Returning

Sunset in San Miguel, oil on canvass, 16 x 20

As this Sabbath moment comes to a close I am grateful for the sustaining grace in all things.

I spent two months in San Miguel, each day studying Spanish, painting, and spending time with dear friends we have made over the years – a beautiful, refreshing place that has become a second home.  After San Miguel, I had a week with my son and his family, time with my grandchildren.  The last month has been at home attending to projects for which there has never been time: cleaning out the attic, the pantry, and the home office, working in the yard, planting grass, cutting the ivy creeping up the trunks of the trees, fixing landscaping lighting.  Numerous construction garbage bags full of stuff that long ago needed to be thrown away. Cleaning house.  Seems like a metaphor for things in life that need attention that often get pushed to the side – “when I get time I’ll do it.”  The need to let go of things that have cluttered space and time and life. 

oil on paper, 12 x 16

I’m grateful for the time to paint and the places it took me, about worrying less about creating a pretty picture and finding a way to express inner creativity and perhaps, just perhaps, letting something new happen without having to be overly controlling – for which I am hoping to bring into my work and ministry life.

I am appreciative of my staff and the vestry, the leadership, and community of St. Bartholomew’s that has made the sabbatical time possible.  And I am thankful for John’s support that is always there.

May there always be Sabbath rests in our lives – a day, a moment, to be more keenly aware of the grace that permeates all things – all things – all things – even me and you.  Grace will show you things and perhaps sometimes it is in the cracks that it makes its way in.

 “Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and... stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to 'walk about' into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?” -Kandinsky

That has to be sufficient.

My life is in your hands, O God, and you have blessed me.  My life whatever it is, I trust in you.

Many blessings.

If we only steward them well

Yesterday I watched an old white oak cut down in the neighbor’s yard.  Although I don’t really know, I imagine the tree to be over 100 years old.  They say it had root rot.  Still I felt sad to watch this enormous tree and canopy cut piece by piece until it was gone.

Life.  What an amazing thing – to not be and then to be; that we were not and then we were; we are – alive.  How absolutely amazing and mysterious to have this opportunity to be alive, to have this gift of heart, mind, body, and soul.

Last week I was able to spend time with my son and his family, his wife and two children.  I was able to hold my new granddaughter.  She is now three months old, healthy, happy.  My grandson, two and half, now has an extended vocabulary, wanting to know about everything.  “What’s that?”  “What’s grandpa doing?”  “What’s grandpa doing now?!”  Amazing how we begin and are able to grow and learn, develop and create, love and dream.  And how important it is along the journey to be conscious and pay attention to the things that matter most, to be present to this moment and the people in our lives and around us, to love kindness, mercy, and justice, and to walk humbly with our God.

A dear parishioner recently died at the age of 92, a long and good life.  And still...it is hard to let go.  The way he lived, active, present, kind, and engaged, is an example for me of how I want to be if I should live a long life; and even if not a long life, how I want to live nonetheless, active, present, kind, and engaged.

Mary Oliver (my favorite poet) in her poem Circles writes:

In the morning the blue heron is busy

stepping, slowly, around the edge of the

pond. He is tall and shining. His wings, folded

against his body, fit so neatly they

make of him, when he lifts his shoulders and begins to rise

into the air, a great surprise. Also

he carries so light the terrible sword-beak. Then

he is gone over the trees.

I am so happy to be alive in this world

I would like to live forever, but I am

content not to. Seeing what I have seen

has filled me; believing what I believe

has filled me.

The first words of this page are

hardly thought of when the bird

circles back over the trees; it floats down

like an armful of blue flowers, a bundle of light

coming to refresh itself again in the black water, and I think:

maybe it is or it isn't the same bird-maybe it's

the first one's child, or the child of its child.

What I mean is, our deliverance from Time

and the continuance, if we only steward them well,

of earthly things. So maybe it's myself still standing here, or

someone else, like myself hot with the joy of this world, and

filled with praise.

