Feast

The other night we went to Feast, one of our favorite restaurants, in fact the place we had our rehearsal dinner at - not that we rehearsed a dinner, but that we had a rehearsal for the wedding followed by a dinner: nothing about the dinner was rehearsed - the proceedings were unplanned and spontaneous - not that we'd not planned on eating there, just that the practice of sitting down and eating were all that had been planned: that is, the seating and space had been selected, but our actual presence and what we did with our presence was unknowable. Not unknowable in the sense of our not knowing what we were saying and doing, but unguessable. And still not unguessable in the sense of our acting in ways novel and arcane among each other, such that ordinary communication would be impossible. We had not rehearsed any of these things, and yet, in the course of human society, it could be remarked that our lives had been nothing but rehearsal. In that sense the rehearsal was the finished event and what was determined was by chance.
The other night we ate at Feast, a favorite restaurant of ours, the location of our wedding's rehearsal dinner, a dinner problematic in its designation but not in our participation - that is, it was our participation that was unrehearsed: unrehearsed in the sense of how we live through the conventions of life and learned behaviors - which are rehearsed over and over. Though we rehearse our behaviors ad hoc and without foresight to their symbolism and interpretations, enough spontaneity thrives in our actions and being, that we ascribe the sense of newness, the doing for the first-timeness, to our acts: in this case, eating at Feast.
Usually I eat steak, which Jami finds notable. She claims that it is a sign of my Englishness and proof of my unItalianess. Steak AnItalianate is. And so the confusion. Usually I eat steak, but tonight I ordered scallops and prosciutto in rissotto: a wonderful dish, even though it wasn't steak. It wasn't steak in the disagreeable sense of something not-being steak. The not-being-steakness of some things being more disagreeable or agreeable than others. Tonight I ate a very good not-steak.
Jami had a margarita pizza. There was no salt along the rim of the crust - which I thought might be an oversight. Once, years ago, I was served a margarita with sugar on the rim - which was disagreeable in extremis. The downfall of civilization may be dated from the day someone thought sugar on the rim of a margarita was a grand idea.
The margarita pizza and the non-steak scallops, prosciutto and rissotto were tasty and accomplished the physical necessity of invigorating us with the breakdown of protein molecules into our bloodstream, forming amino acids and such.
We ate at a table under the awning along the sidewalk facing the street. While we ate, it began to rain. It rained all the rest of the evening.
When I took the photograph above Jami was relishing her hiring at Duke Divinity. She said I made her look like one of my paintings. I love this beautiful woman.

MouseyTongue finds new home

The little kitten that was brought to us a month ago, weak, malnourished, and homeless has gone from 0.8 lbs to 1.9 lbs in that time. Now the kitten is frisky and his reflexes are sharp. He moves so quickly that it's near impossible to photograph him. Tomorrow, Saturday, Mousey finds a new home with Susan. He'll have some playmates (unlike the gang of four that hiss at him here) who'll enjoy bouncing around with him.
Susan lives in the apartment block where my mom and dad first set up housekeeping. We lived in the other side of the duplex from 1960 - 62. There's an element of coming full circle to this, a repetition - as Kierkegaard would have it. When we go there I peruse the shapes and angles of the layout, looking for some clue to my infantile formation. Since Susan's place is the opposite of the one my parents lived in, it's like looking in a mirror, or a mirror of a mirror. In the mirror of memory it's like looking in a mirror of a mirrored mirroring mirror.
It's something to reflect on.
But MouseyTongue is bothered by none of this. No Hegelian or Lacanian ruminations for his little kitten paws as he scampers around his new environs, battling dust bunnies, sidling up with his new kitten buddies in Christ. He'll grow fat and happy, napping in sunny spots for years to come.

Pentecost Banner

Before I began at Columbia Seminary I painted a Pentecost banner for my home church, First Presbyterian in Covington. I remember that it is a six foot square piece of loose canvas - I didn't stretch it. I painted it outside on the floor of the carport at my dad's. It is unhemmed. Red is the color of Pentecost as are blue and gold. The dove, the Spirit, descends into tongues of fire. It descends over a golden triangle - the Trinity. The bottom point of the trinity, where the dove is descending to, is the Chi-ro, the monogram of Christ. At the top of the painting, in a line, are the emblems of the gospel writers: angel, lion, oxen, eagle - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Blue is a color often associated with heaven. And there you have the iconographic program in a nutshell. What does it mean? It means the viewer has something to think about.
I hope that banners can be abstract in a Kandinsky or Klee kind of way. The Russian suprematist painter from early in this century, who painted a black square as his icon, his abstract window into the heavenlies, Malevich, is a good example to follow. Let's have a moratorium on rainbows and doves. I think dadaism isn't explored enough in banner art. The socialist graphics of the 1920s and 30s , El Lizzitsky and Tatlin and others offers a graphic guide to what can be. Herriman's Krazy Kat drawings would be a good way to go as well. I'm hoping that churches might adopt idiosyncratic ways of representing their faith - such that iconography avoids conformity to standardized expressions. That Orthodox icons are unchanged over 1500 years is not necessarily a good thing.

Remember your baptism

This relief was in the Chapel at Duke. I think it must be Jesus baptizing, since the figure pouring water from a scallop shell is holding a cross. Iconography is an interesting pursuit. Paul is always carrying a sword; Peter is followed by a rooster; Mary Magdalene cavorts with her alabaster jar. I think John the Baptizer carries a lamb - or it could be I'm conflating that from the Isenheim altarpiece, where John is pointing at christ on the cross and the lamb underneath is bleeding into a cup, or I could be conflating that from van Eyck's Ghent altarpiece. I think John has a lamb in Sint James painting of John the Baptist in the wilderness. Iconography makes things complicated: imagine a space where Catherine is with her wheel, Barbara with her tower, and St. Lawrence with his grill and St. Jerome with his lion all crowd together in a line at Kroger, with their buggies filled with food and odd items like batteries. Catherine, as usual, doesn't quite have exact change. It's about time for Jerome's lion to go to work.
Today we're in need of new iconography. Lions, wheels, swords - these symbols have lost their charge; plus other people need iconographic programs to trail along after them, wayward thought balloons. I propose a project for a revised iconographic emblemata for a new millennium.

