Category Archives: beauty

Reflection on a Muddy Road

Well, I just counted, and I have 555 photos I took in one short week, early March, during a teaching stint in Kenya. I have a visual collection of everything from students’ gorgeous smiles to interesting meals and village life, from handmade teaching visuals to the amazing fabrics the women wore. We saw Lake Victoria, the beautiful verdant tea highlands, the precarious motorcycle loads, the children walking to school in their differently colored uniforms in every town, the famous Tenwek hospital grounds, the Zebra patterns, and the contours in the vast Rift valley. But one photo of one moment is my very favorite. I attempted to replicate it here just last week; and let me explain why this moved me to get the paints and brushes out.

This is a simple reflection on a muddy road, late afternoon, close to Maasai land. We were in a big jeep which could handle the terrain. Exotic animals could turn up anywhere and it was an adventure at this point which is part of the feel, and then the contrast with this sudden, common, quiet beauty laid out before us on the road. Often, I can’t get my iPhone out fast enough when I see the moment, and yes there were better glimpses than what I finally could catch. Maybe that is why I wanted to try to memorialize the vision in paint.

Poet and Anglican priest Malcolm Guite asked in a lecture “what is the relationship between the knowable and the known?” I think he was musing on those things which are simple in front of us, made of matter which easily we understand — and also what these things can point to?

Maybe my own moment represented something known which I tried to semblance in paint. On a 10×8 paper panel, this is a reminder of a deeper thrust into my heart; possibly close to what Moses saw: an ordinary bush, burning in a known desert, yet the “bush was not consumed”.

Philosopher Owen Barfield asked about these things we tag, (and maybe too easily dismiss) by calling them metaphors. He said metaphors may well be more than just stand-ins for a presumptive idea. He asked, (considering bigger and more real things) “Is it really there?”. He said this was the first question and called these things we see “figurations”. He posited that poignant figurations were important. He also called them “forgetives” which was an old Shakespearian word, derived from the word “forge” describing something which has quick, forged and imaginative power. These forged impressions he said can be “the material manifestation of an immaterial unity”.

I am quite confident that immaterial reality shows up in unique moments because Solomon spoke of this which is knit deep in every human heart. We just need to be on the lookout. And so for me, on a muddy road with some wet ditches there was a bringing down of the sky’s brilliance. Vastness came to visit and laid down right before us into the dirt. It was beautifully striking, and for me a vivid picture of how God comes into our commonality. He is Light after all. But the Messiah who entered in, didn’t stay here on the ground. After doing His glorious visitation, and He left me a sign as an open door for response.

In the 19th c. Emily Dickinson selected words, in three separate fragments which catches this for me. I think she too was onto something.

“If I’m lost – now
That I was found –
Shall still my transport be –
That once – on me –those Jasper Gates
Blazed open –suddenly — (#256a)

“A transport one cannot contain
May yet a transport be –
Though God forbid it lift the lid –
Unto its Ecstasy! (#184a)

Oh Sumptuous moment
Slower go
That I may gloat on thee –
T’will never be the same to starve
Now I abundance see – (#1125a*)

*Dickinson’s excerpts are from Johnson’s Chronolgy

the bride who is waiting…

On exhibit currently at the Blue Spiral Gallery in Asheville, NC is the work of a Spanish painter, Rafel Bestard. If you are local, I highly suggest visiting or at least looking at his work and reading his statement. He is a philosopher painter and I don’t believe necessarily a Christian one. However, his work is touching on themes that I find deeply arresting and pertinent. Look into him and see what you think.

He is dealing with perception, with willful blindness as well as with truly seeing in different ways. In his own words: “My work explores the relationship between fusion and fundamental opposites: Light and Shadow, Love and Death, through a painting technique in which the tradition of the old masters, through influences as diverse as Bachelard philosophy and Kobayashi films, brings forth new representations of eternal concerns.”

Eternal Concerns! And I was moved by what he was articulating on canvas right away.

An art critic said, “the beauty that emerges from Bestard’s paintings is always disturbing.”

What I highlight here is what the artist titled “What is Present”. I can’t claim any knowledge of the artist’s own intentions here with this piece, or with his chosen title, but I know how this painting moves me!

