Category Archives: time

The reoccurring dream

Some dreams are juxtapositions: headwork that a psychologist friend says are just “working out what we could not resolve in the day”. A few dreams are outright scary. Most dreams we can barely remember our sleeping heads having worked through. But some dreams become waking desires. We know those dreams are real because we keep casting our sights by them in some vague way. Do you know what I mean? When vague desire becomes purposeful steps, we are walking with the writers and travelers of the Psalms of Ascent.

We are in the 3^rd triplet now of this 15 Psalm progression (see my last 6 posts). The first triplet’s theme was ENTRY, the second: TEST. This third has a more internal nature. I’ll give it a name once we’ve walked through all three in this set, for we are definitely heading somewhere — but sometimes it feels murky.

This Psalm begins with a historical reference, dating this Psalm after Israel’s exile “when the Lord brought back the captive ones of Zion”. The writer says “we were (then) like those who dream…” He goes on with language which bursts with the realization that their corporate dream had became reality. But the last 3 verses of this Psalm express the same dream into present circumstance; it is therefore an ongoing need. The Psalmist now is “sowing tears”, “going to and fro”…carrying only seed. However the Psalm ends with an expectation of confidence; it’s a statement of trust. If real resolution came once before, it can come again.

Everyone has things they long for which are yet unrealized. Time tests whether that longing is a dangling shiny object or a much more substantive need.

All our dreams are a kind of aspiration, but some are rooted in confident hope which has been seeded by something ultimate which is beyond our scope. So it was, and so it continues in these Psalms.

A song of ascents.

126 When the Lord restored the well-being of Zion,
we thought we were dreaming.
²At that time we laughed loudly
and shouted for joy.
At that time the nations said,
“The Lord has accomplished great things for these people.”
³The Lord did indeed accomplish great things for us.
We were happy.
⁴O Lord, restore our well-being,
just as the streams in the arid south are replenished.
⁵Those who shed tears as they plant
will shout for joy when they reap the harvest.
⁶The one who weeps as he walks along, carrying his bag of seed,
will certainly come in with a shout of joy, carrying his sheaves of grain.

New English Translation

glad resolve

I am continuing here with some words about each of my new pieces which are part of a whole series of 15. The 15 “Psalms of Ascent” are positioned in the 5^th and last “book” or volume of the Hebrew Psalter. And this progression is fascinating in that the microcosm echoes the macrocosm! In other words, what is glimpsed in the gathered detail inside this collection and it’s individual parts also reveals an informed interweaving into the whole of Scripture! The entire, and all its parts are masterfully written.

With these 15 ancient Ascent Psalms, the triplets show the rhythm while the three sets of 5 reveal the stages in the long ascending journey. I’ll write more of those stages later.

Here’s how the repeating rhythm can be seen. Each triplet in this progression ends with the disruption, recently voiced, now resolved. It’s a simple pattern familiar in so many written dramas or musical movements. The first movement or dramatic scene begins with distress. The second develops to a climax. Then the third finally quiets in time to an experience of resolution.

As a whole, this very first triplet of the entire set of 15 shows us this archetype both in its first verse: 120:1, but then in the walking out of the three journey psalms here. That pattern is evident in the triplet (1.Distress 2.Reliance 3.Resolve). This particular set of three Ps. 120-122 takes us from troubled spirit in foreign soil (120) to a pivot of reliance on the God of Abraham (121) to finally a voiced experience of arriving “glad”! One can sense the relief of the original writer in Psalm 122. The longed-for destination has been reached.

Another fascinating feature in this particular triplet is how the action moves from people (liars, deceivers, “those who hate peace”) to a personal decision (the pivot explained in my last post) and then back to people. But this last group of people are at peace. They have welcomed the new arrival; they give thanks and gather together. “I was glad when they said to me…” The troubled individual traveler has become part of a new company. The traveler had to make his consequential pivot individually, but the context of others surrounds his story in really informative ways. Hence, I see this triplet in my notes as the ENTRY triplet in the developing larger story.

Not only is the first verse in the entire series an archetype of this in short form, but this first triplet (the first 3 whole Palms of the series) also secures the pattern –for it telescopes deep time from foreign despair to settled finality. Human history and individual histories can be encapsulated in this first progression of 3.

David is attributed as the writer of this resolve Psalm 122. He was the early King who captured Jerusalem, where his throne was then set up. However, his own and his nation’s history was troubled, and the Psalm ends here with admission of great need. Five hundred years after David’s reign, trouble had multiplied, and the nation was taken captive into Babylon for 70 years. Scholars say that the 5^th “book” in the Psalm collection was compiled after that exile as Jews made their historic walking return to Jerusalem: microcosm and macrocosm through time.

