ART: WHERE WE SPEAK OF HOLY THINGS

Dish of Apples (ca. 1875-77)
 Paul Cezanne

Frederick Buechner is a novelist, spiritual writer, and former minister who has wonderful gifts of insight into life, art, and other matters of ultimate importance. While perusing a collection of Buechner's writings last night, I came across a discussion of the role that art plays in our lives.  I share it with you today because I believe it will resonate with those who read this blog on a fairly regular basis.  As you read this excerpt, you will discover the relevance of the paintings I have chosen to accompany this post.  Enjoy.

Portrait of the Artist's Mother (ca. 1629)
Rembrandt

Excerpt from Meditation for February 20

 Listening to Your Life, by Frederick Buechner

From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention.  Pay attention to the frog.  Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.

The painter does the same thing, of course.  Rembrandt puts a frame around and old woman's face.  It is seamed with wrinkles.  The upper lip is sunken in, the skin waxy and pale.  It is not a remarkable face.  You would not look twice at the old woman if you found her sitting across the aisle from you on a bus.  But it is a face so remarkably seen that it forces you to see it remarkably just as Cezanne makes you see a bowl of apples or Andrew Wyeth a muslin curtain blowing in at an open window.  It is a face unlike any other face in all the world.  All the faces in the world are in this one old face.

Unlike painters, who work with space, musicians work with time, with note following note as second follows second.  Listen!  says Vivaldi, Brahms, Stravinsky.  Listen to this time that I have framed between the first note and the last and to these sounds in time.  Listen to the way the silence is broken into uneven lengths between the sounds and the silences themselves.  Listen to the scrape of the bow against the gut, the rap of stick against the drumhead, the rush of breath through reed and wood. The sounds of the earth are like music, the old song goes, and the sounds of the music are also the sounds of the earth, which of course is where the music comes from.  Listen to the voices outside the window, the rumble of the furnace, the creak of your chair, the water running in the kitchen sink.  Learn to listen to the music of your own lengths of time, your own silences.

Literature, painting, music — the most basic lesson that all art teaches us is to stop, look, and listen to life on this planet, including our own lives, as a vastly richer, deeper, more mysterious business than most of the time it ever occurs to us to suspect as we bumble along from day to day on automatic pilot.  In a world that for the most part steers clear of the whole idea of holiness, art is one of the few places left where we can speak to each other of holy things.

Wind from the Sea (1948)
Andrew Wyeth

SMALL OFFERINGS OF LIGHT

After my two most recent postings, "Memento Mori" and "Waiting in Hallways," I might be well advised to lighten up a bit, lest the reader think that poor George has been reading too many Stephen King novels lately.  A minor shift feels right at this point because I want this journal to weave unexpectedly, rather than proceed in a straight line.  Think of it  like the cliffside roads that skirt Italy's Amalfi coast; they rise, they dip, and they turn quickly and sharply, with each turn opening up a new vista.

That said, my posting today is a small potpourri of images, comments, and quotes, all of which have something to do with revelations of light -- physical light, spiritual light, or both.  I have chosen three photographs that speak to me of solitude, simplicity, and quiet beauty.  I am also posting a quote by the novelist and spiritual writer Frederick Buechner, who has found just fifty-six words to sum up what he has been saying for a lifetime.  But first the photographs --

Farmhouse in Provence  

I took this photograph in the countryside of Provence a few years ago.  The image remains imprinted upon my psyche because it is a study in contrasts with philosophical meaning  -- the aging patina of a house being brought back to life by the willful placement of three simple pots of geraniums in the window.

Sunrise at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

This image was taken at a wildlife refuge not far from where I live.  I sometimes arise before dawn and go there to experience the solitude and stillness of the fading darkness just before the sun raises its baton, bringing up the music of the birdlife waiting to greet the day. 

Door and Window, Monastery, Pisa, Italy

I discovered this quiet place while walking through Pisa, Italy a few years ago.  Aside from the wonderful contrast of colors, I am touched by the asymmetrical balance of the door and window, two unique designs existing in perfect harmony.  Somehow, I find a lesson in that.

Frederick Buechner

Frederick Buechner is a novelist, spiritual writer, and former preacher who has wonderful gifts of insight, as well as the ability to share those insights with soft delight.  I hope to devote a complete posting to Buechner in the near future.  For today, however, I will close with a brief quote that contains an inspiring 56-word summary of what Buechner has learned through his long and productive life:

"If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this:  Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.  In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness; touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."

                                        From Listening to Your Life