Author Archives: marynees

“working the curse”

We’re all navigating amongst cursings. They fly around now-adays into our ears or on our screens like angry gnats. Any curse from any source is a pronouncement toward harm. The first record in ancient documents of the word “curse” however was from God’s mouth, not man’s. And the consequence of that should be a heads-up over any puny castings from mortals.

What is startling about this cursing from God, described in Genesis 3, is that it comes in response to man and woman’s disobedience. God approaches and then has specific words to them; but the immediate cursing that God voices is directed onto Satan and then secondarily God places a curse on the ground like a lightning bolt which bypasses the humans.

The ancient Hebrew word, arar, means “to hem in with obstacles” “to bind” and that consequence is what sticks presently on Satan and also on our earthly ground. We live in a cursed reality, with a cursed supernatural enemy, though we ourselves are not cursed! Lesser beings may aim to curse you, but God has not yet made pronouncement on you. The time He gives each therefore is potentially restitutional. Only God has the moral purity, perfect vision and the cosmic authority to make any claim over one’s soul. But God waits. His self-description is that He is “slow to anger”, but then He has “eyes like fire“.

So, this is important to know going forward for any who might be wrestling with a God-sized heaviness. He waits in mercy. He waits on us. But the prophets were clear with one unified voice that one day God will deal. The wise ask then, how does anyone operate meaningfully in such a damaged reality now? Blaming Satan, blaming the earth, blaming others is not our business and only a wasteful distraction. A Psalm writer makes a counter exclamation before God in this tension of wonder: “what is man that You, God, are mindful of Him?”

Here’s a visual example of taking a quiet and responsive stand midst broken territory. I made this mixed media piece some years ago. It now belongs in a private collection in Nashville. The layered-in pages of text form a silent arc over the head of a lone figure, which I collaged onto the panel, and then painted over into a ground. Field rows are a symbol to me of the work we have yet to finish; and the recession of fields toward a far horizon has long fascinated me as a symbol of time, a coming destination and perspective until that day of completion.

This figure pauses midst the work of cultivating. Is he anticipating? Is he weary? What is he looking at if not the work itself? There is some kind of work going on inside him; and that is his business. Thorns and tangles are represented here, but they are only context. The thorns are not the point. The silent pregnant gaze of the un-cursed farmer is the point.

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

what’s in motion?

“While the earth remains…” assured its founder, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man…” Instead, according to Creator’s worded promise “seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter and day and night shall not cease.” We’ve all taken this for granted, this gentle cycling of life on earth. Like children in comfortable homes, we think it is our due that things should stay as nice as they are. We’ve even assumed we had something to do with all this. It’s ours. Men and women of every nation and time have regularly assumed too much.

Long ago rhythms were set in place and we live within them. Light itself has a pulsing rhythm of particles inside waves. Sound has vibration cycles. Waters have rising and falling tides, responding to a moon which waxes and wanes. Nations rise and fall throughout time. And even our individual beating hearts carry a charted rhythm throughout our waking and sleeping. We can track, even influence modulations in pulse, but none of us constructed nor originated our heart function. When this pattern goes flatlined, we are already gone. Rhythms are embedded, they are a given, a sustaining gift for a time. I consider them all a marker of big-picture reality, and if the Creator’s words are heeded, a sign of hope.

Here is a detail of what I am talking about placed in a collage entitled “In Entropy” which currently hangs in a Gallery show titled “Post Urban”. I don’t know what attracted the jurors to include my pieces. But I know what I intended with inset patterns into a piece which otherwise looks entirely chaotic. There are rhythms, varying cyclings. It is a given thing in both the microcosm and the macrocosm.

As I type today, troops and ships and missiles are moving in positions. For a number of years now I have sensed the waning in my own proud nation. I even felt the earth shake subtly one afternoon, and when I saw the hummingbird feeder moving like a metronome, I knew we were entering the beginning of birthing pangs. Now, many are bewildered at the rapid increases of change, “what’s happening?!” is their wide-eyed cry. The word “unprecedented” is used so often now by talking heads that it (and they) are loosing any meaning.