I’ve tried to visually suggest much of this glad entry in this work. There is a symbol of an individual, like a green reed, smallish and in the center. But “he” is surrounded by light, by a protective covering of sorts and the mark-making gives an impression of history with many others present alongside him.

If you were stuck on a deserted island and only had this triplet of three Psalms for your sustenance, you would have enough to know that trusting God is possible from anywhere and that if you do, He will secure you in the end. It’s the character of the God of Abraham to make good on every promise He has given.

a poem for our time

Not every woman is believed,

Not every man’s a lout.

But bend the narrative and lie

And then you’ll have some clout.

Science is not prophecy

Wisdom’s not for sale,

And you can smell the bias

In every journo’s tale.

A watershed has happened

A seismic shift’s at hand.

Wake up and pray the coffee

Or weep throughout the land.

Groupthink’s not forgiveness

Only God gives right.

So while you breathe you’d best wise up

And come into His light, for:

The Spirit and the Bride say come.

time: a slow mercy

This Fall I got to see Mercury transit across our sun. Through several chubby telescopes, positioned on tripods in a field on campus, a cluster of the curious took turns. The planet was like a speck of pepper on a large egg yoke. Various scopes were set to filter the sun’s light energy so that the color of the gasses around the spherical giant reflected to the eye a different view of it: orange, red, yellow. But the movement of the dark speck did not vary. It moved in one direction. This vacant planet has a set course, slow but sure, creeping silently across the brilliant light behind it.

Mercury is near impossible to see in our skies because of its size and orbit, so this was a rare opportunity, which a knowledgeable friend had alerted me to. And, it struck me as I tried to absorb the significance, that various orbs are moving above us all the time, we just go about our business on earth hardly aware. Like gears in a vast cosmos above us, there is predictable movement. It’s a picture of time. And once we’ve passed through, that time is past, not repeatable.

This comforts me strangely. For time is a slow move. Time is time. Think of that: time means I have time. Its sure ticking gives opportunity to reflect as I breathe here, to consider, as John says in the book of Revelation “the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall take place.” We’re living in the already/not yet place of possibilities. But what is set is set. Can you hold that in?

I offer as illustration a small piece I did last year and gave as a Christmas gift. To me these big things are better caught than taught. I wish you relief from what is past and can now be put away. I wish you a growing confidence in what is set above you as we all move now into another decade of change. Happy New Year.

resistance: a value or a trap

It’s a subtle thing, and lately I’ve been pondering my reasons for resisting as I’ve been examining some motivations. There are days when working or when in difficult relationships where I can feel this drag right under my skin. What is that? Time to take a careful look under my hood. And then time to study the manual. I take some care here, for resistance improperly applied can disassemble; it can destroy gradually like rust. Or, it can save lives like the firm pressing on the brake pedal when required. My difficulty (and yours) this side of Eden is discerning when resistance is good (which leads to Good) and when it is bad, leading to worse. Religions set up codes, or rulebooks to follow so one can “stay on the straight and narrow”. But creative life is much more complex than that. And in fact, in my own life there are times when “no, I wont go there” was very good, and other times when “I must face this head on”. Read Solomon on this, his words are in the middle of the Creator’s manual.

Recently I listened to a podcast by a Harvard trained Psychiatrist who now coaches artists. She does an effective job exposing the false ideas that hinder us such as “I cant” “I shouldn’t” “It’s all good” I’m all bad” (there are thousands more and we all have pet ones to which we we resort). Here’s an example “this hurts, it can’t be good for me” and I noticed I was fighting on the inside something I have no control over. Mine was not an active rebellion, but more a passive sulky resistance. Once I saw the potential in the manual for exactly this difficulty turning into something valuable I had very good reason to stop resisting and cooperate.

In my art practice, there’s often a negative resister: “I don’t have what it takes” but when I activate what I do have, little steps taken against my pet resistance can reveal something new.

Complex situations aren’t only black and white. And I’m a free agent who has the opportunity to negotiate through them: to select and to take into action. Time is one of the things I have, and materials, and a drive on the inside that I believe my Creator placed there. I’ll resist wasting these things.

Here you can see some studio exercises this week as I was thinking on all this. I started with ink. And then overlaid with oils in some more subtle values. Each one of these small maquettes could be translated to more formal work. As I still have time, I will.

“Time is what defines our lives” says Paco Seirulo, Leo Messi’s coach, on how the champion soccer player employs his brain and his legs during split second decisions.

drawing to discover

Blasted rock face breaks off according to the composition of the material being forcibly disrupted. Some rock just crumbles at impact, like so much hardened sand. Other rock, having been deposited by volcanic flow or metamorphic heat reveals these jagged architectural planes and lines when blasted. The visible cuts un-bury the evidence of long-term history in the making of the substrate.

