In the Cross

Piet Mondrian, The Tree A, circa 1913

Tomorrow is Veterans Day, or Armistice Day, a day in which we remember the human souls behind world conflicts—those whom God created in love with bodies, hearts, and minds possibly broken or killed to bring resolution for the world. In turn we think of their families and friends and how wars said to have been won or dissipated long ago still show effects within our private realms.

Christians cannot think long of suffering and death apart from the cross of Jesus. In Roman-occupied ancient Palestine, the cross was a shameful way to die. The cross was reserved for criminals—those considered to be enemies of Rome. Crucifixion was death for losers, for those who did not have a chance to fight. Perhaps this has to do with why, when Pilate asked the crowd whether he should excuse Jesus or Barabbas from death, the crowd chose Barabbas—he was said to have murdered someone.

From a religious perspective, crucifixion at the hands of the enemy would appear as a death meant for someone from whom God had turned His face. Jesus, who always spoke that which gave utterance to the hearts of others, himself said what his disciples were surely thinking: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Today at Canterbury Cathedral, in Morning Prayer preparing for Armistice Day, in the garden where the orangery was lost to a bomb, in meditating on the meaning of the cross Dean Robert said “There is no hope of security except in eternity.” I feel this truth acutely as I pray for people today, some of whom are sick, some of whom are dying, while trying to not choke on the conflict in the air.

The cross, as a symbol, has been thought to mean many things. Grace to bear conflict with others and to accept cross-purposes within our own lives is one of them. The cross is two lines in opposition to each other. Some imagine the horizontal line as representing what is earthly and the vertical line symbolizing the heavenly.

In this way, the cross of Jesus, and the purpose of God in allowing it to be inflicted upon His Son and humanity, is available to all of us as a symbol which we might hold, imagine with, and make something from. It can help us face the fears of the world and lay them against what we trust God for—a line on which we can ascend and transcend.

That line might be one of thanksgiving you write in your journal, of one of a drawing that rejoices in the simple gift of the ability to make it, or words of encouragement for a friend. The cross might be imagined to be bearing this line into being, and then giving it away.

Piet Mondrian, Composition in Line, 1916-17

Join me for an Advent retreat with art on Zoom beginning on December 2. Click HERE for details or to register. Peace.

Matrix and Mother

The above painting is from the high altar in our Lady Chapel in which Mass is said daily. As our cathedral is Anglo-Catholic, and the Catholic Church dedicates October to the Rosary, it seems fitting to write about Mary before the month ends.

But this is a ruse because, as an artist and spiritual person, I find God in the gaps between things as much as I find what I am looking for in my objects of study. When I begin to write or make art about something or someone, I sooner or later realize that eyes in the back of my soul are studying something else.

As I write about Mary, Mother of Jesus, my gaze flies to the Trinity—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in which Jesus has his constant home. Here, by logic, I see Mary as the Mother of God. But logic is a clumsy tool for me, unlike a paintbrush I load with color. What I grasp as I write is the color that means Mary—blue. I want to show, however clearly, where blue meets God.

Cezanne is known as the the father of modern art. He is reported to have said, “Blue gives other color their vibration, so one must bring a certain amount of blue into a painting.” My painting teacher would say “Blue is the matrix of the universe,” thinking he was quoting Cezanne. (“Matrix” orginally meant “womb” and comes from the Latin word for mother.)

Through the appearance of blues that became available in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries—Prussian, ultramarine, and phthalocyanine blues respectively—we see a matrix of blue become increasingly apparent in art. Liberated from costly pigment ground from lapis lazuli—the likely sapphire of the Bible—painters spread blue paint and opened the heavens for us.

Mont Sainte-Victoire, Paul Cézanne, 1902-04

The painter Wassily Kandinsky wrote: “The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural... The brighter it becomes, the more it loses its sound, until it turns into silent stillness and becomes white.” A spiritual painter and writer, in writing about blue, did Kandinsky see Mary?

