Category Archives: brokeness

palliative

The word came to me when I was working this week on some small pieces in my studio. I am familiar with the term “palliative” since conversing with a friend who is a hospice nurse. But I had not considered this term for me… until now.

Palliative: n. an action that is intended to alleviate a problem without addressing the underlying cause.

Is it for me alone that this kind of action is needed to be considered? I’m not a nurse nor good at it. Does the work with my hands and my heart using color and line offer something or anything which helps others who are mourning? Maybe that is true. I know these things help me:

Potent words of quiet comfort: from the Psalms, the Prophets or poetry.
The company of wise people I’ve learned I can trust
Meditative music
Glimmers of fleeting beauty
And lastly, sorrow and joy which can be held and considered at the same time (this for me is new)

These are things that effectively quiet my soul.

This is why I work. And then…here’s the wonder of it. Surprises come. The maker of beauty shows up.

This piece above was a quick little alcohol ink, 11×9. It took me maybe 15 minutes in the first pass. After it dried I knew it needed some adjusting so I added some color to strengthen the mid ground, and a quick steak of color into the bottom ground of the earth. The reticulation of the inks and then the drying revealed some of the working of roots under these trees, like a scope into the hidden places that support the whole. I didn’t plan this but it was a thrilling reality. I’m not taking it for granted. I’m receiving it with thanks. And I’m reminded how Habakkuk heard his own rejoinder from God: “Look among the nations! Observe! Be astonished! Wonder! Because I am doing something in your days — You would not believe if you were told.” (Habakkuk 1:6) But then the God of Israel does tell him; they have a dialogue, and 2 chapters later the prophet quiets in a trembling rest. The workings that matter are His, all the rest just leads there.

“Veil” and looking through

Some things are too hard to see face to face.

This past week I’ve viewed numerous video clips trying to grasp the damage from the earthquakes in the Northeastern corner of the Mediterranean.

One clip haunts me still. With loud noises in the sudden collapse of a huge city structure, crowds start running and shouting, while one man just walks normally away, his back to the chaos as if a stoic. The man barely turns around to see. I’ve watched this several times. He does not visibly flinch. He is impassive, determinedly so, as if the reality across the street from him should not affect him. Surely he heard, smelled and felt the same thing upsetting those all around him?

What goes on in the mind and in the heart when hard things come down?

How would I respond? How would you? Is this why some people pay to go to horror movies so they can peer into the frightfully inexplicable? Is this one way to vicariously prepare from a safe seat? But that man in the middle of horror walked away as if nothing would deter his intention for the day… I don’t know anything about him truly from the seconds I viewed, but to me his manner was disturbing. His determination seemed a façade against reality.

We are peculiar creatures in trauma. And part of this I think is because we simply are not equipped to handle things which are way too big for mortals. We block or we freak. We all have self-protective tendencies, and we are living in increasing trauma. Some try to prepare, some dig in madly and some just try to walk away. Ok, people are different. But what if the issue at stake is a matter of critical importance? Would you know it? Would you want to know when what is happening around you is revealing matters of life or death? Do you have the courage now to investigate how in the world you might be able to face God safely, His face-to-your-face, no matter what?

This monotype is about that, about peering determinedly through the frightening chaos. It is simple but sure. This piece was done some years before the current global disruptions, but nevertheless anticipating them from my own already hard-won experience with personal trauma. This is a monotype (a painting on plexi which was then pulled through a press for a reverse transfer onto paper). It turned out! (You never know until you do it) and so I included this image in my Master of Fine Arts show. The disintegration in the foreground is what sets that back plane up. That’s important. In other words, the ripping apart in the front plane is why the back plane even becomes visible. The texture of the foreground was planned to look fragile, ethereal and even torn. I used inks which reticulated once I applied solvent on the plexi.

The background by contrast is a solid mass, stable, and to me a symbol of weighty timelessness. In a simple graphic I was aiming to suggest big things: about all that is temporally falling apart (the veil) and what is solidly available behind the immediate despair.

This all was hinted in my title. Veils cover things. Veils also protect things. They are put up in rooms or over faces to conceal for a time. They can be beautiful in an anticipatory sort of way, even alluring, for they suggest that something valuable is behind what cannot yet be seen. With a veil one has a sense that the wait might reveal something good, for what’s visible in front of any veil is only partial, preparatory. When the veil is finally removed, we get to see the substance which had been shielded. There is hope potentially here, but one must want to keep looking.

