Category Archives: time

What goes down (goes up)

It is simple and yes, it is scary; but only if you will be honest about what you cannot escape. Your only alternative is to dismiss or pretend for a while — in arrogant assumptions: “there is no God!” “no one sees” “I’m in charge here” “you’re an idiot” “there’s no dialogue” “we’ll enforce this, for the power is ours and we’re on the right side of history”… You may be comfortable for some time this way, but in the end, a higher reality will overcome you. What will you say then?

You have no explanation for why every single human, in all human history goes down, one same direction: down, back into dirt. In this we are all the same. Your body has a shelf-life which betrays every ultimate supposition. The wise grapple with this; for raw honesty is the only way that leads to a scrap of hope.

I am compelled to put these morbid words down. For kidnappings in Nigeria, assassination in Haiti, beheadings in Indonesia, torture in Afghanistan and every hidden thing done in certain American clinics, and in certain Chinese wards has me sorely vexed. I cannot just shrug off what’s going down. I am one voice, from one soul in the same time period as you are. But I am calling it out with real concern.

This is what holds me: God sees it, He sees it all. God hears it. And God hears me. My blood and your blood has something in it that answers back to Him, even if the embodied owner of each DNA code could or never would talk to his Creator. The blood cries up. It did at the very first spilling of just one body ripped open. It is generations of sound waves now. This will not end well for those who won’t address Him while they yet have time to do so here.

“But they will be held guilty, they whose strength is their god… and though it (the Lord’s answer) tarries, wait for it…” Habakkuk 1:11 and 2:3

In contrast to this waiting, I saw a large banner in an upscale American town which proclaimed, “Rage against Hate”. This makes shortsighted sense to some. Human rage always has its reasons, but it is blind to the multiplied effect; and all the collateral damage is worse than any deadly virus. I heard a young woman proudly say recently “burn it all down” and she sincerely thinks that somehow what will arise from the ashes will be productive for the powerless. Tit for tat only ever expands the sorrows.

So, one prophet, instead of raging with men, actually took up his case by raging with the God of justice (worth reading the whole account). He later recorded this and I echo it often:

“Lord, I have heard the report about Thee and I fear. Oh Lord, revive Thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy… I heard, and my inward parts trembled. At the sound my lips quivered. Decay enters my bones, and in my place I tremble. Because I must wait quietly for the day of distress… Yet I will exult in the Lord.” (Habakkuk 3:2, 16,18) The prophet does not get there easily, but he got there.

Here’s what I say to myself and encourage as prescription for anyone. In your recognized vulnerability, take your case up. Life cries to LIFE, better sooner than later. All blood cries up for an account anyway. What’s in your blood is consequential metabolically but also spiritually, regardless of what you have assumed about God or yourself. Blood travels upward though it is heavy, even buried in the ground. That’s what this image is about.

For what goes down does go up.

when the glass was shattered

This icon hangs prominently in my studio space. It’s an important personal memory, but also a much broader symbol for any other pilgrim. It’s like a “memento mori” which was a visual signal in medieval art, often a skull placed in the picture as a reminder of the reality of everyone’s end. My subject here is more than that certainty, but rather a still shot reminder of the lingering time I have until I also drop. I titled this “Lingering Moments”. This is a monotype, a one-off impression made on paper with an etching press. I printed this in 2006.

The impetus for my imagery here was the sight/memory from my television screen, five years earlier, of papers flying out of many broken windows in the twin towers in New York on 9/11. The horror on the ground, and behind those windows could not be seen nor heard on the tv. That was a mercy, a veil at least for us glued to our screens trying to grasp what was really happening there. But I was fixated on these floating bits, as if they were what the Japanese call ukiyo-e = “pictures from a floating world”. That day, what was actually floating were fragments from meeting agendas, spreadsheets, architect elevations, love notes, hand scrawled grocery lists…whatever had been in minds just earlier for thousands of people…and now an ephemeral randomized conglomeration cast into the air.

There was a strange lightness that masked the horror. Five years after that my heart was still etched with the memory. When talking about this with a friend, how to adequately illustrate the import of that day, he said more time would be needed before any sensitively viable imagery could be accomplished… 20 years out my heart-etch remains, and so today, I make an attempt with words.

The flying papers were stand-ins for the gravity of it all. The papers represented particular individuals, doing common work, with unique histories now all jumbled into a common national tragedy. And there was time in the falling of these fragments. That was what struck me: the slow articulation full of weight, like last rites prayers, moments for reckonings on one September day no one ever anticipated.

The papers all fell and turned to dust, but while they wafted in the air there was some time, precious little, yes, but moments just the same between impact and finality.