With expert paint handling and rendering of feminine form, the artist confronts us with a beauty behind a veil. She seems to be lifting away the veil in the present, though her face is dark and moody. She is not looking upward, but the light source reflected on her gown, her hand and fingertips is directly above her. I choose to think of her as a bride, though the artist may just be rendering a woman in a negligee. She is placed in a narrow interior, a tightly gabled enclosure with no evident light source.

My most recent post is how time seems to be escalating. Here an artist is depicting What is Present. He, unbeknownst to him, is rendering my own present as if I were standing outside myself and looking at my position.

Here is why this so informs me. Jesus spoke of returning for His bride. He was specifically symbolic about this event referencing Galilean wedding custom with His disciples on His last night with them. He made them a promise. And earlier that week, when they had directly asked Him ‘when’ he spoke of virgins who needed to wait for their bridegroom. He suggested through parable (and with literal words just earlier) that the waiting would be difficult. But He was also clear that the return would be finally surprising, in their real present, and consequential. I suggest you look into that too.

I would love to speak with this artist. He may have been in the room when I was there at the opening and I didn’t know it. I expect my interpretations may have been foreign if we had had the chance to speak. But what I believe he is addressing is cosmic.

escalations

Recently I emailed a friend about something on which I needed a follow up. We’d both gotten kind of rusty on the task at hand and she said in reply “it’s been a minute”. I laughed understanding her for it had been several months — not minutes. But we use this phrase and everybody gets it, for it feels like time is speeding up. Months are minutes, and minutes sometimes are packed with consequence. The word “moment” is another current word used. I see it in artist’s statements sometimes, it sounds trendy and alert to say “in this moment” as if what we’re sensing will soon rev right on by. Eras and epochs are out, they are no longer spoken of. Moments and minutes are in. Is your head spinning?

The piece I’m showing therefore is one which speaks to this idea of time’s slow-to-fast accelerations. Holding layers and a quick emergence of moment, there’s a lot hidden in the symbolism. This is a very small oil impression from a trip I took to Israel. In Caesarea by the sea we walked thru the impressive physical remains of a large Roman port. After the Romans disappeared, the Crusaders built their own stone structures. Their era is long gone as well. Alongside one of the paths under that Mediterranean sun was a small fig tree. It had fruit on it soon to emerge for the picking. It was alive. One part of a leaf caught the light and enchanted me midst the bramble of greens and browns. The stone path is suggested just slightly on the left. The energy of the moment was felt in the chaos of all that has been laid down and fought over on that very ground, including the choice of red behind the blooming bits. But my focus was on what is emerging. That’s what captivated me and still does. There is history here but there is also so much significant promise yet to be seen. It’s coming. It’s weighty. And it feels to me that we are in an escalating moment toward what the Hebrew prophets spoke so repeatedly of.

The fig tree was important in ancient Israel, not only for sweet sustenance, but also as a sign for when the nation itself would flourish or instead be in regression. There are two yearly harvests of figs with the later harvest being much richer. There is promise even in that reality. But in times of terror, the fruit withers and dies in the trauma. That has happened repeatedly in the past and it will happen again more consequentially in the future. But that future is not the promised end.

I had a rich conversation with one of my grandsons this past week. He’s on a campus where there is all the same clamor you’re hearing about. He was thoughtful about it, so I spoke of what the building take-overs were like when I was a student. How I was involved and what emerged as a result. There were boisterous chants then too, same rhythm different words. How robotic? Are we just in some kind of cyclical reiteration or are we heading somewhere? A French Philosopher observing human cycles said “the more things change the more they stay the same”. That’s similar to what Solomon said 3000 epoch’s earlier: ‘there’s nothing new under the sun’ it’s all been seen before. There is some comfort in the wisdom there. But after my conversation with my grand I thought about the revving speed of the cycles. In 1969 no one was shouting death to the nation they were standing in from our campus; and no one was taking down the national flag and replacing it with something else. We’re witnessing immolation, litterally and figuratively. We are in a different moment now. In our time the protests were about ending a war or adding a certain studies programs to the curriculum. In this present iteration there is a more consequential binary being shouted: choosing life or choosing death.

