Category Archives: hope

Embodied wonder

A friend of mine took a shot of a sculpture while in Lisbon, a bleeding Christ. The image has had me thinking.

Like the transmission of real physical color to pixels (last post) we have difficulty grasping the deep significance of that which this wooden image represents. As a young adult, this event: Jesus being hung up to die was sorry failure. At best, Jesus to me was a good man taken down.

What I missed was that he had laid himself down, that this excruciating choice was seminal to his whole long prefigured rescue plan. Something significant gets lost in translation. We see politely, but are blind. In fact, agnostic presuppositions, or even religious inoculations often prevent us from appreciating this single greatest act of love ever accomplished. Think of it: the Creator submitting to the scourging and the bindings of mortals. Can you name for me any other god who gave up his life, in ransom for his subjects? You simply cannot, for there is no other, and we would never have dreamed up such a preposterous idea. ‘God would never do that’, we say confidently (as if we know what God will and will not do). Maybe like me your first instinct is rejection at such condescension. Yes. We would not do that.

The attempt above his head, in this sculpture, to represent his deity is lame to me. It is to my eyes a pastiche, like some misplaced party decoration. But I wonder, how would one show such a holy free-fall from deity into dust? The blood that one dark day was very real however, it was not a dramatic effect. It was bright and pulsating with the perfect purity of God Himself. Maybe this is what moves me most in this piece. The blood was red and sticky, messy as it was mixed with DNA that tied back to Abraham, back to Adam. . .and even also back to God. The blood did not rise in some holy cloud of exemption; it was subject to gravity and fell, like we all do, to earth. His flesh was warm like ours is, until He gave up his last breath. His character was on display all the way through. Only a few had the courage to open their eyes to the desperate wonder, and even they were not “getting” what was happening before them. Only a few still care to consider now. We whizz by, not noticing the emergence of deep hope here.

If God really did this, in a physical body, what does this say to me, in my body, which is vulnerable, graying and frail?

If God loved this perfectly, this selflessly, can I ignore this in my own attempts to make life work?

If God could do this in hope toward the coming resolution of all things (true justice coming), then what on earth or in heaven am I afraid of?

“God made Jesus who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” 2 Corinthians 5:21

hope seen

Recently we returned from a once-in-a-lifetime celebration (40 years married!) in London and the British countryside. There was so much to see, enjoy and think about that I found myself writing 13 poems on the flight home, next to my sleeping husband. The low point of the things discovered was at the celebrated Tate Modern, what a sorry disappointment! They did not have displayed what I had hoped to see there, and instead had a shambles of selections in a warehouse kind of a space. It was as if the emperor had been discovered naked and malnourished.

This timeline, which stretched way farther, illustrates the fragmentation of hope and ideas, like shrapnel, that have occurred since WW2. Surely both wars in the 20^th century set the ground for much despair in worldview. And the art, especially in Europe that came after, illustrates that. The only interesting work was where a few, like Joseph Beuys faced despair, and articulated it with intelligent concern. Despair alone multiplies despair however, and even more fragmentation. We could not wait to get out of there, actually.

This set us up however to go back over to Trafalgar square, where we had learned earlier there was a concert at St. Martin in the Fields. Oh, what a respite that was! This church has a vibrant understanding of its mission in that city. The concert, mostly Handel, was superb. The sanctuary is where Handel played his first recital in 1726! The crypt below was well arranged for feeding the crowds who come to this place. And they had several art shows going on down there and above that were astoundingly interesting. One grouping, “Odyssey,” was a series of wooden figures done by a Brit of Polish ancestry who, in his search for spiritual roots went back to the land and the trees among which his mother walked as she migrated through the horror of the war. The figures stand as sentries overlooking the diverse crowds in the square beyond the church. They are a silent warning. The other show we loved was “110Faces,” which was a collection of photo portraits of common and not so common Londoners. It was a celebration of the uniqueness, and the amazing victory of diversity in the human image of God that we all are.

And on the portico was a sculpture that was compellingly moving, illustrating John’s gospel chapter 1:1 and verse 14: “and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. . . ” This tied it all together. Though the despair is ever present and remains, His indwelling is the reason there is hope of any substance, and ideas that are worth illustrating.

light comes in

I have been pondering Jesus’ statement that “the lamp of the body is the eye.” How curious that has always seemed to me, almost indecipherable at times. I mean, it’s a very simple sentence. But maybe it has hit me like a riddle because it is so counter-intuitive to the way I usually think. How can the eye be the source of light for men? To me there is a lot that comes from inside people that brings out light and ideas and kindnesses. But Jesus says in another place “It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.” Jesus’ view of man is that there is, by original nature and ultimate potential, no light inside of man; that what man needs originates from outside him. This is radical, and disruptive to the ways we think of ourselves and others; we easily dismiss this.
However, Jesus says that the eye is the gate through which light can enter the body; that it is made for that purpose. In fact your cornea, your pupil and the lenses of your eyes are specifically arranged to take in and transmit light right onto the waiting receiver, your retina, which then translates to your brain. We do not come up with light, it must come into us.
hand-1044883__340 Think about it, your body is a very dark place on its own. When scopes go into our bodies they must bring their own light, like miner’s lamps, to be able to see anything. When bodies are on surgical tables they are dark chasms until the surgeon’s knife cuts open flesh and the huge lights over the table light up what was hidden and all closed in. We only see these things because our eyes have taken in light first. This is simply true, and the physical is a signal/type for what is more important, the spiritual. Looking into someone’s eyes is often so intuitively instructive as to whether there is any life or light in there. According to Jesus, for any light to be inside us, we have to let it in, we have to allow our lamps to be lit. We cannot come forth with light on our own. Light was the 1st creative accomplishment in Genesis and it comes forth from God. This is basic though I stumble over it.
As an artist, I am working with the contrast of darks and lights all the time. I am taking materials and ideas and trying to bring forth new things with the stuff on my work table. It feels so presumptuous sometimes, impossible other times. Indeed it is. I cannot make things out of nothing. I need something to “inspire” me, to get me started. I have been invited to co-create with the One who brings light and ideas and continual kindnesses in and around me. And sometimes THIS feels like a floodgate, that I have difficulty channeling.
Today begins the festival of lights, or Hanukkah. This festival is a historical victory celebration of God bringing surprising light. How interesting that this yearly festival comes at the time of darkest days in the Northern Hemisphere. The King of Israel once said that “In Thy light we see light” Ps.36:9, in other words it is a parallel to what Jesus was saying: that light is apprehended in our experience by His initiative, only by His initiative. This is common grace, meaning it is given to everyone even though they don’t know what they have.
I think of this too because John’s gospel begins with a similar theme: ‘light came in… it came into darkness; and the darkness was exposed and illuminated and graced with the light of life. And darkness simply could not understand or comprehend this light; it could not invent light, but it could reject the light. This is such a mystery of grace. It was in the beginning and it remains.

