Russ Ramsey > Quotes

“Story is a trojan horse for truth. It can sneak truth past the gates of our defenses and prepare our hearts to hear things we might have resisted if they had come as mere declaration.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“But Israel’s God was different. He was definite, and his character was immutably fixed. And they were to love him for it with everything they had. They were to love him with all their heart. In the seat of their deepest dreams and desires, in the place where they wrestled with their sorrows and clung to flickering hopes, they were to love him. They were to love him with all their soul. In the place that made each individual unique, in the inner court of the mind where decisions were made, in the forming of the bonds between friends and lovers, as well as in the coming together of a community, they were to love him. They were to love him with all their might. In the outward expressions of the passions and decisions of the heart and soul, in the places where men’s thoughts turned to action and resolve turned to progress, they were to love him. In their creativity and in their learning, in their working and in their resting, in their building up and in their tearing down, they were to love him. They were to love him as whole people, in all their weakness and in all their strength. On their best days and on their worst, in the darkest hours of their loneliest nights, and at the tables of their most abundant feasts, they were to love him. This was the heart of Israel’s religion: love. Only divine love made sense of the world. This love went beyond a mere feeling. This love was doctrine. Israel’s story was a story of being kept, and the only reasonable response was to love the Keeper.”
― Russ Ramsey, Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative

“Not only are we drawn to beauty, we are the only creatures who engage in certain behaviors purely for the sake of encountering beauty. We use vacation days to drive to places where we can see the sun come up over the ocean. We visit art museums, theaters, and symphonies. We look at the moon and the stars. We climb to high mountain lakes to put our feet in the frigid water to feel the rush and see the reflection of the summit in the ripples we have made. No other creature stops to behold something beautiful for no other reason than that it has stirred something in their souls. When we do these things, are we not like Moses and David, hungering to see the glory of God?”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“Living with limits is one of the ways we enter into beauty we would not have otherwise seen, good work we would not have chosen, and relationships we would not have treasured. For the Christian, accepting our limits is one of the ways we are shaped to fit together as living stones into the body of Christ. As much as our strengths are a gift to the church, so are our limitations.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“Often the best gifts we can give each other cost nothing.”
― Russ Ramsey, Struck: One Christian's Reflections on Encountering Death

“Art shows us back to ourselves, and the best art doesn’t flinch or look away. Rather, it acknowledges the complexity of struggles like poverty, weariness, and grief while defiantly holding forth beauty—reminding us that beauty is both scarce and everywhere we look.”
― Russ Ramsey, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive

“Story is a trojan horse for truth. It can sneak truth past the gates of our defenses and prepare our hearts to hear things we might have resisted if they had come as mere declaration. Jesus relied on storytelling as his primary method of teaching for just this reason--to persuade Jews to empathize with Samaritans, wealthy people to care for the poor, and religious people to have compassion on society's fringe.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“The kind of thing I like to do, I know it isn’t the highest form of art. There’s no doubt in the world about that, and I know it better than anybody else. I love to tell stories in pictures—the story is the first thing and the last thing. That isn’t what a fine art man goes for, but I go for it, and I just love to do it that way.”
― Russ Ramsey, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive

“I also needed what God has brought. I needed to lose control. I needed a broken heart. I needed to be dipped in the crucible of suffering. Why? I may never fully know. But the God who brings his children low does not do it for spite. He does it to awaken desire, like a pang of hunger in the newly risen phoenix that makes it unfurl its wings to fly. He does it to give us new eyes so that we might see the world in a new light. He does it to stop us from continuing down the path we’re on and to set us on a new one. He grants us weakness so that we might not trust too much in our own strength. “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
― Russ Ramsey, Struck: One Christian's Reflections on Encountering Death

“I cannot think of a single thing in my life that doesn't bear the touch of others. I'm guessing you can't either. Of course we wish some of those chisel marks never happened--the ones that draw from us a plea for mercy, the ones that kindle a hunger for the renewal of all things. But other marks have been necessary to give us eyes to behold goodness, truth, and beauty we would not have known otherwise. Living with limits is one of the ways we enter into beauty we would not have otherwise seen, good work we would not have chosen, and relationships we would not have treasured. For the Christian, accepting our limits is one of the ways we are shaped to fit together as living stones into the body of Christ. As much as our strengths are a gift to the church, so are our limitations.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“G. K. Chesterton said of fairy tales that they “do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of the bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of the bogey.”
― Russ Ramsey, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive

“There’s nothing more genuinely artistic than to love people,” said Vincent van Gogh.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“Find an artist you connect with and then pay attention to them for the rest of your life. Read articles and books about them. Go visit them in museums. When you do, they will introduce you to their friends and mentors—the others hanging beside them in the gallery and the artists they mention in the descriptions on the wall beside the paintings, some of whom may be just down the hall themselves. Soon you’ll get to know their colleagues and heroes too. Do this, and you won’t just get to know their art; you’ll get to know them.”
― Russ Ramsey, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive

