There is no cathedral in my studio, no altar but the desk, no icon but the ever-erasing hand. And yet, something sacred takes place here—something slow and deliberate, like ritual. Something that consumes.

When we speak of sacrifice, we often think of the ancient: blood spilled on stone, smoke rising to absent gods. But there is another kind of offering—quieter, longer, more private. The artist gives time, focus, and uncertainty. We work without applause, without assurances. Sometimes without even knowing why.

In this way, art becomes a kind of faith without gods. There is no divine figure to please, no promise of reward, yet we return to the page, again and again, compelled by something unnameable. We place trust in the process itself. We believe in the act of becoming.

For me, that belief lives inside The Buddhist Sketchbook – a book with no end and no hierarchy. Each page is a layer of time, of feeling, of hesitation. Some marks are erased the moment they arrive. Others linger. The sketchbook is not a work to be finished, but a space to be inhabited. A quiet place where the psyche meets the material world.

This way of working is a kind of devotion. It asks everything. The willingness to ruin something beautiful. The patience to sit in discomfort. The discipline to keep returning, even when there is no clear destination. To draw like this is to sacrifice not just time, but certainty. There is faith in that.

Kierkegaard once said that faith is the greatest of all achievements – not because it is easy, but because it asks us to leap without proof. That, too, is the artist’s condition. We do not know what will come of our gestures. We move anyway.

Jung would call it individuation – a slow uncovering of the self through symbols, tension, shadow. To make art is to dig in the dark for something that may never fully reveal itself, but whose pursuit transforms you nonetheless.

And then there is Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods to give it to humankind. He suffered for it. But perhaps that’s what artists do—we carry a flicker of something not meant to be owned. We offer it anyway, knowing it might burn us.

None of this requires a belief in gods. Only a belief in the offering itself.

To live this way – devoted, uncertain, unyielding – is to live sacrificially. Not as martyr, but as servant. Not to a dogma, but to a process. To the mystery that lives not in the heavens, but within.

So I return to the sketchbook. Not because it will save me. But because it asks everything of me. And that, in its own way, is salvation enough.

I offer my time. My joy. My pain. My imperfection.
I offer myself.

Not to gods,
but to the silence.
To the page.
To the fire.
To the possibility of becoming.