REMEMBERING A DISTANT FRIEND

In my last posting, I told the story of two encounters that my college roommate, Anthony, and I had fifty years ago with the novelist William Faulkner.  Little did I know when I wrote that post that Anthony was in the last days of his battle with mantle cell lymphoma, a cancer that he had been fighting for more than a decade. A few days ago, I learned that just eight days after my post, Anthony finally succumbed to the disease and died in Buenos Aires, the city in which he had chosen to spend his final days.

Since learning of Anthony's death, I have felt the need to offer a small tribute to his life.  It's been a difficult task, however, because this was not one of those friendships that endured through thick and thin.  While our lives intersected for a few good years during our youth, we eventually followed very different paths and lifestyles, and, increasingly with each passing year, we had less and less in common.  One thing that remained, however, was a mutual love of language and the myriad ways in which words can be crafted and spoken to lift and sustain the human spirit.  Words, words, words — their beauty, their magic, and their undeniable power — a power that drove me to become a lawyer and Anthony to become an actor. 

Anthony's life was so complex that I would surely miss the mark if I tried to pay tribute to his life with my own words.  A far better tribute, I think, will emerge if I simply quote the words of three poetic works that were chiseled into Anthony's memory and psyche.  These words always spoke deeply to Anthony's soul, and at this particular moment, they speak deeply to mine.

                 How Calmly Does The Orange Branch

                               by Tennessee Williams

                   (From "Night of the Iguana," Act III)

                    How calmly does the orange branch

                    Observe the sky begin to blanch

                    Without a cry, without a prayer,

                    With no betrayal of despair.

                    Sometime while night obscures the tree

                    The zenith of its life will be

                    Gone past forever, and from thence

                    A second history will commence.

                    A chronicle no longer gold,

                    A bargaining with mist and mould,

                    And finally the broken stem

                    The plummeting to earth; and then

                    An intercourse not well designed

                    For beings of a golden kind

                    Whose native green must arch above

                    The earth's obscene, corrupting love.

                    And still the ripe fruit and the branch

                    Observe the sky begin to blanch

                    Without a cry, without a prayer,

                    With no betrayal of despair.

                    O Courage, could you not as well

                    Select a second place to dwell,

                    Not only in that golden tree

                    But in the frightened heart of me?

                          Explanations of Love

                                        by

                               Carl Sandburg

     There is a place where love begins and a place

     where love ends.

     There is a touch of two hands that foils all 

     dictionaries.

     There is a look of eyes fierce as a big Bethlehem open
     hearth

     furnace or a little green-fire acetylene torch.

     There are single careless bywords portentous as a 

      big bend in the Mississippi River.

     Hands, eyes, bywords—out of these love makes

     battlegrounds and workshops,

     There is a pair of shoes love wears and the coming

      is a mystery.

  

     There is a warning love sends and the cost of it

      is never written till long afterward.

     There are explanations of love in all languages

     and not one found wiser than this:

     There is a place where love begins and a place

     where love ends—and love asks nothing.

        The Lunatic, The Lover, and The Poet
( an excerpt from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream")

         Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
         Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
         More than cool reason ever comprehends.
         The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

         Are of imagination all compact.

         One sees more devils that vast hell can hold;

         That is the madman.  The lover, all as frantic,

         Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.

         The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,

         Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,

         And as imagination bodies forth

         The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

         Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

         A local habitation and a name.

         Such tricks hath strong imagination

         That if it would but apprehend some joy,

         It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

         Or in the night, imagining some fear,

         How easy is a bush supposed to bear!

Perhaps there is a lunatic, a lover, and a poet in each of us — our lunatic selves seeing more devils than hell can hold, our lover selves always in a state of frenzy, and our poet selves always turning our experiences into comprehensible shapes, shapes that, hopefully, will bear more joy than fear.  And if there is more fear than joy, perhaps we can always  summon Courage to come and dwell in our frightened hearts.

