“Your soul is your paintbrush, your world is your canvass, your life is your masterpiece”
Whether it means producing a piece of art, writing a short story, or simply bringing beauty into our home or into the lives of others, consider for a moment that we each have the capacity to be creative. The masterpiece, then, is not something we create to hang on our wall but something in ourselves as we fulfill our God-given potential, utilizing the talents He gave us.
Mary Potter Kenyon
It should be the ambition of every true artist to transform wounds and traumas into masterpieces.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
If you have never seen a masterpiece, look in the mirror.
Matshona Dhliwayo
"Make your life a masterpiece; imagine no limitations on what you can be, have or do" Brian Tracy
Life is a masterpiece that you create.” “Your soul is your paintbrush, your world is your canvass, your life is your masterpiece.” “Some of the greatest masterpieces of art are created against the odds of reality. “Write the masterpiece that has not been written.
SACRED TEXT
Life is an art. The whole life of man Is Self Expression. The Individual is an expression of God. We suffer if we do not express ourselves.
Perfect Liberty Kyodam Precepts 1 - 4
Perfect Liberty (PL) Kyodan (“Kyodan” means “Religion” or “Church”) is one of the world’s newest religions, established in Japan in 1924. Though sharing some similarities with the native ancient Japan religion of Shinto, PL is unique in its own right, and characterized by underlying core teaching that “Life is art.”
PL is based on the teaching that life is art and self-expression. Each individual is a unique personality, and the artist continuously shaping his existence. When we express our true unique selves in everything we do, and are able to express perfectly what we basically and uniquely are, our full and uniquely own human potential is realized, and we attain a state of Perfect Liberty—an artistic life of complete, sincere, continuous, conscious self-expression, and the highest, most satisfying, and most meaningful human existence. And when all people live this way, there will be true world peace.
Poem by Matshona Dhliwayo
You are the greatest poem ever written.
You are the greatest song ever sung.
You are the greatest portrait ever painted.
You are the greatest symphony ever composed.
You are the greatest act ever performed.
You are the greatest masterpiece ever created.
Story
Toshiko Akiyoshi changed the face of jazz music over her sixty-year career. As one of few women and Asian musicians in the jazz world, Akiyoshi infused Japanese culture, sounds, and instruments into her music. As a pianist, bandleader, and composer-arranger, Akiyoshi cemented her place as one of the most important jazz musicians of the twentieth century.
Toshiko Akiyoshi was born on December 12, 1929, in Darien, Manchuria. Historically an area of China, many world powers fought to control Manchuria during the twentieth century. From 1932-1945, the Japanese held Manchuria under colonial control. At the end of World War II, the Japanese in Manchuria—including Akiyoshi’s family—were forced out.
The family moved back to occupied Japan, where they experienced the hardships of postwar life. In an interview, Akiyoshi noted that when the family came back, her “parents lost everything.” While Akiyoshi had been able to play piano in Manchuria, her parents were now unable to provide her with an instrument. Since Japan was still under occupation, there were many clubs that catered to both soldiers and the local community. The clubs needed musicians to entertain not only the foreign troops but the Japanese who wanted to dance and listen to music. To keep playing piano, the teenaged Akiyoshi got her first job playing in the clubs and in small combos. By 1951, she was playing piano professionally and leading her own jazz group.
In 1952, pianist Oscar Peterson discovered Akiyoshi while he was on a Jazz at the Philharmonic tour of Japan. After hearing her play in a Tokyo nightclub, Peterson persuaded producer Norman Granz to record her on his Verve label. This recording became Akiyoshi’s big break. After this opportunity, Akiyoshi came to the United States in 1956 to begin studying at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. With her enrollment, she became the first Japanese musician at the school.
In 1959, she moved to New York City and established a reputation as a fine “bebop” (a style of jazz popularized in the 1940s in the U.S.) player.
She played in clubs such as Birdland, Village Gate, Five Spot, and Half Note. She remembered facing discrimination in the jazz world because she was a woman and Asian. In an interview, Akiyoshi recalled hearing people ask “’Japanese play jazz, really?’” and, when it came to her being female, she described it as a “‘Really, really?’ kind of thing.’” In 1959, she also married her first husband, saxophonist Charlie Mariano; the two formed a quartet. In the 1960s, Akiyoshi continued making her mark on the jazz world. She began showing her talent as a composer-arranger for big bands and worked with Charles Mingus in 1962.
By 1973, Akiyoshi had moved to Los Angelas with her second husband, saxophonist, and flutist Lew Tabackin. That same year, Akiyoshi formed her first jazz orchestra—the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra which went on to have great success. The band debuted at Carnegie Hall as part of the 1983 Kool Jazz Festival and went on to record 22 albums and receive 14 Grammy nominations. Akiyoshi became the first woman to place first in the Best Arranger and Composer category in the DownBeat Readers’ Poll plus numerous other awards
In 2003, Akiyoshi disbanded her orchestra to focus on piano. She said in an interview, “it has been 60 years since I discovered jazz and made it my lifetime work. I am so gratified to be recognized for my endeavors especially my infusing of Japanese culture into the jazz world, making it ever more universal.”
Science of Mind Reading
Rumination
You are a mirror of the beauty of God that created the universe.
Rumi
Black History
Una Marson’s life contained a series of spectacular firsts. She was the first Black producer and broadcaster at the BBC. She was the first Black writer to stage a play in the West End. In her time, Una Marson was famous, and she was at the centre of everything. There she is not just in a photograph with her BBC colleagues George Orwell and TS Eliot, but right at the centre of it, commanding the room.
She set up magazines, wrote poetry, was published. In 1932, 16 years before the Windrush generation began arriving, she set sail for the UK
Marson wrote about the racism and hostility she experienced in London, turning it into powerful poetry.
She joined the nascent League of Coloured Peoples, eventually becoming its magazine’s editor. To the surprise of some of the “old codgers” in the movement, she proved that a woman could hold her own in matters of Marxism and colonialism. She met foreign dignitaries including Halle Selassie and gave speeches on equality that made the news.
It is unsurprising to learn that, as a Black woman from the Caribbean, Marson faced hostility from some colleagues. Complaints about her alleged “rudeness” come with a side order of unconcealed racism.
She was conflicted about whether or not to marry, knowing that, owing to the era, it would mean giving up her career.
Eventually, this appears to have led to what we might refer to now as burnout. Her mental health suffered and she ended up being hospitalised in a psychiatric institution in Jamaica. Upon her recovery, she returned to charitable work and political campaigning, setting up a publishing company that made the work of Jamaican authors accessible to as many people as possible. When she spoke about her work on Woman’s Hour, many years later, she noted that it marked her return to the BBC.
Benediction
John O’Donoghue P136 Benedictus
Song: Masterpiece by Danny Gokey