vignette

Laughter

Rabelais said that laughter was a philosophical statement: not derisive laughter but good, straightforward belly laughter. Somewhere in Proverbs I think it is said that laughter cures the bones. From Top to bottom: me, laughing at Rabelais; Jennifer, my sister-in-law, laughing at something profound; Bill, my father-in-law, laughing at a story; Jerry, my dad, laughing at the fact that I have too many books; and Jami, at Carpe Diem, laughing at something her friend Genie said. There is nothing better than being with friends and family laughing. Is there anything more human?

Pirate Cat

Our cat, Thelma, who mews plaintively as if from light years away, as if she were trapped on a space ship just before it were sucked into a black hole, and as if her can of tuna had just disappeared over the event horizon, loves to perch on my shoulder. In this photo she surveys the room from my shoulder, telepathically sending Jami the contents of my scrabble tiles, as we face off in our see-saw battle of logo-eccentricity. When she's on my shoulders I'm one peculiar pirate. RRRRR 'ev ghot a wee kittchen on me back mewwwwin' furty sea.

Last Friday

Amanda, our waitress, took the photo at bottom, which sums up at least partially, the camaraderie we enjoyed at Twain's. The top photo is Davis, who was impeded by a previous obligation, and the middle photo has George, who came late, but provided, along with his wife, Carrie [not pictured, why?], much appreciated banter. Davis is replaced in the bottom photo by Brennan, his emissary and fellow student, who remained with us and more than held his own.
So the bottom photo is Jami, my wife - Ph.D in literature and authority on the grotesque and fund raising; myself, artist, minister, librarian, gadfly; Bob, shuffleboard nemesis, librarian, and long time friend; Brennan, scholar and Ph.D in waiting on biblical arcana; and Joe, preacher extraordinaire, and friend.
Joe, Bob, and I routinely met here where we expatiated on theological matters as they relate to beer, wings and nachos. Twain's provided the right ambiance for our forays into that liminal space where faith meets hops and hot sauce uniting to form pious ejaculations (that's what they call glossolalia when the pope does it in the mass).
Today I showed them perhaps the weirdest thing I have ever written. I wrote it while in Birmingham during my internship. It is a drawing with vignette so bizarre, so over the top, so grotesque - it caught even Brennan off guard; Bob was speechless; Joe ordered another beer. I would include it here on the blog sometime, but I have to be careful, as it might rock the very foundations of society and spell the end of the capitalist system - oh, wait.
It is a blessed and holy company that drinks and thinks together, and it is rare, needing the most careful cultivation. But I don't think we cultivated it consciously: it happened and we reveled in the grace of it.
I wish I could take that bottom photo and hang it over my desk.
Look

Last Sunday's Sermon

Sermon January 27^th, 2008 Benson, NC

1 Corinthians 1:10-18 ¹⁸ Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. ¹¹ For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. ¹² What I mean is that each of you says, "I belong to Paul," or "I belong to Apollos," or "I belong to Cephas," or "I belong to Christ." ¹³ Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? ¹⁴ I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, ¹⁵ so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. ¹⁶ (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) ¹⁷ For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. ¹⁸ For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

1 Corinthians 1:25 ²⁵ For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.

Power is a theme Paul returns to again and again in his letters to the Corinthians. Each time he connects power to the Cross, or to the message he's preaching. He is not talking about power as we perceive it in our society, where people get their way because they have friends, or money, or persuasive skills, or status. Paul is talking about the Cross as if it has a specific power: the message of the Cross is our salvation. No other power can save.

Early in this letter to the Corinthians Paul expresses concern about the behavior of the Church. He is witnessing a Church of Christians at odds with each other. The church has become like a political convention with signs and slogans. We learn later in the letter that church members are suing each other. We learn that they are acting immorally. At some point in the letter a reader might despair that there is any hope for this church at all.

Paul though writes tenderly to them. The Corinthians are a church that can go over the brink or be pulled back from the abyss. Paul pulls them back by reminding them of the power of the Cross. He doesn't remind them of the Cross's power by using conventional methods of persuasion. Such methods, a power in themselves, would divert the power of the Cross into something else, something not the Cross – but something humanly acceptable.

