The Two Domes of Creation

art, Creativity, Faith, Holy Spirit, Holy Trinity, Icons, Imagination, Love, nature, Painting, Prayer, purpose, Spirituality

I had Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion (ACDF) neck surgery at the end of March to correct a damaged disk. A very fine surgeon removed it, replaced it with a new one, and fused it for strength. Two days in the hospital and I went home to recover. I was tired for several weeks, but I soon felt well enough to start painting again. Each week thereafter I could see improvements in my hand steadiness and mental focus as the pain left my body and my healing progressed. I had been through physical therapy and shots in the neck for a year since my original injury.

The old saying about boiling a frog by raising the temperature of the water gradually also applies to pain: if it rises incrementally, you don’t realize how much you’re tolerating. I feel like a new creation, for I have a new lease on life. Most importantly, I have my sense of humor back. I know this is true, for one morning a friend sent me a funny meme. I laughed so loudly, my Apple Watch gave me a High Decibel Warning alert! Silly watch, you’ve never heard my joy.

As part of my ongoing creation series in the studio, I’ve been working with the imagery from the beginning of Genesis (1:6-8)—

And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

I also had in mind the creation imagery of The Gospel According to John (1:1-5)—

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Hildegard of Bingen: Scivias III.1;
The One upon the throne, Rupertsberg MS,
fol. 122v, manuscript
illumination,
12^th CE.

These two texts, one from the Old and one from the New Testament, remind us the Triune God has always been creating our universe and our earth. From this we understand what the Trinity has created, it will be by the same love, desire, and compassion the Trinity will sustain creation and renew creation in the proper time. Humanity is a cocreator of beauty alongside the Holy Trinity. While our works aren’t infinite or perfect, we humans hold the desire to create and surpass our best works, even as the Creator of all things saw all the work before the creation of the first human beings as “good,” but the creation of humans in God’s image as “very good.”

Too often our Christian theology hinges on some form of “sinners in the hands of an angry God,” rather than the doctrine of “God so loved the world.” This dualist contrast of sin/redemption versus love/renewal is a difference of viewpoint between those who focus on judgment and those who focus on grace. The old story of “God loves me in spite of my fallen and wicked ways” doesn’t make sense to a new generation who has gotten affirmations for all their efforts. As part of the old generation, that traditional story barely made sense even to me and my generation. Between 2000 and 2020, Gallup reported church attendance for people born before 1946 declined 11%, attendance for Baby Boomers declined 9%, attendance for Gen X declined 12%, and the facts aren’t in yet for the Millennials or Gen Z. Moreover, speaking only to “personal salvation” is not on most younger people’s minds. They are more interested in the great causes of justice for the weak and the oppressed, and in liberation for the unjustly imprisoned, just as Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah (4:8-9):

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Hildegard of Bingen is a good person to help straddle this dilemma. After all, Hildegard is one of the only four women whom the Catholic Church has recognized as a Doctor of the Church. Only thirty-six other figures in the history of the church have earned his great honor, which Hildegard belatedly received rom Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. This title recognizes the outstanding contribution a person has made to the understanding and interpretation of the sacred Scriptures and the development of Christian doctrine. Only four on the list are women (Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, and Hildegard of Bingen). The definition of the term “Doctor of the Church” is based on the three requirements a person must fulfill to merit inclusion in the ranks of the “Doctors of the Catholic Church”:

1) holiness that is truly outstanding, even among saints;

2) depth of doctrinal insight; and

3) an extensive body of writings which the church can recommend as an expression of the authentic and life-giving Catholic Tradition.

Born the tenth child in an era where a family practiced tithing or giving a tenth of everything to God in every aspect of their life, Hildegard was ‘given to God’ and taken to live in an abbey, as a nun. There she learned faith and healing, and studied medicine, natural science, music, and writing. She wrote ten books, two volumes of which are well known: Physica, a book on natural science, and Causae et Curae, a book of medicine and remedies. These two works hold most of Hildegard’s musings on the relationship between science and faith, along with her scientific observations and medicinal remedies. Scivias, Hildegard’s main theological work, stands for “Scito vias Domini,” meaning “know the ways of the Lord.”

Her knowledge came from visions of light, what today some have called debilitating migraines, which confined her to her bed for days. Hildegard spoke of her visions of light, just as migraine sufferers often report an extreme sensitivity to light, or seeing strange light patterns, in the middle of an episode. Her science was advanced for the 12th CE, but we don’t study Hildegard for her scientific truths. She is more important for her theology and spirituality about creation and God’s love for all life.

When God created the world, God pronounced God’s creation “good.” The world in which we now live is obviously corrupt and fallen, so many people have given up on it. The same was also true back in Hildegard’s time. The secular and religious empires of the West were at war. The Crusades tried to wrest the Holy Land from the Arabs in great battles resulting in mass carnage. The growth of cities’ merchant classes also threatened the established order of the powerful.

It was an uneasy time for all the people, just as it is today when the cultures of the east and the west are wrestling for dominance, great powers still try to expand their territories, and technocrats challenge governments worldwide for power. Once again it is “the times, they (were) are a changing,” as Bob Dylan, the prophet of our age sings for every age.

Hildegard speaks of God not only creating, but also being in the world. This is what we call Panentheism, which comes from the Greek words pan/all + en/in +theos/God. Panentheism considers God and the world to be inter-related with the world being in God and God being in the world. Panentheism affirms both divine transcendence and immanence. We can both experience God through the natural world, while God is also beyond our normal experience. Hildegard experienced God in both the world around her, even though she lived a secluded life, and she also experienced God through her visions. (This is not pantheism, which makes creation into the god or accepts the equality of many gods.)

Hildegard von Bingen: The universe (or the Cosmic Egg), from Scivias, an illustrated work by Hildegard von Bingen, completed in 1151 or 1152, describing 26 religious visions she experienced. Liber Scivias (Sci vias Domini = Know the ways of the Lord). The book, Codex Rupertsberg, disappeared during WW II. Transparencies are from a faksimile, copied by hand by some nuns from 1927 to 1933.
(Plate 4 fol-14r—The universe (or the Cosmic Egg)

“I, the fiery life of divine wisdom,

I ignite the beauty of the plains, I sparkle the waters,

I burn in the sun and the moon, and the stars.

With wisdom I order all rightly.

Above all I determine truth.

I am the one whose praise echoes on high.

I adorn all the earth.

I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.

I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.

I am led by the Spirit to feed the purest streams.

I am the rain coming from the dew

that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.

I call forth tears, the aroma of holy work.

I am the yearning for good.

Invisible life that sustains all,

I awaken to life everything In every waft of air.

The air is life, greening and blossoming.

The waters flow with life. The sun is lit with life.

All creation is gifted with the ecstasy of God’s light.

In doing good, the illumination of a good conscience

is like the light of the earthly sun.

If they do not see me in that light,

how can they see me in the dark of their hearts?

I am for all eternity the vigor of the Godhead.

I do not have my source in time.

I am the divine power

through which God decided and sanctioned

the creation of all things.

With my mouth I kiss my own chosen creation.

I uniquely, lovingly, embrace every image

I have made out of the earth’s clay.”