Time, if even just the minutes it took for the papers to lay down on the dirty street, has long seemed to me a mysterious grace. Whether it is 70 plus years assumed from first breath to last, or just 39.37 hours, or 3 minutes and seven seconds — the time any of us have individually is as if a slow-motion camera has been turned on. The moments we have provide a serious possibility for when clarity can pierce through. Let…a sober…wisdom…pierce, my friend. Time is an ephemeral resource toward that end, it’s a declining dash, a whisper of terminus for each of us. Attend to that whisper — with all your beating heart.

remember

As we enter the very last triplet in this series called The Psalms of Ascent, we are hearing more than a brief plea, but rather now a treatise of important national memory. We’re moving from the personal to the corporate. In Psalm 132, we are in the longest Psalm in the collection of these Hebrew traveling songs. King David’s written and very personal prayers we’ve recently encountered. 132 is an older Psalm from the same era; but it broadens to a corporate call forward. Psalm 132 looks back, but also importantly ahead to a very sure God-promised and covenanted future, and specific promise made to David. We are peering currently here into the world-wide importance of Israel’s story, which is highlighted in so much of the Bible’s macro-story. Inform yourself, especially in our own times at hand, as to what is yet coming for all earth dwellers. What has gone before is pattern for what is yet to play out. To know this is to know the way forward.

Why would an American gentile, born midway in the 20^th century have any interest in these words? If it weren’t for a Jewish friend who spoke of Abraham to me personally 52 years ago, I would have remained oblivious and blinded to most important things. Have you not yourself seen enough evidence in current events to hunger also for someone to speak to you about what is real, true and lasting?! Eugene Peterson wrote poignantly in 1980 “A Christian who has David in his bones, Jeremiah in his bloodstream, Paul in his fingertips and Christ in his heart will know how much and how little value to put on his own momentary feelings and the experience of the past week.” (!)

These are traveling songs: as has been outlined in my previous 12 postings. These entire 15 psalms concern the journey of celebratory return. They are arranged and patterned out for the sons of Israel, on their way up to Zion. The language is clear about this throughout. Those of us who are not of the Hebrew tribes can take instruction from these at least as symbolic parallels, as watchwords; but the words themselves were written by and for Hebrews, especially in this very last triplet before us now. I may not live through the fulfillment of what these Psalms point to, but it is possible you will, my friend.

As already detailed, every triplet in this series followed a certain cadence (1. distress, 2. reliance, 3. resolution). Here in this last triplet we see the very same. Psalm 132 is the distress of longing, memory and urgent appeal. The last two psalms yet coming will quickly and very concisely move like staccato beats to the corporate national finale. Like in a fireworks show, you will know it when you see it! The full throated unified reliance and then joyous resolution is yet coming, but not before some detailed distress. This has been long promised in all of the Book.

Mature direction pays attention to history; any wise counselor, gentile or Hebrew knows this. The best questions I ever heard were given by the angel of the Lord to a distraught woman in Genesis 16: “Where have you come from? And where are you going?” Without a clear-eyed sense of what went before and what is yet coming, we are at the mercy of whims and lies. You have enough evidence of that kind of stupidity all around you. Don’t stay there paralyzed in media fog, speculation, political manipulation, empty promise and bias. You are being lied to and your gut already knows it.

In my illustration of this important historical Psalm, I aimed to give a sort of timeline sense of the historical darkness which existed before Israel ever came into the land of promise, and the darkness and destruction which came upon them later from both the Babylonians and then later the Romans. The ladders in the middle reference Jacob’s dream repeated in the human aspirations of every other wrangler who aimed for what he was after without relying on God’s good direction. But there is a way given, “even for Jacob” .

Remember the God who still promises. He is the bigger point in all these Psalms. In the end, He alone is the golden sustainer.

The singers of these songs were not the first to seek after God’s sure presence in a walking trek, nor would they be the last who will seek Him with songs of remembrance. Why don’t you consider joining them?

The reoccurring dream

Some dreams are juxtapositions: headwork that a psychologist friend says are just “working out what we could not resolve in the day”. A few dreams are outright scary. Most dreams we can barely remember our sleeping heads having worked through. But some dreams become waking desires. We know those dreams are real because we keep casting our sights by them in some vague way. Do you know what I mean? When vague desire becomes purposeful steps, we are walking with the writers and travelers of the Psalms of Ascent.

We are in the 3^rd triplet now of this 15 Psalm progression (see my last 6 posts). The first triplet’s theme was ENTRY, the second: TEST. This third has a more internal nature. I’ll give it a name once we’ve walked through all three in this set, for we are definitely heading somewhere — but sometimes it feels murky.

