Wendy Ide Williams, “After Reading Horae Canonicae,” Mixed Media on Paper. This painting is from her show Spiritual Roots at the Laffer Gallery opening July 10.
I am one of those blessed with high spirits from “getting out” as restrictions have loosened and the outdoors is warm and blooming. When I sit myself down to reflect—taking a stance somewhere beyond where I usually find myself as one does when one goes to write or paint or pray—I hear lines from a poem by Emily Dickinson:
Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro' endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –
This is not the frame of mind which I find most easily leads to contemplation and writing this blog. Looking at myself, I think I look rather stupid and happy at this moment. High and low circumstances are level ground for me as long as they have flowers on them catching dew. But “inns of molten blue” do seem cathedral-like, somehow, and lead me inward.
Why try to be so reflective when it is hard to think this way now and to do it with regularity ever? It only happens regularly by way of intention—maybe only on Sunday—due to siege of distraction or because of being busy trying to survive. We might prefer to find beauty and gratitude in a less self-conscious way through liturgy and the sacraments than by contemplation or creative practice—it can be heavy digging to find the sacred within.
Why do I use “I” as if I am a good subject to write about? Well, it is because I am trying to make a piece of writing here, and like a painting or any metaphoric world one tries to create, it needs a subject. (I would argue that even abstract art has a subject—a “spiritual root.”) I found myself sitting here happily thinking of flowers, and thought I would not be offended if I used myself, which also has the advantage of sparing something or someone else from being written about by one not well-focused on the task.
Debauchee of dew am I, but, sedentary and content as a vase of flowers, I could not hope for a better subject at this moment than this (my) self. There is no better explanation for why there are so many self-portraits in the world than readiness of the subject. It is curious to think that Rembrandt made so many because people enjoyed buying them, as if a window into his self-reflection led them to their own discovery.
All of the above—contemplation, poetry, painting, writing, liturgy and sacraments—can lead us to God and to our true selves. These things can mirror and reveal each other. And even for the busy, artists and non-artists alike, there are creative ways of learning to see the sacred in the profane, and of learning to bring what we regard as profane in ourselves and directing it to what is sacred.
Allowing yourself to be drawn to a thing for no particular reason, allowing questions to loom (as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke advised a younger poet to do), not distracting yourself from why a particular thing won’t leave the mind (flowers!) and taking it as a sign—not in superstition, but as a way of taking yourself and your responses seriously as gifts from God among God’s other gifts—this is receiving your own authority, that which is born of your experience, and the significance of how you see. It is declaring your life (whatever it is) to hold sundry and good things, good at least in that they signify and point in a direction.
A painting is like a life—it is a metaphoric or symbolic world with a subject and other elements such as color, shape and line thrown in. The verb for “throw” in Greek leads to our word “symbol” from the Greek for “thrown together.” As the signs in the sacraments—bread, wine, water and oil—are thrown in with liturgy and its meaning they point beyond themselves, making real symbols which unite us with God and each other. With time for reflection we can see the signs in our lives by which God draws us in and connects us.
Such as that time when…….fill in the blank, often with a line of scripture, maybe a dream or a grace such as the sudden ability to love or accept or forgive. When lost we can remember this sign and sit with it. If we take ourselves as seriously as scripture and the sacraments tell us God takes us, our lives become worlds that are both real and symbolic that demand reflection—works of art. We gain mastery in them as we seek guidance from the hand of our Creator—the original Old Master.
If this kind of discussion draws you or mystifies you, please join me and others while we sit with what scripture, saints, and artists have said about how to use our creativity and imagination to have real lives that communicate with God. Click HERE to register for my two-part workshop on Zoom in August.
You might also like to join Evan Craig Reardon and me for our next deep reading group on Paradise Lost, stretching from October through December on Zoom. These groups lead us, through Evan’s expertise as a poet and gentleness as a guide—to learn about elements of poetry while living poetry through personal response and reflection together. Click HERE to go on this new pilgrimage through John Milton’s classic poem.
Our Cathedral Dean, senior priest and pastor, The Very Rev Fr Leander S. Harding, PhD, and I will be offering reading notes and a discussion on Art + Faith by contemporary painter Makoto Fujimura on Zoom starting in September—click HERE to join us for the Dean’s Forum.
And please check our calendar for other events, such as a workshop in the Cathedral with Diane Cameron juxtaposing The Ignatian Spiritual Exercises with The Twelve Steps of AA preceded by our Blessing of the Animals service with pet portraits, both October projects of Cathedral Arts, The Cathedral of All Saints’ mission to help people fall in love with God. Also go to our YouTube channel for services and offerings from the Music Department where our current organ fellow, Owen Reid, has been posting music from the contemplative beauty of the Cathedral.
Blessings and Peace to you all,
Brynna