Spiritual Imagery Quotes

Art can be a medium for people to discover universal spirit, with imagery not isolated to one particular wisdom path, but pointing to the underlying truth that they all transmit.

I'm interested in painting the most beautifully compelling pictures and images and metaphors and stories and explanations possible that will put Jesus in language for a world that desperately needs to hear it.

God, for example, appealed to me as a beardless man wearing a quilted silk cap; holiness was something burning, forbidding, something connected with fire while a day had the form of an oblong box.

When we pray, we must begin by conceiving God in full and vigorous images, but we must go on to acknowledge the inadequacy of them and to adhere nakedly to the imageless truth of God.

For millennia, artists and mystics have pondered the question of how to represent that which, by definition, cannot or must not be represented.

God is more truly imagined than expressed, and He exists more truly than He is imagined.

The ultimate dreamer is Vishnu floating on the cosmic Milky Ocean, couched upon the coils of the abyssal serpent Ananta, the meaning of whose name is Unending. In the foreground stand the five Pandava brothers, heroes of the epic Mahabharata, with Draupadi, their wife: allegorically, she is the mind and they are the five senses.

Art is kind of the lens through which I think about God.

Some would say the Creator is a lamb. Some would say he's a lion. Some would say both. The fact is, he is neither a lamb nor a lion. These are fiction. Metaphors. Yet the Creator is both a lamb and a lion. These are both truths.

At the time of Holy Communion I sometimes picture my soul under the figure of a little child of three or four years, who at play has got its hair tossed and its clothes soiled. These misfortunes have befallen me in battling with souls. But very soon the Blessed Virgin hastens to my aid: quickly, she takes off my dirty little pinafore, smoothes my hair and adorns it with a pretty ribbon or simply with a little flower... and this suffices to render me pleasing and enables me to sit at the Banquet of Angels without blushing.

The waters of the Ganga are roaring among his matted locks.

Grace abounds in contemporary movies, books, novels, films and music. If God is not in the whirlwind, He may be in a Woody Allen film, or a Bruce Springsteen concert. Most people understand imagery and symbol better than doctrine and dogma. Images touch hearts and awaken imaginations. One theologian suggested that Springsteen's 'Tunnel of Love' album, in which he symbolically sings of sin, death, despair and redemption, is more important for Catholics than the Pope's last visit when he spoke of morality only in doctrinal propositions.

The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus.

The camera will never compete with the brush and the palette, until such time as photographs can be taken in Heaven or Hell.

All things in the natural world symbolize God, yet none of them speak of him but in broken and imperfect words. High above all he sits, sublimer than mountains, grander than storms, sweeter than blossoms and tender fruits, nobler than lords, truer than parents, more loving than lovers. His feet tread the lowest places of the earth; but his head is above all glory, and everywhere he is supreme.

Imagine, a Being with a mind as great as God's, with feet like trees and a voice like rushing wind, telling you that you are His cherished creation.

Clouds signify the veil of the Most High.