Day 3 of Lent {...plain old ordinary supernatural things...}
All manner of things can start fires. The spark of inspiration is all around - so why do we sometimes not feel inspired at all?
There are pictures and there are paintings, and then there is that ineffable thing that we human beings call "inspiration". For me, the simplest most ordinary thing can hit me fresh and in the best way - this is when laundry leads to letter writing, or dirty coffee tables become a poem.
When a work of art is God-breathed, it somehow speaks to us. A little song can carry you through an otherwise monotonous day. A picture can tell a story that gives you a new thought, and the new thought enables you to lay down a tired old way of thinking. That is the least that image can do. It can also change something so deep down inside as to be fundamental.
It’s not just the seeing of a picture that is more than a picture…the act of painting a picture can unlock a fresh way of being in the world that the artist herself needed to discover. In fact, you can't have one without the other. We are not changed by a picture, unless the painter was changed by what she saw first. A painter is a seer of sorts, and a saint of sorts - a painter must be one who has inner vision. That vision - that inspiration - that ineffable thing that is more than what it seems to be...
...it was down there, in the artist’s heart all along, waiting to surprise even her. And here comes the challenge of Lent, 2021. Ordinary living can disguise or discover that inner vision. The details of the every day can conceal or reveal. The painter has to find the courage and discipline to see past it all, pick up her paintbrush, and completely inhabit another space.
While others buy and sell and succeed and go to Hawaii or Italy (for inspiration) and wear busy like a badge of significance.
Let this year’s Lenten season be like good poetry. Poetry takes something as ordinary as a walk around the block, and yet the poet sees a deeper vision. She uses the power of her words to inhabit another space. The poet, with her eye for the extraordinary hidden inside the ordinary, can turn that fleeting moment into permanent beauty. The painter can do the same thing with that same walk around the block, or a flower or an apple or a child sleeping, or the season of Lent.
It’s both a delight and a discipline. It’s the discipline of delight.
Poets and painters and artful practitioners of Lent must all add to their faith the virtue of action, and have eyes to see the beauty of the commonplace, and an unquenchable ache to make it last.
Below you will find an audio/visual version of this post. I hope you enjoy.
Day 2 of Lent. {making beauty out of ashes}
Yesterday was “Ash Wednesday”.
For my new friends who might not be familiar with liturgical practice (I was not familiar for a very long time), Lent is the day that begins with Ash Wednesday, 40 days before Easter. The exact date varies, as does the exact day of Easter Sunday, but the ritual and theology have never changed:
“During Lent, let us find concrete ways to overcome our indifference.”
In full disclosure, I am not Catholic, though the above quote is Pope Francis. I’m Protestant, born and bred, and all the best hours of my life spent studying Scripture - and those hours are many - haven’t done a single thing to alter that fact. Theologically, I beg to differ with some of the doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church. (And I am sure that they beg to differ with me…)
However, liturgy has been their means to preserve the precious truths about God, down through the ages since (Catholics say) St. Peter. I respect that.
A bit of liturgy, fundamentally, helps us remember. And, most importantly, liturgy helps us to remember the same thing. After all, our faith must not rest on “he said/she said”. There are fundamentals pertinent to following Jesus Christ that have never changed and will never change.
And while I do not officially participate in Ash Wednesday, here is what I love about it:
It involves the outward sign of an inward, invisible truth: we were made from the dust, and to the dust we will return.
Practicing Catholics attend a service where the sign of the cross is made with ashes on their forehead. Since I’m not Catholic, I painted the cross on the back of my hand, using a mixture of ashes and iridescent black paint.
What a sobering reality. This cross is a visible reminder of what for some might be a dark truth: death is the ultimate statistic. This cross on the forehead, for Catholics, is also a visible reminder of the sin of the individual, and the sin of all collective humanity. Consider the following verse from the book of Ezekiel:
So why do I, who am not Catholic in any sense, why do I think at all about Lent?
First of all, again I will tell you that I find a bit of liturgy (another term for liturgy might be “heartfelt ritual”) to be helpful to me as a human. At the risk of seeming reductionist and offensive to my Catholic friends, I find the observance of some liturgies to be simply charming. It makes for an artful life.
I enjoy the sense of continuity that comes with having the same thoughts, reviewing the same truths, and engaging the same practice, year after year after year. It’s why I celebrate a form of Advent at Christmas. Both Lent and Advent are a means of slowing time down just enough to live what I call “a well-considered middle”.
The older I get, the faster time flies. I am looking for ways to mark the time, to consider the cross, and to rejoice in such an overwhelmingly scandalous salvation.
Historically, the objective of these 40 days leading to Easter, is to spend the time in a degree of introspection and total (or near total) abstinence from some besetting weakness or sin. Personally, I believe the Gospel teaches us something different. Jesus Christ has forgiven all my sin, past - present - and future! (That alone bends my brain…it blows my mind. Totally.)
And while my Gospel does teach repentance from sin and dead works, there is a far greater emphasis on the finished work of Christ.
I make the sign of the cross on the back of my hand to celebrate trading my ashes for beauty.
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners, a
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes...”
Here’s a short time lapse of the art that came from today’s celebration of scandalous forgiveness - a 9x12” collage on paper: