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There are many ways we can find to process the daily history of our walk with God and how we interpret reality in light of our understanding of Jesus' words. Sometimes, we paint things in the light of our darkest fears, other times, our brightest glories incinerate everything we see about ourselves, till we finally glimpse the moment where glory and faith unite and we finally touch the living waters of our maturity and the density of our human essence.

But the heart is true like an arrow skillfully shot : it cannot live in duplicity. As it longs, so it becomes. The thirst for reality will spill us into the sea of our becoming. But as it is lied to, so our heart might disguise itself in shallowness. But it still cannot lie: and therein rests our hope, that truth can never be destroyed, that the heart can always find the true north of eternity, that somewhere in us, we know the artificial from the genuine, the borrowed from the inherent, and that knowledge will brand us to the present eternal, reality, if only we embark on the journey and relinquish the use of an anchor till we is told to drop it. That's why the language of the arts is so pure to the willing heart: in the process of the gushing out of art-language-exploration will emerge the true self, excavated, as it were, from childhood, and out of that encounter will stem a simpler walk with God and with others.

On the flowing stream of artistic expression, creative prayer evolves like a DNA helix, like feeling forward, surfing the crest of a wave completely abandoned to the will of the sea, treading barefoot the spine of the spiritual earth, a trail where the conscious awareness that there is an underlay to it obscures the confusion of any illusion, that the words used to describe its destination are actually the substance of its vertebrae which we can feel, thanks to the spirited nature of another part of ourselves which is honest, focused, daring, hungry for the spiritual feast of God's breast ...

Like speaking words, praying the arts in a liturgical way is like walking along our devotional outpouring without knowing the distance, as if being constantly walking to the end of a plank that keeps on growing ahead of us, a fluid path of prayer that winds up higher and closer to the distant reflection of who we are calling ourselves to be, and on our good days, who were truly are, without time or space, no rejection of who we are but a complete self-embrace, without a second thought... and if music can do that, as I've truly been wayfaring on that hope for decades, we can find much beauty in the sacred purity of the present moment... and if only, then even just the thought of it makes for a worthy start on the journey.

As for liturgical art, expelling music that morphs as an ambient sculpture, sounds attach themselves like colors on a canvas, or to the frame of our deepest human longings, risk being the fuel which ignites the soul to venture beyond its arbitrarily elaborated boundaries for survival, or conformity. Acceptance is no longer defined by the echoes of an ancient mystification born out of terror. In a daring move, the soul accepts to peer into the glass of its nakedness and stare at itself without artifice. Bent over the pond of our devotions and petitions, as the waters settle, the image of God is finally revealed to our disbelief as we posture ourselves to be the object of God's love in our own eyes.

Originally, ambient works draw [or derive ] from the old Ambient school (Brian Eno, etc) and branches in all kinds of variations, including the use of soundtracks and free-form collages, environmental recordings, famous speeches by famous people, floating chords, subtle rhythms and percussions. Everything is in the treatment of the sound, using effects, reverbs, flanges, time-stretching, pitch-shifting, the "drama" evolving so slowly, you almost feel like time is being pulled back to a grinding halt. Almost. Our whole being tittering on the threshold of the present moment... what an experience!

There are many ways to be creative within that genre, and this site would like to be a hub attracting artists who create life-giving, thought-provoking, meditative, ministering music which explores the human journey, the path of Christianity, as well pre-verbal or unspoken prayers. Works can spring from any of the fivefold ministry. Through all, of course, the goal is edification, exhortation and comfort in an inspiring way. One thing we'd like to see happen is that we'd ULTIMATELY revisiting the environmental ambience of the manifest presence of God in private and social settings.

This site is now open for submissions. We're building a bank of musicians who would love to share their devotional explorations, and who endeavor to create ambient-ish music that inspires and ministers to the soul. Selection will be based on how well the music represents the format of this particular site. The vision growing, many different projects might emerge from this community of artists, both locally and internationally.

Email us to submit your site and/or music [soulcanvas at hotmail.com], send us your suggestions or comments. And next time you're in a public place of prayer and worship, bring pen and paper, and allow God to speak to you in a fresh and personal way. Later on, we'll discover what to do with those revelations...