doug Abbott•Artist•Theologian

Seeds of Potentiality Video

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 08:39:44 -0600

You can watch it on you tube now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23pYxqd05Eo

Thesis art exhibit

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:09:52 -0600

Thesis paper: Art as the conduit between imagination and personal agency.

This art in this installation is my thesis exhibition which is a dialogue with my thesis paper. As an artist I am exploring the role art plays in bringing a new or imagined idea into existence.

Two Opposite Processes

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 14:20:45 -0600

The way of Great Integrity
is like stringing a bow,
pulling down the high,
lifting up the low—

Shortening the long,
lengthening the short
to take from the excessive
and give insufficiency support.

How opposite to our social norms which increasingly impoverish the poor
to further enrich the RICH
who do not need any more.

How can we gather the world’s wealth
to create abundance for all in need?
Through rediscovering the Great Integrity,
by acting without praising the deed. 1

COMMENTARY (excerpt) The process of the marketplace is opposite—selfish beyond bounds—always forcing the poor to create more wealth for the wealthy

1. Lao Tzu; The Tao Te Ching, A New Translation and Commentary. Ralph Alan Dale. Barnes and Noble Books. New York. 2002.

While I typically do not like Barnes and Noble Classic versions of translated texts, I stumbled upon this translation of verse 77 today. A good friend is struggling with the GREED of financial institutions even after the financial, banking and credit multi-nationals have received billions of government money. I worry how NON-TAO the dispensing of billions dollars goes against the flow of GREAT INTEGRITY. The poor, the marginal, the middle class of generations now and generations to come are going to shoulder this move to FEED the wealthy so the super rich can build more wealth in order to make a case to take more from those who are in need.

Reflections on 4 years

Fri, 9 Jan 2009 15:28:07 -0600

I think an e.e. cummings poem is a good fit for today.

i love you much(most beautiful darling)

more than anyone on earth and i
like you better than everything in the sky

—sunlight and singing welcome your coming

although winter may be everywhere
with such a silence and such darkness
noone can quite begin to guess

(except my life)the true time of year—

and if what calls itself a world should have
the luck to hear such singing(or glimpse such
sunlight as will leap higher than high
through gayer than gayest someone’s heart at your each

nearness)everyone certainly would(my
most beautiful darling)believe in nothing but love.

The Shrine is done!!!

Sat, 3 Jan 2009 07:26:28 -0600

Take a look. Doesn’t this just look great?

It Might be said—Lewis Hyde

Mon, 4 Aug 2008 09:49:01 -0500

It might be said that the gifts we give at times of transformation are meant to make visible the giving up we do invisibly. And of course we hope that there will be an exchange, that something will come toward us if we abandon our old lives. So we might also say that the tokens we receive at times of change are meant to to make visible life’s reciprocation. They are not mere compensation for what is lost, but the promise of what lies ahead. They guide us toward new life, assuring our passage away from what is dying. The guidance is of use because there are those who do not survive change. It is as if human beings were like that subclass of insect, the Metabola, which must undergo complete metamorphosis from egg, through larva and pupa, to imago. In some way the fluidity of gift exchange assures the successful metamorphosis. page 44, by Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property.