The Waves

The beach is all about anticipation. I imagine that I'm Odysseus coming from the waves on shore where Nausikaa and her maidens are bathing. Once again I have escaped Poseidon's wrath and emerge from the briny depths salty and barnacled. Paleocartographers speculate that Odysseus found the land of the Phaacens around present day Turkey - what was earlier called Galatia - the homeland of the Gauls or Celts.
I'm writing a sermon on the last chapter of Galatians. Charlie Cousar said that verses 11-17 are the most important in the epistle. They certainly nail down what Paul is trying to say. When you read these last verses you realize that Paul has created a narrative of struggle: between an old way of life and a new way of life. To see this narrative in its proportions realize that the society that Paul wrote to is very different from American society. That ancient society (and the Middle East continues to be like this - we've grown away from it in the West, but this continues to hold for this area and is part of the reason that we don't understand how to engage with them except through violence, apparently) was a community oriented society, very stratified with many boundaries. People acted in groups that they belonged to - our notion of individualism would be a very foreign concept to them. What matters most to them is honor and shame. We think of shame as embarrassment, but they think of shame as a branding. Shame and honor are definitions of character: a person either has shame or honor in relation to another person. And so, in the communal system of shame and honor there are boundaries that are not crossed, except by persons who have that honor. To transgress a boundary brings about shame. So in Galatians, when Paul says that there is neither male or female, slave or free, Jew or Greek - he is saying that these boundaries no longer determine who we can accept, love, advocate for or befriend. In the context of that culture this is a startling thing to say. What possess Paul to say this? It is his experience of the crucified Christ. He met the crucified Christ on the road and it changed his way of being. The ultimate shame back then, for Jew and Greek was hanging on a cross: it was a naked, disgusting death - we may be shocked by the sadism of the event, but Jesus' contemporaries were scandalized by the shame (just as with the Abu Gharib photos, what seems to shock us [and rightfully] is the sadism involved, but what scandalizes people in the Middle East is the shame brought to these men [as well as the sadism, but I understand the shame to be more important in arousing anti-americanism]). Imagine Paul's shock when he meets the crucified Christ. This is a conundrum of honor and shame - in fact, in Christ the very distinction of honor and shame is subverted. So in these last verses Paul reiterates what he has said earlier, In Christ the world was crucified to him and he was crucified to the world. Paul could no longer go on living the way he had been living. To go on gaining honor and avoiding shame was an impossible way of living. Paul describes this experience of Christ as a new creation. This new creation is the goal of the whole letter. This new creation is the truth of the gospel that you walk toward. In Paul's confrontation with Peter earlier in the letter, Paul tells the story of how Peter waffled between living on either side of honor and shame boundaries without realizing that the boundaries themselves, and not the practices they symbolized, were what was harmful. The NRSV translates Peter as "not living consistently with the truth of the gospel." But the Greek more nearly reads that Peter "was not walking straight towards the truth of the gospel." Peter wasn't inconsistent, he was off course. So throughout this letter, Paul hasn't been admonishing the Galatians about their inconsistencies but about their going in the wrong direction. They were heading still deeper into the old creation with its rules and patterns. What exactly is this new creation? When Paul says "a new creation is everything!" his expression is similar in emphasis to the moment earlier when he says that "the only thing that counts is faith making its power felt in works of love." Between these two statements Paul describes the life of the Spirit versus the life of the Flesh. Under the old creation the flesh was held in check by the boundaries between opposites of gender, nationality and religion in the system of honor and shame - but these boundaries and this system did not really free people. Instead people were imprisoned. They were trapped in their roles and held captive to the approval of the group. But if the restraining force of boundaries and honor and shame are removed, what restrains people from giving into the basest inclinations of greed and lust? Paul tells us that it is the Spirit of Christ that has been sent into our hearts. This Spirit is at once a spirit of prayer and a bringer of faith. It is the Spirit that puts us in right relation to God. It is the Spirit that grows and sustains faith in us. It is the Spirit that sets us on the road to the truth of the gospel and it is the Spirit that will see us there.
This is the freedom of the new creation, a freedom where the believer subverts the system of honor and shame by crossing boundaries. These boundaries are not crossed by violence but by acts of love that spring from our faith, the faith in Christ that the Spirit is gestating in us, reforming us according to the image of Christ.
In the gospels we are given images of this love crossing boundaries: the good Samaritan - between Samaritan and Jew; the syro-phonecian woman - between gentile and Jew; the prodigal son - between the honored and the shamed; and many stories of people on the margins being brought back into honor.
We are not an honor and shame society. We are in a culture that venerates self reliance and individualism. Yet we find boundaries. Boundaries of race, gender and religion continue to represent a system that typifies the old creation, that resists the new creation, and that holds men and women captive, imprisoned. Our freedom is a freedom that is spent on the flesh and not the Spirit - which Paul also warned the Galatians about. Thankfully, we have the Spirit and we can tell when we're on course or not for the new creation by whether we privilege these boundaries as absolute or whether we subvert them with acts of love. There are many boundaries today besides race, gender and faith: there are also boundaries of legal and illegal residence, left and right, rich and poor, and many more, let your imaginations free - and these people, trapped in these boundaries, need our love and advocacy. When we are guided by the Spirit this way, we can be sure that we are on course for the new creation.

