Let there be light and love and art

Recently, I attended a statewide interfaith festival which brought together hundreds of people from across diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. Although I arrived feeling vulnerable, unsure of how my presence as a Jewish person would be received, those feelings disappeared almost instantly.

From the moment I walked through the doors, I was met with warmth, and a genuine openness that created an atmosphere of welcome and safety for everyone present. I truly believe all of us
there were leading with our hearts, full of light and love.

I have facilitated numerous interfaith projects over the years, using art as the vehicle for opening dialogue. At the festival, I was asked to facilitate a workshop at the festival, leading a conversation on the topic: what is sacred art? I interviewed three artists from different faith traditions whose creative practices speak deeply about their spiritual journeys in creating their artwork.

From left: Maureen Barten, Uncle Glenn Loughrey, Victor Majzner and Reverend Bhakta Dasa at the interfaith festival.

We heard from Victor Majzner, a Jewish artist; Uncle Glenn Loughrey, a proud Wiradjuri man and Anglican priest, and Reverend Bhakta Dasa, a Vaishnava Hindu priest. Having previously visited each of their studios, I recognised that not only were their finished artworks expressions of something far greater than the images themselves, but their studios felt like sacred spaces, and their processes deeply personal and spiritually guided. I was enchanted just being in their spaces –
a true gift for me, an artist as well.

The most striking part of our conversation was not their differences, but the remarkable synchronicity among them. When one artist answered a question, the other two almost instinctively nodded in recognition, as though sharing a common knowing.

Each artist offered a quote expressing their relationship with art pointing to different expressions of light in its truest sense: spiritual, emotional, and human. (As it happens the Jewish festival of light, Hanukkah, begins on Sunday night.)

Loughrey said: “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

Majzner: “Art is a means of making the invisible visible.”

Dasa: “Art is a tool for contemplation, meditation, ritual and practice.”

Their reflections echoed something deeply familiar to us as Jews: that light is not merely physical. It is emotional, spiritual, and relational. It is the inner light we kindle in ourselves, and the shared light that binds us as humans to one and other.

In a world often fractured by difference, in that space that day, held together by art, curiosity and respect, we didn’t have to find common ground, light or love. We simply had to notice that it was already there. I walked into the festival feeling unsure. I left with my heart full and glowing.

Maureen Barten is the president of Progressive Judaism Victoria, an artist by
passion and lifelong training and a facilitator of art groups.

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