Evil In Silk & Pearls

Albert Einstein said:

 "The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."

Leonardo Da Vinci said:

"He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done."

Pascal said:

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

And Cicero said:

"The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil."

So if people, especially in a religious setting, watch the perpetration of evil and do nothing, do they lack wisdom or integrity to act?  Either way they are in spiritual poverty immune from Wisdom's call. 

But Martin Luther King said:

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

I have pondered MLK's quotation many times to get through bitter times when I have seen evil win.  It helps me to remember that evil triumphant is still evil.  I don't care who dresses it in silk and pearls and takes it out for a thrill.  It is what it is, and if we have Wisdom we can recognize evil beneath the silk and pearls.  Proverbs describes Wisdom as the light of dawn growing ever brighter presenting a garland of grace and a crown of beauty.  I believe that MLK's words put the dilemma of evil triumphant in perspective.  Unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the "final words in reality" and that the strength of right is seen in grace and beauty, qualities eternal and indestructible, world without end. 

Lenten Sacrifices

It is time to consider Lent and what to take on or give up to observe the season.  I try very hard to understand this year after year, but I'm still not sure I get it.  It isn't because I don't understand that I should be conscious of the sacrifice of Christ.  I am.  But it somehow seems a bit artificial to give up chocolate when you live in America and can still have vanilla and caramel.  So what if we give up a meal?  I mean, this is the richest country in the world.  Compared to the rest of the world we live in paradise (even without our chocolate or three squares).  What have we really sacrificed; what have we learned?  Isn't this a bit of artificial piety?

Maybe the problem is food isn't important enough to make me get it.  What if I had to give up painting with blue during Lent?  Or wearing jeans or turquoise rings?  Imagine 40 days without wearing anything from Talbots, taking a photograph, visiting ebay, watching "Law & Order" or e-mailing my buddies?  Now THAT would be a sacrifice, even a bit of hell, but would it take my faith to a deeper place?  I don't know because I don't plan to try.

I do study Mary Magdelene every Lent.  I wear my MM medal and feel particularly close to her.  I pray that I will learn to have her loyalty, courage and love.  I want to see Christ like she did - the one who saved her from demons and showed her the meaning of life.  I want to feel the loss of that light on Good Friday and imagine a world where Christ is gone so that I can appreciate his presence.  Unlike MM I know he will rise on Easter.  She did not know that.  What joy she must have felt.  I cannot imagine.  If giving up chocolate for 40 days and reclaiming it on Easter could give me the joy MM felt when Christ rose from the dead, maybe I'd give it a try.

So as Lent looms and threatens to descend upon us with ashes and loss of chocolate, I will consider all of this yet again and see if there is some way to desire giving up anything besides church.  I'm not a complete barbarian; I do get observing Lent.  I just don't know that temporay abstinance makes as much sense as taking on contemplation.  To that end I will probably participate in stations of the cross on Friday nights during Lent, something I have always wanted to do.  So maybe I have found something to give up after all...Friday nights.  If it ends early enough I can run to the mall and get home in time to eat my caramels and watch "Law & Order".   No artificial piety here.   

Art Studies

I am not so disciplined with my art at times.  I go from one thing to another without finishing what I started.  I want to work on that, and I may have found a method to motivate myself.

I added to this site a feature entitled Art Studies.  Here I will be required to tell a story with art, to think through the art I am working on and be forced to articulate what it means and how my imagination was captured by a concept.  I hope the stories told will entertain, enlighten, but, most of all, make the viewer think about the concept being visually defined.  Have any of these concepts captured your imagination?  Have you created images around these themes or written about them.  If so, please feel free to share with me.  Let's collaborate.   Perhaps we can find some mutual inspiration and have some fun.

The image to the left is entitled "Slotha" which is the Aramaic term for prayer.  It implies setting a trap for one to catch God.  It will be part of an Art Study entitled "Creative Prayer' in which I hope to explore visual images associated with concepts of prayer.   

Lessons From The Lenten Rose

The Lenten Rose is such a symbol of this end of Winter/beginning of Spring time of year.  It fortells the beauty of Spring sure to come and the hardship of Winter still upon us in its subtle, shy colors and unobtrusive appearance hidden amidst leaves.  The arched over beauty faces downward requiring us to lift her head to see her little freckled face.   Looking directly in her face we understand that as pilgrims through the dark, we have far to go, but with honesty, simplicity and humility we will survive and arrive.  

