Category Archives: hope

big picture

Today’s the day that the kids come back into the hallways where this mural is evolving. Excited that we got all 10 faces done this summer, my friend Renee and I both turned to worrying out loud that somehow the individual kids who own these faces might be disappointed. A face is a very personal thing. And especially for a child, how they think others perceive them can be a real trip-up. Renee kept fussing over this little girl’s face. It was hard to stop. Not one of the paintings is perfect. Not one of the kids is perfect. Not one of the artists is perfect, Lord knows. We are all a jumble of things. But today they will see what we’ve attempted to do so far with their little twinkly smiles. It’s fixed. And then we will move on with the bigger broader picture.

Maybe (I am thinking to myself now) the big picture is already happening. That’s a hugely freeing thought. We have an active part in all this, but something else originated and will conclude everything that matters here that’s real. On these particular walls that’s my sense of it, and also in my own life. I had little clue when beginning this project. I had little clue when beginning my life. I have only a little more now. If I did not have an out-sized faith: a confidence in something bigger than me, which is worth knowing, I think I would just eat bon-bons, or download Pokemon Go.

This past week I was able to join a workshop conducted by the former director for the Chicago Public Art Group. The man was a lot of fun with a wealth of info. on materials and budgets and effective collaboration. But the best thing he said out loud was that “we have to get uncomfortable, and then examine why we are”. That’s what adults do. That’s what the best working projects expose. I hope the kids looking at their painted faces can have some courage to do the same overlooking. These are only likenesses. There’s more coming.

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writing into the dirt

The idea (last post) of God writing has had me musing. For text marked into pieces of ground is kind of a current thing. Detailed is just a fragment of a painting I saw last week in a gallery in Asheville, NC. The hand is artist Carol Bomer’s. The marking of words gives direction not only visually but conceptually. One takes in the whole of this dark piece as it envelopes your eye-space, but then the writing captures your focus.

We think this marking into media is avant-garde. Search and you’ll find lots of new and inventive uses of text. But the idea is as old, really, as the hills. At the Mountain called Sinai, the finger of God etched his law into two pieces of rock. This inscribing of text was not Moses’ idea. The finished tablets were not Moses’ handiwork. The entire initiative was God’s. Moses was only the invited mediator. (There are many questions here: If God is God, why did he even need to use a finger? Why two tablets, why not 10, why not one? Why was any mediator needed? Why were words needed? Were the Hebrews, recently slaves, literate? Was the marking that God used common Egyptian?) Back to what’s clear in the story: Moses responded as he was asked. He picked up the rock slabs and brought them down from Sinai to the awaiting tribes.

Think about this even if you don’t know much more. The Hebrew text makes it plain that God’s own finger made visible markings on 2 pieces of mountain rock. He communicated, from His otherness into man’s space. This was one directional. He selected a means that was legible, tangible and understandable. Then came the history of man’s response to that specific communication.

Besides the later episode in Babylon with the mysterious hand (previous post), there is no other hint of God Himself writing in the whole of the Hebrew Bible.

Fast forward to what is called the New Testament or that part of Scripture that tells of Jesus’ arrival and the revolution he brought. There is only one recorded episode of Jesus writing. The story is found only in John’s telling of events. The context is a test. Religious lawyers drag a woman before Jesus. Having just been caught breaking one of the laws on Moses’ tablets, she stands vulnerable and shamed. These prosecutors figured shrewdly. With the evidence before them all, Jesus would be trapped. If gentle Jesus dismissed the woman, he would be sanctioning the breaking of God’s law, and therefore could be correctly branded as a false prophet. If Jesus, a righteous Jew, followed the law and condemned the woman to be stoned, the religious testers would be vindicated, their power enhanced with Jesus as their pawn. Jesus turned the tables, and this is how he did it.

He stooped down and used his finger to write something into the dirt.

“Doesn’t this man have eyes and ears?” “Doesn’t he understand the violation?” The accusers mocked and persisted, pointing their own fingers wildly. The noise around this huddle grew louder. Only one finger was writing. Then, remaining silent, Jesus stooped down a second time into the dust beneath them and wrote again. (What did he write? Could they all see it? Why a second time? In the angry heat, how could dusty marks be any tactic?) Whatever he wrote there is not explained, but what is clear remains. What he did in the dirt was enough to silence them all. One by one, the angry men put down their stones and walked away.