The Mysteries of the Deep

Last August we went to the beach on Oak Island, southward from Wilmington, NC. The top photograph is the view from where our rental beach house was. We'll be there again this August, but the pier was to be torn down. Will a local effort have saved the pier? Will the pier, through some local effort, have been preserved, allowed to stand against the tenditiousness of development, which supplies its own argument: no parcel of land that could be converted into money producing space can be allowed to stand idle - every square inch of humanely habitable land has to belch out dollars in a constant stream or there's no justification for it.
We enjoy the beach and right now, with a month to go before vacation, we're ready to hit the sand and dive into the waves. This year we've two solid weeks at the beach: one week in South Carolina and the next week in North Carolina.
At the end of those two weeks, Jami begins her new job at Duke Divinity. It's official now. Their offer letter arrived in the mail. Of course the way posts are dated, this post will appear off a day from that. That is I suspect that this post will be dated for Wednesday, even though I will probably finish writing it early Friday morning. Things interfere with writing: painting, sermon writing, reading for the sermon, thinking about the sermon, rewriting the sermon, eating lunch, shopping, replacing the dishwasher hose. But now I can write. Rain has pelted down on Decatur since 8 PM. I find the rhythm of rainfall to be conducive to creativity and meditation. Tonight was the first good rain we've had in over a month.
At the beach it will rain at least one day, maybe two. Last year it rained and Tony and Leanne braved the treacherous wind and surf to retrieve our beach umbrellas.
Last year I brought 32 books to the beach. Among them were Pound's Cantos and Roth's Portnoy's Complaint. This year I am thinking about Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and Jung's Mysterium Conjuntionis. I will try to keep the total of books under 20. It will be difficult. I want to do more water color this year. And this year I will try to do some blogging, even as others blog from that location.
I brought a bunch of DVDs last year because the place we rent has a giant TV. The house gets Turner Classic Movies so I'll keep the number of movies down. I'll try to hold the total down to five. I have to keep my total baggage down because I'll be flying from Durham back to Atlanta. My CPE at Atlanta Medical Center begins on August 20. Jami and I will do the long distance thing for a few months as I arrange a transfer to a CPE program in Durham or Chapel Hill.
In the bottom photo I'm on a small charter craft with about 30 other people fishing 20 some miles off shore. Tim, Tony, Leanne and I went fishing last summer. This year I'm staying on shore. I've never experienced sea sickness before.
During our honeymoon, walking out to the pier on the Thames for a boat that would take us to the Tate Modern form the Tate Pre-modern, the lapping of the waves brought back the beginning of the whole sea sick wooziness that I'd experienced last summer. Jami felt it too but didn't want to say. We took other means to the Tate Modern. We loved the Modern. It's on the south bank in an old power plant. They had a great surrealist exhibit up. A large David Smith retrospective was displayed. I've never seen so much of his work up close and it blew me away. One of the concerns of modernism is attention to the spirituality of form in itself through attention to the form and material of work in process - without recourse to overt subject matter: that is the subject matter of painting is painting and of sculpture sculpture. Smith exemplifies this. Looking at his work in this retrospective, I could see how he'd progressed, how his process changed to meet new personal challenges, and finally how he'd mastered the materials and created a vocabulary of shape and handling that brought about a spiritual experience. That is: the sculpture created a space that I entered, and in that space the sculpture changed that space as I was in it and changed the way that I was in it. I think this is what my teachers meant by the presence of a piece. They used the word presence like most people would us the word illusion to describe premodern painting or sculpture. The presence of a piece can not be conveyed by a slide or photo representation.
A lot of work doesn't have presence - or I should say, we're not taught to experience presence. The lure of mimesis is that we're taught to search for mimetic illusion - but illusion fails to represent: illusion betrays itself as not the thing. This is the subject matter of Magritte's C'est ne pais une pipe. When we cease looking for mimesis and its false comforts we can enter into the presence of a piece - a piece is more like nature in that that's the way we enter nature (although mimesis is attempted in nature now as well in certain kinds of theme parks, think Maggie Valley or Pigeon Forge. Or consider that now we look at the Grand Canyon but look only for its resemblance, its mimetic appeal, to an idea we have of Grand Canyoness - we are now trained not to see its presence).
We can experience presence in terms of scale. Scale is the relationship between the size of the parts of a piece to the size. That is: it's possible to have a small but large scale piece - as well as a large but small scale piece. When a piece is really large it acquires the characteristic of monumentality. Monumentality is a large scale but with the absence of any kind of ratio between small and large. The monumental, because it is often minimal, becomes the small part of the surrounding space - and this is what makes it monumental - like Richard Serras tilted pieces of wielded steel plate - there is no small piece to large piece ration; there is only the fact of these large slabs. What these slabs do is energize the space so that the whole area is brought into the artwork's field. Or what these slabs do is make you the smallest part of the ratio - and they bring you into the field of the artwork. This is what Smith's later work does.
Last year we three brought in a modest haul. We got our 13 pieces of fish back to the house and Jami broiled them with some lemon and garlic - I think. It was the best fish I'd ever had. 23 miles out, the bottom feeders are fair game. You cast out 100 ft of line and wait for your baited hook to bump into the wide open mouth of whatever these fish were - I can't remember the name, although a young girl on board caught a Spanish Mackeral - far from home. It was a beautiful fish, all dark and smooth, silvery and fierce. It had a presence.

Around Duke

Last summer Jami and I visited friends in Durham. Paul, pictured with Jami in the middle photo, toured us around the campus, showing us the new things that had been constructed with the library and the divinity school. The top two photos are of a bistro attached to the library, and the bottom photo is a new chapel in the divinity school. In the background, in front of the piano, you see Jami, with her large pink handbag that she bought at a yard sale here in Decatur for two dollars.
What impressed me about both spaces was how airy they are. Light from outside fills them, and the abundance of windows allows me to feel like I'm in nature. The chapel's space has a great freedom in it. Behind the pulpit I don't experience the widening gulf between myself and the congregation that's typical of most church architecture. It's a space that combines formal elements (Gothic patterns of building common to Duke, the organ ranks, the pulpit/congregation split) with intimacy. Last summer I thought, "what would it be like to have coffee here? What would it be like to preach here?"
I remembered how 17 years ago I had lived in Chapel Hill, finishing my Library Science degree. I remembered that just as I had finished my coursework and had begun writing my thesis my mother died. How disoriented I was when I left this place to move back to Georgia.
When I was six, in my first year of school, a big headed skinny kid with horn-rimmed glasses, I remember thinking how far away graduation seemed: twelve years - that's forever. Now I'm throwing up decades and twelve years, much less seventeen years, don't seem like much at all.
Jami and I marvel that we both lived in the Chapel Hill/Durham area around the same time. She lived there longer than I did, but we both left in 1990. We never met, or we're not conscious of meeting, in the years we were there. Perhaps I cut her off in traffic; Perhaps she glanced at me as I visited friends at Duke and thought, "what an odd fellow" - if as much as that.
What would it be like to live there again? In 17 years Durham's not the same place. Neighborhoods have gentrified; the Durham Bulls play in a new ballpark for a different major league team; the basket ball universe has altered, if slightly. But there are continuities: our friends who live there came to our wedding; Carolina bar-b-que is still superlative (although Georgia Brunswick stew continues to be better - why is that?) and abundant; and the place is awash in culture: the universities, libraries, museums, music and theater venues.
Atlanta is a dear place to us. Our families are nearby. We've tons of friends here and a very supportive church. And Atlanta hops with culture too, even more so - it's just a big sprawling place that's really a bunch of little places butting up against each other. And we're comfortable in our little place here in Decatur. We've got our creek outside (it's called something like Peace and Love creek, and now its course is fixed in a concrete bed - but its gentle curve under the trees behind us is beautiful, bucolic) and we walk to church. The seminary's five minutes away. The Midtown movie theater is 20 minutes driving, and the Tara, with Varsity chili dogs waiting across the street, is about 20 minutes as well.
I like having lunch with my friends: going to Twain's and playing shuffleboard with Bob as we down copious diet coke and wings and nachos; talking sermons with Joe and trying new beers. It's a joy to go with Jami to a major league game, even if the Braves are disappointing.
Two months ago, Jami and I went to a game, and as we crossed the bridge over I-20, she looked at me and said, "isn't it nice, just the two of us with the kids out of the house." Yes, we decided then, we're like some couple that's discovering each other once the kids have left.

Great with Child

May friend Suzanne made a comment years ago that all my figures were skinny. So I did a couple of pregnant nudes: this is one of them. I called it Great with Child - after the KJV phrasing of Mary's and Elizabeth's pregnancies. Today we don't say a woman is great with child, unless she's very good with children. Or perhaps this punctuation of the phrase might be appropriate, "Great! with child [again]."
I should do more pregnant nudes again someday.
Today's food blogging item is a childhood reminiscence: when I was a young child, my grandparents ran a store. A mom and pop store. It was a general store with produce, dry goods, and gasoline, Union 76. The store was located on the edge of town, across from the cemetery. During the summers there was little to do but draw and play among the pot holes of the parking lot. One fun thing to do was to go inside and open the cooler where the small coke bottles were. Open one, take a swallow, and open a bag of salted peanuts. I would take the bag's crenelated edge in my teeth and tear, opening the bag. Then I would pour peanuts into the coke. The first swallow was a cavalcade of salty goodness, sweet and salty at once.
On a summer day when temperatures soared into the high 90s and the Braves were already in fifth place by late May, such pleasures were cherished.

