity must also hold onto a captivating vision of the future. This vision is essential to navigate and sustain the inevitable transformations that humanity is currently undergoing.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech about innovation and creativity in the workplace.
If the religious experience were simply some naive impression of the uninformed it would not have resulted in such intellectual insight, such spiritual exaltation, such spectacular religious ritual, or in the immense volume of song and poetry and literature and dance that humans have produced.
We might sometimes reflect and recall that the purpose of all our science, technology, industry, manufacturing, commerce, and finance is celebration, planetary celebration. This is what moves the stars through the heavens and the earth through its seasons. The final norm of judgment concerning the success or failure of our technologies is the extent to which they enable us to participate more fully in this grand festival.
Diversity is the magic. It is the first manifestation, the first beginning of the differentiation of a thing and of simple identity. The greater the diversity, the greater the perfection.
Both education and religion need to ground themselves within the story of the universe as we now understand this story through empirical knowledge. Within this functional cosmology, we can overcome our alienation and begin the renewal of life on a sustainable basis. This story is a numinous revelatory story that could evoke the vision and the energy required to bring not only ourselves but the entire planet into a new order of magnificence.
The historical mission of our times is to re-invent the human—at the species level, with critical reflection, within the community of life-systems, in a time-developmental context, by means of story and shared dream experience.
If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur, then the emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and spiritual life of the human is diminished or extinguished. Without the soaring birds, the great forests, the sounds and coloration of the insects, the free-flowing streams, the flowering fields, the sight of clouds by day and the stars at night, we become impoverished in all that makes us human.
I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.
I'm having so much fun, because you know what? They cast a Star Wars fan in a Star Wars movie. Biiiiiig mistake!
People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?
I think the most interesting question is, why do you act? I act because I have felt in acting some of the most free moments of my life...I think it's also one thing that scares me the most.
It is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest.
I search for surprise in my architecture. A work of art should cause the emotion of newness.
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