Category Archives: symbol

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.

Bread and Salt

It’s been years, decades, since I first heard an old Russian proverb. It latched into my head in some primal way, and I’ve never forgotten it: “eat bread and salt and speak the truth.” What could be more simple? What could be more valuable in any earthly life? Bread and salt are basic. Even the poorest in the tundra have bread of some kind to share. And truth? What could be more necessary, what could be more desired in a meeting of people at any table — especially in our times of fake this and that. I am so weary of all the fakeness and all the outright lies!

And so, when I was invited to submit to a local show called “The Magic of Ordinary Things” I knew what I wanted to do right away. I saw a saltshaker at a restaurant and decided it would be perfect for my still life set up. Truthfully, I asked my companion, since it was such a plain and ordinary specimen “do you think the restaurant would let me take this home?” He said he would be embarrassed if I asked them. So, I demurred under his truthfulness and started my quest unperturbed: how to find a simple multi-sided saltshaker which could highlight the proverb?

Sure enough a local restaurant supply place had just the specimen for less than five dollars. I bought some crusty bread, gathered some cloth and a candle, and began to sketch an arrangement. Then I mixed my oil colors, looking for contrast and a certain mood.

Out popped this painting. It’s not a perfect rendition of the set up in my studio; actually, I love the photo I took better. But the painting has a merit of its own as the paint is so sculptural, especially the wax on the extinguished candle. The candle’s light has gone out, but there is ambient light yet, which allows for the seeing of anything. The contrast between the light in the room and the darks clinging in shadow is highly symbolic to me of the time we live in here.

The show opening for Ordinary Things was this past Friday. Two of my pieces were juried in and hanging. But this one sold right away. Thanks to the Griffin Gallery in Jonesborough, TN.

I make work not for the sales (thanking God I can say that). What validates me is any expression which can be read, even subliminally, as truth. This is the bread I hunger for, and I don’t believe I am alone.

In a search to make sure I had the proverb correctly in my memory, I found interestingly this quote from a current art critic: “I would say we are now in a position, with these decks cleared, to demand more from our art, our culture. I would never try to define art and enjoy the reality of its non-definition, but that is to say it is time to shape up. Artists and critics need to wrest our art away from those who settle for mental dust. Our life depends on it and the time is nigh. So start. And stop breathing that mental dust. You know what it is.”

Here-Here and Where-Where is what I say!

“Veil” and looking through

Some things are too hard to see face to face.

This past week I’ve viewed numerous video clips trying to grasp the damage from the earthquakes in the Northeastern corner of the Mediterranean.

One clip haunts me still. With loud noises in the sudden collapse of a huge city structure, crowds start running and shouting, while one man just walks normally away, his back to the chaos as if a stoic. The man barely turns around to see. I’ve watched this several times. He does not visibly flinch. He is impassive, determinedly so, as if the reality across the street from him should not affect him. Surely he heard, smelled and felt the same thing upsetting those all around him?

What goes on in the mind and in the heart when hard things come down?

How would I respond? How would you? Is this why some people pay to go to horror movies so they can peer into the frightfully inexplicable? Is this one way to vicariously prepare from a safe seat? But that man in the middle of horror walked away as if nothing would deter his intention for the day… I don’t know anything about him truly from the seconds I viewed, but to me his manner was disturbing. His determination seemed a façade against reality.

We are peculiar creatures in trauma. And part of this I think is because we simply are not equipped to handle things which are way too big for mortals. We block or we freak. We all have self-protective tendencies, and we are living in increasing trauma. Some try to prepare, some dig in madly and some just try to walk away. Ok, people are different. But what if the issue at stake is a matter of critical importance? Would you know it? Would you want to know when what is happening around you is revealing matters of life or death? Do you have the courage now to investigate how in the world you might be able to face God safely, His face-to-your-face, no matter what?