Whatever the case, Anthony, I thank you for those good and memorable days of youthful friendship, those days when we rowed oar-to-oar like mates of Ulysses, determined, in Tennyson's glorious words, "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."  With your passing, I cannot help but recall those words that Horatio spoke on Hamlet's death:  May "flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

Credit:  Photo by Mohamed Amarochan, Wikimedia Commons.

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS WITH FAULKNER

William Faulkner
1897 - 1962

There is a scene in Woody Allen's recent film, Midnight in Paris, in which the protagonist reminds his fiancée of one of my favorite lines from William Faulkner: "The past is never dead.  It's not even past."  Hearing that line again reminded me of a couple of brief, personal encounters I had with Faulkner in 1961, when I was a student at the University of Mississippi, better known perhaps as "Ole Miss."

Like most other students at the university, my roommate, Anthony, and I were reading Faulkner as part of our freshman curriculum.  Emboldened by our intellectual pursuits, we decided one day that we could better appreciate Faulkner's novels — perhaps even understand The Sound and the Fury — if we had a personal, face-to-face conversation with the writer, who lived in Oxford, just a couple of miles from the university campus.  We recognized, of course, that Faulkner was a man of considerable fame, having received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, and having published more than sixteen novels, but we remained undaunted in our quest.  If Faulkner had such great affection for all of those dreary characters he created in the fictional Yacknapatawpha County, Mississippi, he would surely welcome a couple of idealistic, albeit naive, students from the real deal — Stone County, a few hundred miles to the south.

Thus inspired, Anthony and I drove to Faulkner's home on Taylor Street one afternoon and entered the tree-lined driveway that led past a couple of barking bloodhounds to the house.  After knocking on the front door several times, all to no avail, we walked to the back of the house and mounted the back steps to the door of a screened-in sleeping porch.  Peering through the screen door, we saw an elderly man taking a nap on an old iron bed.  Immediately sensing that we were pressing out luck, we turned and attempted to scamper away with nothing more than a few giggles.  Alas, however, it was too late.  The man arose from the bed and demanded to know what we wanted.  Summoning what little courage I could find, I replied that my friend and I were just university students who were hoping to get a chance to talk with him about his work.  "I'm not Faulkner," he replied.  "Faulkner is in New York to see his agent and will not return until next week."

Armed as I was with a paperback copy of Faulkner's third novel, Sartoris, which boldly displayed a photo of Faulkner on the back cover, I knew for certain that this was Faulkner and that he was lying through his teeth, all in the hope of banishing the two students who had disturbed his afternoon nap.  In deference to the Nobel Prize winner, however, and with due respect for his menacing bloodhounds, Anthony and I apologized for our intrusion and politely asked the gentleman to please give Mr. Faulkner our best wishes.  We then promptly departed, plotting our next move as we drove away.

Having been rebuffed in our first attempt to have a serious conversation with Faulkner, Anthony and I decided that a more creative approach was required.  We needed to make better presentations of ourselves, perhaps by wearing suits, and, more importantly, we needed our next visit to be accompanied by dates with two lovely university coeds, whose charms would prove to be irresistible to the curmudgeonly author.  Happily, the approach worked flawlessly.  When we returned to Faulkner's house a few evenings later, he came to the front portico and spent a short amount of time with us as we made idle chat and I asked inane, pretentious questions.  At one point, I told Faulkner that I was reading Sartoris and wondered if the rumors were true that Colonel John Sartoris, the old patriarch of the novel, was modeled after the author's great-grandfather.  With a look of considerable disgust, tempered by patience, Faulkner stared at me for a moment and then brushed the question aside, strongly suggesting that we should confine our discussion to a matter of mutual interest, specifically, the comeliness of the two young ladies who had joined us.  Respectfully, though reluctantly, I complied.

I have never been a great fan of Faulkner's novels, with the possible exception of Light in August.  Had I been given another chance to meet the author, however, I would have asked  him a question that has puzzled me for years.  The question relates to two quotes, one the soliloquy from Macbeth that inspired the title of Faulkner's fourth novel, The Sound and the Fury, and the other being from Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech.  In Macbeth's soliloquy, Shakespeare wrote:

                    Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
                    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
                    And then is heard no more: it is a tale
                    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
                    Signifying nothing.