It seems odd that the Cross should become humanly acceptable. Even dressed up in swelling words, it couldn't be disguised that the Cross was the number one means of torture and execution. The Roman Empire had a message of the Cross. It was a word of warning. Today such a message for us might be symbolized by an electric chair. Or perhaps when we think of the state's projection of power, we might think of prison bars, shackles, orange jumpsuits, and goggles. The Cross is how the state makes its power known.

That the Lord was executed on the Cross is a sign of weakness and shame. The Roman state made quick work of Jesus. He was publicly exposed, tortured as a criminal, mocked, and left to die in the elements. There was no way to hush it up; no way to spin it as something else. The Cross was a message of bitter defeat in the mouths of the early disciples.

So it is interesting here, when Paul encounters a Church given over to squabbling and power plays, that he would say that their whole salvation stems from the power of the Cross – and he doesn't apologize for that Cross. He doesn't use pretty language to make an ugly thing acceptable. He means the Cross in all its ugliness, the brutal instrument of Jesus' death, is the power of God for their salvation.

That is, it is only through the Cross that God shows them God's love. It is only through the Cross that the Holy Spirit moves among them, giving them gifts of expression, giving them faith, giving them love. And this is part of how God expresses God's power: in paradox. God expresses power in weakness; wisdom in foolishness; exaltation in in humility. And this is why Paul is writing the Corinthians. They don't get it. They're living as if the Cross weren't there at all. They're living in the Church as if it were any other organization. They are living as if they don't need God's power that saves.

How easy it is, once hearing the message of God, the call of God, to think that we're back in control – like we can carry on as we did before. Yet when we do we negate the power of the Cross.

The power of the Cross has changed our lives. The power of the Cross has brought the Church together. The power of this instrument of torture and death was transformed by the presence of Jesus. Jesus transformed this instrument of torture by his faithfulness. He was faithful to God in his life and teaching – restoring the poor and marginalized to a place in God's kingdom and a place among their fellow Israelites. Jesus transformed this method of state execution into the expression of God's love. God loves creation and humanity. As much as the state might try to get its way with violence, Jesus presence on the Cross demonstrates this violence for what it is: the failure to love others when they are different. On the Cross, Jesus shows the world how far God will go to love creation and to love humanity. God never resorts to violence or force.

The power of the Cross is a new life. The worst that humanity can do to silence dissent, to assert that might makes right, to keep people in line, afraid to act as if things could be otherwise, was attempted in crucifying Jesus. Violent humanity took its greatest power, the fear of death, of being exposed and being in pain and shamed, and Jesus turned that power on its head. The power of the Cross is finally that the power of the world is on its head. God's weakness triumphed over the world's strength; God's foolishness outwitted the craftiness and pragmatism of force – that worldly wisdom that says there's one way to play the game and don't rock the boat.

So if the Corinthians know this, what has lured them away from it? What has caused them to play the world's game? Well the whole thing is difficult to believe. God's foolishness and God's weakness are well and good for God, but they're uncomfortable when lived out among friends and family and business associates. And it's easy to think that encountering Christ is a one time experience. You do it once and that's all you need. Like getting a fix or a certificate – and then you go back to how things were. You said a prayer, you cried, you confessed and now it's back to what needs to be done. Paul makes this assessment of the Corinthians throughout the two letters. Paul makes this assessment, but he doesn't give up on them. Paul is tender with them. He calls them back.

Paul knows that the power of the Cross must be lived out every day. That God's love and faithfulness must be acted on each day. That the new creation needs to be re-imagined and walked into each day. Some days are better than others but each day the effort to love our neighbors, to exhibit our gratitude for God's faithfulness towards us, undertaken anew.

Over time, as we practice the wisdom of God's foolishness and the weakness of God's power, we'll discover what Paul knew and the Corinthians learned, that the power of the Cross is our passion.

The power of the Cross is there for us every day. When we lose our jobs; when we face the limits of life, we can be confident that God's love is with us. God's weakness, suffering the Cross instead of lashing out, establishing God's kingdom by force, shows us just how strong that weakness is: the weakness of the Cross goes all the way. There is nothing God will not do to love creation and the people he has called into being. And God's foolishness shows us how far God will go to confound our expectations – that God will not be predictable. God is so foolish that God welcomes all. God calls all kinds of people to the banquet table. The power of the Cross is God's generosity – the expenditure of God's abundance for us, for the world.