I would like to live forever, but I am

content not to. Seeing what I have seen

has filled me; believing what I believe

has filled me.

...If we only steward them well.

12 x 16, oil on paper, Storm clouds over San Miguel

Unfolding

12 x 16 oil on paper, Christ in the Wilderness
(after Kramskoy)

The end of June ends my time in San Miguel; I’m still figuring out the next piece of this sabbatical journey.  Two months time here has been restorative, productive, challenging, prayerful.  I began each day with a time of prayer and journaling.  I studied Spanish with Felipa at the Instituto Allende for seven weeks.  I painted each day in the studio I rented from Henry Vermillion.  I ate, drank, and laughed with good friends (and made new ones).

This next week I look forward to meeting my new granddaughter, Allie, who is now three months old; and spending time with my son, daughter-in-law, and grandson.

I am bringing some things to a close and others to a new beginning: art, family, and friends.

It is a journey for which I am grateful even knowing the temporal quality, holding things not too tightly but carefully, deliberately, and allowing some things to let go. 

The last few weeks have pushed me into new territory of which I am still figuring out what it is and what it means but it is exciting.

The following is the progression of the painting above; it is after a Russian artist of Christ in the Wilderness but I have placed the valley and mountains from San Miguel below rather than the city of Jerusalem.  It is oil on paper, loose, quick,done in two days.

“The true work of art is born for the ‘artist’: a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation.  It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.”

-Kandinsky

Jumping in the river

The rainy season has arrived with full force; each day brings rain, rivers of rain.  The streets of San Miguel become streams and creeks overflowing on to sidewalks.  Drains cannot contain the water and so reverse pour forth like a busted water line.  On Friday, I was painting when the heavens opened.  The studio stayed dry for the most part, a leak here or there.  I had to close the door to keep the water from spilling inside.  I thought surely it would stop.  Finally I just had to brave the elements and clean up the best I could and head back home.  There was no dry place to cross the streets.  Traffic was nearly halted.  Umbrella in hand, I carried my backpack on my front in the attempt to keep its contents dry.

There was nothing to do but to step into the rush of water; nothing else to do but step right into it, no going back only forward.  When I made it to the Jardin, streams met streams.  And, there they were: the children dressed in school uniforms, released for the weekend, playing in the water.  They carried no umbrellas; they had given themselves over to the deluge and the simple, unafraid joy of playing, splashing, and jumping in the “river.”  It made me smile.

I, who had so carefully tried to stay dry, found myself, shoes and clothes, soaked nonetheless. And here these children embracing what was clearly beyond their control.

I continue to paint and pray and play in San Miguel even in the rain.

I have keys to the house here.  Keys to the studio to paint.  And there is a key in the studio to the share restroom.  The key is tied with a string on to a stick.  Somehow on Monday the key to the restroom came loose and was lost.  We did not realize it until Tuesday.  It had come loose, fallen, not realized until the need was there to unlock the door.  We searched; no key.  We asked at the business in front; no key.  The woman next door opened the restroom for us, telling us that losing the key was a grave sin.

If we could not find it, we would have to borrow another key and have one made.  Perhaps, the gardener had found it as he was cleaning.  We would ask when he arrived on Wednesday.  We awaited his arrival.  “Sir, we lost the key to the bathroom on Monday.  Perhaps, did you find it?”

Out of his pocket, he drew out the key with the string still to it.  The gardener had found it, as though it had been discarded, forgotten, dropped in the busy-ness of other things.

I’ve retied it in hopes that it will stay.  But it has come loose before.  It is though if ignored it will find its way loose by inattentiveness – who knows exactly.

The key is not the thing; it is but a way to open what is needed, protecting what needs protecting, and without, difficult to unlock and gain entrance.

Perhaps I see, perhaps I don’t.  Perhaps I am ignorant, not seeing what I need to see, saying what I need to say, or wanting something that is not mine to be had.

Guard the key.  Hold it lightly.