This Psalm begins with a historical reference, dating this Psalm after Israel’s exile “when the Lord brought back the captive ones of Zion”. The writer says “we were (then) like those who dream…” He goes on with language which bursts with the realization that their corporate dream had became reality. But the last 3 verses of this Psalm express the same dream into present circumstance; it is therefore an ongoing need. The Psalmist now is “sowing tears”, “going to and fro”…carrying only seed. However the Psalm ends with an expectation of confidence; it’s a statement of trust. If real resolution came once before, it can come again.

Everyone has things they long for which are yet unrealized. Time tests whether that longing is a dangling shiny object or a much more substantive need.

All our dreams are a kind of aspiration, but some are rooted in confident hope which has been seeded by something ultimate which is beyond our scope. So it was, and so it continues in these Psalms.

A song of ascents.

126 When the Lord restored the well-being of Zion,
we thought we were dreaming.
²At that time we laughed loudly
and shouted for joy.
At that time the nations said,
“The Lord has accomplished great things for these people.”
³The Lord did indeed accomplish great things for us.
We were happy.
⁴O Lord, restore our well-being,
just as the streams in the arid south are replenished.
⁵Those who shed tears as they plant
will shout for joy when they reap the harvest.
⁶The one who weeps as he walks along, carrying his bag of seed,
will certainly come in with a shout of joy, carrying his sheaves of grain.

New English Translation

glad resolve

I am continuing here with some words about each of my new pieces which are part of a whole series of 15. The 15 “Psalms of Ascent” are positioned in the 5^th and last “book” or volume of the Hebrew Psalter. And this progression is fascinating in that the microcosm echoes the macrocosm! In other words, what is glimpsed in the gathered detail inside this collection and it’s individual parts also reveals an informed interweaving into the whole of Scripture! The entire, and all its parts are masterfully written.

With these 15 ancient Ascent Psalms, the triplets show the rhythm while the three sets of 5 reveal the stages in the long ascending journey. I’ll write more of those stages later.

Here’s how the repeating rhythm can be seen. Each triplet in this progression ends with the disruption, recently voiced, now resolved. It’s a simple pattern familiar in so many written dramas or musical movements. The first movement or dramatic scene begins with distress. The second develops to a climax. Then the third finally quiets in time to an experience of resolution.

As a whole, this very first triplet of the entire set of 15 shows us this archetype both in its first verse: 120:1, but then in the walking out of the three journey psalms here. That pattern is evident in the triplet (1.Distress 2.Reliance 3.Resolve). This particular set of three Ps. 120-122 takes us from troubled spirit in foreign soil (120) to a pivot of reliance on the God of Abraham (121) to finally a voiced experience of arriving “glad”! One can sense the relief of the original writer in Psalm 122. The longed-for destination has been reached.

Another fascinating feature in this particular triplet is how the action moves from people (liars, deceivers, “those who hate peace”) to a personal decision (the pivot explained in my last post) and then back to people. But this last group of people are at peace. They have welcomed the new arrival; they give thanks and gather together. “I was glad when they said to me…” The troubled individual traveler has become part of a new company. The traveler had to make his consequential pivot individually, but the context of others surrounds his story in really informative ways. Hence, I see this triplet in my notes as the ENTRY triplet in the developing larger story.

Not only is the first verse in the entire series an archetype of this in short form, but this first triplet (the first 3 whole Palms of the series) also secures the pattern –for it telescopes deep time from foreign despair to settled finality. Human history and individual histories can be encapsulated in this first progression of 3.

David is attributed as the writer of this resolve Psalm 122. He was the early King who captured Jerusalem, where his throne was then set up. However, his own and his nation’s history was troubled, and the Psalm ends here with admission of great need. Five hundred years after David’s reign, trouble had multiplied, and the nation was taken captive into Babylon for 70 years. Scholars say that the 5^th “book” in the Psalm collection was compiled after that exile as Jews made their historic walking return to Jerusalem: microcosm and macrocosm through time.

I’ve tried to visually suggest much of this glad entry in this work. There is a symbol of an individual, like a green reed, smallish and in the center. But “he” is surrounded by light, by a protective covering of sorts and the mark-making gives an impression of history with many others present alongside him.

If you were stuck on a deserted island and only had this triplet of three Psalms for your sustenance, you would have enough to know that trusting God is possible from anywhere and that if you do, He will secure you in the end. It’s the character of the God of Abraham to make good on every promise He has given.

a poem for our time

Not every woman is believed,

Not every man’s a lout.