What strikes me is the symmetry in both these singular stories. When Jesus writes he is likely referencing the writing of God. The fact that he does it twice, and quietly is poignant. The law God wrote was left intact that day. But now one, with her feet still there in the dust, saw the final mediator. Failure had constrained them all to face Him who alone had authority to bridge the gap between a history of shattered lawbreakers, and the Law giver Himself. He could only do that if He had fingers, eyes, ears, a knowledge of his people’s mandate intersected with a heart of compassion.

 

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what in the world is sure

There is a growing disconnect between what’s on the news (alarming, irritating and mind-numbing) and what is on my heart. Like a miracle tonic is the soul-rest I take in from little sure things now: like sunlight, and birdsong, like seeds sprouting and yeast working. And sure things are not all sweet. The words of the prophets give me warning and set me straight when all else is failing. There is, I am experiencing, a better place of peace than the typical two options we are seeing displayed otherwise, and everywhere. You see either:

  1. Angry-at-this-world revolution, whether left or right, there’s a lot of this.
  2. Removal in self-placating denial, or just plain helplessness.

I am observing it all, pondering. My anger has gotten me nowhere (the advantage of years can teach) and helplessness is just a black hole of another name. Denial is a drug that doesn’t work. I am having to look in earnest at a different option. You can too.

Start here: Psalm 19.

The Psalms are each an emotional journaling of a God-seeker. They are honest, some are angry, none are the words of pretenders. In this one, the writer is himself looking out at what is sure. He has to look beyond himself to do that. Like a standing rider in a fast moving train, he has to grab the hand pull.

The writer speaks of the outpouring that is continually available, day and night, there for the reaching.

Then in the second section of this poetic expression, he elaborates on the source of this outpouring and what God’s provision can do in the soul. This is sure for any who will take it in. This is available now. This is pouring into our world at the same time that the other junk we have to deal with is all around us. You still have a choice.

I illustrate this today with a piece I made some years ago. If you wanted to own this you would have to pay me a lot of money, and the work would need to be hand delivered for it is encaustic wax. But you can see and ponder it here for free. It is a response to Psalm 19’s declaration of the outpouring into our ground. I think it is a masterpiece, “after the Master” who said he was doing this communication into our broken places freely “day to day” and “night to night” Such an idea calms my anger, and awakens my dulled spirit. That’s what the truth does, it breaks in. George Orwell observed in another difficult time that “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” And so it is.

 

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whirlwind apprehension

This is an older image, but a concept I’ve been revisiting in my head: the coming of whirlwind.

I made this monotype (ink on paper) in 2005 and titled it “Not in the Whirlwind”.

‘Sowing to the wind, reaping in return a whirlwind’ is an ancient idea and one that I’m sensing now is immediately pertinent to our current moment nationally and even globally. Hosea, a prophet to Israel in the 8th century BC, coined this visual alarm. In his writing, he spoke a mixture of severe warnings mixed with surprising hope. His listeners barely could grasp the import, and so his life became a visual aid at several points. Still, he feared their deafness to his words, saying, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” He labored to inform them. The small book we have from his pen is 14 chapters long. In the 8th chapter, he announces the coming despair, saying, “they sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind.” He could see it in their future. His words are not angry or manipulative finger pointing but rather a lamenting plea. For what it cost Hosea to log that lament, I wonder if anyone heard? History indicates “no”, at least for the nation as a whole.

When Elijah, another even earlier prophet, retreated exhausted and discouraged, he needed God’s intervention. His story gives examples of how God moved in Elijah’s life to sustain him and then to speak to him. God was not in the whirlwind, (where I got my title for the above image). Then God was not in the earthquake, nor in the fire. But God spoke as Elijah sought Him in the coming of a gentle blowing after these events. Thus exhibited the character of God’s voice: a gentle blowing. But Elijah had to listen for it—past the din of the alarms that preceded God’s words. This is the purpose of prophecy: not to frighten but to alert any one, even just one who will listen. Prophetic words are wake-up calls.

But then as now, they are easily dismissed. When the whirlwind comes the quiet voice will be much harder heard.

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when the dust gets focused

I noticed something interesting this week when I was in Barnes and Noble. I asked the sales guy and he confirmed that they have recently changed their section heading from “Self Improvement” to “Living Your Best Life”. It seems the dust is getting more focused! This store’s general section title, to me sounds a little more humble, and a lot more realistic about what is even possible to promise now.