God, there are things beyond my control and beyond my knowing.  How does one know the heart?

12 x 16 oil on canvass

I’ve been wondering how much progress I have made with my painting.  I seem to have more questions than answers.  Although, I have found myself thinking about how the looser style fits with theme of the luminous darkness – if it does?  The connection that started was that of the notion of the beauty of imperfection.  The looser style is not “perfect;” some lines are not completely straight, colors may be odd – but in it is a beauty that is difficult to describe, perhaps in the “brokenness” of our lives, the unexpected color, how things come together to convey something left to the viewer, an invitation into what is there and more.  Like the question laid out that is not too quickly answered because in the wrestling with the question for the “other” – there is the encounter, not in providing too quickly the answer which may be mine but not necessarily yours.  It is not just leaving something to the imagination; it is in the wrestling – my life, your life.

So, the painting does not need to look like “John” or “me.”  The response of the viewer (or the question) does not need to be “That doesn’t look like _____.” Perhaps it is more of an open hand outstretched.  “Take what you will.  I am not giving you your answer or even your question.  Simply this; take of it what you will.”

Fellow traveler, I, too, have my questions.

Moving into new territory

12 x 16 oil on paper, La Parroquia

San Miguel is a community full of artists and artistic expression.  You see it and feel it in art galleries, in music (in small and large venues), in dance, in festivals that are happening all around all the time, in parades that spring up from seemingly unknowable origins – loud, colorful costumes, energetic, in seventeenth century buildings and modern structures, in los sabores de la vida.  It is in the Aurora Fabrica and in the artisan market.  It is realistic and abstract, trained and self-taught, small and large-enough-to-cover-a-wall.  It is in brightly colored larger-than-life puppets celebrating life and death and … just because.  It is everywhere. 

I continue my paintings on canvass; although since having attended the lecture of Kandinsky, I have been wrestling with my own desire to move beyond my own limits, my own fears of not getting it right, of it “looking pretty.”  I know the part of me that wants to move beyond and the part that keeps things in check, both needed but not letting one dictate everything.

I finished a canvass painting (I will show at another time) and rather than lose the paint still on my palette, I quickly sketched a thought, an image, and then used the paint to just “waste.”  What I found in the process was joy and energy and freedom.  I found myself in a different space and when I was done I found something had shifted for me and left me with more questions about what I was doing.

I continue to paint on canvass but I am also painting on paper – not a particularly good material for oil but on one in which I find I do not have to worry about getting it right – just paint.  I can always throw it away.  (The one posted is one I did yesterday when I found that the canvass I was working on was still wet and need more time to dry before moving on to the next phase.)  What I am experiencing is a certain freedom beyond the canvass.  I love how I feel in the process; I love the color, the freedom, the joy, the uncertainty, the style.  I will see how it goes.

I come back to Kandinsky’s quotes:

 “The true work of art is born for the ‘artist’: a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation.  It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.”

 “Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and... stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to 'walk about' into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?”

To move beyond the boundaries that I have placed on myself that keep me from moving into new territory that I makes my heart sing.

And I do

The other night, I attended a lecture on Wassily Kandinsky, first known abstract painter.  I have seen/known his paintings but known nothing about the man.

Fascinating - his movement from figurative painting to abstract and the journey that took him there - a spiritual journey, an attempt to express what he believed could not be expressed through figurative art.

When he saw Monet’s “Haystacks”, he was moved, puzzled, and changed – when he realized that the haystack was not thing, it was simply the container not the content.

And yet…Kandinsky still used form (circles, lines, points, color) to express his ideas, impressions, inner workings of the soul.

What is happening when we/I create art?  My oldest daughter has her master’s degree in architecture from Yale University.  When she was very young but old enough to hold a crayon, we would spend Saturday mornings at the coffee table drawing – in wonder at the pure joy of color and movement and expression.

Why paint and hang it on a wall?  Beauty? Admiration? Adornment?  Expression of the human soul?