And it is all for us, individually and in the Church, if we will practice each day living in the power of the Cross. When we live according to the rules of the world, as Paul told the Corinthians, we empty the Cross of its power. But when we live in the power of the Cross, we really do live into the new creation that God has promised.

Clouds

The passage of time is certain. I once drew a cartoon where I alluded that the passage of time was stalled in committee. But a committee only seems like eternity. I once read in some Dutch theology of good Calvinist bent [Bavinck, I think it was], that we can't experience eternity like God, but we can participate in eternity. That is, we participate in eternity when we do what God does: pursue justice for the marginalized, give generously, be merciful, and love all creation and all people -- especially those of the household of faith. And this notion of participation joined to eternity seems present in the medieval doctrine of the wheel of Fortune: that the closer we are to the hub (the unmoved mover - who moves as he is beloved), the less we participate in Fate and the more we participate in Destiny: it is out on the rim, removed from the presence of God and the love that turns the planets and illumines the stars, that we feel lost to Fate, the recipients of unlucky accidents.

Presto Change-O

I am now almost fully back to Durham. I have spent over a week here and interviewed three times, with a phone interview Tuesday evening. Five months away from Jami has been difficult, even when visits are two weeks apart. This last week has been heavenly. I am now flying back to Decatur where I'll finish packing the house and studio. One last shuffle board at Twain's; one last visit to Birmingham - to deliver the Shirley Gutherie painting to Cary Speaker. Cary will hang the painting, a fine expressionist image of a great reformed theologian, in his church at Mountain Brook. I'll see Shannon Webster there and hopefully we'll share a pint somewhere. Then I'm back to our house (which we'll rent if it doesn't sell in the next week).
Here are pictures I like. Jami drinking tea at a cafe in Jackson, WY and a view of the Grand Tetons from Gros Ventes (pronounced "growVaunts"). Tetons means breasts and Gros Ventes means belly - breasts and bellies: what were those French fur trappers thinking?
I hope to see friends and family in Decatur.

mis-en-place for the studio and the well appointed gadfly

I forgot to mention that my wife, Jami, made the most incredible pecan pie - as well as bruschetta (wasn't there a 70s cop show of that title?) , a wonderful spread constituted with olives and love. As the picture above indicates (actual footage), she rounded up all my favorite meets and vegetables. And the pie - I can't say enough: it's richer than the treasury, better than (or just as good as) my grandmother's.
Now I meant to talk about studio mis-en-place, that for the artist such a mis-en-place is even more important than for a chef. I daresay it but when I was in New Mexico, scientists from Sandia labs, who worked in the infamous safe rooms reverse engineering alien technology so we can have safe microwavable popcorn, would come by and visit my studio and study my methodology, hours later shaking their heads in wonder as they returned to their black helicopters and left. So I think I know something about organization.
First off I let chaos have its way. Entropy is the natural state of nature and nature teaches us, as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes might say, so that we may pursue things in their proper course. When we learn from nature, we copy God's creative process. And what we see in nature is that God delights in blurring edges, moving things around, losing things, and having stuff pop up in surprising places.
Second - and we may have to come back to this later, as the topic may shock, scare, or nonplus some of the more delicately constituted readers of this blog.
Third off (out down up) it's important that the studio space not be too nice. Or maybe it could be all right if it's nice - I've just never had a nice space. There should be plenty of light, and it helps if a train track is nearby and it's convenient to restaurants, coffee houses, and bars. For a number of years I would water color in bars and coffee houses. If your studio is your room, that might seem to be a downer, but one benefit of painting in your room is that you don't have to get dressed: I've enjoyed painting in my underwear. Certainly I can't paint in my underwear in a "nice" place.
Fourth it's important to have flat surfaces, tables and wall to prop canvases on - easels are a fabrication of the art supply industry and you don't necessarily need them. If you do get an easel get a good solid french easel, season it by throwing a bucket of aged turpentine and linseed oil on it, hack at it with a knife, and partially burn one of the legs. It is important that the easel not look better than any painting. It is important that the easel look like you found it in the woods and brought it home. One of my favorite easels was used to trap rabbits. Sometimes a piece of fur would come out of a crack and become embedded in the paint. Moments like this are what makes a studio's mis en place. Chance should always be in play.

