More stuff learned it seems

Scince this autumn, when we went to NY, and I spent 5 hours in the Metropolitan Museum, I've pondered the exhibition of Giorgio Mordani works in the Lehman collection. I find these simple still lifes and few landscapes that he did between 1920 and the early 1960s fascinating: they're grayed out, with some limited color range and contrast; the brushwork in the still lifes is is made of long strokes, left to right, with some up and down movement. In the Landscapes the brushwork is more vigorous.
What I think he does is what Merleau Ponty and other positivists talk about "describing more to understand better." To Morandi you have to look beyond the repetition of subject matter and the tonality. What he's done is limit himself. Part of that limitation is to ask himself What it is that he needs to do in a painting - what is a painting? So with this limitation of artistic vocabulary he set out to translate the intensity of his gaze onto the canvas: that is, the canvas becomes the site of a translation of the object through the subjectivity of the painter. For Morandi I think the task is that this gaze not be a glancing blow - in a way his method is the opposite of Monet's: not impressionistic though certainly not given over to detail. I feel I really know the objects Morandi paints, even though the duration of his application is belied by paucity of detail. what comes through in paint is the density and silence of the objects and their arrangement.
What I've pondered is how to apply this to myself. Certainly it's a lesson in paint - and paint is a lesson in life. I ask myself What is essential to me? What can I limit myself to? The thing is not to paint Morandis anymore than Morandi painted Cezannes or Cezanne painted Pousins. Morandi's work is entirely unique to himself. Much as Sean Scully's work is: you know what you'll get with him, but you're surprised all the same.
And so it is.
Along with this I've pondered Donald Kuspit's Art Criticism issue of the last year - a survey of the last 90 or so years of art making. I'm surprised at how conversant he is with Freud Klein and Bion; and it's that association he makes with art as healing that strikes me in his whole argument. Basically he argues against the formalism that took hold in midcentury and the ironic vantage point that brackets that formalism in the 1920s and the 1990s. I've approached art in formalistic terms for many years (the subject of painting is paint, the materiality of the materials, etc) and I have to say that something in Kuspit's argument touched me. Certainly I've thought of my art as a psychic necessity for me but have not considered whether it might heal those viewing it. Jami has helped me here, pointing out how Out of Chaos, the painting I painted in chapel, affected the congregation and her. It's true, people approached me afterwards and commented on how moving it was to watch during the week's services the painting change and unfold.
Kuspit's text has made me look more closely at Beuys and Rauschenberg and Hesse, as well as wondering what I've accepted too readily in Johns and Duchamp.

What I've learned lately

What have I learned? That age, wisdom, and friendship aren't necessarily enough to wean a person from the sound of his own voice. They try to teach us this in CPE, or I should say, we try to learn this in CPE. That the progression is something like presence, and wisdom and then guidance - and that "then" should be a good length. I'm still learning this.
At times I ask myself How is it possible to know so many of life's answers? Isn't this the very problem of Job's friends: Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar and Elihu? They're all philosophers. And they demonstrate in their speech that they have no stake in their friend, Job's, life; they have a stake only in their theories, the sound of their voices, echoing wisdom that sounds so right. Their words fit like finely crafted bricks walling a magnificent house.
And this is why these words don't work for Job: he is walled in by them. He is walled behind them like the Character in Poe's Cask of Amaltiado. And his friend's have done it in the best of intentions.
So the question is How do we separate our intentions from what we do? That is How do we do the good we intend, or the best good, we mean to intend? And how do we avoid scuttling real pastoral work under the cloak of intending good? Of course the answers are well known: beginning with James' admonition to be slow to speak and quick to listen.
My wife, Jami, reminded me as well that it's important to ask real questions. She's so much more Socratic than I am: ask questions that allow the other person to express their need.
Certainly Job's friends don't engage him on this level: that he might know and be able to come to his own conclusions - and that he should be allowed to rest in those conclusions.
We all think we know best for each other. It's that log in our eye and the mote in our sister's and brother's eye problem that remains with us.
How do we ask What is this log in my eye? The log in my eye is the projection of my desire onto others: my desire to solve life's conundrums and create a world in conformity to my own speech. The log in my eye is the rehersed bits of wisdom I've cobbled together. Job brings his worries to his friends and receives four logs in essence. How can he carry them? He refuses, which causes his friends to produce more logs. They never say He must have a good reason for refusing to carry our logs.
What if we refused to carry our logs as well? I think what I need to do is develop a muscle of spirit that shuts my mouth when invitations to advice are offered. A muscle that senses the inflation of my best intentions, a sense of when I'm driving into my blind spot.
Isn't that the healing stance I would want to receive from others. Certainly the pastoral goal is not the rehersing of wisdom but the healing of souls. And so the question is What is the place of healing here? - whenever we receive an invitation to promulgate wisdom. That there is speech that heals the world, that heals our friend. It is speech that invites the person asking from their need to stretch out their own hand and to rise up and walk. It is speech that offers an arm to lean on rather than a log to carry.