joy and ecstasy of creativity

some beautiful and stirring thoughts from Matthew Fox (from Listening to the Land, by Derrick Jensen):

"... What's the opposite of inertia? Zeal. Aquinas says zeal comes from the experience of the intense lovability of things. And of intense beauty.

... without a cosmology, without permission to be mystical with nature, we don't realize the whole matrix for our sexual being. Until we recover that, the environmental revolution is not going to go anyplace. It's going to be about duty and not about pleasure. And pleasure, or delight, is how you change people the most radically.

... we also need spiritual practices and ritual, because authentic work has to come from the inside out. You recover delight in life through the self-empowerment that comes through creativity, through art as meditation. And through ritual experiences, with which you can rediscover your child inside and that child's relationship to the universe and to a place.

... Art is the only language we have for awe. I gave a talk at the Chicago Art Institute two weeks ago. It was a wonderful experience. I said three things to the artist. First, I said, Thank you. Second, I said, Welcome back, because you've been banished during the Newtonian era. Then third, I said, What you're here to do is teach us to behold being, to go into grief, and show us the intrinsic power of creativity. Art is not for art's sake, it's for creativity's sake, which is for evolution's sake."