This is a biblical idea. For example, after his encounters with God, Moses hid his face in front of the people with a veil. His veil provoked them. But when Moses spoke directly again to God, it was face to face, the veil was no longer needed as a barrier between God and His friend. A veil had been prescribed by God as a protective cover between the Holy of Holies and the priests of both the exodus tabernacle and then later the temple in Jerusalem. Veils were necessary to shield what was temporal from what was Holy.

But here’s the kicker (if you stayed with the struggle and did not walk away) when Jesus died having taken into His heart the sins of the world, the veil in the temple was ripped open. The substance of His torn body became eternally significant. He always called Himself the door, the only door through. Now we understand what He meant. To look at Him is to look eye to eye into the very face of a willing, forgiving, available God who is far better than any cover which obscured Him.

In trauma, the ripping away of what we relied on or called “normal” is terrifying. But when that disintegration exposes something far greater to consider, would you really want to walk away? Any determined seeker is promised that he will find.

Binding Up the Fracture

“Broken” is a trendy word

Which gives us all a pass

To roll like Pollyanna

While blinding through morass!

Who wants to face the music though?

Who wants to buck the throng?

But no matter what your view of things…

We all know something’s wrong.

It’s bigger than we bargained for

It’s deeper than we know

We may whistle in the darkness

But despair is all the show.

There’s tension here with no way out

–play dumb and numb the pain

Or –work your way: ascetic death

No confidence of gain.

I’ll hint a third way pictured.

What if breakthrough gently came?

Though most are blind or working hard,

He still offers all the same (His remedy insane)

It took gargantuan sacrifice.

The work completely done.

The reach from out our system:

A perfect sinless Son.

The clean One came to right us.

No other god could do,

Before we knew our greatest need.

He entered: faithful, True.

To pass on this though it’s shrouded

Is to miss the greatest tie:

That God for man has made the Way.

The rescued testify.

This I wonder, how can any atheist or agnostic explain why human life has any value, even as they may want to hope so? And why is hope even a word, a human instinct, if it all does not matter? There’s tension here… but tension can surprise and birth beautiful things.

Ernest Becker, atheist and social-psychologist said “the plight of moderns is that they are sinners with no word for it” (The denial of Death, p.164)

The plight of God was to make a perfect way for sinners to be safe with Him. “The paradox of the cross is that it insists on highlighting our evil, in order to leave us with absolutely no doubt that whatever we have done, we can be forgiven.” (Becky Pippert, p.129 Stay Salt)

Image: monotype with muddy ink, 26×16″ by Mary Nees

Poem by Mary Nees

falling and rising

The display of color has been brilliant this year, now mostly all dimmed and down in my neck of the woods. Such vibrancy artists and photographers strive to capture.

How lovely this transition we see every year from light green buds, to broad leafy canopies, to the loss of photosynthesis in the aging cycle of a leaf — which yet gives us so much dying beauty! It seems like a slow mercy to me. Years ago, on a Fall hike I sat in wonder watching the gentle flutter of yellows and reds. Almost ad infinitum, these bits flickered through a tall stand of trees. The paper thin light catchers were like dressed up dancers, letting go from their support and one by one falling gracefully to earth. The float-fall was profoundly beautiful, oh… that a one-year old leaf could be a reflector of such fading glory.

We can observe and even take heart from these cycles in nature, it’s part of our natural background. Tides move in and out, and this is strangely comforting. Seasons flow around the calendar. Sound has a rhythm of waves, and history has repeating patterns. The nine month cycle of deciduous leaves gives those of us who live for decades an object lesson in common grace that we can ponder every single year.

For we all will fall, but unlike the simple leaf, there is potential for us also to rise. The Bible speaks of this: first a universal Fall early on in the book and then a singular Rise predicted by the prophets. The Rise is encountered early in the New Testament and then the same is promised for many at the end of history. This progression is echoed whether positively or negatively in the life of many a character in the pages of the book. Lives lived out show a trajectory from rising to falling or falling to rising. The results are evidenced in time.

Here’s one example, I went to an art show this past week on the University campus. Artists can be like watchmen on the wall, they often see farther, and look for clever ways to warn, to celebrate or to announce. Amongst the collection in this show were several obvious clarion calls that our progression as a nation is falling, and falling fast. I saw nothing there which gave me reason for hope. I walked out truly depressed.

