The High Road Gallery The sun beat down on artists, poets, and gallery visitors gathered for the opening of the “Language of Art” exhibit that featured twenty-five selected pieces of art and poems written in response to them. One by one, poets took center stage and read their works. I sat in a plastic lawn chair and watched, noting the variety of forms poets take: young and old, men and women. Some women readers wore pumps and dresses, others jeans and t-shirts. One walked up and halfway through her poem her hands began to shake. She put one behind her back while the other shook the paper.
“Such a small group,” I thought, “and she is so nervous. She must not be accustomed to reading her work before an audience.” I admired her commitment to her art. One man wore a sports jacket. Others were more casual. Each was given rapt attention and applause when they had finished. All of us sat, listened, and sweated together until the last line was read, when we moved back into the gallery to cool off and study again the art and poems displayed beside them.
How many similar events are held across the country in small towns and big cities? I thought of my friend, Kilian McDonnell OSB, who will publish his fourth book of poetry in time for his ninetieth birthday this fall. I thought about artists in general, those who work with pigments and clay, fabric and paper, words and ideas. A few are well known and financially successful, but most are like those gathered at the small gallery on this Sunday afternoon. Faithful to their work, eager to share it, grateful when it is received with open minds and hearts.
Artists of all types invite the rest of the world to slow down, look closely and feel deeply. They remind others to wonder, to connect the unlikely discovering truth in the process. 
They elicit smiles, laughter, tears, and questions. They grapple with big questions, enter into mystery’s darkness, and plumb the soul’s depths. Then they share what they have found with any who will listen. They do these things because they must. Money or not, success or not, being an artist is not something one does, it is who one is.
“Waiting” by Laurie Van Balen
As I walked outside to my car, holding a bit of cheese balanced on a cracker, I gave thanks for the gift of artists in our midst and the grace and courage they bring to the world.
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