I resonate with Hildegard not only because her theology speaks of God’s love for everything God created, but also because God desires for all creation and humanity alike to come to a state of perfection. Even when I was a nonbeliever, creation always called my name. I’ve always felt a peace and wholeness when I looked upon nature. The beauty of the sky, the changing colors of the seasons, and cloud patterns fascinate me to this day. Now I can read Psalm 19:1 with a heart of faith:

“The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament (dome) proclaims his handiwork.”

Hildegard of Bingen’s final and greatest visionary work was the Liber Divinorum Operum, the “Book of Divine Works.” Each of her recorded visions elaborates the dynamic Word of God, present before and within Creation. The Word first became a human being to bring the Work of God—humanity and by extension all creation—to perfection. This grand vision is the culmination of Hildegard’s entire theological project and represents her most mature formulation of the themes central to her thought.

Hildegard believed the fundamental human vocation was to understand both ourselves and all creation as the work of God, and our place as cooperative agents of that work. Also in this “Book of Divine Works,” Hildegard considers rational understanding as the means to know our Creator and properly fulfill the work for which we were created; the relationship between humanity and the rest of creation as microcosm and macrocosm; and the eternal predestination of the incarnate Word of God irrupting into and unfolding through time, as revealed in both Scripture and the life of the Church. Our Library of Congress has a fully digitized copy of Hildegard’s final tome of 353 magnificently illustrated pages, which is accessible at the link at the bottom of this post.

DeLee: Christ Offers the Word, acrylic on canvas,
8” x 10”, 2025

Nature has always revealed the presence of God to me, not just the in the act of creation and the beauty of nature, which I see presented daily from sunrise to sunset, but also in the transits of the stars in the night skies. From the myths of our ancestors trying to make sense of their world to our current search for the mysterious ninth planet (sorry, Pluto, I still love you, even if you’ve been demoted to a dwarf planet), and to the great nebulas and galaxies beyond our Milky Way, we humans have experienced God among these other mysteries.

While we believe one day we can know all the unknowns, we nevertheless awake to discover we stand on the precipice of yet more mysteries and the need to refine our former truths. The more we know, the more we discover we’ve barely scratched the surface of the depths of what can be known. This search for knowledge is what keeps the curious alive and ever on the quest for the outer boundaries.

*Hildegard: Scivias* III.1: The One upon the throne.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 122v.

The creative mind believes a heart touched by God’s creative spirit has unique insights to give to the world, which needs beauty to confront the mess we can see outside our doorsteps and on our nightly newscasts. Creating an icon is one way to pray and enter a holy space. The circle stands for the halo, but also to identify the image portrayed as a holy or important figure. When I need to recenter myself, I always paint an icon. I pray twice—once in the act of painting and again in observing and meditating upon the image of the icon. This icon has not only the halo of Christ, but the cruciform halo, which serves to differentiate the Trinity from the non-divine saints, dignitaries, and angels. It appears on images of God the Father and the Hand of God, Christ and the Lamb of God, and the Dove of the Holy Spirit.

Rebecca Boyle describes the science of creation in “The Universe’s First Light Could Reveal Secrets of the Cosmic Dawn:”

Everything started in the tremendous burst of energy known as the big bang. Within a few seconds the universe cooled enough for the first protons, neutrons, electrons, and photons to spark into existence, and within a few minutes those building blocks came together to form the first nuclei of hydrogen and helium. After about 380,000 years, the universe was sufficiently cool for those protons and neutrons to grab free-flying electrons and form the first electrically neutral atoms. For the first time, photons stopped colliding with free electrons and were able to flow through the universe. This process, confusingly called recombination—it was actually the first true combination of atomic components—released the cosmic microwave background (CMB) light that pervades all of space. The most detailed map of this background is from the Planck satellite, a European space observatory that launched in 2009 to study this light.

DeLee: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” —John 1:3

I made this second creation painting during this healing time by intuitively wrapping strings around the stretched canvas. Then I took assorted sizes of plastic lids which I couldn’t recycle, but I was “needing to find a use for them” before I relocated them to the trash heap. I belong to the generation of “waste not, want not.” (Yes, my nannie had the famed ball of string and one of tinfoil also.)

As I placed the various sized circles around the canvas, I thought of the many hours my childhood friends and I would pass the leisure of our hot summertime days with scribble challenges. One of us would make random marks on a paper for the other to decorate or to discover a magical creature of our imagination. As we grew older, these became more developed into different textures and patterns. As I painted the circles and straight lines, I saw the bright cross amid the heat of the great power of creation, with all the elements created in that first burst of light.

Hildegard: Liber Divinorum Operum II.1: The Parts of the Earth: Living, Dying, and Purgatory. Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, MS 1942, fol. 88v (early 13^th CE.).

As Hildegard reminds us, “Humankind, full of all creative possibilities, is God’s work. God calls humankind alone to assist God. Humankind are co-creators. With nature’s help, humankind can set into creation all that is necessary and life-sustaining.”

One of our last days in the art class I teach at a local church to adults who are willing to pursue the challenge of treading beyond their comfort zones, I was fooling around with a compass and a straight edge. It wasn’t a ruler, but I found the center of the canvas with the compass intersections instead. I used a piece of cardboard as my straight edge. I ended up with multiple intersecting lines, all of which I left on the surface.

When I got home, I found them interesting. These I pursued, but not all of them. The art is in deciding which ones to ignore! While painting, I reflected on God’s creation. The Holy Trinity has always existed and has always shared the work of creation. Also, there is no such entity as a “Holy Binity” or just the Father and Spirit only. The Son has always existed and has always shared the work of the entire Godhead, which we often refer in a shorthand as “God.”

DeLee: The Dome of the Waters, acrylic on canvas, 10” x 10”, 2025

As I painted more, the dark blues above the light blue represented the waters above the “firmament” of the pale cerulean sky. When it rains, the holes in the dome of the sky let the water leak out, or so I’ve heard the old folks say. I never heard their explanation for why it doesn’t rain all the time, but perhaps “angels are involved.” They might be busy plugging the holes in the dome with their fingers, but God must have many angels working hard on our behalf.

The area below is in greens for all the growing and thriving things. There is an upside-down dome, or a Cheshire Cat smile pale green eighth moon shape for the underground water sources. All the intersecting compass marks are the energy signatures, which God’s power unleashes when God makes a new thing or renews an old thing. If we are sensitive to God’s creative spirit, we cannot help but be in awe of the magic and mystery of not only the minutiae of nature, but also the grandeur of the cosmos.

Ansel Adams: Wilderness, California. Afternoon Thunderstorm, Garnet Lake.

The great landscape photographer Ansel Adams was one of the voices of those who found inspiration in nature, especially our national parks. He spoke the same sensible words for our age: “As the fisherman depends upon the rivers, lakes and seas, and the farmer upon the land for his existence, so does mankind in general depend upon the beauty of the world about him for his spiritual and emotional existence.” (From a speech to the Wilderness Society, May 9, 1980).

The natural world is meant for humankind to care for, tend, and enjoy with respect, just as we would care for a beloved partner. Not everyone sees the world with the eyes of God, who so loved the world—both the humans, the creatures, and the earth itself—God gave God’s only Begotten son to save the world, “For God did not send his Son into the world (kosmon|κόσμον) to condemn the world (kosmon|κόσμον), but so that the world (kosmos|κόσμος) might be saved through him.” (John 3:17) What God created, God loves and will sustain. Can we do anything less and still be faithful to God’s calling on our hearts?