2000 years ago, a prophet in the temple at Jerusalem approached a set of parents when they brought their child to the temple for his 8th day dedication. The couple were poor and likely indistinguishable in the hubub of a crowded temple court. But the old Jewish seer was alert for he had been promised that he would not die before seeing God’s salvation.

Luke records this story from an eyewitness, the mother of that child. Lifting the baby from her arms, the prophet suddenly announced a joyous declaration that salvation, the coming of the promised rising had come! But then, tenderly he turns to the baby’s mother and adds “This child is destined to cause many in Israel to fall, and many others to rise. He has been sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose him. As a result the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your very soul.”

His falling and his rising would be the causation for the destinies of many to follow.

This child’s public presence in the world would bring all too soon a sorrowful piercing; a full participation in human dying, the falling that every soul must experience one by one. But then…but then the rising would commence.

whoops!

If you are one of the small number who came onto my blog yesterday afternoon, and if you listened to the video posted there, then you got a sneak preview! It probably hit you as weird.

I have un-published that video clip of me describing a 3D piece I made, paralleling it to an expectation I have. My reason? That clip is scheduled to post automatically once I am lifted out of here. I had the clip recorded as a testimony of my confident hope. But it is not for now since I am still here, and still working and still making plenty of mistakes.

Oh the quiet joy in time, and the slow opportunity to start in again!

I just got home from an 8-day Plein Air fest and counting travel to get up to Northern MN and back with my supportive husband (who just got back himself teaching on another continent) it was a haul. Needless to say, we’re a bit disoriented. Normally, I post on the 15^th of every month in which I am present, pushing the publication date of my video to a later time. I missed the timing this month, hence that may have been for you readers a bit of disorientation as well. As Mark Twain put it ”the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

But I will die. And so will you.

The real question is what will you find on the other side? I entreat you, with all I have in me now: don’t let that reality be a whoops. Jesus, the only one who anticipated well, who made not one whoops, who defeated death’s sting and prepared his followers as to how to be ready had much to say about the end and of His coming back. And for those who “love His appearing” there is great reason for joy. Even as our world is self-destructing, even more so as it is. “No one knows the day or the hour”, Jesus said. No one needs to get all wadded up in fear or blinded by all the lies which are multiplying (He said that too, same chapter). Your way out, the only safe way out is both simple and sure: Jesus. Learn Him.

Meanwhile, in this present mean while, my studio is crammed with projects and half starts, big ideas and small beginnings into them. This piece is a “whoops” right now. I started it on an October visit up at that lake, and tried to bring some resolution this trip, only making it worse with September color. I may trash this, you can see if you look closely how I’ve already tried to scrape into some of the garish green, or I may try to improve it if I effectively can within its context. I have time!

the pit and the way out

It’s a black and white thing. It’s either an individual reckoning or a deadly default. I made this monotype after reflecting on the thick heaviness over an excavation site we had toured many years earlier. This still haunts as a symbol of destination. The ancient city of Pergamum (and its repeated iterations throughout history) is where cultic practice left an entire proud city ruined. It is a warning for now; for I fear much of the world is heading in the same wrong direction.

Listen instead to the clear solitary cry of the Psalmist.

So, it’s about a choice of focus then, with an upward cry. We still have choice in time: the dark hole looming, or the only way out. It’s a black and white thing.

I will simply offer how a poet I recently heard took that same 5^th Psalm and put it into a personal sonnet:

Safe in the love of one who’ll never part,

Of one whose kindness is itself a shield,

Who understands the deep things of my heart

Better than I can ever do, I yield

Myself and my perplexities to him,

And in his house of mercy I am healed;

Healed of this world’s bloodthirstiness, its grim

Deceptions, all its weary wickedness,

The death-speak of its tyrants, as they hymn

The idols of excess, the emptiness

Of endless purchases, all washed away

Until my sight is cleansed. His righteousness

Makes my way plain, and leads me through the play

Of early morning light, to worship him

Whose mercy wakes me at the break of day.

(Malcolm Guite, “Psalm 5: V Verba Mea Auribus”)

the times require

(Not prose, but urgent poems -mine and His- with an image from my icons “Among the Lampstands”)

Among the lampstands walks a man with fire in His face

And seven starry messengers are held up by His grace.

He involves us in this vision. He gave us words to SEE:

The things that are, the things that were, the things still yet to be.

He walks among the lampstands. He wants my heart to know.

He’s not seated casually – so far from all below.