Laughter

True enough, as Jami will tell you, one of the benefits we share together as husband and wife, is the interface of our brain waves. Scientific proof that a husband and wife's brain waves can cross, merge and hybridize is elusive. Yet, how can some things be accounted for. I am broaching this topic because suddenly I have developed the ability to write about cooking. I get this ability from some other worldly sphere - dare I say, from sharing alpha-wave patterns with Jami. So what I'm about to write is, in a sense, a product of Jami's as well as an invention of mine.
Lunch can be the day's most important meal. When I'm preparing my own lunch the first thing I do is go to Kroger. there I wait in line for the deli counter person to ask me what I want. I usually tell her that I want a fried chicken breast. Sometimes though I will ask for two short thighs. It's important that the chicken be fried. I take this fried chicken and go to the chip and cracker aisle. Jalapeno and cheddar flavored chips are quite tasty. Sometimes I go with sea salt and vinegar. Once I bought cracked black pepper, but this offering underwhelmed me. I take these items to the cashier. At the express line, while I wait behind someone paying for detergent, grape Hi-C, and pork chops with exact change in quarters and pennies, I grab a couple of Diet Cokes. One will probably be sufficient, but I buy two, just in case. What I have is a filling lunch for under seven dollars. I'll finish the chips at my studio while I paint. It's the nirvanic balance of my life.
People say to me, "OK Fred. It's apparent that Jami's superlative cooking skills are influencing your gastronomic sensibilities. What is she gleaning from her brain waves' connection to yours?" I have to admit that this is an astute question. Jami and I have discussed this topic at length while we play Scrabble. And I must say, and she may disagree with me as there might be some contention, but I must say that I believe that my comic sensibility has influenced her.
I say this because one thing I do comedically is laugh at myself. Jami has this same disposition. Remarkable.

Trafalger Square at night

Our honeymoon in January: we walked around London. We exited the National Gallery in the evening and walked by the fountains. London was more expensive than we'd anticipated. We had a bout of food poisoning. And we had a wonderful time.
When I look at this photograph I'm struck by the placement and play of the light. Light from direct sources and light reflected in water. Light is bent with the water as it arcs. And light is diffused in the air, giving the picture an over-all softened appearance. I focus on the equestrian statue, silhouetted against the sky. The rider seems to gallop on air or along the roof line. The perspective and angles, along with the bend of light along the water spout, give the image a collage effect. Positive and negative space are confused: is the inner part of the arc hollowed out? Does it read partially as a bridge? Perspective and proportion are skewed. Tension is created by the rising diagonal, left to right, that the rider describes, which is opposed to the stronger arc of light directly under him. The eye rises and is pulled down at once, as the picture is read, left to right. As the eye follows the arc down into the fountain, there is a feeling of expansion and lift. The eye follows the light of the right edge fountain up and back to the central square of white, where it rests before shifting back to the far left pattern of gold and white checks, formed by the windows of the left edge building. The photo is carried by color: golds and purples. Midrange warms and cools that give the atmosphere a relaxed feeling.
That's certainly how we felt: relaxed and at peace.
We still feel that way.

Jami's sister made me this warm, cool looking hat, that kept my head dry

Here's Jami, on our honeymoon, looking smoldering and lovely, standing on the river walk on the Thames' south bank, near the British Film Institute, a wonderful place to watch a movie. We saw two Bogart films: Sahara and the Big Sleep. They also have a wonderful restaurant there where they serve top notch fish and chips.
I've been offering food recipes and exempla on my blog while Jami's attending to other matters. In that spirit I've uncovered a superb bachelor recipe. I hope that it inspires as well as instructs.
Here goes:
Drink - chilled martini glass, Grey Goose vodka, three olives (w/ blue cheese stuffed in them)
Food - corn chips and Pace hot picante sauce followed by hot dogs, broiled or fried till blackened, covered with onions and chili, each in a bun.
Bon Appetite. Good night and good luck.

Jami puts the kitten in a martini glass

The kitten fits in a martini glass. The system works! For months Jami has followed Kittenwar at the eponymous site. On this site photos of kittens are pitted against each other in up or down voting opportunities. The very cutest kittens win 75 per cent of their battles - and the not so cute? that's a sad tale. We've noticed that the cuter kittens are often portrayed in cups or small objects, and they are new kittens. Older kittens fare less well. Kittens in groups cuddled together fare well also. So in the spirit of kitten war cliches, we attempted to get MouseyTongue into a martini glass - a sure fire winning strategy. He was uncooperative. We promised to keep him dry, but he apparently likes his martini dirty. In the process the martini glass suffered indignities that can only be hinted at and must remain unnamed.
All this reminds me of a cartoon I saw when I was pre-K. It was one of those 1930s cartoons that's jazzy and the animation backgrounds are hazy. Figures have no elbows and arms and legs bend in arcs. The chiaroscuro is thick and murky. In this cartoon some kittens escape from their mother and travel all over the house, having mishaps. At one point the kittens get into the liquor cabinet. Soon they're wearing smoking jackets and puffing on stogies.
At this point it becomes somewhat surreal. There's a knock at the door and the kittens cautiously open it. They've won a trip on the Hindenberg! They're chauffeured to the aerodrome where they cavort with all the celebrities and politicos of the day: [insert Movie Tone Newsreel music and narrator] there's Jack Dempsey, and Mayor Jimmie Walker, and is that Lou Gehrig? It is! - he's holding Joe Dimaggio's scissors: there's a real Yankee Clipper! And here come the kittens: they're drinking out of all the martini and champagne glasses and the guests are loving it, as the majestic airship sails high over the Atlantic for the 1936 Olympiad - the party's just getting off the ground. While on the Hindenberg the kittens switch from macanudoes to Chesterfield cigarettes: Chesterfield, there's a smooth smoke that won't burn the larynx - so says opera star, the Met's own, Suzanne Fisher: she won't go on stage without taking a quick puff. And look at those kittens scamper down the gangway. They're the toast of Unter den Linden. Tonight they'll dine with Charles Lindbergh, the Lone Eagle, and Herman Goerring , in another embarrassing episode of American hero worship and misguided pre-war allegiance.
[end newsreel music and narration]
Later, while the kittens are gathered around Jesse Owens, their mother shows up. She's flown across the Atlantic in Amelia Erhart's Ford Trimotor. She scolds them and shoos them onto the plane and back to the states. The cartoon closes with the kittens singing a farewell octet to Owens and the other braves athletes of the Olympiad.
I've forgotten a lot, but that's the gist of it.

actual size

This is as big as this kitten is. Take a ruler and place it on the screen. Incredible isn't it? Yet true enough, this kitten is minute, the very definition of miniscule. Sure, over time, this little MouseyTongue may well tower over other domestic felines - but it seems unlikely. This little kitten will make the perfect companion for a boy or girl. He begs for you to take him home and feed him.

