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 2ndtemple 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?”
“Hope is the thing with feathers — that perches in the soul” Emily Dickinson, who penned this sweet line, knew a thing or three about meaningful hope. Hers was a buoyant expression, all the more poignant because she was equally aware of the hardness of her time/place and of her own internal struggle. Her poetry is rich for this reason: real, but outward even as she felt the confines of her tiny upper room.
Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.
If you are local, this Friday night the Johnson City Public Art committee (JCPA) is holding a “pop up gallery” at ETSU’s Tipton Gallery space downtown on Spring Street.
Today is the 1st year anniversary of my 
It is an earnest and deep-seated Wonder before the biggest matters that keeps me working. It is needed Humility that keeps me fit. And beyond my own natural chutzpa there is a Courage I count on and ask for from the Spirit who made the world, who made me. Perseverance is the last bit I have to own, and own again. (These 4 aspects–I gleaned out of the Creation account in Genesis–are a sort of working prescription; that’s why they are written big, with growing notes on my studio wall).
Another sketch from my 
I am delighted to highlight a piece I made this winter which has been selected along with a small collection of other pieces by Dr. Noland, ETSU’s President, for brightening office spaces on campus.
“First I have the picture” Einstein reportedly said, “then I come up with the math”. Before any of us knew how to decode language, our little eyes trained on images. Even the cones on our retinae respond to color before form is understood. We begin from image impression, but then sometimes the more we “know” what’s in front of us, the less we can wholly grasp.
darks and lights from a photo of a magnolia blossom. What was important in translating this into paint was not “this is a magnolia’ but rather more than that, and I needed to take time to consider how. My oil color is carefully selected. But what excites me is the emergent shine, and the impasto lending toward a sense of exuberance. The cropping too was a choice, as if I am just teasing the viewer into only a glimpse. Glimpses for me are key, for if I try to tell the whole story, we’ll all get lost in words. There’s an energy in this translation into color that springs off the canvas. Usually I dive into work from an idea in my head, but to take the time to map it first, if even so simply, is important, and more than I knew. I’ve heard about the necessity of sketchbook planning, but since I’m not much of a draftsman and am also impatient, I’ve often skipped that part. “I see said the blind man”. So this mapping process was a win for me, and it’s informing further practice.
The fields are white, the horizon beckons and we’re keeping our trekking boots on. Some 48 years ago, I heard theologian Dr. Joseph Dillow explain the patterns in the ridges and the valleys of Isaiah’s prophetic masterpiece. It was like being in a biblical glider over peaks and valleys in the histories of nations. The prophet, viewing from hundreds of years before Jesus, saw with distinct clarity what was coming. To a young design student, this uber-view was mind-altering stuff. And we are standing in the midst of what Isaiah further predicted. To quote a secular seer “so let us not speak falsely now, the hour is getting late”*. We know the King is coming — we’ll not lag here in retreat.