some drawings

I continue to draw, as I have for 45 of my 50 years. For the last 34 years I have pursued an approach to drawing that encourages accident and experimentation - working faster than I can think. I have had spurts of progress during this time - some regresses or black holes, but I've continued forward progress. In the words of my therapist, "drawing [myself] out of unhelpful places."
My art is my compass. Perhaps for a time I sought the certainty of theology - especially stringent systematic theologies - but some of those have been the very black holes of subjectivity [as Deleuze would say] my art has drawn me out of.
To be able to draw and express myself visually has been life to me. The visual has brought to speech concepts that I could not have broached.
I would say, with these drawings, the meaning isn't necessarily in the content. The meaning is in the doing.
At times, as in CPE groups, some have viewed my drawing with suspicion - as if I weren't listening. But this has not been the case. I listen better when I'm drawing.
Tonight I'm driving into Raleigh to draw from a live model for the first time in years. It'll be fun and a bit challenging. The human figure is a puzzle, every day offering new solutions.

recent workshop

Three weeks ago seven pastors and I got together for a workshop on using art to open up possibilities in creative thinking for ministry. My premise is along this line: that our culture privileges words and speech, while bracketing off images and the imaginary - in the process people are cut off from parts of themselves that are vital and creative. I offer art, and my experience as an artist and minister, to briefly facilitate getting in touch with this bracketed-off side through drawing and painting.
This was my first workshop, so I was grateful for a friendly audience. Still I was anxious that they would find it worthwhile. They responded wonderfully - working during the day and sometimes into the night on paintings and drawings.
The only rules I put forth were that nothing would be called a mistake, that we would cut off the editing/censoring function, and that we would allow associations to flow freely - also I encouraged them to work faster than they could think about it.
These are not easy things for most people to do - to let go of control and to accept accident and experimentation.
All in all the facilities at Ferncliff, the food and drink, the comradery, and the singing (they turned me on to Chris Smither) were excellent.
Thanks to Shannon, Roger, Lander, Neill, Jeff, Drew, Gene for all their work.

recent paintings

lately i've eschewed upper case. years ago i went entirely lower case, for some reason, but taking german required me to use upper case again. call it at that time a search for some singular identifying trait - now, call it a stylistic intention.
not that that's connected to the images posted here - unless someone wants to hazard a connection.
the top painting is a glimpse of a figure in motion: something like you'd see in muybridge or balla - but the images are clipped, bracketed, not presented as wholes but as fragments. fragments of space and time.
kaja silverman makes a lot out of the myth of orpheus and eurydice: coming to terms with the fragmentation of life, life's limits, we die to narcissistic involvement and become alive to relationality - we can really see each other without needing all to be totalized in our perception.
and finally a shadowy backlit figure about which i haven't brought to speech yet.

October post

I find that I'm doing the best art of my life right now - springing from stability in my life and some maturity - some getting free of what Lacan calls "the desire of the other." The funny thing about Lacan is when I hear people talk about him in a critical theory context, I wonder, "why are you focusing on that? Where is that coming from?" - but in terms of pastoral care: he makes perfect sense - our language fails to symbolize our experience; the concept of Ego fails to account for subjectivity; our demands are counterproductive to our desires; and we have to live in an 'always wanting more' state. Life is learning to live with our losses - our griefs - a sense of lack that sends us searching - that is the slippage between the "I think" and "I am" of the human subject. In this sense it's no surprise that Lacan quotes Romans 7 from time to time.
About other's desires: I described it this way in my recent workshop/seminar (I'm uncertain what to call these events) - when we are an infant we are forced into the position of other people dictating what we want (tantrums and crying aside - we get the message eventually about what is rewarded and what is punished) - our desires literally are framed by other people, authorities and peers, and then one day we are given the ball (as it were): Sometime around the end of the first half we're told, "OK you're on your own, now go in there and call some plays" - and we finally have control of the game, and we're behind 24-3 or ahead 17-7 and we've no idea how that happened. It's not like even then we get to do what we want - we've still got this Other play calling in our ears (and most of these people should never have been allowed to coach). Drastic measures are called for: the Other must be kicked off the team (though he's sneaky in re-insinuating herself) and you must experiment and make mistakes to find what you're good at to get out of habits (third down quick kicks and the ancient schemes of our parents and grand parents).
Rant Rant
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I thought of a devotion while reading Kaja Silverman's Flesh of My Flesh. I was reading early on her reflection on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth and Ovid's telling. She focuses on the Coda of the story - that Orpheus dies and reunited with Eurydice is now able to relate to her: that is, he had to come to terms with his own mortality, his own limits, before he was able to relate to another human being - that is, Orpheus' myth is a retelling of Narcissus. Orpheus charms the world with his gifts but fails to relate to that world - he cannot even understand his loss of Eurydice is is own fault, but must blame and shun women in reaction. When the Ciconian women tear him apart, he becomes aware of his limits - that he is really fragmented: in pretending to self contained he has shielded himself from confronting how his narcissistic wound, untreated, ungrieved, has split him. Ironically it is death that allows him to be relationally whole.
He is finally able to enjoy being with Eurydice, to allow her to walk ahead and to be invisible to her.
(interestingly, she notes how in the last supper Christ recapitulates Orpheus by inviting his disciples to feast on his fragmented body: that's not unusual and may have been prevalent understanding the early church, since Christ and Mary recapitulate the Isis Osiris Horus myth as well - the church takes over pagan iconography and memes)

Anyway, the story that came into my mind follows:
Isaac, years after the binding incident with his father, whenever he would be traveling, if the day was bright and the weather was hot, would feel compelled to take a detour off his route. Coming to a empty place, he would take off his clothes and lie down naked, exposed on rock and soil. He could feel the cold rock on his back, and the soil would cling to him. Clutching himself he would moan and writhe; finally he would cry out, "love me, father!" into the empty sky. Spent, he would lie there, crying.
When it all passed, he would rise up, put on his clothes, and travel on. His eyes remained wet and red.
He would never speak of this.
We only know about this because a sparrow watched him, unseen and still behind a thistle bush.
The sparrow later told the story to a fox in exchange for a piece of fish.