He once walked in a garden (one walks when not at rest)

He’s up and looking, searching. His heart is on the quest.

Genesis 3: 8, Revelation 1:20, and 2:1

These are piercing eyes that see the show of every deed I know.

And those undone and those dismissed which stained my vaunted soul.

He says “wake up” He softly calls. Then runs off from my door!

“There are things yet uncompleted! Take my blood-soaked cloak as cover

And run with me my love.”

“Don’t slumber now, ‘stead heed my promise and I will give you more.”
“Have you forgotten, you who stand there pondering the storm?”
“I’ve loved you long before. I have more for us together! Oh, turn and let’s explore.”

Song of Solomon 2:8-14, Revelation 22:2

His were first words ever spoken. His will be the last.

And though He knows we “now have sorrows” -Time will make this past.

He assures me with His middle words He sealed them sure and fast

And so my present tense is traveling, held by Jacob’s mast.

Genesis 28:12-13, John 16:22-27 and Revelation 1:5 and 8

“After these things I looked and behold…” There’s a linear time jump to future we’re told.

Quantum cycles repeated ‘til the story was old.

But then lifted out come we, no longer on hold.

I’m so caught by wonder, I drink from again.

“To Him who’s released me” My soul on the mend!

Revelation 1:5b and 4:1

There is a city coming. Beyond this hour of trials,

Established by the builder, who says “a little while”

A new name and an old name Gives the One traversing time.

And you who hold fast what you have. Will not be left behind.

Isaiah 26:20, Mark 6:31, John 16:16-22, Hebrews 11:8-10 and Revelation 3:12, and 6:11

Thickets Repeat

There’s something deeply set in the fabric of all material things, though every generation resists it. But it’s real, it’s frustrating, and we live with it every day. This was predicted in fact: that out of the broken ground we til, that thorns and thistles would accompany the healthy produce we each need for sustenance. More than that, this ground, which blooms both good and ill, will also receive us back. Like gravity: it’s a baked in thing and no workaround can cancel it. “All the days of your life” there will be a confounding coming up of thorns. And with both downward gravitation, as well as with upward tangles, we only hurt ourselves when we don’t navigate with some creative measure of humility about things that complicate our ambition. Elon Musk (ambitious himself) said: “I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.”

To bear in your mind something true is half the battle.

For me early on, a wake-up call about what I could transcend and what I could not, refitted my idealism. So, it stuns me when there is so much hubris being thrust forward as if all natural laws are changeable, and that this present generation is finally going to rule and reign into super humans. Proud pronouncements from posers of any stripe make me wince. For thickets repeat. They multiply even. C.S. Lewis called every single generation’s ahistorical cockiness as simply “chronological snobbery”.

The oil painting I am highlighting this month is not just about that downside. There’s more in the human story; and it is hinted, whispering through the chaos of any mounting morass. I sold this to some friends and they have this painting hanging in their living room where they can talk about the broader hope and even the peeks of beauty which are embedded in life on our ground, as symbolized here. One has to look however. Hungering to see something beyond your own mess is not a weakness of the wretched, but actually their first step through.

The texture and the scratching-in here is pervasive. It’s as if I am digging with a trowel. There’s lots of natural broken line, but colors got revealed along this way. It’s a quiet persistence, a determined expectation based on things which are truer than assumptions. We all live on roads where thistles are. We can curse them and stay stuck in them. We can deny them and get cornered by them. But the real subject of this painting is the light, dancing through the bits, and without that light we can’t see at all.

You can live on any ground where thickets are if you will just start studying that light.

when heaven and earth shuddered

It happened on the ground we inhabit. It was the darkest of days. And all the ugliest of sins, the sorrows of every other day humans have ever suffered fell into the heart and onto the scourged back and the thorn-crowned head of the King of glory. David’s promised son, Job’s Redeemer, Abraham’s expected Seed, Daniel’s foreseen “son of man” and “Messiah the Prince” took on not only our common flesh but also our death sentence. He took it in full. He said “it is finished”.

The burial cave could not hold Him, the forces of evil around and above could not defeat Him. He beat them clear through their own gruesome strategy. Meekness has a way which hits the Serpent sideways and rises unscathed.