Joy and peace,

Cornelia

U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time

https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx

Trans. by Nathaniel Campbell, from the Latin text of Hildegard of Bingen, Liber Divinorum Operum, ed. A. Derolez and P. Dronke, in CCCM 92 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), pp. 47-9. (Musical Score)

International Society of Hildegard von Bingen Studies: Karitas habundat

http://www.hildegard-society.org/2014/11/karitas-habundat-antiphon.html

Panentheism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panentheism/

The Universe’s First Light Could Reveal Secrets of the Cosmic Dawn | Scientific American by Rebecca Boyle

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universes-first-light-could-reveal-secrets-of-the-cosmic-dawn/

Neumes | Music Appreciation 1

Neumes

International Society of Hildegard von Bingen Studies: February 2015

http://www.hildegard-society.org/2015/02/

The Book of Divine Works. | Library of Congress: Fully digitized copy of Hildegard’s final tome of 353 magnificently illustrated pages, late 12^th century CE.

https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_21658/?st=gallery

Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Star Talk: Could One Electron Explain the Universe?

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1859416304571349?fs=e&fs=e

Is a River Alive? By Macfarlane, Robert. Available as audiobook, kindle, and paperback

Weaving a Life Story

Academy for Spiritual Formation, adult learning, art, Creativity, Faith, Holy Spirit, Icons, inspiration, Ministry, Nativity, renewal, righteousness, Silence, suffering, vision

Weaving is a metaphor for our life’s story and journey. We envision the weaver in charge of the colors, designs, and textures of the finished fabric. The weaver’s goal is to produce a beautiful product. We often think we are in charge of our own destiny, as “The Weaving Song” by Carolyn Hester, in which an old 1960’s era folk singer would sing:

Choose the right color And push the right tread

Throw through the shuttle And peg down the thread

Work is all laid Before your start

To make your own pallet Of bright hue or dark

The loom of life is moving The weaving is all your own

Choose the right color And push the right tread

Throw through the shuttle And peg down the thread

Rainbow of colors Is at your command

Choose all the right shades Offered in the stand

The loom of life is moving The weaving is all your own

Life’s but a grey And heavy with care

May blooms scarlet With couragе rare

The loom of life is moving Thе weaving is all your own.

DeLee: God’s Eye and Cross, woven canvas, branch, string, paint brushes, fabric scraps, wire, packing materials, 16” x 20”, 2025.

Yet life doesn’t always work out the way we thought it would. The Bible says Job was the most righteous person of his era, and Job complains after losing everything and everyone:

“My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle and come to their end without hope.” (7:6)

This wisdom text reminds us sometimes the righteous suffer, even while the wicked prosper, but God is still God, and we will understand this mystery of God when we see God face to face. We call this “theodicy,” (from Greek theos, “god”; dikē, “justice”), or our explanation of why a perfectly good, almighty, and all-knowing God still permits evil to exist.

God gives human beings free will. We make our own choices in life, just as everyone else does. Since we don’t live in a universe of one, other people’s choices impact our choices. Imagine a pingpong ball tossed into a room filled with mousetraps all loaded with other pingpong balls. If one ball hits a loaded trap, it sets that ball off into motion and those balls set more balls into motion until chaos ensues! If more than one person is involved, some sort of disagreement is sure to follow. Some of us are even at odds with our own selves!

As the old joke goes, a solitary man was rescued from a desert island. On this island were several structures. When asked, he said, “That one was my house and that one was my church.” And the other building? “That was the church I used to go to!”

Louise Bourgeois: Spider, metal, National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa, Ontario. Her mother mended tapestries, like a spider spins a web.

When life is chaotic, creative people find solace in the quiet of their chosen deserts: the studio, the workshop, or their favorite writing chair. While we artists have the illusion we can control the images we produce or the songs which bubble up from our hearts, in truth, what we create is a shared product with our heart, mind, and the creating spirit. If we begin to lose our humility about this shared process, we lose the creative energy underwriting our works.

Louise Bourgeois: Metal Spider wrapped in yarn, Japan

We know this emotion as “pride,” and the ancient cultures warned against it. Throughout history, legendary and mythological figures have been used as examples of either virtue or a moral failing. The story of Arachne and Minerva is no different.

Attributed to Amasis Painter, 6^th BCE, Greece, clay, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

A 6^th BCE Attic Black Figure Lekythos storage vessel attributed to the Amasis Painter shows the type of standing loom and the various shuttles of different threads a weaver would use for a fabric. Today we think of weavers sitting at their looms, but the ancients stood at their work.

Arachne was a mortal who excelled in the weaving arts: spinning her own yarn and selecting the correct colors to produce the beautiful images for the finished fabric. Minerva, the goddess of handicrafts and the Roman correlate to the Greek goddess Athena, had heard of Arachne’s prowess and her pride. Disguised as an old woman, Minerva visited Arachne to warn her not to disparage the gift of the gods. Arachne rebuffed her, and held her ground, even when Minerva revealed her true identity.

Minerva (Athena) and Arachne by René-Antoine Houasse (1706), Versailles

When the weaving contest began, both were even in technique and design. Minerva’s image was of the pantheon of the gods, but Arachne told the stories of the god’s mishaps with humanity. This angered Minerva, who struck Arachne with a weaver’s shuttle. Embarrassed, Arachne took a rope to hang herself, but Minerva had pity on her and changed her into a spider instead. We call spiders, ever weaving their gossamer webs, “arachnids” in her memory.

In Christian art, the theme of listening beside a well or spring is connected both to the angel’s annunciation to the Virgin Mary and to her weaving curtains for the Temple. The third-century Dura-Europos church baptistery has a fresco of a woman drawing water from a well, which Yale theologian Michael Peppard believes represents the Annunciation to Mary at a well, from a scene from the gnostic writing, Protevangelium-18.

Woman drawing water at the well. Possibly the Virgin hearing the Angel’s voice. Dura Europa.

Others think it represents the Samaritan woman at the well or Rebecca from the Old Testament. Because the fresco doesn’t include Jesus, the empty space instead represents “the bodiless voice” that Mary hears in the Protevangelium. Also, a five-pointed star appears on the woman’s torso, which could symbolize the new child in her womb. The star in later iconography was repositioned to the shoulder of her mantle, and the water vessel survives all the way into the Renaissance art as a vase with flowers.

From The Protoevangelium of James, section 11: And she took the pitcher, and went out to fill it with water. And, behold, a voice saying:

“Hail, you who hast received grace; the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!” (Luke 1:28) And she looked round, on the right hand and on the left, to see whence this voice came. And she went away, trembling, to her house, and put down the pitcher; and taking the purple, she sat down on her seat, and drew it out. And, behold, an angel of the Lord stood before her, saying: “Fear not, Mary; for you have found grace before the Lord of all, and you shall conceive, according to His word.” And she hearing, reasoned with herself, saying: “Shall I conceive by the Lord, the living God? And shall I bring forth as every woman brings forth?” And the angel of the Lord said: “Not so, Mary; for the power of the Lord shall overshadow you: wherefore also that holy thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of the Most High. And you shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” And Mary said: “Behold, the servant of the Lord before His face: let it be unto me according to your word.”

