The title of this work is a little-known Hebrew name of God I discovered when reading through Abraham’s journey in the book of Genesis. In 50 years of my own journeying, I have never heard anyone talk on this, but it is rather simple, and it hit me between my eyes one day as I was (then and continue to be) impressed with how Abraham learned more and more about the character of this unseen God he aimed to follow — step after dusty step. It takes time to learn important things.
You can see for yourself how Abraham identifies this new description of God in Genesis chapter 21 right after he’s made an agreement with a man who could have been an enemy (the back story is recorded there, starting in ch. 20). Abraham messes up. God protects and leads, then God even blesses him (kind of a main theme in the Bible). And the philistine takes notice and comes forward. Both this foreign leader and Abraham have something they need to settle out. And so, they make a treaty, a solemn covenant. That’s the short of it.
But the long of it, is that Abraham already knew about the value of covenant by the time he gets to ch.21. And he already knows some things about the character of the God who’d solemnly promised (alone and uninitiated) by making a covenant with this father of the Jews. (see further back story in Genesis 15). So that once things settle out so wonderfully with Abraham’s on-the-ground issue, he is given to see so much more deeply how God has been everlastingly in charge of the entire journey. El Olam can be translated as “continually eternal” “without end” or even literally “the vanishing point”. Abraham voices this realization on his own, and in worship after the philistine has left the scene satisfied. Abraham sees where and how and with whom this is ALL going to settle out. Abraham’s El Olam can be trusted.
The idea of a vanishing point made me curious even as a young one looking at how the parallel corn rows seemed to squish together further out in the field. This was visually mysterious to me, for I knew that walking down any row would never lead me to that point. But then in college I gained some skill at understanding how to translate depth onto a 2 D surface in a perspective drawing class. This old sketch is from that class. There’s a hidden vanishing point in pencil on the back horizon which is the key to getting everything else correctly in place. If you look closely, you’ll see how I messed up too. But the joining point is there.
Later when I saw that this abstract idea was voiced by Abraham as another name for God I was ‘blown away’, or maybe blown further into the mystery: to the point of that recognition.
I made the complex landscape highlighted at the top of this post in 2006. It was inked up and pulled onto paper through an etching press, then I collaged graph paper onto the image and finally a layer of encaustic wax was floated over the center to give it some translucence. This result is one of my favorites for the conceptual reasons above. I have submitted it to a juried committee for a possible showing in Cincinnati in 2022. If it makes it in, I will note that on my news and reviews page. But for now, I am just content to rest this year, and to rest all of my years in the able hands of El Olam.