paint it purple

What is the difference between “morality” and “beauty”? 

 It is the difference between a church and an art gallery.  Say each encounters chaos, a tradegy, pain and pathos (jilted love, an affair, a car bomb, a tumor).  One attempts to preach it, fix it, file it, categorize and position it — it is bad, or very bad — deal with it. 

 The other makes it into art. 

I dream of the day when churches become art galleries… and people’s lives — good, bad, sad, sinful, and broken — become art.  And when we gather around we are not faced with whether to throw the stone in our hand or make a speech.  Rather, we enter into the other’s life, we come along side and feel with them, feel the same as those they hurt, and interpret their lives as a work in progress… and walk away inadvertently with paint on our street clothes.

My good Jewish friend has cancer. 
What is your first impulse:  Correct dogma or poetry…? “Salvation” or Ecclesiastes?