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.

Las Tres Tentaciones (or The Three Temptations)

San Miguel is a place of deep dreams for me.  The altitude? The alignment of stars?  The ability simply to be away?  Perhaps all of it.  A week ago, I had a dream that I have entitled “Las Tres Tentaciones” or “The Three Temptations.”

In the dream, it is late at night I have been somewhere and heading home.  I step out onto the darkened cobbled streets.  The streets are uneven as I make my way.  Ahead in the distance, I hear some noises in the street; it sounds like teenagers laughing and running around in the street.

I see three small lights swirling around the ground where their feet would be.  They are not laughing but taunting.  As I approach, there are no bodies only shadows.  I try not to be frightened.  What do they want?  It seems as though the swirling around is meant to trip me up.  One of the things stops and looks at me – an eye in the center of the bluish spiral light.  It is a taunt, a challenge, an accusation.  It simply says, “God admires you.”   It then laughs and says “I’ll leave that with you for the moment.”

My heart sinks.  The accusation is in how I would like to think God thinks of me but I know my own failings; and the accusation is a challenge or a question: “God admires you?”

As I move down the road, another swirls around my feet, laughs, and taunts me with another one, “Others admire you.”  And there is the accusation: “Others admire you?”  How I would like others to think of me; the accusation hits home.  Yet, how I know how I have failed others.  I am being pulled under.

And then the last strikes its accusation, “You admire you.” – unsaid but behind it: “You admire you?”

All three strike at my heart.  All three true in one form of how I would like to be  - admired, well thought of, yet undermining it all is a false vision of value, of my life, of my successes and failures.  It is a trap.  All three are false.  It is the three temptations. 

I awake – I think.  I could still be dreaming.  

I say a loud “Enough!”  “Go away!”  I lay there.

 

“God,” is my prayer as I drift back to sleep.

….

 As I have sat with this dream, I am reminded of Jesus’ three temptations in the wilderness.  The three are related to God, others, and one’s self.  Each one the accuser lays out in front of him; and each time he lets go of that which can be seductive for us all.  How do I understand myself in relation to God, others, and myself?  Where does the accuser strike home?  What is true?  What is false?  Admiration is a false temptation.  God is.  God loves.  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  Here lies the center.  God loves you – always has, always will.  And as you are loved, so love.  God’s grace sustains all. 

I am surrounded by that grace all the time.  Grace is all around us all the time, in life, in death, in choices made and not made, in paths taken and not taken.  May I know the sufficiency of that grace.

Grace will show you things

There might not be “the” right answer, “the” right way to do things.  Perhaps it is in the journey, the willingness to wrestle with the angel.  “Bless me.”

I have completed a painting.  It is finished; signed.  It is modeled from a photograph of John on New Year’s Eve, in the dark and cold, holding a sparkler; that is the light.  In the painting, the person (it does not need to be John).  Part of holding it out at a certain distance is the reality of protection, of keeping from being burned, but it is also almost as an offering to the viewer – a light that burns hot and bright for a moment.  It burns bright and fiercely and then it is done.  I remember the joy of it as a child and it can still evoke the same.  What is it?

Darkness is not dark to you;

The night is as bright as the day;

Darkness and light to you are both alike.

Psalm 139:11

The person recedes into the background lit by the fierce brightness.  The other hand is simply open, another invitation of the self even as it continues off the canvass to the viewer.

I started to post the progression of the painting but then changed my mind.  Perhaps later it will be interesting to see how I got to where I arrived.  My idea of authentic art may well depend on the artist’s intent and the viewer.  The artist cannot control the response of the viewer nor should the artist be primarily concerned with the response of the viewer which will surely vary depending on the individual: their perspective, life experience, mood, relationship to the artist, to the subject, to simply where they are at any given moment.

The artist’s responsibility (if in fact there is one) is to be connected as best one can be to what one is attempting to express even if it is simply to celebrate the opportunity to be alive and create out of one’s being.

What I am searching for myself seems inexplicable.  I walk around galleries and look.  Most often I keep moving, interesting to see what folks are doing.  To be honest, I do not know the artists, where they are coming from, what they are bringing out of themselves, trying to wanting to express.  I simply look and occasionally stop and look again more deeply.  Why this piece and not another?  Is it inherent in the piece?  Yes, there is skill and color and subject.  Is it in me?  Perhaps more likely so – that which catches my eye.  Yet, there are universal themes that seem to resonate: beauty, emotion, the extraordinary, sometimes the extraordinary in the ordinary, the beauty in the imperfection, or the texture and seeing from a different perspective, through the eyes of someone else.