What makes the news headlines however, is missing the real story (and that was true then too). For many are quietly observing, grappling with the import, and thinking for themselves. Others will just follow the crowd, for wide is that way and easier for them (in the moment).

But where I return my heart (often) is that the Grand Maker of light and figs and tastebuds supervises times and histories. He still allows the glimpse of sunlight on a leaf and the emergence of life for the hungry. He comforted the weary, saying with otherworldly authority “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” And when a soul can grasp the depth of that: His promise — it only takes a nanosecond.

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.

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.

the rock and the horizon

Geologists have a name for the earliest epoch in earth’s history: the Pre-Cambrian era. This is when the continents took shape and life forms began to emerge. At least from the evidence left to investigate, the Pre-Cambrian is ground zero, or the canvas upon which fossils and sediments later laid down on top of this early bedrock between the waters.

Earth scientists also say that in Northern Minnesota we can see and walk on some of the oldest Pre-Cambrian bedrock which is exposed to us on earth. These are ancient rocks. The evidence to support this is in the surrounding geology, the dating of this basal igneous material, and subsequent metamorphic compositions in these intriguing forms.

Add to this that some geo-scientists who have done extensive core sample research around the globe see patterns in the lay-down which indicate how and where uplift, rifting and plate subduction cycles occurred above the earth’s mantle. From the evidence seen in the rocks and in computer modeling, it is postulated that in earliest earth time these rock outcrops along the deep trench of Lake Superior may have been some of the highest mountains in the original continental Pangea. I only learned this recently, having read a geology text during Covid. But I have been scampering along this settled volcanic material since I was young. This ledge rock has long fascinated me for its firmness, color and especially the fracturing of its angles. It is just wonderfully magical stuff!

So this summer I got to be up there again. On a rainy day, I captured a section of this rock with my phone, did some quick sketches and then finished a painting inside in a couple hours. I am proud to highlight this 8×10 oil for several reasons. First, I set up and framed a visual composition which still appeals to me every time I look at it. I am critical of my work, so that is saying something. The color is true, and the semblance of the wetness on the top planes of rock reminds me of that interesting moment in time when I was looking at this ancient stuff.

This painting is more than visual though, for conceptually it is a statement about past/present/and future, and so it holds weight symbolically as well.

The rock is ancient, and to me more valuable than diamonds for its enduring hardness, while also being entirely accessible to anyone! Those two aspects: ancient and available are so rare. What could be better on earth than something so old and so commonly present for anyone to stomp around on? But it has a mysterious beauty too. It is no wonder they call this area “artist’s point”; it attracts people even before they have any clue as to ‘the why’. Here’s why for me: Rock is often used as a metaphor of eternal things, referenced by Job, Moses, David, Isaiah and Jesus (who Himself was called “the Rock”). This metaphorical yet available rock named Jesus, sits now in His high place, having settled things in time, our time, every time., and time to come.

The horizon is a symbol or a sign to me also, and I reference that often in my work. My horizon on this particular day was cloudy, almost mirage-like and I loved that. Like a wrapped present, or a pretty lady with a veil is the mystery of this glimpse. More is coming, more is behind my view of things. It’s an anticipation which is sure though shrouded. Paul the brilliant 1^st century Christ-follower said, “we see in part but not the whole”. Our sight is limited, our understanding of all that is yet to come is dim. But we do know the important things, the vital things and we know all we need to know. The rock is solid, a basis for sure confidence and solid footing. And that far line out ahead of me is just a teaser.

So time right now is my present reality, looking back and looking forward today, and right then when I captured this view. I’m on a continuum therefore and this is comforting. No other life forms can enjoy an awareness and a thoughtful contemplation of history: what happened before, what happens to me now and what will happen in the future. Time is a continuum, a linear travel forward. And the future can be glimpsed here symbolically at least. Seen things are only shadows of more important things, says the writer to the Hebrews..