This apocryphal Greek text, which was first written in the 2^nd CE, with Syrian revisions into the 5^th CE, is important because it increases our insights into women’s history, the childhood history of Jesus, Jewish-Christian relations, and the impact of Christian apocrypha on Islamic origins. This text, which contains the infancy narratives of the Virgin Mary, John (the Baptist), and Jesus is the source many of the Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox religious feast days. Moreover, it’s also the origin for the icons representing the birth of Jesus in a cave.

Duccio: The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, tempera and gold on panel, 1308-1311, National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C. Part of a series of the Life of Christ, the rest of which are in Sienna, Italy.

A similar Marian birth narrative, The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, gives more details on the life of the Virgin, the miracles surrounding her marriage and the birth of Christ. It also tells the story of the Annunciation in two visits rather than one. The angel’s first greeting is beside a fountain and the second is inside while Mary is weaving the curtains for the Temple.

When I was on a recent Five-Day Academy for Spiritual Formation retreat, one of our hands on projects was a small weaving. Our package had a small loom, some yarn to weave with, and beads to attach. Of course I had to use a second packet to finish out my weaving because I tightened the horizontal rows more tightly than the organizers thought the regular attendees would do with their yarns and ribbons.

I also had my eye on a nice lichen covered branch to use as a hanging support. When I picked it up, it had red ants on it. I had to do some mad shaking to get them off! Anything for art! During one of our quiet reflection sessions, I sat beside a small lake under a pavilion to let my hands work. I’ve always needed a quiet space to process the flood of ideas and the rush of emotions when meeting new people and hearing new ideas. I operate as an extrovert, but when I get full to overflowing, I need quiet to recreate and recharge. I find new power in the admonition of Psalm 46:1-6—

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
Selah
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns.
The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Diedrick Brackens, “prodigal” (2023), cotton and acrylic yarn

When my hands touch the different textures of the threads, and I let my spirit work with the creating Spirit of the word and world, I can shed all the strain and stress of being on a different schedule from traveling, having nerve pain in my neck from a bulging disk, and more interaction than I’m used to since I no longer work.

I always fought to carve out quiet times when I was in active ministry, for listening to God is the first calling of any leader worth their salt. I knew I wouldn’t hear God’s voice in the pell mell rush and cacophony of our world. The disembodied voice is more likely to come to us when we’re alone or in a receptive moment. It’s important to note Mary was one of the virgins of the House of David chosen to weave the curtains for the Temple in Jerusalem, according to The Protoevangelium of James, section 10. She was busy, but working for her God. It was when she took a break to draw water from a life giving well that she heard the messenger from God.

Bruce Conner, Arachne, 1959, mixed media: nylon stockings, collage, cardboard, 65 3⁄4 x 48 3⁄4 x 4 1⁄4 in. (167.0 x 123.8 x 10.7 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Edith S. and Arthur J. Levin, 2005.5.12

When I was appointed to a church, I always had a list of tasks to do, but I often never completed them because God would send “interruptions” to my well laid plans for the day. After several years, I began to understand these interruptions were my real tasks of ministry for the day. We have plans, but God has a better plan.

The prayer in my weaving supplies was appropriate for me on this retreat:

Teach us to listen, O Lord.

Quiet the noise of our lives

so we can hear your voice. Amen.

After several weeks, I’ve come back to finish this blog. In the meantime I’ve had anterior cervical discectomy and fusion for my neck pain and numb fingers. It’s for the bulging neck disk that causes pressure on the spinal cord. If this happens in the lower back, a person gets sciatica and numbness in the legs. In the neck,the same condition affects the arm and hands. I feel better than I did before, so I’m thankful for all healing mercies. I have to be careful not to overdo my activities. The instructions “Don’t do housework!” were gladly received.

I hope you seek out your quiet spaces and quiet moments to hear the sheer, still sounds of silence, the inaudible voice of our God.

Joy and peace,

Cornelia

NOTES:

Carolyn Hester: The Weaving Song, Track 10 on At Town Hall, One, Produced by Norman Petty, 1965.

Troubadour: Weaving Song: similar words to Hester coffee house ballad above. https://music.apple.com/us/album/weaving-song/400303687?i=400303767

Myth of Arachne https://www.worldhistory.org/Arachne/

Ally Kateusz: Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership,1st ed., 2019, Kindle Edition

Annunciation or Samaritan Woman, Dura-Europos Baptistery
https://www.christianiconography.info/Wikimedia%20Commons/annunciationDura.html

Charles Bertram Lewis:”The Origin of the Weaving Songs and the Theme of the Girl at the Fountain,” PMLA, Jun., 1922, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Jun., 1922), pp. 141-18, Modern Language Association. http://www.jstor.com/stable/457

Susan B. Matthews: Dura Europos—The Ancient City and The Yale Collection, Yale University Art Gallery, 1982, Yale University Printing Service. https://artgallery.yale.edu/sites/default/files/publication/pdfs/ag-doc-2378-0002-doc.pdf

Camille Leon Angelo and Joshua Silver: “Debating the domus ecclesiae at Dura-Europos: the Christian Building in context,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 37 (2024), 264–303, doi:10.1017/S1047759424000126. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/E76ED3AD86D09A74893368840DEDFA6A/S1047759424000126a.pdf/debating-the-domus-ecclesiae-at-dura-europos-the-christian-building-in-context.pdf

The Protoevangelium of James, section 11. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0847.htm

The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, section 9. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0848.htm

Horn, C. (2018). The Protoevangelium of James and Its Reception in the Caucasus: Status Quaestionis. Scrinium, 14(1), 223-238. https://doi.org/10.1163/18177565-00141P15

Learning, Growing and Thriving

adult learning, art, Athanasius, brain plasticity, Christmas, Civil War, cognitive decline, Creativity, crucifixion, Faith, Imagination, incarnation, john wesley, Love, mystery, nature, renewal, Spirituality, St. Athanasius, United Methodist Church, Valentine’s Day, Valentine’s Day

In most adults, learning and thinking plateaus and then begins to decline after age 30 or 40. The old adage, “Don’t trust anyone over thirty” takes on new meaning in regards to creativity. People after this age start to perform worse in tests of cognitive abilities such as processing speed, the rate at which someone does a mental task. The slide becomes even steeper after 60 years of age. We also notice a similar learning decline in children after summer vacation, which results in the fall semester becoming a “reteaching opportunity.”

As one who is also “growing long in tooth,” I have passed this yardstick by a mile. I notice I have a “slower processing speed” in my creative writing. I don’t consider it a reason to quit, but a reason to better organize my other time-wasting behaviors (social media, newsletters, newspapers, etc.). I can always ignore cleaning the condominium! Creativity before housework, is my motto.

We often think older adults are on a downward slope with unrecoverable loss. “Use it or lose it,” the saying goes. Recent research suggests we need to apply a more hopeful mindset and vocabulary when discussing older people—much like that used for childhood or early adulthood. Decline, as we so often see it, may not be inevitable. In fact, learning a new skill and practicing it for three months has shown benefits beyond the the practice time.