Hello Durham

None of these photographs was taken in Durham, but that doesn't stop me from using them to evoke, albeit only obliquely and not exactly, not sufficiently, the change that has occurred in just these last days: where I have left the hospital in Atlanta and moved to Durham to be with my wife, Jami, after 5 arduous months of geographic separation. If you were to relate the photos to Bartok's 1st, 3rd, and 6th string quartets, then something would be added to the feeling, the sensibility. Think of the transition from Antonioni's E'Clisse, the ending, where nothing is said for 10 minutes, and then break out Sinatra's You Make me Feel So Good.
Jami welcomed me Friday night with all my favorites, cheese, nuts, marinating steaks, and with her exuberant love. I'd had a rough day and I'd been sick. Even as I write this I'm still prone to fits of coughing. Hopefully I'll see a doctor on Monday, as I'm extending my stay here for a week. I'll be back in Atlanta for a few days the week next, packing up the house, readying things for the final move. Then we'll rent the house: a wonderful 3 bdrm, 1 bath 1947 ranch, with deck and spacious back yard, located in exciting Oakhurst, within walking distance to the Eastlake MARTA station and a 15 minute drive to downtown Atlanta. Perfect for a family just starting out.
Come the 1st of February this is where I'll be, with my wife, in our apartment with our cats, painting and working out my call as a minister of Word and Sacrament. In the meanwhile, I do look forward to seeing people in Atlanta and Birmingham soon, after the 21st.

Home

Here we are, a year later, and still a dapper young couple. Nothing has been more difficult than living apart for 5 months. I'm going to Durham this weekend and have an interview. I have an interview after next weekend as well. Pray that all goes well and that I can be in Durham with Jami soon. This week has been an arduous week - I've been ill, feverish, and work has been difficult. Emotionally I'm a bit at loose ends. Today in our men's prayer group I learned that I'm not the only one going through some form of that emotional and physical stress. We all have things going on in our lives that wear on us.
Tomorrow is a tough day for me: going to work at 7 am, having a conference with my supervisor and her supervisor -and I discovered this tonight: another supervisor- at CCCG, and then getting on a plane and flying to Durham to be with Jami - which is the highlight of the day.
This may all be too personal to write in a blog. I do typically venture into the realm of arcania or some imaginative flight. But so be it.
Today as I lay sleeping, slipping in and out of hearing NPR on my computer (which is the only way to listen to NPR in Atlanta - Jami and I often wonder why Atlanta has such a poor NPR station, while Chapel Hill has such a good one), I was grateful for being loved. I knew that no matter how difficult things might seem, that love is always victorious. I don't mean victorious in a militaristic way, but in a more enveloping way.
I told my friends in the prayer group tonight that I'd had a mystic experience yesterday. I stood on the quad at Columbia and I looked up in the sky, on one side of me a long gray cloud and on the other a long white cloud, and all the sounds, the thrumming of the air compressors, the chirping of the birds, the whoosh of the wind, were part of a musical piece - the sounds of people playing, the traffic - for a lover of Ives and Boulez this is no stretch: this is what music is. I stood there aware that I was surrounded by love, by Jami's, by my counselor's, by my friends', and by God's, and it seemed to be the most weighty fact of the universe, more weighty than a black hole or neutron star. I felt the mass of love as a pressure passing through all the world, embracing, enveloping, holding all the lost, alone, too busy, over focused souls in the world. I felt it and was aware of it, though I hadn't been seeking it. I had been praying to be lifted out of my sadness at being separated, at feeling alone at work. And there I was and there it was. I told this to my friends, and one of them, who had been playing frisbee golf on the quad said, "that's what you were doing." I asked him if I had seemed strange standing there, and he said no, just that I had looked deep in thought.

