It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful, but it is more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. We are tasked to make our lives, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of our most elevated and critical hour.
- Henry David Thoreau, Thoreau And The Art Of Life

What is involved is a sense of the largeness of a human person. The unconscious is not so much the part of the psyche that has been repressed, the unconscious is not so much our past experience, as it is that part of the human being that has yet been experienced.
      Just as an acorn contains in its unconscious the dream of the oak tree and that dream expresses the coming into being of the oak, working with a person, we have to have a method of drawing forth what is in the seed, the still unlived potentials of the person.
- Ira Progoff, At A Journal Workshop

. . .

Creating art is wonderful, but not nearly as wonderful as creating a life of beauty.
            Anything you give your heart to will both challenge the depths of your being and transform you. To dive down into your soul, find the beauty, nurture it and offer it to the world is the magnificent challenge of life. And if what you have to offer is truly unique, the world is likely to be indifferent for a long, long time. Staying with your beauty, your truth, your integrity is very difficult, but out of these things comes meaning, and meaning is all-transcendent.

. . . 

What in your life is seeking to manifest? What inner beauty wants to see the light of day? What about your unique life experience can add to the lives of others?

. . .

Text of my recent presentation to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.

Slide show of the presentation.