arrested by a painting

This month, I was arrested by a painting. It was among many other works in a fine exhibit the Germans brought to Beijing, housed in the newly constructed National Museum. The exhibit, covering several rooms, highlighted the “The Art of the Enlightenment.”

The Enlightenment is known by historians as a time of great scientific discovery in the West, and known by art historians for its grandiose swings away from the patronage and parochialism of the Church to a search for higher human ideals for source material. Artists explored themes and styles to authenticate their aims. From this time we get the beginnings of brilliant graphic political satire (Hogarth and Goya), a revisit to the ancient mythologies of Classicism (Delacroix, Titian), and the development of Romanticism and its reach to the landscape.

It’s easy to see how the Chinese, though not as inclined to the former two aspects of this time in Western history, would certainly resonate with the importance of the landscape. Enlightenment artists thought they had discovered “the sublime,” when all along Chinese landscape artists had been musing on those depths for centuries. There was a whole room dedicated to these sublime European landscapes and the room was being well visited.

In this room I found a small oil—“Dolmen in the Snow”—by a German I knew little of, Caspar David Friedrich. This piece is simple and profound. The foreground is foreboding, indeed a dolmen is a burial place. The three trees in the painting appear dead as well, though likely dormant from winter. The central tree is leaning and is closest to the dolmen. There has been much cutting of branches of the other two trees. But of the fingerlets of branches we see, they are all reaching upward.

Snow blankets this quiet scene, and there are no figures except a lone bird whose position indicates we are located in a high place. The starkness of contrast between this dismally yearning and empty scene and the sky is what stopped me. The sky is luminescent and beckoning, warm and enveloping/changing the entire effect. Apparently Friedrich intended this piece (as with some of his other works) to be a defense of his faith as a Christian.

Friedrich was living at a time when to be overt about one’s faith was “uncool” according to the groupthink. So he stays under the radar but uses his art to symbolize what is in his heart. It still speaks. In fact, later artists look to some of his work as the beginning of symbolism.

The last room of this entire exhibit was a jump into the Modern/Postmodern era with a few selections: a portrait by Andy Warhol, some abstracts and a sculpture by Beselitz, and a video by Joseph Beuys. My sense is that the curators were wanting to show the end result, to date, of the aims of the Enlightenment. In their Western conceit they think that the end is always going to be better than the beginning, that tolerance really is the highest ideal, that meaninglessness and self-mythologizing is very deep.

I think the Chinese observers will likely have more an objective detachment and consider this end otherwise. The art speaks for itself. For me, I’m back in that landscape room.

Hope, with strings attached

We’re living in a time now where the word Hope is hot. It was the theme of a political campaign that won a young man the Presidency. Now he sits precariously as the harbinger of hope. I pray for him with all my heart. I pray to the only One who gives me hope.

Hope is like a helium balloon, it is lighter than air and all too quickly can disappear, even as the Greeks feared that hope’s companion is that inevitable foe: Delusion. Hope must be tied to something to really be able to stick around, to have any verity of reference, any true sustainability. So, one of the strings that holds my balloon is grounded to the true Giver of hope. The other tie (and I’m not sure yet if there are any other strings, but these two are enough for me) is time: Time is the context for hope to have any meaning at all as a word and as a concept. I hope because I live in time and my present time causes me to hunger with hope. Hope is a real thing because I am in the not-yet time of what hope looks to. Anticipation is sweet if it is grounded in something real that I am beginning to taste and understand. The string I hold leads me to the sight of that lofty balloon. There is something there and I can almost touch it, I am munching on an hors d’oeuvre and that is why I can hope. The compound word in French literally means “outside, the main work”. Hors d’oeuvres sustain the guests until the meal, the “real work” arrives; and these hors d’oeuvres are said to increase my appetite. These are concepts that only make sense if there is such a thing as time. Time’s stretching out and its restless, yearning ambiguity are context for true hope. Because of time, I can learn and experience hope. Without time, hope makes no sense and is meaningless.

Here is a rich quote about time from a book I am presently enjoying:

“Childhood’s time is Adam and Eve’s time before they left the garden for good and from that time on divided everything into before and after. It is the time before God told them that the day would come when they would surely die with the result that from that point on they made clocks and calendars for counting their time out like money and never again lived through a day of their lives without being haunted somewhere in the depths of them by the knowledge that each day brought them closer to the end of their lives.” Frederick Buechner The Sacred Journey, p.10

Mary Barton Nees

Conceptual Landscape