PS  The dates on this card are incorrect.  The Pancake Dinner is 02/20, and Ash Wednesday is 02/21.

Enclosure

Synesthesia & Synchronicity

Oh my goodness, 7's really are golden yellow, and R's are red.  Mondays are blue, and Wednesdays are black.  I have always known this and tried to describe it to a few people, but no one ever got it.  I thought it was overactive imagination or extreme love of color (I joined the Episcopal Church, in part, because it is color coded).  Instead it was synesthesia all along - a neurological overlapping of senses so that one associates color with letters, numbers, words or music or perhaps tastes or smells sounds.  It is nice to have a word to apply to a lifelong reality I never found another person to understand.

Synchronicity happens to me often, and many people do get that.  It is the "God winks" concept; I like to refer to it as "Ask and the door will open; seek and you will find" concept.  Then again, I pray for synchronicity because it feels very much like the hand of God showing up in my tiny, unimportant world.  It is not at all unusual for me to find what I am looking for or wanted to know by what would appear to be happenstance.  Or I will say something riding down the road and hear the very concept repeated in some group setting a few days later (odd stuff, like 'yellow is NOT mellow" and, boom, someone says something like yellow is not a relaxing color after all when you got together to discuss English literature).  I also have lots of books on the most unbelievable range of topics through which I flit haphazerdly, depending on my mood.  It really is an altogether wonderful way to live, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in creativity and spirituality. 

Recently I had a bad day brought on by some deliberate cruelty I would just as soon not describe.  On that day I ran across synesthesia and realized what a wonderful little gift God gave me.  Several days later I picked up a book I flip occasionally and opened it at one of the three marked spots.  I had not read this before; do not know why the blue bookmark was there; suspect it was there from several years ago marking a section I had read.  I glaced down and immediately picked up the word synesthesia.    I didn't know that was there.  I was surprised and delighted.  A theme runs through my pain.  What is God telling me?  Why is this concept appearing in multiple places?  Can I smell concepts like fear, truth, lies?  I suspect to some extent many people can.  Can I see my own prayer?  Can I wait in the dark until the colors appear? 

Last Year This Time

When I repeat seasonal projects the same time each year I get into this interesting rhythm that reveals the changes that have occurred to me and my art in a year.  Last year this time I was preparing a Lent postcard for my church.  I was in the mood.  This year I am not.  I would be happy to skip Lent and move on to Easter. 

I have this funny love/hate relationship with Lent.  It is a mass of contradictions for me, and it lasts too long.  I find the veiling of crosses with violet silk to be an humbling and grounding experience year after year.  The crosses are beautiful, and this expression is one of the most striking forms of symbolism in the church to me.  It says "this is who we are" because it starkly reveals us as a people who never forget and somehow connects me to the communion of saints who came before me.  [In that way being Christian and Southern is somewhat similar.] But I do not like the overt public display of personal piety, the talk about what people plan to give up for Lent.  That's very much like wishing on a star and assuring the wish won't come true by telling what you wished.  It reminds me of a kindness negated by making its existence public.  For God's sake, go in a closet to pray and do good deeds. 

The time around Lent has been turbulent for me over the last several years.  I have turned it into a joke that I plan to give up church for Lent.  It's a joke that puts a look of horror on the face of a priest, but it has been a joke lived out for a  couple of years by a withdrawal from community during Lent.  While I veiled the crosses, I didn't even go to the Shrove Tuesday pancake dinner last year to celebrate the last moments of festivity before Ash Wednesday.  I didn't go to Ash Wednesday either because the thought of the priest who would administer the ashes even so much as touching me induced nausea.  That made me sad then.  It is not a problem this year, so I'll have to come up with some other reason to avoid the solemnity.

I do love Good Friday.  It's one of my favorite services all year, and I totally get into the intensely solemn observation.  But it doesn't last long, and by Saturday we are hauling flowers into the nave to celebrate the resurrection.  I wouldn't miss Good Friday unless I just had to.  I feel particularly close to my patron saint, Mary Magdalene, and I grieve from the heart for the passion of Christ, and it is good for my soul.  But much of the rest of season just wears me out.

So last year I couldn't/wouldn't participate even though I was up for it.  This year I can/might, but I'm not up for it.  Last year I was into iconic images of deep meaning.  This year I want to paint white flowers with light.  I have nothing to give.  I am ready to take.