Startling Truth 2021

The “Startling Truth” series is a meditation on belonging, resilience, and awe. The title comes from Maya Angelou’s beautiful poem “A Brave and Startling Truth”. The pieces featured below are all currently hanging in local galleries for the month of June. They’ll become available for sale in Sarah’s Art Shop on Monday, July 5th.

My question with this series is this: When we stand at the edge of all we know, listen for the untranslatable language of the cosmos, and peer into the unquenchable darkness, will we finally acknowledge that the possibility of our existence — that we lived at all — is miraculous? And who might we be, as people of earth, and how might we treat each other, if we could embody that startling truth in the powerful now?

“Startling Truth” is a form of active prayer and also an expression of profound appreciation for the most foundational fact of human existence: that we are made of star stuff. Songwriter and poet Joni Mitchell puts it beautifully, “we are stardust, we are golden”.

Here are the poems that formed the foundation of this series. I give deep gratitude to these writers and their ability to share their gifts with the world.

• Antidotes to Fear of Death by Rebecca Elson

• God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins

• A Brave and Startling Truth by Maya Angelou

• Stars by Mary Oliver

• The Moon and the Yew Tree by Sylvia Plath

• Planetarium by Adrienne Rich

• Relativity (for Stephen Hawking) by Sarah Howe

• Remember by Joy Harjo

• Let there Always be Light (Searching for Dark Matter) by Rebecca Elson

Return to Main Gallery or Visit Sarah’s Print Shop