Don’t miss what happened here in history. It still is a stake in your ground. But like a prince dressed as a pauper you wont see Him unless you are are looking with hungry eyes yourself. What God bought here is priceless, and it is still being offered. Some see while the madding crowds around walk on by. Listen to how an old man recognized Jesus when he was only 8 days old: “God, you can now release your servant; release me in peace as you have promised. With my own eyes I have seen your salvation. It’s now out in the open for everyone to see: a God-revealing light to the non-Jewish nations, and of glory for your people Israel.” (Luke 2:29-32)

Later in Revelation, the victoriously risen Jesus said to the quasi-concerned: “I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may become rich, and white garments, that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes that you may see.” (Revelation 3:18, mirroring Isaiah 55:1-2).

This painting I recently finished, is not yet visible elsewhere on my site. “Stake in the Ground” is currently hanging in Jonesborough, TN at a show, but it will be taken down next week. I don’t claim sight or skill better than others. But I feel an urgency to use my hands to express His matchless offer, given at great cost. Read the reliable accounts for yourself, learn of Jesus, who says He holds the keys. He’s the One to listen to, and He makes it simply clear.

take hold

“From the ends of the earth I call to Thee when my heart is faint; Lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For Thou hast been a refuge for me, a tower of strength against the enemy.” Psalm 61:2-3

This simple alcohol ink drawing recently sold, but the image and the thought behind it remains mine. Since this handmade impression and the words inscribed around it spoke to another, it seems apt to share it here now.

Recent events, and the trauma for so many in peril has awakened me to lifting prayers in the middle of the night. I have heard others say the same. It is now our reality, worldwide, where some need desperately to hide, and others look for any alternative tower of strength they can find. There are enemies, surely there are. Hearts are faint. But fear and sadness will not grip me, though it visit me, and I have consequential response while I have breath for others. For there is One who hears every plaintiff cry to Him. He is often symbolized as “a rock” in the Bible, and yes, this One is higher than we are. Further, He is a willing refuge for any who seek Him.

“For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth, that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His. You have acted foolishly in this (said an unknown seer to a dithering King). Indeed, from now on you will surely have wars.” 2 Chronicles 16:9

So take hold to this One who sees and knows, grasp on from your heart, trusting these given words, trusting also the perfect Son, Jesus, “the rock”, who bought your ticket of access before God by His atoning death and resurrection. If you trust Him, He will know it, and He will shelter you.

look up

My very first remembrance of a sense of hope was when I looked up. Somehow, without knowing much else, this was a reflexive wonderment at where the changing light was coming from. Later, at a camp in Ontario, I remember the vast, punctuated mysteries in the dark skies. One particular night, this was even a rather private worshipful reckoning. What was going on? This camp was not religious at all; and no one prompted my looking up, but there I was grappling with the idea of something I sensed but could not see further. Later someone read Psalm 8 out-loud and the question posed there made deep sense to me: “When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers…what is man that You (God) take thought of him/me?!”

Years have passed and I still marvel at that question, and the sense of knowing that came from simply pondering upward.

What is man…and isn’t his/my value all the more significant placed in context under such displays above?

In a different and desperate time similar to ours, midst the company of ubiquitous liars, the ancient writer of Psalm 120 detailed his private agony under the sun. He cast out a prayer, but his focus was downward evidenced in all his words. However, in the very next Psalm 121, the writer looks up, past all that is material and into the trust of a bigger keeper or guardian. He names and describes that Keeper. This is his turning point. It is no small thing.

But this small thing is not an easy thing for us; for not only are there contradictions on the outside, but also within our own hearts. God self-describes as Holy; and we are not. Our default is independent, even haughty and so we must fear or even just refuse any true thought of Him. How is this ever resolved? In another Psalm, the writer despairs; then the same voice later says “when will you come to me?” (Psalm 101)

He did.

In Jesus, Creator came; and this was the crux in human history. Your maker came gently dressed in a pauper’s robe, and purposefully took the full hit for every single one of us. Take this in. “…for the son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” The Maker of the cosmos above and the wonders below came and entered into our sorry space to finish the problem, and set the access between His holiness and our great need, between justice and mercy. And obviously there is some clean-up action yet to be done down here. He’s got the plan for that. He set the beginning and the end. In between, the time you yet have to consider this is mercy for you. So, look up meaningfully toward Him. You can do that on your own, and if you do, He will see it.

Jesus said, “when you see all these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads for your redemption is drawing near.”

an added note after watching much present “news”: We have reason for despair. We must therefore realize greater reason for looking beyond the ground. To look up is not denial, but rather an informed and necessary choice, and once you do that, there are others who need your earnest prayers.

Mary Barton Nees

Conceptual Landscape