We went to see the Liebowitz exhibit at the High on Saturday and coming back I took some photos

And my camera loves blur. Jami's beautiful, even when a bit blurry. She wanted me to be sure and get shots of the shoes. Last night she walloped me twice in scrabble. After a weekend where I won twice, she's come on like gangbusters.
Since her food blog's on hiatus, I thought I'd talk about food from my bachelor days. [I'm doing this for people who like food as a conversational matrix in which to project ideas of self and augur development of identity in gastronomic dialectic. ] I begin by going to the store and buying a can of spam. When I get home I open the can of spam and slice the block of pork-material into slices, which I place on a sheet of tinfoil on the top rack of the stove, near the broiler. I pour worcestershire sauce on the slices of spam and I turn on the broiler. After five minutes I flip them and broil another minute or until flames leap out of the door. When done, I remove and put a slice on white bread with mayonnaise. Sometimes I add dill.
Jami loves it when I mention dill, because apparently I don't know how to use dill. It's a pickle for sure.

Much further along now

Locked in a tower: She thinks, "I had a life. I was going somewhere. Every day I'd read: plays, poetry, novels. And I practiced my music. I lived a life of expectation. I had my eye on some boys and loved to go dancing. I was princess of the kingdom. And then one day some drunken priest my father was bar-hopping with spewed out some nonsense where his daughter's son would kill him. Dad tried to dress it up to me as some oracle wrenched from the soul of the pithian navel. But I knew priests love to plant these ideas in king's minds. It's as if they live to get fathers to sacrifice their daughters. Let me tell you about my friend Iphegenia - dead on a mountain so her father could get better gas mileage. I ask where will it end? Old men live in fear and are easily manipulated. What did Laius think? That Oedipus, a little infant, would stab him with a rattle? My parents and their friends creep me out. Here I am in a tower, reading, bored, and one day I look up and there's Zeus. I just knew it was him, even though he was as slight as a beam of light, all golden, and it seemed that gravity couldn't hold him. He moved swiftly and covered me with warmth. I was in heaven. But Zeus: he never writes, he never calls. What is he up to? I need him now because dad suspects. I'm sure of it. I'm five months along. I'm over eating and having mood swings. Yesterday I tore up a bunch of books and made a large paper mache glider to fly off the top of the tower. What was I thinking? I'd have broke my neck. More and more I ask why, why can't we talk; why can't we talk and dad could be a grandfather to the boy? Is talking too much? Must we be subject to the drunken mouthings of oracular nitwits? "

What shall I do for post 100?

Danae, a young woman imprisoned by her father, a king, who is told that his daughter's offspring will kill him. So the king puts his daughter in an impregnable tower. Zeus, who likes a challenge, beams down on Danae in a ray of golden light. Soon she conceives Perseus, the kid who grows up to decapitate the Gorgon, Medusa. Perseus indeed kills his father - but he refuses the kingdom. I've been working on this painting for months and it's nearing completion. Here are two details: her face, reflecting golden light, and her hand, covered with blood.
Only recently has this painting become Danae. At first I began an abstraction, intending the painting to be about lines of color. And then this figure appeared. I attempted to create a visitation or a three graces - but the composition wouldn't work right. Now I've settled on Danae, and it fits.
I've loved this story for years. Along with the Leda story and the Europa story it forms a trinity of Zeus stories. Zeus as light, impregnating a girl with transcendence, ratchets up the symbolism. This isn't some anthropomorphic tale but a tale that comes as near as ancient mythology can to the virgin birth.
In the story of the Virgin the Holy Spirit is often depicted impregnating Mary through the ear. At least the idea is that the Word begets the Word via audation. Nothing's easy - got to go in through the ear. Which ear? I can't remember if it matters, but probably the right ear - the left ear being sinister.
So you think a tradition would have begun of virgins wearing veils over their ears?
Danae was locked in a tower of bronze, which didn't stop her from becoming pregnant. Her father then put her and her son in a wooden chest and pushed her out to sea - but that didn't stop Zeus and Poseidon from saving her son and her.
Later myths tell of Perseus killing his father two ways: one is an accident with a discus or javelin at the Olympic games; the other is some bold intrusion into the king's court where Perseus pulls Medusa's head out of a bag and turns the whole court to stone. When I was young, hearing this story as a small boy, I loved the vengeance of the calcified court; now I prefer that the story of an accident at the games: it has that element of chance encounter like Oedipus meeting his father along the road; or like the Israelite king who hides among his army in disguise only to be killed when an archer draws his bow and releases an arrow by chance.

All I've ever wanted in this life

Jami beams at me, smiling on her birthday. And my heart is buoyant with delight. Even though she's protested most of the photos I've taken and posted, I think that she'll like these. To me, she is beautiful in every photo I've posted. Here she is early in the morning, reading my previous post on Bloomsday on Bloomsday.
Today was the Oakhurst Picnic. Our church here, a wonderful church where there really is diversity, where we're not part of the most segregated hour in America, is precious to us. When I first came to Columbia Theological Seminary I went to Central in downtown Atlanta. Central is a wonderful church. Ted Wardlaw, the pastor back then [he's since gone on to be head of Austin Seminary], preached good sermons. I also knew a few of the elders there. One of my favorite services at Central involved a blue grass choir. The service used blue grass extensively. I'll have to write about the power of blue grass in another post. If you want to feel like you're in a progressive congregation with all the acoutrements of ancient power and wealth, that's the place to go. They do many good things in the inner city: run a night shelter, provide services for the homeless and poor, medical care, literacy programs.
Central, however, is a long way for a seminarian to drive. Oakhurst, less than two miles from CTS, became my default church. I found myself looking forward to being there: singing with the gospel choir and the chancel choir; passing the peace for 15 minutes; and being in church with african-americans and people of different sexual orientations. I felt liberated here. The fact that Jami has gone there for over five years makes it that much more special. It is also the church we were married in.
All I want is to paint, to love this woman, and to be a minister.
Anyway I like these two photos: Jami's smiling and laughing - perhaps at the thought of beating me in scrabble. Perhaps at one of my great jokes.

Paul and Thecla

The Acts of Paul and Thecla is a 2nd century romance about Paul and Thecla. Paul is an apostle and Thecla is a bride to be who is convinced by Paul's gospel message to abandon her role in life, leave her beau at the altar, and assume the role of disciple, preaching along with Paul, the message of Christ: that they are crucified to the world and the world to them; that what matters is a new creation and not this current state of affairs.
Thecla's mom and beau don't give up: they attempt all kinds of shenanigans to return Thecla to her role, wife of a benefactor, ruling the domicile as a piece of property. But Thecla doesn't want to be a piece of property, she wants to belong to Christ. And so it turns out that she is delivered to the lions in a great public spectacle. Instead of eating her, tearing her limb from sinew and crunching tasty dainty flesh, the lion is converted by Thecla. Thecla then pours water on herself and exclaims, in the only use of the middle voice that occurs in any canonical or non-canonical text of the word "baptizomai" - "I baptize myself." She baptizes herself (that she hadn't already been baptized is not unusual, since early Christians had established a catechumate as long as 3 years before baptism) and then she baptizes the lion.
Eventually Thecla is dispatched. Paul is dispatched - but not in this story - or any story: the book of Acts ends like the Sopranos: it goes black and you're left to fill in the blanks.
The lion isn't dispatched. Instead he, his name was Henry, was one of the early missionaries to Spain. When later he was complained to that his gospel was a bit Arian, Henry shrugged and said, "what's the big deal. I'm a lion and I'm talking to you and that doesn't seem to bother you?"
Ludwig Wittgenstein would later say that if a lion could talk we wouldn't understand him; Henry's tale says not so much "not understand him" as not "get him."