Jaune, Rouge, Bleu, by Wassily Kandinsky, 1925

At a recent Zoom meeting, the Dean sat in front of a tapestry of Jesus and the Sacred Heart as I stood in front of my semi-abstract watercolor of Jesus on the sea, which is my backdrop to the chaos of the pandemic and also to hope. I was struck by how the colors both in the Dean’s tapestry and in my painting are almost the same—as if I and the tapestry-maker held the same palette of colors and their meanings.

The tapestry’s Jesus is made from browns—earth tones—and is surrounded by blue sky comprised of the blues I mention above. The Dean’s Jesus has white angels within the blue. In his sermon on Sunday, Dean Harding spoke of Jesus’ sacred heart on fire for us. The white surrounding the heart shows its constant, intense heat.

Christ on the Sea, Brynna Carpenter-Nardone

In my painting, even as a color, Jesus has taken on earthly flesh to be surrounded by water as he was in the womb of his mother, blue Mary. He emerges to still the storm and point to glimpses of the color the Church loves to end his advent with—white—which might be moonlight or the Spirit moving on the water.

At this moment in time with injustice and unrest, sickness and death, we more easily recognize our fear of chaos than we see that we also fear our own advent and becoming. Can we for a moment, through the art of contemplation, deliver ourselves to be sown with Christ as a seed for the future? Are we able to remember our home in the matrix of the universe?

 We are all meant to be mothers of God...for God is always needing to be born.

—Meister Eckhart

Tails of Two Cathedrals

The Cathedral of All Saints in Albany, NY

Recently my prayers are most importantly that—prayers—while they often flow from a discombobulated mind and unsettled heart. For someone such as myself, sensitive and somewhat disorganized by nature, the Daily Offices of the Book of Common Prayer are effective means for steering myself toward God.

And so I am thankful that Thomas Cramner, Archbishop of Canterbury, pieced together that good English book from the Good Book and traditional prayers during his time of turmoil and reformation.

But I also have a creative mind that seeks itself to build a raft on which to float toward the uncertain future. Therefore I have an affinity for St. Ignatius, the day dreamer who discerned God’s action in his life and sought to teach others to do the same. Though I have not made a full retreat of his spiritual exercises, on most days I read a suggested passage of scripture for making the retreat. Then I revisit it, sometimes wrestle with it, sometimes draw it, throughout the day.

My first attempt at drawing an imaginative prayer—The angel’s visits to Mary and Joseph became conflated into one visit in my mind as the couple both accept the call to parent Jesus.

More on Ignatian prayer in the next blog post. Meanwhile, while I work on integrating his work, I enjoy our poetry workshops at our cathedral and listen to a variety of online podcasts and services.

A comfort to me during the pandemic has been my YouTube subscription to Canterbury Cathedral, where all prayers began to be said outside in its various gardens when it closed. All spring and summer, Dean Robert has read stories, such as The Little Prince, has begun prayers with quotes (this morning it was from Sylvia Plath’s journal), and gives homilies as the green around him becomes increasingly boisterous and shot through with blossoms.

I am no stranger to church mice and an occasional bat, but many animals live at Canterbury Cathedral. A cat is always somewhere in the frame at Morning Prayer, stealing the show. A few mornings ago, a black one ran as if chased. “It is a very windy day here,” the Dean said. “The cats don’t like it because it gets in their whiskers.”

He spoke with the same authority and inner knowledge in his voice that his homilies contain. I always listen to the liturgy rather than speak with him due to our different prayer book and lectionary. He seems aware of this as he invites me to say the Lord’s Prayer in whatever language I can muster. When I give thanks with him for anniversaries in the life of the world that he is careful to name, my private beast—my concern—jumps off the table as if to set about grooming itself straight.

A week or two ago, after Morning Prayer in a chicken coop had ended, a long series of grunts began. Hearing no prayer, I looked at my phone to see what had begun. It was a three-hour video of Clemmie the sow giving birth. Now, if I have already listened to Morning Prayer and I feel lost, I watch the videos of the growing piglets.

Grunts mean that life goes on even when cathedrals are closed and prayer has ended, even when pandemics rage. Jesus Christ is the same today, yesterday and forever. Clemmie and Winston are too busy in the piglet nursery to imagine that it could be otherwise. Dean Robert, always mindful of whiskers, the Cathedral looming above him and the sky above it, attest to the truth of these things.