Adults often have limited time or resources, so if we encourage learning a new skill, this may help them step out of their comfort zones. In people’s later years, many personal and societal changes—such as moving out of state to be closer to family members, switching jobs or coping with physical distance from loved ones—make learning new skills necessary to adapt and succeed.

For example, taking a class to improve technological skills could aid seniors’ success in an increasingly digital world, such as helping them use Telehealth or online banking platforms. Learning new skills in an art class allows a person to express their feelings and solve problems in creative ways. Each person can find their own path to success in artistic practice.

Potholder Loom, just like the one I had back in the day.

Our art class is trying a new thing: weaving. We have been painting for quite a while, so this is really a hands-on project. Some of us had the benefit of making woven potholders as children, or weaving newspaper “sit-upons” at summer camp. The technique isn’t unknown, but making a creative design interpretation is how we take our basic skill forward into a stimulating and creative brain challenge.

DeLee: Woven Paper on a Stick (Earth and Sky)

We could just repeat what we already know, but this doesn’t build us new neurons in our brains. If we keep the same old paths and don’t create new ones, we aren’t flexible when we meet new situations. Since we live in a rapidly changing world, building a brain capable of rapidly adapting is important to live independently and vibrantly for as long as possible.

I remember how my Daddy could only use the old tv remote to change the channel for the original non cable stations. When “Murder, She Wrote” came on the cable channel, my Mother had to use the cable remote to change the station for him. His Alzheimer’s disease prevented him from learning new skills, but he remembered all of his previous medical training and could diagnose his condition and boss the emergency room doctors when he was admitted to the hospital for a fall. Our brains are a mystery indeed.

Mike jumped the gun on Valentine’s Day and created a woven heart. These were big in the Danish and German communities and very popular in the 19th century in America. During the Civil War, soldiers made many of these in elaborate forms to send to their loved ones back home.

The brain is a fantastic and mysterious organ. If we make a habit of learning something new every day, of whatever interests us, we have the opportunity to keep our lucidity for a longer time. We also we meet the quickening changes of modern life with a steadfast heart and mind. We stress less when we know we can adapt and change in our own lives. We don’t have to be the people who say, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” We can teach and we can learn, but we might need to be more patient with the old dog. In some corners, we call that “grace.”

I watched my Granddaughter’s Daddy Daughter Dance

Our group was in and out during the several weeks devoted to this project. One of us was sick, one was grieving the death of a beloved pet, another had pressing work issues, and the teacher went to Florida to see her granddaughter get married. Amazingly, life goes on. People dropped in for spiritual support, which is a side benefit of the community of art class. I managed to get mine mostly done, and Gail S. finished hers completely. Sometimes life interrupts our best intentions and we move on. We will learn new lessons on the next project.

Gail S’s “Eye of God” weaving incorporates yarns from two different mop heads, some sticks, and a bird feather. Gail almost always keeps a realist focus in her works, so her eye of God has a bird feather to mark the pupil. The upper field of grey and white mop yarns represent the cloudy sky, while the blue yarn stands for the water and the brown for the land. God watches over all of God’s creation. Gail S’s love of the outdoors and all of nature is evident in all her work.

I also recycled some old paintings and cords which I’d used in the preparatory work of other paintings. In addition, I used some recycled strips of Amazon shipping parcels as well as a wire shape which once belonged to a butterfly wing. In repurposing these items into the weaving along with two old brushes bound together with a God’s eye, I invoke the renewal of life after death.

We people of faith have two opportunities for a renewal of life after death. The first is by our profession of faith in Christ and his life, death, and resurrection on our behalf for our salvation. This gives us a living faith in this world. The second renewal is for the resurrection from death itself. This gives us a life beyond this world. Our faith is worthless if it doesn’t change us for our walk upon this world. If we don’t have the heart and mind of Christ within us, and if we aren’t earnestly seeking to be made perfect in the love of Christ daily, our United Methodist heritage tells us we’ve not yet been converted.

Yet Christ desires to save all, as John records in 12:32, Jesus tells the crowd,

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Not just some people, or only the best, or even just us United Methodists, but ALL people. Most of us aren’t able to understand such a wide ranging love, for we live in a world of tribal loyalties. If we look at creation, which is God’s first work, God loves that which God created. God loves everything God created. We humans are the ones who choose sides and introduce boundaries and hate into God’s singular creation. The world or Kosmos is the creation first and then the people in it.

Today we tend to ascribe “world” to the “culture,” or secular society in general, but its plain meaning is creation and the human presence, for good or ill. The ancient Greeks and Romans divided the world into the material (bad) and the spiritual or mind (good), but the Jewish theology conceived the unity of both as part of God’s gift to humankind.

In the fifty-fourth chapter of On the Incarnation, St. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote a sentence that has echoed down through the centuries even into our own time as a brilliant summary of the Gospel. He wrote this: “God became man so that man might become god” (54:3).

This doctrine is called theosis or acquiring the whole nature of God. We United Methodists call this state Christian Perfection, or “a heart so full of love of God and neighbor that nothing else exists.” Our Wesleyan heritage was influenced by the Wesley brothers’ deep love for the Greek Orthodox fathers of the early church. To focus only on fallen nature is to deny the power of God to redeem us and all creation and to make all things new. We humans and nature aren’t more powerful than God!

If we cut off part of our God given self, we deny the incarnation of Christ, who became human for us that we might become divine. We need to remember what John 3:16 so succinctly states:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Art is a way to open our eyes and hearts to a new way of seeing spiritual truths. Art is also reflective of the artist’s soul and spirit. A sensitive viewer can read the tale of trauma or the struggle for survival in an artist’s body of work. More than this, we can listen for their voices straining to be heard. Most people have been silenced and conformed to the “cause no trouble, don’t get out of step” mantra of the public school system training our youth for the workplace.

In art class, we can lose our fear of being different because being different gets rewarded! Being original gets an attaboy or attagirl. I find such joy helping people find new courage and creativity they didn’t know existed within themselves. My students keep me young too. I feel blessed beyond measure.

Joy and peace,

Cornelia

To Stay Sharp as You Age, Learn New Skills | Scientific American

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-stay-sharp-as-you-age-learn-new-skills/

That Man Might Become God — Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/asd/2015/01/22/man-might-become-god/

Pumpkins and Gourds

adult learning, art, Creativity, Faith, generosity, inspiration, Ministry, nature, Painting, picasso, pumpkins, shadows, Spirituality, suffering, Winston Churchill

Sometimes I can work for hours and end up with nothing to show for it. In grammar school, I could use the excuse, “The dog ate my diorama.” Today my primary reason is “The latest iOS upgrade sent my file into the far realms of the cloud and smashed it to smithereens while it was traveling to some unknown destination.” I can be thankful at least my mind only goes on occasional jaunts to Pluto, but it returns after those excursions after a time. And no worse for wear, not that anyone would ever notice.

