Seeing God

"La Quinta"
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10 January 2015

Out of respect for the passionate, loving people on both sides of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy, I have been mostly silent. I know which side I support of course (Je suis Charlie!) but I've always felt that I create an image of the face of God (not the Prophet, I am not Muslim) whenever I make a picture of what is in front of me.

So here you see a banal image of a banal scene: a hotel lobby at 6:00 in the morning. I try to approach this with the same open mind and care that I have when I draw the river back in South Natick.  Because I am a seeing and scribing instrument, the subject doesn't really matter. What matters is the time spent and the attitude during those moments of attention. Some call it prayer. Some call it listening. I call it Art.

Art shows us a facet of the place where our minds meet whatever is outside of the mind. God is in that place and therefore God is in this lamp and in this banality. Since God is there, the moment is sacred and Life is sacred and Life is an Art of recognizing sacredness (unlike the murderers in Paris). The questioning mind is a seeking, scribing instrument used by Creation to find language to create and praise itself. In this way, "blasphemy" could be seen as an form of Love and engagement. It could suggest an ultimate and intimate cry to God to descend from a human-created throne to dwell among a marvelous, many-faceted and intelligent Creation. 

A Tale of Two Steeples

Two steeples, two churches. One has a clock and a weather vane. The other is very tall and thrusts a golden cross into the sky. One is the home to perching pigeons. The steeple with the weather vane provides a resting place for starlings and robins. One church is dark, shut up and for sale. The other has been in existence in one form or another for over 300 years.

Sacred Heart, the for-sale church was caught up in legal settlements in the slow-motion tsunami of the Catholic clergy sex-abuse scandals. The doors were padlocked on Christmas Eve in 2004. Statues of Mary and Jesus were removed early one morning and the church was "de-sacralized" so it could be sold.

Sacred Heart Church steeple
04-20-14
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I often think about these steeples as I walk over to the river to sketch.  Since Sacred Heart has fallen into disrepair I always picture in my mind the church imploded from rot, the steeple crashed in on itself and daylight flooding the sanctuary where we can see a congregation of mice, sparrows and raccoons and a tall white pine growing before the dusty altar.

The Eliot Church's steeple had developed a list over the years and had to be straightened out. I wonder how they paid for such an enormous repair?  For years, as I approached the building from Union St. I would wonder just which element in my field of view was askew. Or maybe it was I who was off kilter.

The Eliot Church steeple
04-20-14
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I'm partial to the message of a steeple that is engaged with the local's need for accurate weather data and the clock. There's a firm foundation of faith in those observations. Sacred Heart church has the more emotional and compelling story though. It's a story of greed, anguish and a golden cross dangling in the sky… to what end? Sacred Heart is the drama queen pulling us all in some direction but it seems to be in search of a compass or a rudder. Eliot Church shaggily soldiers on with prayer flags, forsythia wreaths and a Prius parked to front, engaged but perhaps it has a more realistic entry point into the human story.

Walking on Water

The Charles River and The Pleasant Street Bridge
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16 March 2013

Winter won't go away. A day or two of warm weather last week and I believed Spring was just around the corner. I guess Winter heard me and put an end to that nonsense. I imagine the remaining dirty piles of iron-hard snow are walking into real estate offices and window-shopping at appliance stores for freezers. But there were a few days of wet snow and rain and the river is swollen and the island is covered in roiling, swirling water. I watch where it flows under the bridge and monitor the depth informally by how much of the arches are obscured by water.

I prowl the river's banks and ruminate on the water. It's really tearing along. I toss a few sticks in and they go shooting off to Boston harbor. I imagine stepping out and tumbling into the frigid water. It's black and really cold. Could I walk on it? I've heard that it's possible… in the Bible. But walking on water is totally unnatural and an abomination. It's not possible to just wish away Physics and walk on water. Period. And why would I want to do it?

You would conclude that I am an agnostic or a non-believer. But I go to church all the time and am probably too involved in their business. It's all good but I see no place for miracles in my life …although I succumb to magical thinking all the time. It's a problem for most people I think.

The other night I was driving and narrowly missed hitting a person who was ambling across the dark six-lane highway. My daughter was riding shotgun and I was scanning the illuminated signs and storefronts on the right side. She started making strange noises when she saw the man and I slammed on the brakes and stopped a few feet from his shaggy form. He didn't break his relaxed lope and gazed up at us with no fear or panic. He might have been wearing headphones. It was bizarre. He crossed the road and we continued on our journey home. Was it a miracle? Maybe it depends on how much you stand to lose. There were no witnesses except me and my daughter and the man who chose that moment to stroll across the road. After the shock of it all the experience exists solely as some rearranged neurons in my brain. Happens all the time.

Most things ultimately resist analysis. But it's as if one is desperate to make a withdrawal from the ATM and it's closed for a holiday.  So you root around in your drawers and dishes and jars of pennies and scrape up some sort of explanation for what is essentially unknown void empty of meaning and purpose.

I don't believe in miracles BUT I do believe that I am lucky …sometimes. Sigh… :-p
I hope fate smiles on you too. Today!

Lunch with St. Francis

St. Francis, Trinity Church, Boston
conté pencil
1 March 2013

I had thirty minutes or so to wait for a train yesterday, so I wandered around Copley Square in Boston looking for something to draw. I hadn't been there in a long time and the city seemed new despite the old snow and grime of March. I circled the sturdy brown confection known as Trinity Church and admired the slate roofs and carvings of Biblical personalities and Phillips Brooks above the entrances and windows.

In the back of the building complex, I saw people hurrying inside for a lunch-time organ concert and I was tempted to attend and take a later train home. But this had been an impromptu journey in the first place and illustration jobs were calling me to the studio.

Near the back entrance there was a small courtyard. Informal cobblestone paths encircled its four sides and a fountain lay covered but I could almost hear the splashing water and feel the warm rays of the Spring sunshine to come. In the center of this postage-stamp garden was a small statue of St. Francis of Assisi. It's nothing fancy —compared to the heroic bronze of Phillips Brooks giving a benediction backstopped by Jesus Christ by Saint Gaudens around the corner. No, St. Francis is even a bit mossy and a cement sparrow perches in one hand. Such is the state of things. It all looks so expected: two visions of redemptive power and authority existing under the same roof around the corner from each other. Like the two-faced Greek god. Yin and Yang. Jekyll and Hyde. Glory and humility; something for everyone. We truly are people for all seasons and inside we are, for better or worse, a union of contradictions.

I've been wondering about St. Francis lately and feel I must read a good "Life of…" He lived in a very different time. A very dangerous time I suppose and I wonder about the example we assign to Francis now: meek, loving, humble, a friend to animals. But what was the reality of challenging the powers of Rome (presumably some Romans had a problem with vows of poverty) and also founding a functioning Franciscan Order with any corporation's needs and machinations? Was Francis a bureaucrat or a Christ-like saint wafting through the middle ages like a gentle Spring wind?

Oh, religion is such a weird and sticky thing! It's the artist in me that wants to see the Spirit behind all things and it's the artist who is perpetually seeking glory in the most mundane and forgettable effects and coincidences of the things that cross my trajectory through my existence. Maybe St. Francis would have some thoughts on the matter…?