But bend the narrative and lie

And then you’ll have some clout.

Science is not prophecy

Wisdom’s not for sale,

And you can smell the bias

In every journo’s tale.

A watershed has happened

A seismic shift’s at hand.

Wake up and pray the coffee

Or weep throughout the land.

Groupthink’s not forgiveness

Only God gives right.

So while you breathe you’d best wise up

And come into His light, for:

The Spirit and the Bride say come.

time: a slow mercy

This Fall I got to see Mercury transit across our sun. Through several chubby telescopes, positioned on tripods in a field on campus, a cluster of the curious took turns. The planet was like a speck of pepper on a large egg yoke. Various scopes were set to filter the sun’s light energy so that the color of the gasses around the spherical giant reflected to the eye a different view of it: orange, red, yellow. But the movement of the dark speck did not vary. It moved in one direction. This vacant planet has a set course, slow but sure, creeping silently across the brilliant light behind it.

Mercury is near impossible to see in our skies because of its size and orbit, so this was a rare opportunity, which a knowledgeable friend had alerted me to. And, it struck me as I tried to absorb the significance, that various orbs are moving above us all the time, we just go about our business on earth hardly aware. Like gears in a vast cosmos above us, there is predictable movement. It’s a picture of time. And once we’ve passed through, that time is past, not repeatable.

This comforts me strangely. For time is a slow move. Time is time. Think of that: time means I have time. Its sure ticking gives opportunity to reflect as I breathe here, to consider, as John says in the book of Revelation “the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall take place.” We’re living in the already/not yet place of possibilities. But what is set is set. Can you hold that in?

I offer as illustration a small piece I did last year and gave as a Christmas gift. To me these big things are better caught than taught. I wish you relief from what is past and can now be put away. I wish you a growing confidence in what is set above you as we all move now into another decade of change. Happy New Year.

resistance: a value or a trap

It’s a subtle thing, and lately I’ve been pondering my reasons for resisting as I’ve been examining some motivations. There are days when working or when in difficult relationships where I can feel this drag right under my skin. What is that? Time to take a careful look under my hood. And then time to study the manual. I take some care here, for resistance improperly applied can disassemble; it can destroy gradually like rust. Or, it can save lives like the firm pressing on the brake pedal when required. My difficulty (and yours) this side of Eden is discerning when resistance is good (which leads to Good) and when it is bad, leading to worse. Religions set up codes, or rulebooks to follow so one can “stay on the straight and narrow”. But creative life is much more complex than that. And in fact, in my own life there are times when “no, I wont go there” was very good, and other times when “I must face this head on”. Read Solomon on this, his words are in the middle of the Creator’s manual.

Recently I listened to a podcast by a Harvard trained Psychiatrist who now coaches artists. She does an effective job exposing the false ideas that hinder us such as “I cant” “I shouldn’t” “It’s all good” I’m all bad” (there are thousands more and we all have pet ones to which we we resort). Here’s an example “this hurts, it can’t be good for me” and I noticed I was fighting on the inside something I have no control over. Mine was not an active rebellion, but more a passive sulky resistance. Once I saw the potential in the manual for exactly this difficulty turning into something valuable I had very good reason to stop resisting and cooperate.

In my art practice, there’s often a negative resister: “I don’t have what it takes” but when I activate what I do have, little steps taken against my pet resistance can reveal something new.

Complex situations aren’t only black and white. And I’m a free agent who has the opportunity to negotiate through them: to select and to take into action. Time is one of the things I have, and materials, and a drive on the inside that I believe my Creator placed there. I’ll resist wasting these things.

Here you can see some studio exercises this week as I was thinking on all this. I started with ink. And then overlaid with oils in some more subtle values. Each one of these small maquettes could be translated to more formal work. As I still have time, I will.

“Time is what defines our lives” says Paco Seirulo, Leo Messi’s coach, on how the champion soccer player employs his brain and his legs during split second decisions.

drawing to discover

Blasted rock face breaks off according to the composition of the material being forcibly disrupted. Some rock just crumbles at impact, like so much hardened sand. Other rock, having been deposited by volcanic flow or metamorphic heat reveals these jagged architectural planes and lines when blasted. The visible cuts un-bury the evidence of long-term history in the making of the substrate.

I have a good number of wonderful (to me) photos of cut-faces as we recently drove around Lake Superior. Since a little kid, these broken faces have always drawn my eye. All I could say was “these are beautiful!” to the casual glances of others. Now I am trying to understand why these have so magnetized my attention.