I see the same in a small ancient tale called “Jonah”. In this short story, the religious guy, the one who actually “fears God” is the biggest louse. The guys in the troubled ship, flailing around with their self made gods are the ones who actually pray and find their rescue first. And it’s in all the tumbling around, at the strategic initiative of a compassionate Creator, that each one in the story learns the true God’s character. He is the point; the swirling dust just fleshes out this deeper mystery.

I’ve stopped wringing my hands. I am no longer going to get exercised about what’s going down. I want to be like those guys in the boat who were the first to get focused and pray (to a God they hardly yet knew!) This is a huge excitement, because, my friends, He really hears even our feeblest cries to Him.

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early impression

An early memory still informs me. I’m told that these early impressions shape us in profound ways, and it may be true. In fact this could be my very earliest memory, for I distinctly remember standing in my crib. I was nimble enough to stand, and tall enough to be able to feel the screen top preventing me from being able to climb out. The latch on that 50’s model contraption had me trapped. I was therefore looking out the window which was open and just beyond me to the right. It was a partly cloudy day, the curtains gently swaying. Can a toddler marvel at the sun? If so, I was doing precisely that, watching the brightness emerge, then remove as the clouds shifted. That memory sticks sure for some interesting reason; time was involved, and wonder. I could have had no understanding about orbs and atmosphere. I just remember being so very happy every time the sun was visible again. I could feel it, I could see it, and then it would hide again. This whole scenario was beyond my control, and as a young one so much else was too. I was an observer. But the pleasure of this revealing warmth was as personal as such things can be, grasped by a little girl who was alone in her wonderings. If my Mother had come in and found the right questions to ask, if I had even had the language to express, I am not sure I would have been able then or even later to explain how this moved me so deeply.

I could try to understand this partly now. For one thing, whenever I am in a new space, the most important impressions for me are out the window, not interiors. This has simply always been true. What is “out there” is far more significant for me than what is trapped or caught here. I just have known this for a very long time. It has to do with place and position and outlook I think, and maybe even destination.
When I got older and found my interest in landscape, I first thought my own attempts were only “hobby art” until I studied the thinking behind Song Dynasty landscapes. The Chinese, long before the Europeans, understood the mystic depth of “the beyond” vs. the small observer. This makes total sense to me, likely because of my own impression in that crib. The Hebrew poet expressed this, way earlier, in Psalm 19.

And the personal experience of warmth, the assurance of it’s presence even behind the darkening cloud was the beginning of hope for me, I feel. I have a melancholic temperament with depressive tendencies, but I have never been locked in a deep depression. I really thank God for that, for I know my tendencies and I have dear friends who suffer terribly. I wonder if this is why: I knew early on that the bright warming happiness was there, really there; and that it would soon reveal again. You cannot convince me otherwise.

Long before I knew the Creator’s name, or came to understand His character, I was experiencing Him.

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that time

If you look around in galleries or online at 21st century visual work, you will find a lot of chaos and disassembling, a lot of broken line and seeming randomness. Some of it is strikingly beautiful. And this work is concurrent with some very interesting science called chaos theory which is seeking to understand any patterns in very complex, sensitive and interdependent systems. My small piece here is one example, done with watercolor, ink and gravity. I have paired it with a Dickinson poem, #217:

“Savior! I’ve no one else to tell—
And so I trouble thee.
I am the one forgot thee so—
Dost thou remember me?
Nor, for myself, I came so far—
That were the little load—
I brought thee the imperial Heart
I had not strength to hold—
The Heart I carried in my own—
Til mine too heavy grew—
Yet—strangest—heavier since it went—
Is it too large for you?

Last night on Skype, one of my daughters and I continued our own simple investigation into the ancient words in the Psalms. We are doing this because we both need it. We are like sheep who need to be laid down and fed. It is so noisy “out there”, so many lies, so many distractions in the seeming randomness, and each of us is vulnerable. If you think you are not vulnerable, you are already dumbed into captivity. We are like the girl in the prayer meeting who ran to answer the interruption at the door. When the answer to their prayers was standing right at the gate, she could not open though she recognized his voice. She ran and told the others, and they, having just mumbled more prayers for Peter’s release, could not imagine that God was really listening, let alone had already answered. This was a group of early Jesus-followers, not much different than us. They all ended up being amazed in spite of their paltry belief.

