Arts and Compassion

Creative Practice Week 5

            Reflecting on this week’s learning materials; I was inspired by the graphic heading depicting the golden rule for compassion with the world and symbols of the various religions.  The video, with Rabbi Shai Held, Compassion and the Heart of Jewish Spirituality, moved me because I was born and raised Jewish. Rabbi Held helped me to reconnect with my heritage and gain more spiritual understanding about my religious roots and compassion.

            Because of this stirring when contemplating my symbol for compassion I was drawn to the Star of David that represents the Jewish religion and the nation of Israel.  As a child I was drawn to the Jewish star, I loved it.  The star was so easy to draw, two triangles opposite directions put together, I would put lots of them on everything I made.  For my timeline artwork in the Arts and Human Development course, I chose to create out of clay and used the Star of David as the symbol representing my life. I placed the creative spirit in the center, each triangle represented a stage of my development and everything was within the circle of life.  Here is a photo of my timeline artwork: Circle of Life. 

            For my creative practice this week I created my symbol of compassion centered on the Star of David by graphically creating this image and placing the different symbols for various religions within it. An image of the earth was included representing the religions and people throughout the world. I chose to have all the symbols be shades of blue and white, these are the colors that represent compassion to me, I learned from week 1. While working on this I realized that blue and white are the colors of the star on Israel’s flag. In the center I placed the healthcare symbol for compassion representing my AIM practice. 

           Once the symbol was to this point I placed all the people of the world around it enclosed them in a circle border to represent unity and emphasize the compassionate act of loving your neighbor. This symbol exemplifies the compassion concept, The Golden Rule; In everything you do, do to others as you would have them do to you.  Once completed I felt strongly connected to this symbol of compassion I created based on my religious heritage and this week's course learning materials.  I hope you do too.