I have a good number of wonderful (to me) photos of cut-faces as we recently drove around Lake Superior. Since a little kid, these broken faces have always drawn my eye. All I could say was “these are beautiful!” to the casual glances of others. Now I am trying to understand why these have so magnetized my attention.

From burst photos taken in the car, then on site: en plein air, I have been drawing and begun painting — not to replicate, but to discover. This posture takes the pressure off, and opens doors for freed up investigation. For it’s not about the rock/lines/planes/color though that has captivated first. I use those as jumping off points. It’s more about the nakedness of the cuts and the beauty therein exposed. Oh to be able articulate that! It’s like this solid rock thing with its cut contrasts is a signifier of something else being expressed to me.

In his dreamy, harsh, philosophical novel “The Island of the World”, Michael O’Brien says early on that “people always seem to fall in love with the image first, never the substance…”. It’s pictures that draw us originally, but if we get hooked and we want to know, organic things can lead us so much further.

A good number of artists spend time endeavoring to go deeper, like cave artists. And ‘going in’, underneath, behind the surface of things is where so many spend dogged time. For example, the subject of “beauty” has long been recognized by artist/thinkers as having a component of fear attached to it. It’s strange but sure. It’s something really important to discover.

“Poets are dreamers, Josip. They scribble their subconscious onto paper in order to connect with food sources.” O’Brien brings in characters to help his protagonist Josip along in this search. And that’s exactly what I am doing here: connecting to some food sources of a deeper hunger.

learning from some elders

I recently finished an autobiography of a little known Canadian artist: Emily Carr, entitled: Growing Pains. Emily was Canada’s equivalent of Mary Cassatt, at least in terms of era, European training and singular focus. But Cassatt never left us with such an articulate journaling of her struggle. I learned of Carr when in the Northwest of Canada last year. I’d already loved the amazing modernist landscapers of the Northern wilds called the Canadian Seven; but Carr’s name, or her work, is not usually included in general groupings amongst them.

To have come from the provincial west of Canada, not far removed from pioneering times — to endure the scoffing of family and the pursuit of suitors for her singular desire to study — then to travel to San Francisco, London and Paris so that she could get art training — and to live through Victorian attitudes, poor housing and bad health while working hard is Emily’s life. She was spirited, rebellious, sensitive and diligent and for a good portion of her mid-life she fell back in discouragement, running a boarding house back in British Columbia. It was later in life when she was recognized and included by Lawren Harris. He was one of the Seven, and insisted on including her in some exhibits back in eastern Canada. More important is the record of his thoughtful mentoring of her progress by mail. Her own articulate words tell this tale.

She says early on, having discovered her love of the woods as important to her voice: “sketching outdoors was a fluid process, half looking, half dreaming…as much longing as labour…these space things asked to be felt not with fingertips but with one’s whole self”. Then later after Harris’ encouragement: “…help was a little notebook I carried in my sketch sack and wrote in while intent on my subject. I tried to word in the little book what I wanted to say…I stopped grieving.” Lawren responded: these “represent vital intentions…unusually individual and (are) soaked with what you are after more than you realize…then we approach the precincts of Great Art—timeless—the Soul throughout eternity in essence.”

So, mentored myself by her words and his, I have started easing back into what I’m after in my own onging sketchbook. Here’s one recent entry.

synergy

There is so very often in my own practice what feels like a long incubation period before the bursting out into the open. It always takes longer than I expected to see the fruition. And then I hear this in my head “anything worth doing needs time and thought, planning and prep.” We all kind of get that. But here’s my problem: I’m impatient. I have ‘visions of sugar-plums’ or dreams of resolutions planted deeply. I don’t even know how they got there, but they’re there. Actually, I do know how they got there: lots of Bible reading and then lots of active prayer based on the clear promises I see. I get excited when I sense the glimpses. But then comes another corner to go around, another hindrance, and another disappointment. And these are incubators which take time and thought…I think maybe I just summarized my own internal life. You might see this in my work: for both the good and the bad of it all.

I bring this up for two reasons. The painting here happened quickly last month. It was kind of a surprise as I was working up several panels one day. I stood back and thought “hmmm, I may have just seen this pop to a finish. How did that happen?” The long incubators probably had something to do with it.