I remember my Dad explaining that the furthest edge we see is only a few miles away because of the curvature of the globe. The huge lake surface then is like a clinging bulge we can only catch a scant glimpse of. But the maker of this lake, this rock and the maker of me sees it in wholeness and as He’s promised, will be bringing it to completion.

a shifting

There’s a shift going on. I know it personally and in my own work. I sense it nationally and globally (you probably do too). But I’ll speak for myself alone here. I am not afraid. In my 7^th decade now, I am getting better, bolder and more anticipatory about what is ahead for me in every way. Here is just brief attempt to herald this with words and through my art.

This past month I was asked to show a collection of my Master’s thesis work (completed from 2004-2007), at a fabulous new gallery in our town. Time is such a teller! I can see it now better than I even could when making these pieces. The whole collection is somber, full of stark verticals and traveling horizontals. The hues were muted the textures broken. The ideas that spawned each piece were all rooted in gravity while I was pondering what holds us in place, what governs time and people which is above the material that we can see?

That last sentence still captivates me into my present work. And I use a landscape ground in everything I do, I just can’t get away from it, even in the more abstract pieces. The tagline I’ve given my work “Conceptual Landscape” remains importantly descriptive. Concepts drive my work, ideas drive my actions, but the seen aspect of this is from a certain place on the land right in front of me. To put it a different way: the land is the stage-set only, but the winsome script is what keeps me and others watching and listening. To represent this effectively, visually without saying it out loud takes a level of skill I am only beginning to touch. But I am on it, like never before. Here is just a sample page of my current sketchbook.

The stage-set is beautiful, and oh I have so many references all around me, at different times of day and lighting! My colors now are brighter. The light is more compelling even especially on darkening days. The textures lead, the lines are often diagonal now, rarely settled horizontals or intersecting verticals. And somehow, in the pieces which are ready to frame, there is a sense of potential, of excitement, even surprise in how the marks, my marks, are contributing to a quick conclusion.

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.

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.

A Vehement East Wind

In my Images on this website, the category “Icons” pulls up a collection of meditative symbols that have moved my expression, and to me they still speak. Employing various media from collographs to monotype, from drawings to collage, are suggestions of themes which are universal as well as biblical. Each of these works, as a stand-alone visual, is an offering toward the pondering of ultimate things that matter. If the images intrigue, titles may suggest further. And in future posts I may elaborate on a couple more of these with some detail.

So this month, I want to highlight the predicament of one troubled sage. It’s a true story of how unbelievers were moved to trust the true God in contrast to the dismal character of His prophet.

Jonah’s story is found in the Hebrew Tanakh, in the last portion labeled “The Writings”. In the Christian grouping of the same writings. Jonah is called one of the “minor prophets”. He lived and labored in the 8^th c. BCE . Anyone can learn much through his struggle. Even the Quran takes lesson from the tale of this Hebrew. His is a short 4-chapter drama, worth your read.

The single image I drew from Jonah is the tension left unresolved at the end of his story. Jonah himself is long gone from earth, and what he did in response to God’s words and God’s obvious compassion is unknown to us. Yet his quandary — which mirrors so much of real life — can be a rich mine for so much more. Jonah leaves us as he broods, sitting under the meagre shade from a wilting gourd vine, having to decide what he’s going to do with what God has said to him. Herein lies the crux of the whole matter inside his own sulking heart.

Jonah’s problem is as current as today’s news. In fact, I read this week in The Times of Israel, writer David Horowitz’ description of their current situation: “I get the sense of time stopping, of a fateful moment — a balance that can swing either way, in the Old City and beyond”.

My work here, aims at that same pregnant tension. I titled it “A Vehement East Wind” taken from words in the 8^th verse of Jonah’s 4^th chapter.

An east wind is an unusual shift in the natural order. Normally winds and weather approach us from our West. The reason for this is that the earth we stand on has an axis, rotating rapidly from what we call east into west from any point on the globe. Like the trails that slide over the hood of a moving car, the atmosphere meets and moves contra the direction we’re traveling. But east winds are a strange and often violent reversal, almost like an ambush coming from behind. And biblically, east winds portend danger. Isaiah said “Thou dost contend with them…with His fierce wind He has expelled on the day of the east wind.” Job agrees “The east wind carries him away…for it whirls him away from his place.” Drought is indicated by Hosea’s east wind (13:15), and Ezekiel’s as well (17:10).