On the street where we live

While our house hasn't sold, the house on the corner has been torn down. This house had been boarded up for over a year and this Fall someone began taking it a part. I haven't taken photographs of this progress in a month. During the last month the rebar and concrete have been smashed up, and this morning a small bull dozer began digging out a deep hole. The top photo may not show the front door well enough, but the previous owner had taken up a perfectly good patio and made a front decoration for his house with the upturned stone work. Jami felt that this was not the best choice that could be made. Certainly that's part of a neighborhood's charm: the choices people make - sometimes creative and good, sometimes creative and puzzling. With the demolition of this house, we've witnessed the passing of one man's dream [cue the Chuck Mangione song "children of Sanchez"] . What will arise in this house's place? I speculated earlier that a roller coaster would be built. Most likely a large, two story porched, three - four level house with garage, like the one up the street, will arise. It's unlikely that any kind of folk art will flow forth from the new yuppie owners. I can't be critical though. We hope that yuppies will come and take our house. Still this house on the corner is a reminder that our 1947 ranch's days may be numbered. What will arise over our heads? A 20 story family dwelling with a zeppelin docking station. One day the current 5400 sq ft houses that are springing up will face the fate of the house across the street. Will one of those people have decorated their facade with decorative stonework?

Footprints in the Snow

Robert Burn's poem "To a Mouse" is one of Jami's favorites. It contains the phrase "the best laid planes of mice and men." Burns uses the disruption of a mouse's home under the turf by a plowman to meditate on the common fate of mice and humanity, as well as on the travails of nature - the poor mouse has gathered its winter provisions at a great cost of time, only to experience devastation at an inopportune moment. Burns concludes that the mouse and he share a common fate, albeit as a human his knowledge of this fate doesn't allow him to live comfortably in the moment (both past and future loom over him with their dangers and uncertainties) while the mouse is blessed --"the present only toucheth thee." The mouse can enjoy the moment, even in disaster. The mouse must have read Ecclesiastes, and in its natural state proclaims the truth that unnecessary toil and extreme regret are vanity, and that God requires that we make the most of each moment. In Reformed theology we might say that in each moment we are to glorify God and enjoy God forever.
Last year, at this time, we were honeymooning in London, and we visited a bookstore at Charing Cross, where on one shelf, Jami found a tiny 19th century copy of Burns poem. It was so tiny that it might have belonged to the "Wee Sleeket Cowran Timirous Besatie" of the poem. In fact the bookstore owner, who reminded me of Richard Blake, our librarian at Columbia, did his best to persuade Jami to purchase the book, saying, "don't you care for the wee sleeket beastie?"
I recalled the poem as we went snow shoeing yesterday. Our guide, Taylor, pointed out where a bird, perhaps a hawk, had landed. In the photo above you can see the impression it made on diving, crashing into the snow's crisp crust, as well as the impressions made by its pinion feathers as it took off. On close inspection, and it's barely visible in the photos, tiny tracks lead to the depression. But these tracks also lead away. The wee sleeket cowran timirous beastie lives to forage another day.
I'm filled with joy that the beastie has made it. Its tiny prints delicate laid out in line across the snow. What a chance it took across this open ground, this exposure between sagebrush and tree root. Disaster has left its impression, but the wee sleeket has carried on.

MMVIII

This is the last thing I painted for my MFA show in the spring of 1986: a Madonna. It is my personal icon - the one thing I've painted that I treat as an icon, a window onto the spiritual. Currently it is hanging in the hallway of our house in Decatur. I shall carry it up to Durham soon. I remembered when I painted it, in oil, that I gouged the surface with a knife, regessoing some spots, in the hopes of creating something that had the ambiance of Paul Klee's paintings. Klee is a particularly important painter for me. It took me some time to enjoy his work: he disdains traditional imagery and paints in a way that might seem childish. But when you live with Klee, each one of his small works (and none of them are much bigger than 16 x 20 inches, certainly not the size of the abstract expressionists, who I also admire and learned from) grows on you, gets into your soul. They did with me.
This year I'm taking more seriously what I do well: paint and draw. I don't know how this will play out in terms of my call - which I will continue to pursue in terms of ministry as a pastor or chaplain. One difficulty with being an artist is that the lack of seriousness the Church attaches to art can effect the artist. When I say that the Church in general and in particular doesn't take at seriously, I mean just that: that the Church could pay a million dollars for art - but that expenditure in no way would indicate taking art seriously. Or I could say that the Church takes banners and stained glass seriously. But the art, in the person of the artist and what the artist struggles with and where the artist's expertise is, is dismissed.
And so I say that it is difficult to be in an environment where what I do isn't taken seriously - where I must take what I do seriously.
Is there any discussion on this?
Does anyone have a sense of how art and spirituality are joined?
It is this kind of discussion: where art as a spiritual discipline can take the Church.