I was in Israel this month: a surprise trip, which also happened quickly. It was amazing in so many ways: friendships, learning, sensing the blooming going on there, some puzzles I’ve had suddenly clicking together… it was synergistic. I brought my watercolors, paper pads and brushes. They just took up space in my bag as I had not one minute to sit and use them. But oh my cameras were busy. I caught door frames and the wares of spice sellers. I caught the patterns on ancient marbles, and the blooms on a fig tree. My eyes reveled at the mustard yellows on the close hills and the sweet purply dimness on the far mountains –the planted rows of almond trees and date palms, and then had lunch overlooking the very hills where Abraham grazed his flocks. These things are all incubators. The fruition follows.

sign of the Fig Tree

It’s the time of year when buds are emerging. It’s also the time of centuries, long awaited, of Israel’s coming to fruition. The re-born nation is celebrating 70 years back in her land. “Can a nation be built in a day?” exclaimed the royal prophet Isaiah at the very end of his grand vision. I am convinced we are living in the time of Israel’s glorious denouement. The evidence is obviously visible: the land is blooming. Many trees, besides the broad-leafed fig, show the fruit of Israel’s 70 year cultivation of the land on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean. They are back where they started. This monotype is a reflection of that further becoming.

Like mirrors which echo imagery down a long corridor, has the fig tree been a watchword in every age for those who have read the Jewish prophet Jesus. Many have longed to see what we are seeing now with our own eyes. Many prophets promised it, and many more eager for the fruit yet to appear.

Before the Roman devastation of the 2^ndtemple in Jerusalem, Jesus, from the tribe of Judah, used a fig tree as a metaphor for his nation. It was not the time for harvest. And so the “sign of the fig tree” became a sad precursor to the Roman ruin of the Jewish homeland just decades after Jesus. The tree’s unfruitfulness at that time was a prophetic illustration of what was about to come down.

Now that nation is reborn, and fig trees are blooming again. There is reason for anticipation.

The fig is the third tree mentioned in Genesis, after the tree of life, then the forbidden tree (knowledge of good and evil) that was nonetheless sampled by Eve then Adam. The Fig was the fall-back, not for eating at that point, but for the more desperate need for cover-up. Its broad leaves were grasped and stitched together for now there was an instinctive knowing of inadequacy, a need for costume-ing. It was the first masquerade.

But for the gracious kindness of a seeking God, that is not where the whole story ended, though it could have. And that is precisely why this sign interests me. It wasn’t the poor tree’s fault to be a sign of leafy futility. The fig tree that Jesus spoke of remains a metaphor of what was and what is yet coming: Isael’s long term future toward fruitfulness. He finishes everything He began.

Fig trees are blooming again in the land. And the God of Abraham is still walking around. He’s still asking any who want to care the very first question he posed to mankind in another garden: “where are you?”

marking time

The floor of a red cedar canoe, in the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia quietly testifies to its own story. Once standing tall and alone in a rain forested wood fringing the Pacific, it was scope-ed out then heavily laid down. Done. Cut off from its nourishment; it was then gouged, steamed and stretched by the hands of others. Soon it was deemed seaworthy, buoyant and bearing. It was now a thing, not a living thing. This lovely tree was un-noticed until it was found useful for the ends of others. It is said that the first nation Indians were careful with trees, making only single slits in bark to preserve a tree’s life.

But what of this tree? Are we to consider it a sacrifice? Are some sacrifices worthy? And by whom?

I could show you other photos: of the carved yokes that adorn the gunnels, of the painted designs: the brands of ownership. But to me these whispered lines of life are the most authentic. It’s a silent recording of the lively passing of years. In these is seen the marks of weather and growth of push and pull when the tree was still responding on its own.

Time is a slow and certain mover. It is gentlemanly. It is more reflective of the Maker of trees than are the hands of many men. In this testament of silent marks I take comfort, even as the tree itself has been laid low. Emily Dickinson resolves the sadness by saying “let months dissolve in further months—and years –exhale in years—“*

I will let this be then, except for reminding us here. For in these marks I see a most particular record of days not forgotten.

*poem #690, Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R. W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)

a prayer from Moses

Psalm 90

Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.
²Before the mountains were born
Or You gave birth to the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.

³You turn man back into dust
And say, “Return, O children of men.”
⁴For a thousand years in Your sight
Are like yesterday when it passes by,
Or as a watch in the night.
⁵You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep;
In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew.
⁶In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew;
Toward evening it fades and withers away.

⁷For we have been consumed by Your anger
And by Your wrath we have been dismayed.
⁸You have placed our iniquities before You,
Our secret sins in the light of Your presence.
⁹For all our days have declined in Your fury;
We have finished our years like a sigh.
¹⁰As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years,
Or if due to strength, eighty years,
Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow;
For soon it is gone and we fly away.
¹¹Who understands the power of Your anger
And Your fury, according to the fear that is due You?
¹²So teach us to number our days,
That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.

¹³Do return, O Lord; how long will it be?
And be sorry for Your servants.
¹⁴O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness,
That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
¹⁵Make us glad according to the days You have afflicted us,
And the years we have seen evil.
¹⁶Let Your work appear to Your servants
And Your majesty to their children.
¹⁷Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us;
And confirm for us the work of our hands;
Yes, confirm the work of our hands.

Mary Barton Nees

Conceptual Landscape