Today will be different. I am determined. I am convinced. I am also wearing my Bat Girl costume, so I will not let the powers and principalities of evil defeat me. I will fight against the darkness of the night and bring the light to the hidden places. When we start a new venture, the only way we can gain experience is by failing. In fact, failure is how we learn. The best teachers set up the learning process in structured practices which build upon each prior experience. We also observe our students to note if we need to reteach a lesson from a different point of view to cement their understanding before we move onto the next phase.

Mr. Rogers was still breaking world records in running for his age group at age 100. He died on November 14, 2019, while in hospice care at the age of **101**.

No one learns to lift a huge weight in their first exercise class. They begin to lift progressively heavier weights until they can lift the heaviest weights possible. No one becomes a world class artist in kindergarten, but sensitive teachers guide them from an early age to focus and hone their skills. Later, once they absorb what their masters can teach them, artists begin to find their own personal expressions and style. Art also provides an emotional outlet for people who have no aspirations to become a professional artist. Some people only want to explore their creativity, enjoy playing with the colors, get out of the house, and interact with others. Socialization and challenging our minds are important activities for a healthy life.

Sir Winston Churchill
*Still Life, Fruit*, ca. 1930’s
Heather James Fine Art

“Happy are the painters for they shall not be lonely. Light and color, peace, and hope, will keep them company to the end, or almost to the end, of the day.”

Winston Churchill wrote this in Hobbies in 1925. reflecting on the solace painting had provided him since the death of his daughter Marigold.

Hans Hoffman, The Pumpkin, oil on canvas, 1950, 36” x 48”.

One of the great teaching artists, Hans Hoffman, was known for his quote:

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

When we see a landscape, a still life, or a face, most of us get overwhelmed with the myriad details. We want to focus first on the details, instead of the bigger shapes. This gets us in trouble every time. What do the time management gurus tell us over and over? Write down your list. Number your biggest priority. Do it first. Always do the biggest, hardest, and nearest in time deadline things first.

This is how we make our basic sketches on our canvas. Get the big shapes on the canvas first. They do not have to be a great outline, but a general gesture that takes up the space of the object, proportionately to the other objects. Often, we treat our marks as if we are chiseling in stone. With paint, we can let it dry and go over it and no one will know the difference.

As we paint big to small, we can paint the darks, the lights, and the middle tones. This allows us to blend the colors together if that is our desire. Sometimes the blank white canvas fills us with trepidation. We may think our first sketch might be somehow “wrong.” There are no wrong marks in art class, but we may make many marks on the way to fulfilling our mind’s ideas in life. Winston Churchill has a remarkable story of his personal experience learning to meet the open maw of the great white canvas. It once terrified him as much as “Jaws” does the modern movie goer.

Picasso Cubist Still Life with Watermelon

This week we approached our seasonal gourd and pumpkins from several different directions. We looked at zen tangle designs, realism, and pumpkin patch photos. We also looked at paintings that focused on the stems and vines. We also looked at Picasso’s still lifes. He was a master of the Cubist patterns and simplification of forms. He did not try to make the objects look real, but made shapes, which were pleasing to the eye.

Michael painted an exuberant pumpkin with a giant green stem and his usual textured background. He enjoys his time in art class and his work shows it.

Gail S. painted a multicolored group of pumpkins attached to a sinuous vine. She brings her knowledge and background in nature as a park ranger to her artwork. She always has an interesting design element to her work.

Gail W. Started with a realist rendering, but ended up with thin layers of paint overlapping at the edges of the pumpkin creases. When she asked what was going on in her painting technique to cause this, I noticed she was using water to thin her paints. “When you thin your paint so it is transparent, then when it overlaps, you get a solid line. Use your paint straight out of the tube next time.” She took her painting home, added another layer of paint straight from the tubes, and decorated the whole with zen tangle designs, using a fine point marker.

I put my gourds in an interior setting, as if they were on a tabletop near a window, which looked out onto a blue sky. I added a tree branch bereft of autumn leaves, as if a cold and rainy day had preceded the day of this painting. The barren landscape outside contrasts with the luscious treatment given the gourds inside. Each gourd has its own personality and spirit. They are more than mere natural objects.

They brim with the reproductive power of nature, as a testimony to the promise of tomorrow’s abundance, even in the face of today’s barrenness. One gourd casts a shadow, while the other does not. A viewer might feel some psychic dissonance because a realistic rendering would have both objects cast a similar shadow. The space is not “real,” but “spiritual” instead.

This is the promise of a faithful God for those who believe in God’s steadfast love and providence. As we hear in Habakkuk 3:17-18, we can have trust and joy during trouble:

“Though the fig tree does not blossom,

and no fruit is on the vines;

though the produce of the olive fails,

and the fields yield no food;

though the flock is cut off from the fold,

and there is no herd in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the LORD;

I will exult in the God of my salvation.”

In a world in which the good often suffer and evil seems to prosper, we always remember God is still at work to fulfill our daily needs, if not all our infinite desires. We will not want. Those who have the heart of God will always share with those who have less. Those who are greedy and don’t share God’s generous nature will stay stingy. This is how we know who is doing the work of God—the people who are loving God and neighbor both. .

Joy, peace, and providence,

Cornelia

SCHEDULE FOR 2024:

November 8—Painting

November 15—No Class—Vacation

November 22—No Class —Vacation

November 29—No Class—Thanksgiving

December 6—Painting

December 13— Painting

December 20— Painting

December 27—TBD —holiday season and school vacation calendar

Painting as a Pastime – International Churchill Society

Painting as a Pastime

When He Wasn’t Making History, Winston Churchill Made Paintings | Artsy
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-making-history-winston-churchill-made-paintings

Hans Hofmann: Quotes

https://www.hanshofmann.net/quotes.html

The Eisenhower Matrix: How to Prioritize Your To-Do List [2024] • Asana
https://asana.com/resources/eisenhower-matrix

art, Attitudes, Creativity, Faith, Fear, generosity, hope, Icons, Imagination, inspiration, Israel, Light of the World, Ministry, Painting, poverty, renewal, Spirituality, suffering, Sun, United Methodist Church, vision

The first bright light of creation must have been an awesome sight. Of course, only God was there to see it or hear it. The earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep. Genesis 1:3 tells us, “Then God said, “Let there be light;” and there was light.”

John Martin: The Creation of Light, Mezzotint, 1825, Royal Collection of the Arts, London.

I have often wondered if God’s creation of light was accomplished with sound. If at one time only darkness existed, then suddenly light appeared, would this sudden change happen like an atomic bomb flash? Not with the bomb’s destructive evil and force, but with the creative and life-giving energy of God’s power and love. While scripture tells us we hear God’s voice in the sheer silence (1 Kings 19:11-12), this is after God has created everything which we humans might worship instead of God. When God first created light, what was the power behind God’s words?

George Richmond: The Creation of Light, Tempera, gold, and silver on mahogany, 1826, support: 480 × 417 mm, frame: 602 × 539 × 66 mm, Tate Gallery, London.

Maybe no one cares, for if no one is in a forest to hear a mighty oak fall, can we say it ever made a sound? Just because human beings weren’t created yet does not mean the light did not come into existence or make a noise. We might as well say bombs are not leveling towns in Ukraine and Gaza merely because we are not running from the falling bricks and dust. Yet, we can see the pictures on television and know these facts as true.