So when Jonah, late in the day of his return to God’s business, finds himself insulted by an east wind, we know this is not a gentle eastern breeze but rather a sign of significant trouble.

You might empathize with the man. He tried to ignore God but that proved mercifully impossible.

In all this, I was moved to tears, and moved again even as I re-read Jonah’s account today. For God cares more for pagans than we do; and He knows how to get their attention. And in the harder end, He speaks into our angry hearts, quietly awaiting our own response! There is beauty in the wilting gourd, if only Jonah could see it. The poet John Moriarty says of his own coming to clarity that it was like being “shattered into seeing”.

In my image, it’s like a still shot in this moving drama. What am I going to do with God’s words and with His heart?

This piece was selected and now hangs in my United States’ Congresswoman’s office.

in entropy

en·tro·py (ĕn-trə-pē) n.

1. Symbol S For a closed thermodynamic system, a quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work.

2. A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.

3. A measure of the loss of information in a transmitted message.

4. The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.

5. The deterioration of a system or society, especially when it seems inevitable: city activists who fought entropy by organizing neighborhood groups.

[German Entropie : Greek en-, in; + Greek tropē, transformation; see trep- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.]

(cited from the American Heritage Dictionary: https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=entropy&submit.x=48&submit.y=13)

Entropy is an important concept to understand for it describes the very time in which we’re living. I offer not only basic definition here but also some explanation through my own work, for I think it informs our moment.

I learned the meaning of “entropy” in a physics class; it marked me immediately as a truth. Not “my truth” (oh, please don’t bore us!) but universally recognized reality.

Entropy is a thermodynamic law, the Second Law, in fact. This means it is intrinsically true for all and has been observably tested through time. You can’t get away from it anywhere on earth. Entropically all material things degenerate. Bouncing balls left alone return to lower and lower heights, metal corrodes, soil depletes, smiles fade. As a high-schooler I had seen enough to know that things weren’t right, that breakdown and disappointment of outcomes was plaguing each and every one. I am not a philosopher, but as a chronic melancholic, learning there was a stated “law“ for this was actually a huge relief! Someone had identified and spoken the Truth out loud. Admitting this, it seemed to me then, at least maybe we could get somewhere meaningfully even in the midst of such harsh goings on.

That recognition was before I even cared about spiritual things, but I do think it was an important beginning point. One has to admit the universally bad news before any transcendent good news is even relevant!

Just recently I was pulling older work out of my flat files and re-discovered this large mixed media piece: “In Entropy”. I have entered it into my Icons gallery here, for its timeless significance. I accomplished this in 2006, and it was included in my MFA (graduate work final) show. This is a large collage pasted together from science text snippets, a photograph I took in Asia, and some hand-inked brayings onto good printmaking paper. I then layered in encaustic wax overlays.

What moved me here, and still moves me, is that in the midst of all the deconstruction going on all around, there are sure hints of pattern observable in forms and waves, in repeats and cycles. Pattern reveals a plan and a planner for those who are hungry to look into the back story. Scratchy lines (seen in so much contemporary work) are a symbol, as are sine charts which suggests process in time. We are all heading somewhere even in the dim.

I made this visual as a statement: that ultimate plan is bigger than breakdown, that hope has reason outside our narrow system, that beauty is a sign even in the dissipation, and that the Maker, the ultimate Planner is not at all perturbed. The prophets all spoke of when and how He will intervene in the mounting chaos. The time is His. Listen to Habakkuk quoting God’s words in his second report (2:3) “For the vision is yet for the appointed time; it hastens toward the goal, and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; For it will certainly come, it will not delay.” Jeremiah a couple decades later describes his own crushing trauma in Lamentations, but then he also grapples with the only One who could intervene into his particular pit “and therefore I have hope…“

Slice through or tear apart what is and what will be any way you wish. But if you dare to care, you may notice hints of promise shining through the fragments of ruin, for what Creator started, He will certainly also bring to resolution.

And though I am weighted (each day now) by the gravity pulling us all, my hands and my heart exult (every day) in the One who is truly coming as He promised. What He made He cares about, He sees how things are being handled. He will set right what concerns Him. Wait for it.