Category Archives: symbol

rooms as signs

In the slow process of walking this grief out (and it has been a walk, a very slow paced walk) I have been surprised by one thing that kept catching my eye, then immediately resting my soul:

Well appointed rooms.

Well appointed rooms are very meaningful to me, even just the pictures of them.

Somehow this year I was given a subscription to a women’s magazine and I would look forward to each issue for this reason alone.

How strange… in fact it was most often the rooms of strangers, not my own pretty rooms that I live in, but rather the representation of other places, places I don’t know about, but that invited me in…

It was as if the lovely rooms pictured on glossy paper gave me a metaphor toward the reality that this place I inhabit is NOT my home, that there is another place I do not yet know and these images are signs of it for me.

I am not a material girl. I love beauty and pretty things to be sure, but I have learned not to place my aims there. I don’t have to have, or possess pretty things to glean sublime enjoyment from them; I do not need these things, thankfully, to be content. But during this time therefore it has startled me how much I have thirsted for this specific kind of beauty. It is a beauty of place, and of welcome, and of particular taste. It is a beauty of a resting place where clutter is gone and someone knew I was coming.

It occurred to me this morning that this better explains to me why Jesus said to his disciples on that sad last night on earth with them that He is “going to prepare a place” for them. This is almost an obscure promise between the important foot washing and then the important Passover… but it is ALL packed with meaning and this too now makes deep sense to me. In grief I need a picture of another place. AND, I need to know this other place is a real place, not just an ethereal hope. He is a carpenter, he is making a real place. I will be welcomed there and the chairs will be comfortable, and the colors will sing, and we will sit together and marvel at all the tears (real tears, not metaphors) that were spilled before we got there.

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waiting rooms

May 8, 2011

Waiting Rooms

These are not the rooms we care much about;

They are holding places

And they usually belong to someone else.

We go to them when we have to, however

and distractedly find a chair.

– a necessary convenience in what usually is an inconvenient spell.

The colors are bland, non-committal

For you see, everyone has to wait

Therefore everyone must be accommodated.

And so not one feels at home.

Lately I’ve been thinking that even home

My sweet home

With committed color and personal touch

Is still a waiting room.

And this new thought is a revelation.

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On Beauty (or, fools rush in where angels fear to tread?)

I have thoughts that roll around and confound me both before and while I work. (Robert Motherwell said, “When I am thinking, I am working”). And one of the things that really interests me is this illusive thing we have named Beauty.

I remember once walking along on a cold sidewalk, heading somewhere, with some plan in my head. On my left was this ordinary bush. The sidewalk actually went around it. I happened to look up at this rather obtrusive dark green thing, and suddenly was caught to a dead stop. For there were these delicate clusters of tiny silvery-blue orbs all over this thing. They were astounding, and so winsome, and they brought me to tears, right there in the cold.

Here is a photo I took this last month, while at a meal with some friends. A Chinese radish had been carved to reveal this delicate surprise. It too was winsome. And inviting, It is made of just the common stuff from a garden, and yet it has been made with care, and anticipation, and just joy! Maybe the crafting of beauty is just like this. We start with the stuff that’s just hanging around us, but there is a remaking with anticipation and delight. And the result is so much bigger than the crafter can even know.

Beauty is not the meal, but it leads me to the meal. Beauty is like an usher, a silent gentleman who offers his arm. I am at the back of some important gathering, and I am not sure that I am dressed right, or not sure where I should sit. I am worried that I have arrived too late, I am thinking about all this mundane stuff. But beauty comes up alongside me with welcome on his face, and he ushers me in.

Beauty humbles me, and yet it does not win my humility with dominating power. It captivates me by it’s profound and winsome silence. And there is this mysterious ache I am left with after an encounter with beauty, that there is more coming.

 

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