This philosophy — beautifully written as it is — offers little solace to the questing heart.  In his Noble Prize acceptance speech, however, Faulkner suggests that we are not condemned to a fate of despair, that we may, indeed, find lasting meaning in our lives.  Listen!

I decline to accept the end of man.  It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

I refuse to accept this.  I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.  He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.  The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things.  It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.  The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

So this is the question I have always wanted to ask, Bill (as Faulkner was affectionately referred to around Oxford).  Did you finally conclude that Shakespeare was wrong?  Did you discover that our shadowed lives are more than tales told by idiots, more than mere sound and fury, and that our lives do, in fact, signify something, especially when the compassionate soul finds a way to speak, to lift the human heart, and to imbue man with courage, honor, and hope?  As you can see, Bill, there was so much we could have discussed on that humid summer evening some fifty years ago.  Ah, but why debate the past?  As you have always reminded me, Bill, the past is never really dead — indeed, it's not even really past.

e

Faulkner's House, "Rowan Oak,"

Now Maintained as a Museum 

By the University of Mississippi

Photo by Gary Bridgman

BEAUTY AND THE SPRINGTIME OF POSSIBILITY

Unfortunately, my postings since the beginning of the year have been few and far between. This has been a disappointment for me because I derive great nourishment from the beauty, wisdom, and inspiration that I discover in my conversations with friends in the blogging community.  From time to time, however, the pressing demands of everyday life escalate to a level that leaves little breathing room for either pleasure or reflection. 

With the demands in my own life compounding lately, rather than abating, I woke up and came into my office around 3:15 this morning, intending to post a note stating that I would be taking a sabbatical from blogging until things improve.  As soon as I retrieved  my blog, however, the banner of current postings by others reminded me of how much I need these conversations in order to meet the challenges of life. That caused me to pause for a moment and pick up the book I have just finished reading, namely, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, by the late John O'Donahue, a fine Irish writer and one of my favorite  navigators of the human heart.  Turning to a dog-eared page, I reread a passage that I read a couple of nights ago and which has resonated deeply with me since then.  I quote that passage below because it speaks more eloquently than I can about the terrain through which I have been passing for several months.  The depth and power of these words convinces me that I must not allow the distractions of the day to divert me from the sources of strength that I will require for the journey.  Thus, rather than take a sabbatical from postings, I am going to redouble my efforts to post on a more frequent basis.

From Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, under a subsection titled "The Lost Voice" — 

A time of bleakness can also be a time of pruning.  Sometimes when our minds are dispersed and scattered, this pruning cuts away all of the false branching where our passion and energy were leaking out.  While it is painful to experience and endure this, a new focus and clarity emerge. The light that is hard won offers the greatest illumination.  A gift wrestled from bleakness will often confer a sense of sureness and grounding of the self, a strengthening proportionate to the travail of its birth.  The severity of Nothingness can lead to beauty.  Where life had gone stale, transfiguration occurs.  The ruthless winter clearance of spirit quietly leads to springtime of possibility.  Perhaps Nothingness is the secret source from which all beginning springs. 

There are also times of malaise, when life moves into the stillness of quiet death. Though you function externally, something is silently dying inside of you, something you can no longer save.  You are not yet able to name what you are losing, but you sense that its departure cannot be halted. Those who know you well can hear behind your words the deadened voice, the monotone of unremedied sadness.  Your lost voice cannot be quieted.  It becomes audible despite your best efforts to mask it. Sometimes even from a stranger one overhears the pathos of the lost voice: it may speak with passion on a fascinating topic, yet its mournful music seeps out, suggesting the no man's land where the speaker is now marooned.  Put flippantly, no-one ever really knows what they are saying. The adventure of voice into silence and silence into voice: this is the privilege and burden of the poet.