One of the first paintings Jami bought from me

One of the first paintings Jami purchased of mine was this image of Salome with the head of John the Baptist. The piano refers to Strauss's Salome and cues the viewer in that this is more than the Biblical story. Salome adds new meaning to knowing in the Biblical sense. This Biblical sense of proportion is at once outlandish, outrageous, egregious, and an affront and a back and a side. In an aside the woman is at once Lotte Lenya and the head would be Strauss's own. I don't mean to stress Strauss. Offenbach Overbeck and Karl Orff yer dogs. Off to children's choir the other day I saw the chorister toten kinder lieder, lending tender kentish litters, coating lint or leading kintners, kiting tendori lantern condors. I was as astonished as anyone at our extinguished host hoisting hottentottentettertots upon the briny deeps: unfathomable.

Five Years Ago

Five years ago I painted this painting before I went to seminary. It's a 15 by 20 inch painting in oil of some trees and the paint is laid on thickly. I remember when I painted it. I was using the carport at my dad's house as my studio and I was painting during the Summer. I painted at night, when the air cooled down. An owl screeched overhead and tree frogs made a steady pulse of sound. I've thought that this painting isn't quite finished, but so many people react positively to it, I think it would be a shame to do anything to it. Someday I'll get back to oils. Acrylics offer immediate results, but oils offer an elasticity of approach. I can lay my brushes down and come back hours later and the paint's still alive. Sometimes I feel that oil paint is more real. Acrylic is plastic and no matter how good a painting is, the surface doesn't feel hard enough. Still acrylic is great for using in poorly ventilated spaces - which is what I've had for some time. Acrylic is also portable in a way that oil isn't.

Of course the kitten is getting bigger

I took this two weeks ago when we first began caring for the kitten, MouseyTongue. At the time Mousey was .8 lbs. In a few days he was up to .9 lbs. And now, he must be over a pound. In a few weeks we'll take him for his final test, and he'll no longer need to be quarantined from other cats. Then the cat will be free to live with a wonderful new owner. Mousey will make a wonderful child or adult a boon companion. This little kitten is playful and frisky. But of course, we can't keep him: the gang of four, Thelma, Louise, Cleo and Catalina wouldn't allow that.

Happy Birthday Jami, Beautiful Wife

I was born on the Fourth of July, a very historical date for the US, but not so much for the rest of the world. Celebrations of the Fourth are low key in Italy, for instance, and delayed till the 14th in France. Jami was however born on an even bigger holiday, Bloomsday, the day of the month of June where all the action occurs in Joyce's Ulysses. This is a great literary holiday. People all over the world are hoisting a Guinness, ghosting a highness, and goosing a hostess. Wikipedia has a grand entry on Bloomsday. Suffice it that Joyce picked this day for the action in his book because its the day of his first date he had with his wife, Nora Barnacle. So Three Quarks for Muster Mark, as Joyce says in Finnegan's Wake, as well as The Proteiform graph itself is a polyhedron of Scripture.
And I sat [sic] about reading the Wake this morning to be sure of my quotes above, and I came upon this gem: amid all the punning and portmentauing, Joyce writes, "What has gone? How it ends?/Begin to forget it. It will remember itself from every sides, with all gestures, in each our word. Today's truth, tomorrow's trend./Forget, remember!" Something so elegiac startles after 615 pages of Burlesque. Undoubtedly a clue to the circularity of the narrative: the last sentence "a way a lone a last a loved a long the" leads right back to "Riverrun, past Eve and Adam's" and we find ourselves, with Sir Tristram, "passencore rearrived from North Amorica." This is related to what Eliot will later write in the last Quartet "to make an end is to make a beginning./ The end is where we start from." Every day an end and a beginning. The past pokes through in every new moment and tempts us with possibilities, while the future threatens us with its predeterminations and inescapable mystery. And when we arrive, in each new day, we are as we started, and know ourselves for the first time. And then we forget. Remember? St. James describes the casual hearer as one who "looking n a mirror walks away and forgets what manner of person they are." [my paraphrase] That's what Stephen Daedalus's and Leopold Bloom's and Molly Bloom's journeys are in Ulysses: odysseys, two along the streets and one in the heart, weaving and looming, discovering where to end a beginning, begin an ending. In them Joyce is trying to walk away from the mirror and remember who he is.
Marriage is an odyssey. Two people rediscover themselves and each other every day. It is a journey without timetable. Yet time and language are in the warp and woof. Delight and joy and laughter are the sound that cloaks our presence with each other. Tears, anxieties: like storms they thunder and light striking, but they spend their energies and what remains of them is a clear blue sky.
I cannot say how grateful I am for Jami. I love her bunches.

last sunday's sermon

This is last Sunday's sermon. I read the text from Kings about Elijah and the widow, from Luke about Jesus and the widow of Nain, Galatians about Paul's conversion, and preached from Psalm 146. Psalm 146 is a great Psalm and it contains the existential kernel of Kierkegaard's and Niebhur's dictum that absolute worship belongs to absolute things: that you don't give absolute worship to temporary things - this is where sin begins: in the anxiety such a miscalculation provokes. At least that's my understanding of Niebhur. Cheryl told me that this message would just go flying over everyone's head.
So I wrote, focusing on this verse in Ps 146: that prince's can't help us deal with the fundamental human condition of death, in that they themselves are subject to that condition. But when we listen to the psalm, we discover how God leads us into understanding and action in that condition. That we're authentic when we follow God into the places where loss occurs, and less authentic the more we evade those places. God dwells where the pain is in our human lives.
The italicized passage is a passage that Jami felt was unnecessary, but then she said maybe it was.

Psalm 146:1 Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul! ² I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long. ³ Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. ⁴ When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish. ⁵ Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God, ⁶ who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever; ⁷ who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free; ⁸ the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. ⁹ The LORD watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. ¹⁰ The LORD will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the LORD!

How do we live in this world? What is it to be really who we are? The writers of the Westminster Confession answered this in the first question: What is the chief goal of humanity. And the answer is: God has created us to Glorify God and enjoy God forever. This is perhaps the most quoted phrase in the English Reformed tradition – of which our presbyterian church is a part. Wherever I've been, among conservatives and liberals, I know that most people will be familiar with this response. In another , may be less familiar, Reformed creed, we're told that our only hope in life and death is that we belong body and soul to our Lord Jesus Christ. These are important things to keep in mind as we approach ever day. Am I glorifying God and enjoying God. What does that enjoying God mean? I think that today's psalm, as well as the other passages in the lectionary help us answer these questions.

