Greetings fellow religious futurists! Rev. Dr. Richard Kirby, Chairperson of the World Network of Religious Futurists invited me to submit a periodic essay on my views of Spiritual Aesthetics-its role in the new 21st century medicine. I had the privilege of meeting Rev. Dr. Kirby at the Annual Meeting of the World Future Society held in Philadelphia in late July of 2002.

It was at this meeting that I realized that I could contribute to the vision, mission and goals of the World Network of Religious Futurists. And I view it as a privilege.

By way of disclaimer I am not an academic nor do I consider myself a true scholar. I am a physician who even before medical school fell in love with beauty of god’s creations as well as man’s. In particular I fell in love with natural beauty including the human body in all its manifested shapes and sizes, and with natural beauty especially flowers, birds and fishes. And I fell in love with the great creations of man most notably words, especially poetry–but also music, the visual arts, song, and dance. In 1976 I founded the American Physicians Poetry Association (APPA) and in 1985 founded the International Arts- Medicine Association (IAMA) dedicated to exploring the rich synergies between the healing and creative arts. My vision in IAMA was “the true healer neither knows nor seeks boundaries between arts and medicine”. So I really viewed arts and medicine as one.

It wasn’t until the past 5 years in particular that I came to realize that these efforts in arts-medicine was God’s way of placing me and guiding me on a spiritual path. I came to realize that not only were art and medicine one but prayer, art and medicine were indeed one. I came to realize how powerful the arts can be as a special path to God and how engaging in the arts could be such a healing experience because of the arts capacity to help us realize the divine and the divine within each of us.

So many great thinkers have written eloquently on this topic including Carl Jung, Rollo May and more recently John Diamond, Shawn McNiff and Thomas Moore. My friend Doctor Michael Samuels said it best, in my opinion when he stated simply that “art, prayer and healing all come from the same source-the human soul. The energy that fuels these processes is the basic force of life, the force of creativity, of love.”

What I would like to do is build my future essays around a biblical or other sacred quote or poem and explore the healing power of Spiritual Aesthetics with you. We will see how the new medicine of the 21st century must incorporate spiritual aesthetics as perhaps its last best hope.

We’ll start with Ecclesiastes next time- “God Has Made Everything Beautiful In Its time”

May God bless and keep you. May God smile upon each of you. May God reveal and make manifest the divine artist within each of you.

Dr. Rick Lippin
April 2003