From burst photos taken in the car, then on site: en plein air, I have been drawing and begun painting — not to replicate, but to discover. This posture takes the pressure off, and opens doors for freed up investigation. For it’s not about the rock/lines/planes/color though that has captivated first. I use those as jumping off points. It’s more about the nakedness of the cuts and the beauty therein exposed. Oh to be able articulate that! It’s like this solid rock thing with its cut contrasts is a signifier of something else being expressed to me.

In his dreamy, harsh, philosophical novel “The Island of the World”, Michael O’Brien says early on that “people always seem to fall in love with the image first, never the substance…”. It’s pictures that draw us originally, but if we get hooked and we want to know, organic things can lead us so much further.

A good number of artists spend time endeavoring to go deeper, like cave artists. And ‘going in’, underneath, behind the surface of things is where so many spend dogged time. For example, the subject of “beauty” has long been recognized by artist/thinkers as having a component of fear attached to it. It’s strange but sure. It’s something really important to discover.

“Poets are dreamers, Josip. They scribble their subconscious onto paper in order to connect with food sources.” O’Brien brings in characters to help his protagonist Josip along in this search. And that’s exactly what I am doing here: connecting to some food sources of a deeper hunger.

learning from some elders

I recently finished an autobiography of a little known Canadian artist: Emily Carr, entitled: Growing Pains. Emily was Canada’s equivalent of Mary Cassatt, at least in terms of era, European training and singular focus. But Cassatt never left us with such an articulate journaling of her struggle. I learned of Carr when in the Northwest of Canada last year. I’d already loved the amazing modernist landscapers of the Northern wilds called the Canadian Seven; but Carr’s name, or her work, is not usually included in general groupings amongst them.

To have come from the provincial west of Canada, not far removed from pioneering times — to endure the scoffing of family and the pursuit of suitors for her singular desire to study — then to travel to San Francisco, London and Paris so that she could get art training — and to live through Victorian attitudes, poor housing and bad health while working hard is Emily’s life. She was spirited, rebellious, sensitive and diligent and for a good portion of her mid-life she fell back in discouragement, running a boarding house back in British Columbia. It was later in life when she was recognized and included by Lawren Harris. He was one of the Seven, and insisted on including her in some exhibits back in eastern Canada. More important is the record of his thoughtful mentoring of her progress by mail. Her own articulate words tell this tale.

She says early on, having discovered her love of the woods as important to her voice: “sketching outdoors was a fluid process, half looking, half dreaming…as much longing as labour…these space things asked to be felt not with fingertips but with one’s whole self”. Then later after Harris’ encouragement: “…help was a little notebook I carried in my sketch sack and wrote in while intent on my subject. I tried to word in the little book what I wanted to say…I stopped grieving.” Lawren responded: these “represent vital intentions…unusually individual and (are) soaked with what you are after more than you realize…then we approach the precincts of Great Art—timeless—the Soul throughout eternity in essence.”

So, mentored myself by her words and his, I have started easing back into what I’m after in my own onging sketchbook. Here’s one recent entry.

synergy

There is so very often in my own practice what feels like a long incubation period before the bursting out into the open. It always takes longer than I expected to see the fruition. And then I hear this in my head “anything worth doing needs time and thought, planning and prep.” We all kind of get that. But here’s my problem: I’m impatient. I have ‘visions of sugar-plums’ or dreams of resolutions planted deeply. I don’t even know how they got there, but they’re there. Actually, I do know how they got there: lots of Bible reading and then lots of active prayer based on the clear promises I see. I get excited when I sense the glimpses. But then comes another corner to go around, another hindrance, and another disappointment. And these are incubators which take time and thought…I think maybe I just summarized my own internal life. You might see this in my work: for both the good and the bad of it all.

I bring this up for two reasons. The painting here happened quickly last month. It was kind of a surprise as I was working up several panels one day. I stood back and thought “hmmm, I may have just seen this pop to a finish. How did that happen?” The long incubators probably had something to do with it.

I was in Israel this month: a surprise trip, which also happened quickly. It was amazing in so many ways: friendships, learning, sensing the blooming going on there, some puzzles I’ve had suddenly clicking together… it was synergistic. I brought my watercolors, paper pads and brushes. They just took up space in my bag as I had not one minute to sit and use them. But oh my cameras were busy. I caught door frames and the wares of spice sellers. I caught the patterns on ancient marbles, and the blooms on a fig tree. My eyes reveled at the mustard yellows on the close hills and the sweet purply dimness on the far mountains –the planted rows of almond trees and date palms, and then had lunch overlooking the very hills where Abraham grazed his flocks. These things are all incubators. The fruition follows.

Mary Barton Nees

Conceptual Landscape