The painting I highlight at the top of my post this month is in my icons collection on this website. This image is a simple small thing, made of alcohol inks on coated paper. Obviously a landscape, but for me the undulating hills are a symbol of the rising and the falling that happens in all things. All around on the ground, where any one of us stands, are bigger things working, way bigger and especially above. And to give anyone a greater sense of it, Jesus said to his pretty clueless followers basically to “look up”.

It would be valuable to see the whole chapter of warnings He said this in. He didn’t give them a candy-coated pep talk, but rather a gentle pointed wake-up call, and then finally: “He told them a story. ‘Look at a fig tree. Any tree for that matter. When the leaves begin to show, one look tells you that summer is right around the corner. The same here—when you see these things happen, you know God’s kingdom is about here. Don’t brush this off: I’m not just saying this for some future generation, but for this one, too—these things will happen. Sky and earth will wear out; my words won’t wear out.’ “

Luke 21 in the Message Translation

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.

“El Olam”

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.

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.

among the lampstands

Today I am highlighting this ink monotype, which I pulled onto homemade paper several years ago. I have it in my “icons” collection on this website because the image, and the idea behind it, serve as a simple reminder into a most auspicious visitation: Jesus. He spoke urgently and at length about things to come in the book of Revelation, the very last book in the Bible. The Greek word in the first sentence is apokalupsis, which means “the disclosure” or literally “to take off the cover” “the appearing of Jesus Christ” as the sentence and then entire book continues.

Most people I know are afraid of this book. It is daunting, no question. But there is much that is beautiful in how Jesus prepares any willing reader to understand, to even be blessed and to be prepared. It is clear in the 1^st chapter that Jesus, “the alpha and the omega” “the living One” “who holds the keys” is the giver of the words that his last remaining disciple scribes. John sees and details Jesus as He now is, with the cover off.

Jesus walks among the churches, in the beginning chapters with knowledge, with “eyes of fire” and gives them words: some of comfort, much of challenge with very specified warnings.

The 7 lampstands, as depicted in my image, were historical churches, each different, some are soon to loose their standing (and did). Jesus knew and He gives direction before all hell breaks loose, for any who would simply take heed. In aiming to understand better these churches and the particular warnings given them, I recently did a series of 7 paintings that correspond, attempting to simplify and to symbolize what I read in chapters 2 and 3. My collection of paintings will be opened tonight at a local arts center. You can see a preview here. My hope is that any viewer of the work will find themselves curious enough to look into the words that have moved me for themselves. Jesus spoke, John wrote and I painted so that some would have the willingness to pay attention.

Listen to how the old man John was moved. Here is his dedication in the 1^st chapter: “to Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood.” John died holding onto this dedication.

Even if you consider this just ancient literature, can you give me one good reason why you would hide in ignorance from such a diligent last accounting?

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.

What goes down (goes up)

It is simple and yes, it is scary; but only if you will be honest about what you cannot escape. Your only alternative is to dismiss or pretend for a while — in arrogant assumptions: “there is no God!” “no one sees” “I’m in charge here” “you’re an idiot” “there’s no dialogue” “we’ll enforce this, for the power is ours and we’re on the right side of history”… You may be comfortable for some time this way, but in the end, a higher reality will overcome you. What will you say then?

You have no explanation for why every single human, in all human history goes down, one same direction: down, back into dirt. In this we are all the same. Your body has a shelf-life which betrays every ultimate supposition. The wise grapple with this; for raw honesty is the only way that leads to a scrap of hope.

I am compelled to put these morbid words down. For kidnappings in Nigeria, assassination in Haiti, beheadings in Indonesia, torture in Afghanistan and every hidden thing done in certain American clinics, and in certain Chinese wards has me sorely vexed. I cannot just shrug off what’s going down. I am one voice, from one soul in the same time period as you are. But I am calling it out with real concern.