Down the street from where I am staying, a hotel has allowed an artist to cover its outside wall with a painting of a mariachi playing a trumpet.  It is a temporary installation.  In the room, I am using as an office hang two pastel paintings, a folk art painting of birds on handmade paper, a framed talavera tile over the desk, and a collage of bits and pieces (even cut out circles of Kandinsky’s circles.  What is it? What is it that we are doing?

I think I paint because I want to paint, a certain need or hunger to do so; it gives me energy.  In the midst of it, I am taken out of myself or somewhere else.  Time collapses.

A Child of the Light, 16 x 20, oil on canvass, 2014

Perhaps one could do it with one’s work (if not demanded) or gardening or writing or building something.  Could the same be said with sitting quietly, in silence, contemplating without images? Could it be weaving, wood-turning, glass blower, blacksmithing, and on and on?  Yes.  Of course.  But some of these are utilitarian: clothes, blanket, tools, furniture, pots, glasses, etc.  But what of pure art?

Writers convey the story of being human; and we are to share in knowledge of events and people, learn more than we could alone.  Poetry and song tell and retell the human experience.  But what of pure art?  Some has surely been to tell story, history, myth, especially before printing or photography and, now, social media.  But now when a photograph is able to be sent immediately to innumerable people, saved, re-configured, cropped, recolored, enhanced, vintage-fied, what of that?  What role does the artist as painter serve?  Conveyor of what?

Perhaps it is for no other reason than to celebrate or give expression to life or emotion, depths of the soul.  Odd creatures we are.  Created, made; desiring to create, to make; and we do.  And I do.

Kandinsky once wrote:  “The true work of art is born for the ‘artist’: a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation.  It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.”

He also wrote: “Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and... stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to 'walk about' into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?”

What more do you want?

Life finds a way

On the rooftop of the house here in San Miguel is a table with four chairs.  On the table is a planter with desert succulents.  My first week here I notices a dandelion making its way up through the other plants.  I thought of pulling it but I left it.  I watched it bloom; and then it was gone.  No doubt the gardener pulled it from the planter.  I was surprised to see it here in San Miguel.  But there it was finding its way.  Last week I noticed that it was coming up again; and not only a dandelion but clover as well.  Here in the midst of the high desert mountains, clover and dandelions finding their way.  Perhaps they do not belong but they make me smile and laugh at God’s good humor and how things have way of making a way where there is no way and things surprise us and can bloom even when we don’t expect ... sometimes don’t want them.  They just do.  In the midst of all our plans, life – in ways we may not expect, or think we want – will find a way; it just does.  There it was.  What makes a plant a weed and another not?  Is it perspective or desire?  Perhaps at times, what comes up for us needs to be pruned or pulled, and then perhaps, it may simply be new life finding its way where we may not expect it to be.

I have continued to paint each day at an art studio.  It provides me a place to go and be apart and simply paint.  I paint for two to three hours and then I am done, able to leave it behind until the next day.  It is a process, step-by-step, day-by-day, watching it take form.

I am currently working on my fourth painting.  The second is finished.  The third is almost complete.  The fourth is in its infancy.  The second painting was a shift but still in my mind in the direction I am wanting.  It is a painting of Nuestra Señora de Refugia (Our Lady of Refuge).  Jesuits brought a copy from Italy to Mexico.  From there the copy was re-copied, some baroque, some primitive.  She became an important image/icon for the people of Zacatecas, a mining town in Mexico.  The mines were their livelihood and dangerous.  She was looked to for solace and protection; she also adorned many home altars.  In the darkness of the mines, they saw her, a feminine image of the divine, the God-bearer, as a mother who cares for her children.  The devotion of Our Lady of Refuge was so widely spread that in 1832 Pope Gregory XVI acceded to a petition by the Mexican hierarchy and authorized her commemorative day for July fourth, the day of her recognition as “Queen of Heaven.”  I felt drawn to her and wanted to honor her and my time here in Mexico.