“We are in a time.” I keep saying that to myself: we are in a time that is momentous and consequential. There is now a collision of world-views going on about which the nations’ leaders are ignorant. The lessons of history are being ignored, the warnings of Jesus have long been disregarded. The arrogance of the narrative spinners has deceived them. And the church? They are mumbling prayers, staying cloistered, and discounting any young one who comes with joy. “You are out of your mind!” the prayer group told the girl who had heard the desire of their prayers with her own ears.

After the resurrection Jesus was gentle but very direct with one of His followers who was struggling. In the face of incontrovertible evidence, Jesus still needed to say to that man “ be not unbelieving, but believing.” There is something about the will then, something about a willingness to step forward into safety with Him. “He’s still in it with us”, says Adrian Plass. And be sure you understand that there is an eternal difference between believing any other creed than the one that is only Jesus.

“A man can’t always be defending the truth; there must be a time to feed on it.” C.S. Lewis said that from hard won experience. Now is that time.

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death dialogue

in partnership with Emily Dickinson, #976, 1864; image: Mary Nees, 2015

Death is a Dialogue between

The Spirit and the Dust.

“Dissolve” says Death — The Spirit “Sir

I have another Trust” —

Death doubts it — Argues from the Ground —

The Spirit turns away

Just laying off for evidence

An Overcoat of Clay.

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sparks rising, then what remains

An ancient philosopher once stated that “man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” His was an observation based on hard won experience, evaluated carefully, critically. We’re told that ancients were ignorant and primitive, that our evaluations now are much more advanced and sophisticated. Moderns consider such a statement about man’s bent toward trouble as nonsense, for we are making utopia (don’t you know) we can do it, yes we can. Yet such projections are faith statements that have no reliability. To project that our efforts will build what human history has yet to see is an exercise in folly at the very least.

I see sparks. They are brilliant and captivating for a moment, then they are gone.
And (if this brooding thought goes beyond my own campfire) what will then remain?

In the 8th century BCE, a well regarded Hebrew prophet recorded a 66 chapter oracle that covers the globe, detailing events centuries ahead of him that he could not have known. For believers this is not difficult. God spoke through this man. Here is just one fragment: “For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, but My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, and My covenant of peace will not be shaken, says the Lord who has compassion on you.” The Psalmist echoes this word. “Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change and the mountains slip into the heart of the sea.”

True faith is not mindless religious duty, but rather a response of trust in something reliable.

God has made many promises. He alone is ultimate reliability. What remains then is Him: His character, His covenant agreement of peace (now in the heart, later, on the ground), and His compassion on me. If these are words only to you, I invite you to explore His reliability.

My watercolor piece above is a response to His breaking promise in Isaiah 54:10.
The British thinker Malcolm Muggeridge added this:
“As Christians we know that here we have no continuing city, that crowns roll in the dust and every earthly kingdom must sometime flounder, whereas we acknowledge a king men did not crown and cannot dethrone, as we are citizens of a city of God they did not build and cannot destroy… precisely when every earthly hope has been explored and found wanting, when every possibility of help from earthly sources has been sought and is not forthcoming, when every recourse this world offers, moral as well as material, has been explored to no effect, when in the shivering cold the last faggot has been thrown on the fire and in the gathering darkness every glimmer of light has finally flickered out, it’s then that Christ’s hand reaches out sure and firm. Then Christ’s words bring their inexpressible comfort, then his light shines brightest, abolishing the darkness forever.”

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at an intersection

 

Trajectories that meet at a single point are called a convergence. Lines become a single point of intersection, and these places are rare. Rare in life, and I think intriguing in art. This image is a detail of an etching I did several years ago. The piece is called “Temporal”. The idea to me was just the wonder in the slowness of time. As things look random, time is what gives us a chance to view the quiet emergence of so much that is important: the blossoming of fruit, the maturing of character, the perfect development of every longed for thing. And in this waiting there can be great mercy as a trajectory moves toward fulfillment.

Right now in the evening sky there is an unusual convergence happening. You can see it at dusk above the western horizon. The planets Venus and Jupiter have been moving in their singular orbits closer and closer toward a meeting as seen from our vantage point on earth. Tonight, June 30th they will be so near as to appear as one large star. The constellations (that is the star clusters that have been identified by several ancient cultures) are a pictorial back drop behind what happens as our solar system keeps moving like a swiss watch. This convergence of two planets in line with our own is happening in front of the constellation Leo. Maybe that means something. Maybe it doesn’t. But, thinking like an artist, I’m paying attention. Something’s happening here.

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