This is what holds me: God sees it, He sees it all. God hears it. And God hears me. My blood and your blood has something in it that answers back to Him, even if the embodied owner of each DNA code could or never would talk to his Creator. The blood cries up. It did at the very first spilling of just one body ripped open. It is generations of sound waves now. This will not end well for those who won’t address Him while they yet have time to do so here.

“But they will be held guilty, they whose strength is their god… and though it (the Lord’s answer) tarries, wait for it…” Habakkuk 1:11 and 2:3

In contrast to this waiting, I saw a large banner in an upscale American town which proclaimed, “Rage against Hate”. This makes shortsighted sense to some. Human rage always has its reasons, but it is blind to the multiplied effect; and all the collateral damage is worse than any deadly virus. I heard a young woman proudly say recently “burn it all down” and she sincerely thinks that somehow what will arise from the ashes will be productive for the powerless. Tit for tat only ever expands the sorrows.

So, one prophet, instead of raging with men, actually took up his case by raging with the God of justice (worth reading the whole account). He later recorded this and I echo it often:

“Lord, I have heard the report about Thee and I fear. Oh Lord, revive Thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy… I heard, and my inward parts trembled. At the sound my lips quivered. Decay enters my bones, and in my place I tremble. Because I must wait quietly for the day of distress… Yet I will exult in the Lord.” (Habakkuk 3:2, 16,18) The prophet does not get there easily, but he got there.

Here’s what I say to myself and encourage as prescription for anyone. In your recognized vulnerability, take your case up. Life cries to LIFE, better sooner than later. All blood cries up for an account anyway. What’s in your blood is consequential metabolically but also spiritually, regardless of what you have assumed about God or yourself. Blood travels upward though it is heavy, even buried in the ground. That’s what this image is about.

For what goes down does go up.

when the glass was shattered

This icon hangs prominently in my studio space. It’s an important personal memory, but also a much broader symbol for any other pilgrim. It’s like a “memento mori” which was a visual signal in medieval art, often a skull placed in the picture as a reminder of the reality of everyone’s end. My subject here is more than that certainty, but rather a still shot reminder of the lingering time I have until I also drop. I titled this “Lingering Moments”. This is a monotype, a one-off impression made on paper with an etching press. I printed this in 2006.

The impetus for my imagery here was the sight/memory from my television screen, five years earlier, of papers flying out of many broken windows in the twin towers in New York on 9/11. The horror on the ground, and behind those windows could not be seen nor heard on the tv. That was a mercy, a veil at least for us glued to our screens trying to grasp what was really happening there. But I was fixated on these floating bits, as if they were what the Japanese call ukiyo-e = “pictures from a floating world”. That day, what was actually floating were fragments from meeting agendas, spreadsheets, architect elevations, love notes, hand scrawled grocery lists…whatever had been in minds just earlier for thousands of people…and now an ephemeral randomized conglomeration cast into the air.

There was a strange lightness that masked the horror. Five years after that my heart was still etched with the memory. When talking about this with a friend, how to adequately illustrate the import of that day, he said more time would be needed before any sensitively viable imagery could be accomplished… 20 years out my heart-etch remains, and so today, I make an attempt with words.

The flying papers were stand-ins for the gravity of it all. The papers represented particular individuals, doing common work, with unique histories now all jumbled into a common national tragedy. And there was time in the falling of these fragments. That was what struck me: the slow articulation full of weight, like last rites prayers, moments for reckonings on one September day no one ever anticipated.

The papers all fell and turned to dust, but while they wafted in the air there was some time, precious little, yes, but moments just the same between impact and finality.

Time, if even just the minutes it took for the papers to lay down on the dirty street, has long seemed to me a mysterious grace. Whether it is 70 plus years assumed from first breath to last, or just 39.37 hours, or 3 minutes and seven seconds — the time any of us have individually is as if a slow-motion camera has been turned on. The moments we have provide a serious possibility for when clarity can pierce through. Let…a sober…wisdom…pierce, my friend. Time is an ephemeral resource toward that end, it’s a declining dash, a whisper of terminus for each of us. Attend to that whisper — with all your beating heart.

Mary Barton Nees

Conceptual Landscape