Since first reading Anam Cara, I have long treasured O'Donahue's insights into the spiritual landscape of the human heart.  I did not discover O'Donahue's meditation on beauty, however, until after reading Fireweed Meadow's wonderful posting, Beauty by John O'Donahue, which I heartily recommend to other readers.   Thanks, Fireweed, for bringing this book to my attention and inspiring this post. 

RABBIT HOLES, REAL ESTATE, AND REALITY

Homestead Near Keld, U.K., Taken During My Coast to Coast Walk Last June


Where thou art—that—is Home.

Emily Dickinson

With the exception of a few sporadic comments here and there, I have been largely absent from the blogging community for about a month.  This all began rather innocently as my wife and I embarked upon a house search, thinking that we would like to relocate from Maryland to South Carolina later this year.  In a matter of days, however, I fell into a rabbit hole and descended into the chaos and confusion of today's real estate world.  

After considerable hand-wringing, debate, and prolonged negotiations with the owners of a particular house, we signed a contract to purchase the property, subject to several contingencies.  As soon as the ink was dry, however, we were visited by a plague of problems, some of which were legal in nature (e.g., perceived violations of setback requirements) and some of which were structural in nature (e.g., a malfunctioning septic system).  While we attempted to work toward the resolution of these issues, the sellers eventually decided that they preferred to have the contract cancelled, rather than provide the additional time necessary to address these matters.  In the end, it was much ado about nothing, except, of course, the wear and tear on the soul, which is what I want to talk about in this posting.

Lest there be any doubt, my purpose here is not to whine about losing this particular house.  Indeed, I am somewhat relieved that this affair has finally come to an end. What I do regret, however, is the loss of the time and energy wasted on, of all things, a material possession!  It wasn't just the money spent on experts, surveys, and inspections; it was the forfeited time that would have otherwise been spent in solitude and gratitude, time for listening rather than talking, time for watching herons and egrets meditate upon the edges of these coastal marshlands.  Take these hours from a person and you have essentially shortened a life.

One of the great ironies of modern life is that we must function in a world that is undeniably competitive, capitalistic, and ego-driven, while, simultaneously, we are called upon by virtually all spiritual wisdom to transcend that world.  It may be, as F. Scott Fitzgerald stated in The Crack-Up," that "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."  I, for one, however, find this extremely difficult when it comes to remaining transcendent through the day to day challenges of living in a materialistic world.  Transcendence works best for me when I am immersed in art, nature, solitude, or some form of meditation.  Place me in the center of commercial negotiations, however, and I become a hopeless recidivist, trying to nail down my security in an insecure world and attaching myself to desirable outcomes.  It is only later — after diagnosing my dis-ease — that I return to the centering wisdom of my teachers, those who have repeatedly warned me that control of one's fate is an illusion and that attachment to desirable outcomes is a set-up for suffering.

Almost two thousand years ago, Pliny the Elder cautioned us that "home is where the heart is."  If that is true — and I believe it is — my home is in a place that has no measurable metes and bounds.  It is a place where art and creativity flourish, where ideas are more valuable than money or property, where kindred spirits become fellow pilgrims in the quest for better selves and a better world.  It is, among other things, here in this blogging community where I have returned to find inspiring poetry, spiritual insights, and heartfelt commentary on matters of ultimate importance.  When I see the tracks of my fellow pilgrims, I know that I am out of the rabbit hole, back to reality, and on my way home.

THE WISDOM OF BIRDS

Snowy Egret

Like my late father, I find birds to be endlessly fascinating.  At some level, I suppose, we are all like Daedalus and Icarus, harboring a latent desire for wings that will liberate us from the narrow confines of the world's labyrinth.  At another level, however, I simply feel a personal connection with many birds, especially the large birds with whom one can establish and maintain eye contact.  With these birds, I always sense a kind of mutual empathy, a mutual awareness that, for better or worse, we will need each other for the journey ahead.  Maybe it's a mutual respect for each other's solitude, coupled with  a  recognition that even solitaries are interdependent in the greater scheme of things.