We are in a trickier situation when we try to find information to prove the existence of the creation of the first light and the facts of its origin. We are certain light was created, for light now exists. Tracking light’s history to its birth story is the challenge!

*The Creation of Day and Night*, by Francisco de Holanda, *De Aetatibus Mundi Imagines, 1543.*

When the Old Testament says God created light, the ancient readers understood this word to mean a special light, not the light of the sun, moon, or the stars. God created these lesser lights on a later day, so they possess a different form of light from the first light. The early Hebrew philosophers distinguished between chomer, matter, and tzurah, the form or function of an object. A raw material has chomer, matter, but once it’s made into an object, it acquires the form or tzurah.

Michelangelo’s The Separation of Light from Darkness, (c. 1512), the first of nine central panels that run along the centre of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

At the beginning of creation, nothing had form. It was all matter. Then God created the Ohr Ha-Ganuz, or the Hidden Light. This special light played a critical role in Creation. Just as regular light allows us to see and relate to our surroundings, the Hidden Light enabled the different elements of creation to interact with one another. It dispelled the initial state of darkness when all objects were isolated and disconnected from one another. Through this special light, the universe’s myriad objects acquired purpose and function and were able to work together towards a common goal.

About 13.8 billion years ago, our universe ballooned outward at an incredible speed. Everything we see today, which was once packed tightly together, expanded in a roiling mass of light and particles. It took 380,000 years for this hot, dense soup to thin and cool enough to allow light to travel through it. This first light, dating back to the formation of early atoms, we call the cosmic microwave background and we can still detect it today.

The Advanced Simons Observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile is on the forefront of research for detecting cosmic microwave background radiation to give us a better picture of the early universe, its evolution, and the many phenomena within it. Beyond the cosmic microwave background, they will hunt for and study the birthplaces of distant stars, the contents of interstellar dust, exo-Oort clouds—spherical shells of ice and dust at the edges of solar systems—and several other phenomena. But, given the unique capabilities of this observatory, they are also open to finding some unexpected and unexplained puzzle pieces in the universe that we did not know we were missing.

Before there were any stars or galaxies, 13.8 billion years ago, our universe was just a ball of hot plasma—a mixture of electrons, protons, and light. Sound waves shook this infant universe, triggered by minute, or “quantum,” fluctuations happening just moments after the big bang that created our universe. The question we first asked, “Did the creation of light make an audible sound?” is related to the “cosmic wave background radiation” that the observatory in the Chilean desert is seeking.

Although scientists call this moment the Big Bang, it was not a loud explosion. Instead, it was more like an imperceptible humming because this first moment happened when the universe was denser than the air on Earth and sound waves could travel through it. This covered the first 100,000 to 700,000 years. As the universe cooled and expanded, the sound waves grew longer and and the sounds lower. As the universe continued to expand, the wavelengths became so long the sounds became inaudible to the human ear.

NASA Sound File Magnified of Big Bang Microwave Radiation

For this sound file, the patterns in the sky the Planck Observatory observed were translated to audible frequencies. This sound mapping represents a 50-octave compression, going from the actual wavelengths of the primordial sound waves (around 450,000 light-years, or around 47 octaves below the lowest note on the piano), to wavelengths we can hear.

Creation: Bright Beam, stage 3 in the studio

Maybe as you read this, you wonder, why do artists have an interest in science? This is an attribute of artists from Leonardo in the Renaissance down through the Impressionists who studied the play of light and atmospheres on surfaces in the 19^th century. Today we know the speed of light means we are always seeing a “late arriving sunbeam.” The speed of light gives us an amazing tool for studying the universe. Because light only travels a mere 300,000 kilometers per second, when we see distant objects, we’re always looking back in time. If we the universe clock backwards, right to the beginning, and you get to a place that was hotter and denser than it is today. So dense that the entire universe shortly after the Big Bang was just a soup of protons, neutrons, and electrons, with nothing holding them together.

Lentil and ancient grains pasta soup, held together by melted cheese—metaphor for the early universe

The moment of first light in the universe, between 240,000 and 300,000 years after the Big Bang, is known as the Era of Recombination. The first time that photons could rest for a second, attached as electrons to atoms. It was at this point that the universe went from being opaque, to transparent. The earliest possible light astronomers can see is the cosmic microwave background radiation. Because the universe has been expanding over the 13.8 billion years from then until now, those earliest photons were stretched out, or red-shifted, from ultraviolet and visible light into the microwave end of the spectrum.

Today we have tools unavailable to the 15^th or 19^th centuries, but what we have in common is the human mind. Because we are created in the image of God, we have the same desire to create and shape our world and to understand our place in it. For some people, they find placing their trust in God’s absolute power over all creation and events as a way of understanding the problem of good and evil in the world. This justifies suffering and allows them to ignore the plight of the poor. Prosperity religion, which preaches the good prosper and the bad suffer, is a classic example of this theological belief. We United Methodists believe in doing good to all people, as often as possible, with all the means we can. As the gospel says in Matthew 25:37-40—

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’

We know Jesus as the Light of the World (John 8:12)—

Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

Perhaps this ancient light of creation has not yet reached everyone who reads these words. I can only guess they ignore even the voice of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah (58:10):

“If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.”

The sun will always shine when we help others. The light of Christ will burn bright in us to burn away our gloom and despair when we give a hand to others who are in need. Their lives will be brighter in turn. We often turn away from people in hard circumstances because we do not want to face the prospect that we one day might need a hand up. This strikes at our self image of invincibility and self sufficiency. We keep remembering “God loves a cheerful giver.” If we think only of this part of the verse outside of its context, we might think God only loves the giver. God also must love the one in need to provide the blessing for the giver. As we read in 2 Corinthians 9:7-8—

Cornelia DeLee: Creation: Bright Beam, acrylic on canvas, 16” x 20”, 2024.

“Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”

As an old mentor of mine taught me, “Don’t do all the work for your people. You’ll rob them of the blessing of serving the Lord.” None of us can replace the eternal light of Christ, which has been traveling to us since the dawn of time, although the Light has been with God since before time began. This Light is even now permeating the universe, in a prevenient journey to the furthest distances of creation. There is no place the Light will not go before us. Even as we attempt a return to the moon and hope to go to Mars in the future, the light of Christ has already gone before us.

If this does not give you hope in what many think is a dark and despairing world, refocusing on the Light with us instead of the darkness that always seems so near might help to change your attitude.

Joy, peace, and light,

Cornelia

What Did the Big Bang Sound Like? | HowStuffWorks

https://science.howstuffworks.com/what-did-big-bang-sound-like.htm

Breishit: The Hidden Light of Creation

https://www.ravkooktorah.org/BREISHIT_67.htm

The science illuminated by the first light in the universe | Stanford Report

https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/07/science-illuminated-first-light-universe

When was the first light in the universe?

https://phys.org/news/2016-11-universe.html

The Creation of Light: William Blake and Francisco de Holanda/thehumandivinedotorg

https://thehumandivine.org/2022/02/27/the-creation-of-light-william-blake-and- francisco-de-holanda/

Learning Creativity

adult learning, art, brain plasticity, Children, Creativity, Painting, photography, renewal

Is creativity innate or can we learn creativity? From my experience, children are creative up until about age eight, at which time peer pressure begins to suppress their imagination and willingness to experiment and exercise their own inner truths. About this age, children acquire an understanding of the “real world,” as opposed to the worlds of their imagination. This is when they want to draw “realistic images.” Their skies begin to meet the earth, rather than being a single ribbon of blue across the top of the page. They often attempt textures of clothing and realistic renderings of hair and facial details in their artwork.