Isn’t it enough for an artist to express him or herself in whatever way (medium) they choose?  There is so much really creative art here especially folk art.  Taking items and putting them together in primitive ways (and who is to say it is primitive) and simply say “here” whether I like it or not.

Let me walk these days in gratitude and put my hand to what is in front of me.  Aware.

I see color and light and shadow, texture and design.  I feel the breeze sitting in the shade even while the sun burns hot overhead.

Returning year after year, I feel a certain knowing of this place, movement, flow but a year has passed. A friend here o there has moved, has undergone treatment for cancer or been ill, life-changing illness.  While much is the same where I almost feel I have never left, life changes as it always does.  A restaurant has closed.  Another has opened.  Construction and deconstruction here and there.

Now that I have finished a painting, I have begun another, an entirely different piece.  Perhaps scattered.  So much I want to do; it takes time.  I also want to be in this moment and feel the breeze on my cheek and listen to the church bells.  How can grace not be around us all the time?

Grace is everywhere all the time – as God goes and is so is God’s grace whether we are aware of it or not.

We had a hard rain last week.  Water has a way of finding its way.  Even the smallest crack can be an opportunity for water to make its way into a house.  I saw people on roofs and ladders repairing, covering.  It will show you things.

Grace will show you things and perhaps sometimes it is in the cracks that it makes its way in.

May there 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.

May I be aware in this Sabbath moment of your sustaining grace in all things.  My life is in your hands, O God, and you have blessed me.  My life whatever it is, I trust in you.

That has to be sufficient.

Wrestle with it, even if uncertain

What to make of my sabbatical.  I have an idea about my painting but not a complete concept, not a complete plan or design.  How does one incorporate intense joy and deep sadness into art as the Luminous Darkness?  I want to wrestle with it and see where it goes even if uncertain.

As I washed the altar on the night of Maundy Thursday, I was in that moment preparing for death, all the deaths I have known: the people, the little deaths of life, and my own death – and Jesus’ death.

I poured the water on the five crosses on top of the altar marking the five wounds of Christ, and with white towels prepared it for this day, prepared the tomb, prepared the body, washing away the dust of the journey, waiting, hoping, grieving, believing.  Let the mystery do its work.  Let Jesus happen.

What happens if I produce only one painting? Or none?  What if it takes me into my own dark night of the soul?  What will it look like?  To not only look at darkness, deep sadness, but intense joy as well, to see beyond and into the depths and try to express the complexity of life and the trajectory of where I/we are wanting to be.  I want it to be authentic, imperfect, beautiful, tugging on my heart of joy and sorrow.

I am nervous about putting out there the information about my sabbatical and what I hope to focus on: Art and the Luminous Darkness.  How to make sense of it?  How to give it life in me?  To find the voice for it?  I know I am less interested in another pretty picture than I am in allowing my soul work and my experience of the work around me find expression through my art.  A certain yearning.  Grateful yet an itch that remains.  A longing that will never be completely satisfied but with which one comes to peace with, at least on some level.  Yet expression of that intense joy as well, beyond words, beyond complete description.

I love taking paint to canvass, the feel of the paint, the color, the smell, the unknowing, watching it come to life – that moment when just the right stroke says what you wanted to say sometimes when you did not even know it for sure.  Then there it is; out of a whole painting that one stroke that carries the satisfaction of purpose.  It is the turn of phrase, the silence in the score.  You know it is there and you are amazed at how it works even if no one else sees it.

Authentic art.  What is it?  What makes one piece priceless or hung or collected and another stacked in a thrift store?  What creates longing?  What causes the “ah” or the desire to revisit a painting like a dear friend?  To stand in front of it and ache?  What is it?

Is it the look over a shoulder, the look back, or recognition, of regret, of joy and grief revisited?  Not propaganda or an attempt at manipulation but it can have a story or a moment or simply an authentic emotion.  Birth, love, death.  Spring, winter, fall, summer?  God?  To what end?  Perhaps needing/wanting a compass, a direction for my art, to have some sense of why I am doing what I am doing, I find myself asking the questions.

“From the waters of chaos you drew forth the world, and in your great love, fashioned us in your image.”

Perhaps it will be discovered in the doing.  I’m not sure what this journey will bring.  Perhaps it will take me to somewhere I have already been but different.  I know I feel alive when I paint; when I create.  Enter that.  Don’t be afraid of it.

Oscar Wilde once said “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”