This monotype is about that, about peering determinedly through the frightening chaos. It is simple but sure. This piece was done some years before the current global disruptions, but nevertheless anticipating them from my own already hard-won experience with personal trauma. This is a monotype (a painting on plexi which was then pulled through a press for a reverse transfer onto paper). It turned out! (You never know until you do it) and so I included this image in my Master of Fine Arts show. The disintegration in the foreground is what sets that back plane up. That’s important. In other words, the ripping apart in the front plane is why the back plane even becomes visible. The texture of the foreground was planned to look fragile, ethereal and even torn. I used inks which reticulated once I applied solvent on the plexi.

The background by contrast is a solid mass, stable, and to me a symbol of weighty timelessness. In a simple graphic I was aiming to suggest big things: about all that is temporally falling apart (the veil) and what is solidly available behind the immediate despair.

This all was hinted in my title. Veils cover things. Veils also protect things. They are put up in rooms or over faces to conceal for a time. They can be beautiful in an anticipatory sort of way, even alluring, for they suggest that something valuable is behind what cannot yet be seen. With a veil one has a sense that the wait might reveal something good, for what’s visible in front of any veil is only partial, preparatory. When the veil is finally removed, we get to see the substance which had been shielded. There is hope potentially here, but one must want to keep looking.

This is a biblical idea. For example, after his encounters with God, Moses hid his face in front of the people with a veil. His veil provoked them. But when Moses spoke directly again to God, it was face to face, the veil was no longer needed as a barrier between God and His friend. A veil had been prescribed by God as a protective cover between the Holy of Holies and the priests of both the exodus tabernacle and then later the temple in Jerusalem. Veils were necessary to shield what was temporal from what was Holy.

But here’s the kicker (if you stayed with the struggle and did not walk away) when Jesus died having taken into His heart the sins of the world, the veil in the temple was ripped open. The substance of His torn body became eternally significant. He always called Himself the door, the only door through. Now we understand what He meant. To look at Him is to look eye to eye into the very face of a willing, forgiving, available God who is far better than any cover which obscured Him.

In trauma, the ripping away of what we relied on or called “normal” is terrifying. But when that disintegration exposes something far greater to consider, would you really want to walk away? Any determined seeker is promised that he will find.

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.

the Artisan will perform it / sign of the almond rod

I am currently using my monthly blog to highlight some older important work. These selected pieces are from my personal past but poignantly each is relevant (I believe) to our global present. And each is a handmade sign toward the future. If you are a regular reader here, you may’ve already recognized that TIME and its sightless flow is a really interesting concept to me. Time is both linear and rhythmic with repeated echoes. Time in this sense, is like light energy which is both particle as well as wave. Time flows and it cannot be encapsulated. It impacts every one of us who live within its circuit whether we want to acknowledge it or not. Time can easily go on without us.

Time is more interesting and emblematic than any single one of us musers who sit in our own period on a timeline can grasp. A most published cosmologist admits “Scientists in every discipline are now far, far removed from the reality they claim to explain.” (1) This writer goes on to detail how we just don’t really understand 95% of what hints to us of existence “out there”.

Such is the ineffability of many big and important things as well as this mysterious entity we live in called time. Any pondering of things not understood ought to humble us? Plato said “For every one, as I think, must see that astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.” (2)

But back to time: it is going somewhere, it leads in one direction: Past/Present/Future. And in its wholeness, time is revelatory of a much grander story: with a beginning, a middle and an end. This whole process is superintended by an Artisan (if you’ll allow an even bigger IDEA) who exists beyond time in eternity. Would you be willing to handle that possibility if even for one of your moments?

What prompts me this month is the pregnant report of one spokesman for this Artisan, the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah. I have slipped back into his record to glean what he might say to my own time, my own nation’s experience of decline. Jeremiah lived through the last gasps of a once grand culture in the 6^th c. BCE. He is appointed to speak into that history, and he is given hint that this won’t be easy. In the very first chapter of his tome, Jeremiah describes an exploratory dialogue he is graced with. The Artisan and Creator who formed the prophet from his mother’s womb, says this: “What do you see Jeremiah?” Jeremiah looks, identifies an object in front of them and replies. “I see a rod (branch) of an almond tree” The LORD then takes that common thing and makes it a lesson: “You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.”

