The mind can only take you to the farthest reaches of its cognition; but the soul, immortal, effervescent, can ascend to the loftiest heights, from the judgment of Heaven to the deepest abyss of Hell.

The scientists claw at the deepest corners of the brain to piece out the inner workings of the world. They live in logic, the summation of knowledge that has been discovered, agreed upon by consensus, or realized up to that point. They try to envision as much of the formulae and the algorithms of the world as their brains can take. Yet at the very end, the sadness takes them, and the conclusion grips them that even the seemingly limitless horizon of reason has an end, and beyond that plateau, only faith can carry him further.

The artists have a deeper, more anguished hunger. They do not see with their eyes, or their mind; they perceive through their souls. They pour in ink or easel, in scale and notation their very hearts, and the very reflection of their selves. For they, have a more sublime exploration: one deep within. Joseph Conrad found its horror in The Heart of Darkness; Vincent van Gogh fought depression in his art and the clamoring of his spirit, till the madness overtook him; and the great genius, Wolfgang Beethoven, stricken deaf finally in old age, screamed the loudest, in the movements of his later symphonies, and the pastorals to God, till he too broke, and must have muttered, “ah God, I can go no further.”

Or “Ah, God, no more.”

The artist understands that there is a larger, more complex world out there, and that he is one small speck in the midst of infinitesimal celestial bodies. He sees no measure in time; in fact knows that each measure merely proves that one repeats the other, and that we are trapped in an endless cycle of shuffling through the world, trying to expand our thoughts and minds, but never truly going beyond the limits of our existence. Not even beyond a city, a province, a country, a continent. He looks finally inward, and finds both meaning and a constant emptiness in the exploration of his soul. If he is not careful he loses purpose in life, for what value does anything have, before the scale of God’s universe?

We wonder at the grand paintings of Michelangelo and the thundering of Wagner, but these are mere futile attempts of the artist to break from the prison of this mortal, tangible world, into the supernatural, the external realm where the Heavens dwell, and where the angels shine in such terrifying radiance that is beyond the limits of the largest star. And even they are mere reflections to the the irresistible, all-Powerful, existence and presence of God. Can we not see the plight of the artists, trying to fit these magnificent bodies to paper and ink, or throwing their souls through stentorian orchestra to reach these heights, only to fall so humiliatingly short?

Let these words carry through the reader, to his own musings:  picture the world from afar, and dots spiking to lines trying desperately to break through the atmosphere to space; these are the multitude of men, trying in their vain, hope-ridden hearts, to touch God.