Early in the psalm, the singer tells us what not to do. The psalmist commands us not to put our trust in princes, in mortals, in whom is no help. Well I hadn't been putting any trust in princes – after all they're mostly in Europe. .But the key word in this sentence is “mortals”. And this is an apt translation because no matter how well off, or how privileged in life a human being is, that person is subject to death. The psalmist begins with an exhortation to Praise the Lord and then gets right down to the problem of life. The problem of life is that we can die so easily: that no life is a sure thing, that we're haunted by separation and loss and change. This is the problem of how we live in this world, the problem the confessions and creeds also address: How do we live in a world dominated by death?

But why does the psalmist focus on princes to answer this question? . Princes have money and privilege. They are not encumbered by long work hours and they command respect. They seem to be the most free of all the human community. Today the psalmist might say don't trust in the powerful, the celebrity in the news, the great leader. If you see them or happen to be in their presence, have only this thought – this person is going to die just like me. Don't think: how can this person help me? Don't think: this is a perfect networking opportunity Don't think: I'm so honored. Instead remember: this person is going to die. This person lives under the possibility that that they will become ill, that they will lose a family member, that they will lose the ability to control their bodies or control their minds. Death is not just the cessation of life, it is the loss of lots of little things and big things that all add up to zero. They could lose the power of being a prince – and that would be nothing. If you lose money – you can get that back, or at least some of it back. But your life? But a friend? A parent? When dementia took my grandmother's mind, every visit to her was witnessing a new death – something new was forgotten every day. Sometimes I would be surprised at something she would remember, but then, days later, that too would be forgotten. Death is inescapable; but it is evadable – at least for a time. We can insulate ourselves. We distract ourselves with entertainments, politics, arguments, hatreds, chemicals, thrills. We go into debt to avoid thinking about it. People look for a hero to save them from death. People join mass movements because a leader seems invincible. But the psalmist says it isn't so. Don't put your hopes in princes, politicians, heroes, celebrities, or anyone who is only a mortal.

Instead, the psalmist says put your hope, your trust, in God. The God of Jacob, of Israel, who created heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them. God cares for the poor, feeds the hungry, lifts up the bent over, frees the prisoner, and delivers from oppression. God creates justice in the world. God's faithfulness never ends. The plottings of the wicked, God bends back on them. God does not fear death. God has died in the person of God's son, Jesus, and death could not hold him down. Jesus conquered death. If there is any hero, it is Jesus. If there is any prince we should look to, it is Jesus. And what kind of prince and what kind of hero is he? Like the description of God here in the psalm, Jesus feeds the hungry, he frees the prisoner, he gives life to the dead. Hence the Reformed confession that “our only comfort in life and death is that we belong body and soul to – not to ourselves but to our faithful savior, Jesus Christ. Indeed that we're redeemed from the power of Death by his blood and sacrificial work, his conquering of Death and the world systems that manipulate the fear of death. And that because of this all that we owe God is gratitude.

And this is the Christian struggle:to live in a world dominated by death, and then, like Jesus, to go right to those places that remind us how fragile our life is. We don't have to act heroically or attach ourselves to some human movement or powerful leader. We belong to Jesus and not ourselves. And our gratitude towards Jesus is not some minor obligation. Our gratitude towards Jesus is the substance of the Christian life. How do we live this out? Look at the psalm. We see there that God is active among people who can't help themselves. God is active in the very places that death attacks us. God is active in breaking up the plans of the wicked. God is involved with helping those who are shoved up against loss. We live out our gratitude when we go where God goes. And God goes to some difficult places. God is with the bent over, the burdened. God is with people who are losing. And this scares us. How can we be with God in these places? These are places we don't want to be because they remind us how fragile our life is.

Look at the story of Elijah: he is called out to be with a widow during a drought, to see that she has food and sustenance. He is called to bring life back to her son. Elijah walks into the place of death, not without some reluctance, to be sure. He cries out to God ,”why are you bringing this calamity even upon her?” and he says “even her”- implying that he's not feeling so well himself. But he isn't trusting in princes. He isn't trusting in some human agency. He's trusting in God, and so he is able to meet people in their grief. He is able to be with her an let her have her grief. Elijah doesn't tell her to cheer up or get over it. He is able to be with people in their reduced circumstances. It isn't easy but he knows God is with him, because he knows that God is especially present in these kinds of difficult situations.

Jesus is the living Word. This is not just an empty title. In this story of the widow of Nain, we see that a living word is how he is: that what he says and how he acts are identical. He does not say one thing and do another. In this story he walks out to the widow who's lost her son. His heart is drawn to her. And he doesn't consider whether she is worthy. As with the Elijah story there is nothing about this widow to commend her. God didn't chose her based on what she did or because she was powerful. Jesus comes out to this widow and restores her son to life. Jesus is where the pain is. Where the discomfort is. To the place where life is most fragile. Whatever else this widow might be, to Jesus she is a carrier of the image of God and that is enough.

And Paul, what a story his is. He was once filled with hate for Jesus and for Christians. His hate drove him to damage people's lives. Even though he was well versed in the scriptures and could read how God was invested with helping people, with saving and not destroying, Paul knew this psalm quite well. But Paul still aligned himself with the powerful and set out to destroy. And in destroying he destroyed himself. And then Jesus confronted him and saved him from hating. Paul was a new man. He gave up hating and joined with those who loved. He went to the widows, the orphans, and those who were bent over. He became a healer of souls and preached Jesus, not just with his words but with his life. When imprisoned in Phillippi he freed not only the prisoners, but the jailer as well.

The jailer himself is imprisoned in what the jail symbolizes. Just as Paul was imprisoned in his hatred. Just as the psalmist cautions against trusting in mortal solutions as an escape from death. The psalmist recognized that what imprisons us all is death. And just as the jailer seems free compared to the prisoners but is really imprisoned; and just as Paul seemed free from death by bringing death upon early Christians, but was really bringing death upon ;himself. So the psalmist warns us that mortal solutions to the problem of death simply imprison us in death and loss behind bars of fear.

And so our life is lived with God. It may seem daunting to us. We're not Elijah or Paul. At times Jesus seems far off. But the Holy Spirit helps us do what we can to participate with God . Over time we get better as our experience opens our hearts. We enter every day into God's story, a story that tells of conquering death and loss. We leave behind a mortal story, a story about evading death and loss, about pretending that I'm different or special, this group will save me, this strong leader will keep me from harm. We don't have to be in denial that we will die and that we are fragile. We don't have to be phony, pretending that we're not hurting inside, pretending that we're not afraid. Why does God dwell in such painful places? God dwells in the truth, and the truth of our situation is that we are encumbered by death and are powerless to save ourselves. Our gratitude stems from this: where we encounter defeat, Jesus brings victory; where we stumble in blindness, Jesus lights our lives with his love. This is the perfect love that casts out all fear. And so we can look at death and not despair. Our Lord Jesus has conquered death. He is the prince of peace in whom we can trust. And he saves us because having died he lives and dies no more. Because of him we need not fear painful things. In our pain we re not alone. In death we are not alone. Ever how long the grief, how deep the sadness, he is there. Praise the Lord. Praise God who reigns from generation to generation. Praise God's name, always.