“it is far too easy to perceive our suffering as a kind of failure in life rather than as a means of grace—as an obstacle to get over and around as quickly as possible rather than as an occasion for the broken beauty of Christ to be slowly but surely formed in us.”
― Russ Ramsey, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive

“We live in communities that need goodness, truth, and beauty. And we play a role in advancing those transcendentals that make us human. We are to curate them for others. We play a role in blowing on the embers of "whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“The pattern in Scripture is that of God working through unlikely servants for the glory of his name and the spread of the gospel.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“Sometimes this is the artist’s work—to stand and knock on the door of glory and, whenever possible, siphon little wisps of smoke from those places where we catch a glimpse of the light so that others might see and believe. What can we show each other of glory anyway except light in shadow? What glory can anyone see in any of us except for wisps of smoke, traces of the great burning fire? And is that not enough for now—to show enough to prove there’s more?”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“We are drawn to beauty, and we instinctively know that somewhere, somehow, such a thing as perfection exists”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“By painting himself into the boat in The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt wants us to know that he believes his life will either be lost in a sea of chaos or preserved by the Son of God. Those are his only two options. And by peering through the storm and out of the frame to us, he asks if we are not in the same boat.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“Louis Évely wrote, “A tortured heart committed to the Father is the most living image of the Redeemer.”32 To suffer well is not to have our faith shattered but rather to have it strengthened because, through it, the object of our confidence becomes clearer and more focused. The blessing of suffering is that it strips away any pretense of not needing God or others. It frees us from “this exhausting comedy”33 of having to pretend that we’re fine on our own.”
― Russ Ramsey, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive

“Frederick Buechner once wrote: “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
― Russ Ramsey, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive

“We are drawn to beauty, and we instinctively know that somewhere, somehow, such a thing as perfection exists. (...) Our best attempts at achieving perfection this side of glory come from an innate awareness that it not only exists, but that we were made for it.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“deep inside the smoldering stump of Israel, a remnant of life was rising to push back the darkness and break through the crust of the desolation of the people of God to find the light of day. Though they struggled to see it, God loved them. He loved them with an everlasting, unfailing love. Salvation was coming, and when all was said and done, “He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. ” (Rev 21:3-4) “Behold,” he says, “I am making all things new.”
― Russ Ramsey, Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative

“When I look at the old painter’s reimagining of the scene, to my eye he doesn’t seem to want to show us the spectacle of the temple when Simeon held Jesus, or what he can do with it as a painter. After a life filled with suffering and sorrow, he just seems to want to hold Jesus.”
― Russ Ramsey, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive

“If I wanted, I could come up with reasons to be angry with everyone I know; there are sins of commission or omission I could hang on every last person in my life… The truth is, I will never run out of people to indict. We are all guilty of so many failures to love well that if I wanted--and sometimes I do want--I could find some fault or transgression in everyone I know that I could then use to justify writing them off. I could blaze that trail to hell if I wanted to, and just the thought of it scares me off”
― Russ Ramsey, Struck: One Christian's Reflections on Encountering Death

“Affliction is not some test that simply exists to build our character. It beats us up. It changes us. It sobers us. It raises ultimate questions.”
― Russ Ramsey, Struck: One Christian's Reflections on Encountering Death

“Depicting Jesus as he actually was—a Middle Eastern, dark-skinned Jew—wasn’t a value at that time because the goal of art wasn’t historical accuracy; it was accessibility.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“I am not who I was twenty years ago. Neither are you. We change, and the world changes too. Will you allow yourself the freedom to change your perspective on this world? On yourself? On your complicity with injustice? Rockwell’s body of work unfolded as history revealed new insights into what was happening around him. And inside of him. He said, “For 47 years, I portrayed the best of all possible worlds—grandfathers, puppy dogs—things like that. That kind of stuff is dead now, and I think it’s about time.”27 Rockwell knew he had changed, and the world with him. He learned as he went and showed America back to us. Beautiful and terrible things happen all around us. And in us. Long to know the story, and as you learn it, tell the truth.”
― Russ Ramsey, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive

“This is the intangibility of genius--to create work that transfers from the canvas, the page, or the instrument into the heart of another person, arousing a longing for beauty and an end to sadness. This was what Vincent wanted to create--art that would transfer from his easel into someone else's soul to work as a balm of healing for the broken.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith

“It is hard to render an honest self-portrait if we want to conceal what is unattractive and hide what is broken. We want to appear beautiful. But when we do this, we hide what needs redemption —what we trust Christ to redeem. And everything redeemed by Christ becomes beautiful.”
― Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith