This painting depicts the solitary feeling of existence, and sometimes how we feel isolated and alienated from all beings, including God. This does not mean it is so, but felt. When I am out at night time for a walk underneath the stars, I may feel very much alone, and indeed be alone, but those are the times I have felt closest to God.
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I love this passage in the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton’s, “Seeds of Contemplation”:
And so, suppose your meditation takes you to the point where you are baffled and repelled by the cloud that surrounds God, who maketh the darkness His covert. Far from realizing Him, you begin to realize nothing more than your own helplessness to know Him, and you begin to think that meditation is something altogether hopeless and impossible. And yet the more helpless you are, the more you seem to desire to see Him and to know Him, and the contradiction of your desires and your failure generate in you a painful longing for God which nothing seems able to satisfy.
Do you think your meditation has failed? On the contrary: this bafflement, this darkness, this anguish of helpless desire is the true fulfillment of meditation. For if meditation aims above all at establishing in your soul a vital contact of love with the living God, then as long as it only produces images and ideas and affections that you can understand and feel and appreciate it is not yet doing its full quota of work. But when it gets beyond the level of your understanding and your imagination it is really bringing you close to God, for it introduces you into the darkness where you can no longer think of Him; and are consequently forced to reach out for Him by blind faith and hope and love.(p. 81)
For me, it articulates the modern Christian experience in this world, which really is how we experience the cross of our existence. Even though he is talking about meditation and the degrees of progress within it, I think it truly describes how I experience God lately.
Do we have the courage to go there? That is the question! Do we, in desiring to know God, have the courage to feel as though we are far, far from him?
Contributions to nakedpastor are greatly appreciated.
This is a mixed-media piece I did a few years ago.
I’m fascinated by the cross and its importance, even centrality! It is the crux of all that matters. I’m reading a book I picked up while on my trip to Ottawa a couple of weeks ago. I was in a cool coffee shop and they had all these books on sale. I was immediately drawn to this one because of its title. Harris Athanasiadis, George Grant and the Theology of the Cross: The Christian Foundations of His Thought. I’ve barely started it, but like a good book should, it’s got me thinking on deeper levels. Grant is considered by many to be “Canada’s foremost political philosopher” (inside cover). Here’s a quote from page 19:
“Grant begins to see human history, not as a progression toward heaven, but a descent into hell. At the same time, he begins to conceive of God not only as judge whose hidden law is the law of natural justice in the world, but as an infinitely patient and merciful God, paintfully waiting through, perhaps even hiding behind, the cruel events of human history, waiting for those individuals and societies ready to repent and return to God.”
I like this because on the one hand it admits the terrible condition of our world, while at the same time not excusing us from responsibility. The image below is above is one I did to try to capture the centrality of the cross in life. More later!
Contributions to nakedpastor are greatly appreciated.
You can bid on this painting in my ebay store.
Contributions to nakedpastor are greatly appreciated.
David Hayward is a pastor artistically stripping to the essential.
