Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer & supplication with gratitude, make your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will protect your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

​-Philippians 4:6

This piece is part of the 2017 Exquisite Corpse Games http://exquisitecorpsegames.com, a blind artistic collaboration, in which each artist was randomly assigned the creation of a head, torso, or legs. The assembled pieces were unveiled at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Pete, FL on Nov 2, 2018. 

My piece, True Self, is the torso portion of the completed work. It was inspired by a quote by C.S. Lewis:

What I call my ‘self’ now is hardly a person at all. It’s mainly a meeting place for various natural forces, desires and fears, etc., some of which come from my ancestors, and some from my education, some perhaps from devils. The self you were really intended to be is something that lives not from nature but from God.

O be still while 
You are still alive,
And all things live around you speaking
(I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.

​-Thomas Merton

Cast all your cares on Him, because He cares for you.

-1 Peter 5:7

My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place,
When I was woven in the depths of the earth,
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
All the days ordained for me were written in Your book
Before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139:15-16

Compassion asks to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

-Henri Nouwen

I sit in darkness. I sit in human silence. 
I begin to hear the eloquent night.
The world of this night resounds from 
heaven to hell with animal eloquence, 
with the savage innocence of a million
unknown creatures.
The enormous vitality of their music 
pounds and rings and throbs and echoes
until it gets into everything, and swamps
the whole world in its neutral madness.

​-Thomas Merton

My body's now a begging bowl
That's begging to get back
begging to get back
To my heart
To the rhythm of my soul
To the rhythm of my unconsciousness
To the rhythm that yearns 
To be released from control.

-U2, Moment of Surrender

Show me where it hurts, God said, and every cell in my body burst into tears before His tender eyes.

​-Rabia of Basra