Whatever the case, I have been spending a great deal of time in recent weeks observing the abundant bird life that inhabits this part of coastal South Carolina.  A few photos of my friends are set forth below, together with some relevant observations by writers who have discovered the wisdom and metaphorical values of birds.

Great White Egret

With an eye made quiet by the power

of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

we see into the life of things.

Wordsworth

Great Blue Heron

I am looking at a great blue heron who is building a nest in the pine tree next to my father's home.  Every once in a while she stretches her long neck and points her head toward the heavens, and I feel the stretch in my throat.  She stands immobile for long periods staring into the eastern horizon and then floats to the canal below for some food.  I have seen this heron mother for years in the same pine tree.  Winter is her season to nest.  She stands like a blue-gray guardian of the past, not seeming to take notice of the flow of traffic on the highway . . . 

This great heron reminds me that storying is a kind of root medicine, a way for us to enter our depths and derive nourishment from the fruitful darkness.  For her life to succeed, this big mother heron needs her old pine tree and her dark inland water.  She needs continuity, heights, and depths for her life to be complete.  It is this way with tellings, with stories, with myths, with prayer, prophecy, and song.  They call forth the firmness of the tree and the yielding deep water in moments of transmitted inspiration.

Joan Haliflax
The Fruitful Darkness 

Great White Egret

                                        Birds make great sky-circles

                                        of their freedom.

                                        How do they learn it?

                                        They fall, and falling, 

                                        they're given wings.

                                                    Rumi

Great White Egret

I studied the bird, deeply impressed that she seemed to know instinctively that in stillness is healing.  I had been learning that too, learning that stillness can be a prayer that transforms us.

Sue Monk Kidd
When the Heart Waits

Great White Egret Egret

                                               Birdsong brings relief

                                               to my longing.

                                               I am just as ecstatic as they are,

                                               but with nothing to say!

                                               Please, universal soul, practice

                                               some song, or something, through me!

                                                                            Rumi

Great Blue Heron

EMERSON AND SELF-RELIANCE

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803 - 1882

One of my oldest possessions is a two-volume set of the collected essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson.  From the first serious reading of those essays as a college freshman, I knew that I had discovered a friend to whom I could always turn when searching for guidance on issues of ultimate importance.  Now, more than five decades later, my admiration and respect for Emerson remain the same.  His observations on the nature and potential of mankind are as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century.  As philosopher and writer Jacob Needleman states in The Spiritual Emerson, a new compendium of seven of Emerson's essays —

Reading Emerson can awaken a part of the psyche that our culture has suppressed.  And when this part of our human nature makes itself known to us, we are, for that moment, no longer hypnotized by the black dream of a dead universe or the hellish dream of a vain and angry God.  Nor, for that moment, are we under the spell of sudden illusions or arrogant fantasies about what human beings are and what they can become: illusions that deny the true metaphysical nobility of man; fantasies that blind us to how far we actually are from that nobility.

In keeping with what has almost become an annual ritual, I have been re-reading some the Emerson essays that influenced me as a young man seeking liberation from the stifling conformity of my southern background.  These essays inspire me now as they always have, and I would like to share some of Emerson's thinking with you on my blog, beginning today with some excerpts from "Self-Reliance."  As I read this wisdom, I continue to ask myself if there is anyone writing today who not only possesses such a penetrating mind, but who also has the power to summon us to our better natures.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius.  Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost . . .

* * * * *

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. 

* * * * *

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

* * * * *

Trust thyself:  every heart vibrates to that iron string.  Accept the place the divine providence has found for you . . .

* * * * *

The virtue in most request is conformity.  Self-reliance is its aversion.  It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. . . . Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.

* * * * *

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.  Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. 

* * * * * 

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

* * * * *

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love.

* * * * *

You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

* * * * * 

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.  With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

* * * * *

To be great is to be misunderstood.

* * * * *

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exists with God today.  There is not time to them.  There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. . . . But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future.  He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

* * * * *

Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.

* * * * *

Insist on yourself; never imitate.  Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.

* * * * *

Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart . . .

* * * * *

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.  Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Emerson's Study

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