robed up and with my cousin at her ordination

In the top photo I'm posed in all my ministerly glory: robe, stole, and Book of Common Worship with some notes. The bottom photo shows the commission of my cousin, Cheryl's, ordination. I'm behind her. Cheryl is soon to be the as(sis)(cociate)tant Dean of Students. It was a bouyant moment. That was last Sunday week. This last Sunday I preached at her pulpit while she was at the Wise family reunion. This has become our running joke: each year she goes to the Wise reunion and I, a Wise, substitute for her.
Fellowship Presbyterian is located along a country road - the original roadbed still curves through the churchyard and is now the driveway. The old white frame church burned down in the 1950s and now the church building is a brick A-frame with large picture windows. It's a fine example of 60s style.
Behind the church is an extensive graveyard behind a stone wall. In the near corner is a Wise family plot. Imagine my surprise. Alas after the 1890s no Wises died here. Where did they go? Presbyterian Wises are rare in these woods. I figure that when the early Wises left Virginia they were Anglican. But somewhere they descended into frontier Baptists. By the 1900, in my group of Wises, they were the worst "landmark" Baptists (a group of Baptists that believed that education was a tool of the Devil - and therefore clergy needed to be as ignorant or more ignorant than their congregation. Look them up in Ahlstrom's Religious History of the American People). It cheers me up that at least some of my relatives had the sense to be Presbyterian.
Presbyterians are not immune to ridicule though. Walker Percy has a good morsel about them in the Movie Goer. His protagonist, Binx Boling, relates that 5 of his 6 aunts are of the highest Brahmin sensibilities - the 6th is still a Presbyterian.
It's true, to a Presbyterian from Massachusetts, a Presbyterian from Georgia looks just like a Baptist. Our regional penchant for revivalism and agrarianism and general anti-intellectualism is the great leveler. All the differences we perceive about each other fellow southerners are miniscule when viewed from any objective perch. And to us, they're all alike as well. Objectivity only going so far.

portrait of an endowment

Last week I was eating at Los Bravos with my friend Bob, and during our conversation I had a vision. I knew what needed to be painted now more than anything else, more than yet another nude biblical character or some mythological being ordering a pizza. I looked at Bob while he was speculating about whether Thomas Aquinas would have been a guitarist or a drummer, and I said, "I know what I can paint. This is something so necessary." I explained that we had lots of portraits in the library and in the refectory of luminaries and eminences, theological and spiritual promotories. But we lacked a representation of the thing that lies more at the heart of the seminary than any of these people: more central than the old guy with his crutch or the guy playing the fiddle. There are guys (and one or two women) sitting and standing, wearing robes and suits, but there is no image of our endowment. It is the invisible eminence. The endowment lives among us, unheralded, yet we are often enjoined to think of it. What might the endowment feel if we do this or that. The endowment is almost like a child: it needs to be protected. Yet the endowment has a mind of its own: it's up this year after being down a few years.
What does the endowment look like? Dismiss the obvious entendre out of hand. That's too obvious and obvious doesn't have much aesthetic value. Perhaps a Coke bottle in the rain: is the coke bottle half empty or half full? Again too obvious.
I will have to abstract something. I will have to dig within myself and express the essence of the endowment. How does the endowment feel? We never talk about that. Does the endowment walk the campus at night and ponder the stars? Is it a creature of the day or the night? Has the endowment suffered a lost love? Does it send its mother a Mother's day card?
Perhaps we need a "children's letters to the endowment" program. "Dear endowment, I am a young boy in middle school. Everyday my mom packs peanut butter sandwiches in my lunch. When I grow up I hope to be an astronaut or a rodeo clown. I'm failing math, so I don't know about the rodeo clown. Did you eat peanut butter sandwiches when you were a kid?"
Endowments love heartfelt letters like that. Only children can write that way.
But what does the endowment look like? We know that it's a large endowment and capable of doing anything. It can save and protect us. Is the endowment Super Man or UeberMensch?
I'm struggling with this in my studio.

Ancient Grafitti

In this image, at the top center, is a diagram of a cat. Jami draws this cat and she's got it down: two peaks, dots for eyes and nose, and long whiskers. Lately I think she's making the nose bigger, and here she's indicated more of a mouth, creating a broad smile, a Cheshire cat smile. When I think of the Cheshire cat, I remember the story in Alice, and the original illustrations (and how wonderful illustrations were in that era), and how they conveyed the wonder of such a cat that becomes invisible except for its smile. In Chesterton's Man Who was Thursday the mysterious man in the room takes on a kind of reverse Cheshire Cat aspect, in that he disappears by becoming very large, expanding beyond the comprehension of the title character, Thursday.
To the left of the Cat is the word "paint" - off image this word finishes the phrase "enjoy paint." I need to remind myself that the aesthetic for me is to enjoy the paint, the act of making is different from the act of looking. In a product oriented culture, the presentation of process is hard to present - since the nature of process is not presentable: a diagram may be drawn or notes taken or a film made, but the process, its interior hinges remains elusive in its essence. Still for me, it's the process, not the product, that satisfies me most. The process is like alchemy. It is possible that viewing could be alchemic (alchemy as Jung understood, a visualization of an interior narrative of becoming, the invention of symbols to move to an unknown but compelling goal); in fact anything could be alchemic - in that it provides space for contemplation.
Under the cat is a diagram of the chi-rho page from the Book of Kells. At first glance this image looks like a giant "p" but it is an "x" or chi with the upper left leg very small and the lower left leg very long and curved, with the two right legs stretched horizontally and curved inward on the inside while being pulled outward on the exterior. It's a fun thing to draw. In the original book of Kells, a cat spies on a mouse and a beaver captures a fish inside the curlicues and ornamentation on the page.
Lower left is a cat, something I've painted over one of Jami's earlier cat icons. This image contrasts the iconic and the mimetic. The iconic is the representation of a symbolic space and the mimetic is a declaration of similitude, that the symbol is the real. Iconoclasts confuse the symbolic with the real, but people who use icons for worship don't make that mistake: they remember that symbols are symbols. The rise of the mimetic begs the question of this confusion.
Somehow I think all this might connect with Lacan's imaginary, symbolic and real - as well as with the mirror stage. But I have to ponder it some more. Plus, I have to discover not just the theoretical reality of this, but the actual reality of it. Which so far has taken 25 years. May be more.

Beaiutiful woman with kitten

On Saturday a chain of circumstances saw us with a kitten: a small bundle of spunk. At first he was lethargic and in need of medical attention, but now he's getting better. He runs very vast, scampering on tiny legs. And he mews a high piercing mew, like some bird of prey - a very tiny condor. He's named Mousey Tongue (pronounced Mao Tze Dung). Our other four cats, Thelma, Louise, Catelina and Cleo, are the gang of four - they stand at the screen door to the screened porch and take turns hissing: it's their motherly instincts - or else territorialism. Jami loves little creatures and she cares for this little fellow. She was gone for a couple of days this week and I took care of the kitten, but I'm not very motherly. This kitten will make some lucky person a wonderful feline companion one day soon. I know it in my bones.
Jami is very lovely. And never so lovely as when I get a double word score and 50 points for "horsier" : the quality of being more horsey.