Huh? ok start with the given basics here: The rod is real. It is tangible, it is alive for a time, like a cut flower; but it is only a rod. It will bud however, for God says He will watch over it to perform it. He said this, not me, not Jeremiah, we are just witnesses to the edge of a very big thing.

Any historically alert Hebrew, hearing Jeremiah, would’ve hearkened back to an earlier rod of Aaron’s, some 8 centuries prior. That rod budded, and then produced whole almonds! That fruit producing rod was kept as a holy symbol of God’s miraculous ability in spite of the people’s rebellion. Jeremiah would not have missed the hope embedded in this given simple verbal sign. From their past into his present and assured by God for a future, Jeremiah had something to fasten onto in his heart: God said He would do it in spite of them. God would watch over every promise He had made through time to accomplish it. His words then are where we best be watching with expectation. Herein is lasting hope. Give Him an honest try. His words aren’t hard to find.

Believing is Seeing, Michael Guillen, Tyndale Refresh, September 7, 2021, p.97
The Republic, trans.B Jowett, Project Gutenberg, June 22, 2016, Book VII

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.

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.

re-vision

Have you seen it for yourself? Have your eyes seen at least the clips of those claiming utopian dreams — yet themselves dazed, stoned, and de-constructing? The darkness is being revealed, and it will soon have its fullest hour.

Righteousness came and was rejected long ago. He was hung up, and they thought they’d extinguished Him. This is the most important thing to know: there is no other trustworthy name by which any soul can be secured out of this present and growing delusion.

The prophets all spoke of what is coming, very specific words. But Jesus added two watchwords for the years, the months, and the days before it all comes down: “Don’t be deceived”, and “don’t be afraid”.

How is that possible, especially as things get freaky? There is only one Way. He is that Way and He voiced it clearly, urgently, graciously Himself. This is your only reliable lifeline. He is the only door into real utopia.

But to get there, you must die. Die to your own ways, your own strategies, your own long-term assumptions. Go down with Him, and He will bring you up.

This beautiful photo came to our door in a magazine. This is an individual counterpoint, to what your eyes are seeing from all other media. This is more real, unfiltered though shrouded. And it’s happening all over the planet, but under the radar of the power-players. Baptism is a sign of relinquishment, however it is symbolized, wherever done, whenever a person realizes his true need — and gives in to the One who said He can provide that need. Trust His words, backed up by His perfect life. Re-vision means setting your sights (again and again) to what is real.

image used with requested permission: Voice of the Martyrs

the sign and the Substance

In a New York magazine I recently read this statement: “We remain human beings… and we orient ourselves in time, looking forward to the future. When that future has been suspended, humans come undone.”

And this report is even sadder.

I will say here what the writer of the first article said, and what the Doctor in the 2^nd article surely felt: “I began to loose it this week”. I echo his words; my heart grieves. The time is getting long and longer. You know it also; it weighs on all our hearts.

Several years ago, August 2011 to be exact, I was sitting in this very same house when a rolling quake went up the entire Appalachian chain. And, with incredibly no loss of life, it yet put a visible crack into the pinnacle of the Washington monument, 400 miles away. A few weeks later after that quake, in a remarkable set of unplanned circumstances, I was to stand in front of that monument, observing with my own two eyes the crack on its top. For me: the quake experience and that subsequent sight was a serious sign. When my house jolted, when my ceiling fan started to wildly wobble, these words of Jesus came fast into my head: “But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs”

Birth pangs. I remember when I was in my own first labor, when a nurse on the next shift came in and pronounced something about her expectation as to the length of my transition. My body hadn’t done this before; we did not know. But this nurse’s glib assumption, turned out to be incorrect. The signs were obvious, but the timing was not. And here’s the substance: the birth did happen; and in the end, that was what mattered. A couple years later, when labor commenced with our second child, the early signs were now familiar. Previous experience had prepared me, but it was no less ominous — for once that progression started, I knew I would not be able to stop it, no matter how long it took. That recognition was the worst part of the entire birthing — more than the physical pain, was that sense of control loss. The process was hard; the result was sure. We’re in a time like that now and I recognize it.

