A Year of Days with the Book of Common Prayer

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Psalm 150:6

"When the psalmist wrote this, he was thinking of a liturgical setting: harps, drums, timbrels, singers, everyone in his or her own way offering the best there was to the glory of God. The best - every artist knows what that is. The feeling of having stretched as far as you can stretch. The happy exhaustion of having given it all. The arts sprang from religion, a theological and pastoral gift, not an extra frill for those who happen to enjoy that sort of thing, but central to the human response to God.

Theological? Yes. When the human being stretches as far as possible, tests the limits of training and skill, she is fulfilling God's command: Be fruitful and multiply. Did you think that was just about having babies? The world is filled and nurtured in all kinds of ways besides the obvious one of procreation. The writer. The singer. The actor. The painter. The dancer. God gives us gifts, and we husband them carefully.

Pastoral? Absolutely. The arts enoble both artist and patron. Through the arts ... they sing and dance and paint one small piece of the sacred story."

A Year of Days with the Book of Common Prayer, by Bishop Edmond Lee Browning.