Photo by Zach Key on Unsplash A global pandemic. A war raging in Europe. Racial injustice. Gun violence. Rising inflation, gasoline, and food costs. With everything going on in the world right now, a seemingly logical question may be, "why would anyone bother with art right now?" Or we may hear, "Art is a luxury, not a necessity". But is that really so? In my last post I mentioned how art, specifically the philosophy of kintsugi, helped people deal with the stress caused by

Photo by Riho Kitagawa on Unsplash There's an old Zen about a conversation between an old butcher and his customer, which was overheard by a passerby. The customer asked the butcher, "Give me the best piece of meat you have", to which the butcher replied, "Every piece of meat I have is the best. There is no piece of meat here that is not the best." After overhearing this exchange, the passerby, afterward known as the Japanese Zen philosopher Banzan, became enlightened. "Every