Labor is a sign, and signs are only that: they point to something else, which is much more substantive. Signs signify, but they are not the true event: only the preparation for it. A red hexagonal metal stand with the letters STOP is not the intersection but rather the warning before that place. Small earthquakes are not “the big one” but rather an indicator of others coming. Labor pains are not the birth, but the necessary movement toward that event. Are my eyes on the prize or on the pain toward getting there?

We’re all in a certain labor, and many feel it worse than I do. But I had a sense of the weight of it this week; it put me under for some hours. It reminded me of the glib words of the nurse who did not know my time and made a false prediction. When it comes to whatever is ahead, best be sure, and that’s why Jesus’ words catch my attention. I feel we’re on a moving train, like a progressing labor, and we simply can’t get off. Something is coming ahead, and being prepared is only wise.

JRR Tolkein said “It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near one.” But hold this in your heart: the dragon is not the Signifier. That Signifier we await has authority over the dragon, over any virus, over my sinking heart.

What is settling out as newly evident to you as you hold this tension, as lesser things hold less value? What is it you are trusting?

For me, it does not end here. My future may be somewhat certainly suspended, but temporal expectations are not my end; I am loathe to make something tangible here my end. I am going to hang on until the promised birth, if God gives me the grace to do so.

I image an older piece here entitled “The Valley of Achor” taken from Hosea’s words for holding on and for looking ahead. The prophets all spoke of the Signifier.

when your heart finally wakes

Most our lives we’ve moved right along to “the next thing”: school assignments, testing dates, graduations, interviews and invitations. Labor pains have led to births, births to nursing, to raising, to cheering and teaching, then finally to letting them go. Then doing that again alongside others. Both my husband and I are “to do list” people, and so this stay at home order has been good for getting simpler things done which have long missed our lists. We’ve taken walks on the empty campus near our home and marveled at the sprouting of spring. He has taught himself how to tie his own flys between zoom calls, and I have created an online story time with two of our grands as part of their homeschool. The attic has been cleaned out, and now my studio. Never in 70 years have we had to consider what to do with paused time. How has it been for you? We are mindfully grateful that we are not stuck in an apartment in some dense city, nor in the Congo where our friend tells us people are much more scared: where hunger at home is challenged by danger outside. Being older, we’ve been urged by our daughter who works in a hospital emergency department to “stay home!” But all of us, around the globe, no matter circumstance, have been given poignant pause to weigh “what do I do now?”

Pauses have a way of reaching us where the pace of normality never did, and never could.

I recently taught a Bible study on Revelation, and it is startlingly noteworthy that midst the horrors that sequence through that prophecy, there are valuable pauses. All heaven seems to wait while those on earth decide what it is they are going to do. In that I find a great sign of mercy. The time we have now is mercy. We’re all quite good at numbing ourselves through things just to get to “the next thing”; maybe that’s a mercy too, but easily we miss a lot that’s important when we do.

I highlight a famous Baroque painting by the Italian dramatist Caravaggio. We studied this up close at the National Gallery in London in 2012. I had always wanted to see it, for it portrays in theatrical fashion the moment when Jesus (yet unrecognized by his fellow travelers) breaks bread at the table. They’ve been clueless as to who it is they have been traveling with in their distracted sorrow. Try to get past the early 17^th century garb and the insipid looking Jesus and place yourself at that table as Caravaggio intended. There is a place for you there. And it was only in that pause — in the tearing apart of what was common and basic, that the strangers finally understood who was sitting right there next to them. The real Jesus is still looking to join you where you sit too. Will you take the pause you have and allow Him?

Mary Barton Nees

Conceptual Landscape