This is part of their artistic growth, but not every child grows at the same pace. Because adults often praise these early achievements, those children whose brains haven’t matured often begin to give up on their creative endeavors. We can’t rush brain development. Therefore, we shouldn’t disparage children who don’t progress as quickly. Children all go through predictable stages, but the environment and their innate nature determines how quickly they progress through these levels, or if they quit at some point.

This nature and nurture process is part of what we call “neuroplasticity.” This is a fancy $2 word meaning the brain has the “ability to reorganize pathways, create new connections, and, in some cases, even create new neurons.” At birth, every neuron in the cerebral cortex has an estimated 2,500 synapses. By the age of three, this number has grown to a whopping 15,000 synapses per neuron! Yet the adult brain has only about half that number of synapses. This is because as we gain new experiences, synaptic pruning strengthens some connections in our brains, while others are eliminated. Those we don’t use, we lose.

This is why as we age, we should learn something new everyday. As Mary Oliver, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet said: “Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

We are building new brain synapses. Getting out to socialize is also important. While people used to believe the brain became fixed after a certain age, newer research has revealed our brains never stop changing in response to learning. In this sense we are always able to learn, even if we’re a little slower than younger people. As I age, I realize I don’t move as fast, but I’ve never quit waking up and looking forward to the challenge of the day.

The day might come when we have a stroke, or damage to the brain. At that time, a belief in the ability of our brain to rebuild itself will be important, for recovery of speech or the ability to walk or feed ourselves will be our goal. Art class helps us face small challenges in non-consequential situations and prepares us to have courage and confidence to meet with optimism the greater challenges of life. Art, like life, is a growth process. Because art is a creative experience, we always are working with God’s help, and not by our own power:

“So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” —1 Corinthians 3:7

SCRIBBLE STAGE

The scribble stage is a critical part of early childhood because it helps children develop their hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. This age is from the child’s ability to hold a crayon to around 4 years old. Characteristics of this initial stage are:

Random scribbling
Purposeful scribbling
Naming scribbles

The best way to encourage these young artists is to ask, “Can you tell me more about this?” This allows children to share all the things they enjoy about their work. Make sure the supplies you use are easy to control, like thick tempera paint, unwrapped crayons, washable markers, and chalk. Children use their imagination, rather than looking at things to copy. Copying is frustrating and confusing for children.

PRE-SCHEMATIC STAGE

This a stage beginning from 3 1/2 years old to 7 years old. Children begin to make patterns in their drawings and label it as a representation of the things they know in their world. They begin to draw human figures by merging the circle with lines. Initially, these figures look like “tadpoles” or “head feet” symbols. Often children’s first figures are unrealistic or lack body parts. Yet this is an important stage in which helps children develop their own sense of identity by allowing them to explore different self-images before they arrive at a satisfactory one. Art plays an important part in defining who we are at this stage. We can encourage our children by asking them to tell us about the stories behind their artworks and not requiring them to match the reality we see.

SCHEMATIC STAGE

Between age 7 to 9, children develop their own symbols for each object they’re trying to create. Their drawings follow a specific pattern: the sky is a strip across the top of the page, just as the ground is a strip across the bottom. Objects no longer float in the middle space, but are attached to the ground. The most important objects are larger than the less important ones. Perspective doesn’t follow any one rule. We can encourage children to look at their environment more closely, but without correcting their artwork. Any corrective actions we make to get our child to progress more quickly than they are capable will just set them back.

PRE-REALISM STAGE

The child’s inner critic awakens between age 8 to 12 years old. They still create images according to their own symbols , but begin to overlap them. They still use flat coloring, but add more details. They begin to care what others think about their work. We can encourage them best by showing them how to do things and not trying to push them into skills beyond their ability.

Young artist, pseudo realism: note everything is a pattern or symbolic representation of reality, but the overall image is flat, rather than three dimensional.

PSEUDO REALISM STAGE

Between 11 to 14 years old, children begin to add shadows and try realistic perspective in their artwork. They look more intentionally at their environment and at individuals, while they attempt to record these details in their art projects. They’re also more critical of their product. Therefore, they need more positive feedback. My rule in middle school art class was, “Say three positive statements about your work before you tell me three negative criticisms.” This helped my students know they had succeeded on some levels before they looked at the areas that needed improvement.

Learning and exploring new art methods are a wonderful way to keep these youths engaged. Not all these youths are ready for perspective, but they can learn to see simple stacked boxes and draw them.

DECISION MAKING STAGE

Beyond the age of 14 is a critical time, for young people will make the decision to continue with art or drop it altogether. Their inner critic combined with the judgement of outsiders (parents, teachers, other influencers) confirms their belief art is a pointless exercise. A few others, who have been rewarded with positive reinforcement, will decide to continue with their art experience by mastering skills, learning perspective, and developing their own personal style. We can encourage all students at this age by reminding them art is important in their everyday lives. When we expose students to art history, we expand not only their cultural awareness, but also show them the possibilities of artistic expression and creativity. We also have to offer opportunities for both visual and haptic (hands on) learners.

As a result, many adults come to art classes at the Pseudo Realism Stage. This isn’t an insult to them, as if saying they’re at “arrested development,” but if they haven’t had training beyond this age, this is a realistic assessment of their skill level. This is why we go through lessons on color mixing, perspective and drawing skills. Each person looks at the image from their own viewpoint and tries to translate their best impression of the three-dimensional world on to a two-dimensional canvas. This skill is the equivalent of translating German into Italian by an English speaker. It’s a learned skill, but one can practice it and develop it over time with repetitive exercises.

The brain actively uses its thinking processes to create a work of art. We always need to remember, this art work isn’t a representation of a thing, but of our experiences with the thing. Our choices of color, line, size, weight, and value all speak volumes of our emotions as we relate to the subject matter. When we look at an artwork that seems dead, but is technically proficient, we know the artist had no emotional connection to the subject matter. Likewise, we can see a more primitive painter who put their heart and soul into their artwork and judge this work to be “fine.” What we artists try to do is keep an open and tender heart and stay emotionally invested in our subject matter so we can allow our work to come alive.

As a teacher, I always hope to discern where each adult student is in their artistic development. The old saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” also applies to building our art skills. The more we work and get positive critiques on how to improve our work (this criticism involves what we did well also), the faster we usually progress. In fact, when we critique our own work, we see what we did well and what we could improve. Our next experience builds on that learning.

One thing I always underestimate is the length of time students take to do a project. Children fly through projects, but many adults have an inner critic who second guesses their decisions. I often say, “Just dab some colors on the tip of your brush and dab them on those trees for leaves. Pretend like you’re the god of your painting, and “let there be leaves!” They laugh at me, but I’m just trying to keep them from painting every single leaf individually. We see trees as a mass of leaves, not as individuals, especially if we look from a distance.

Sometimes I look over at someone working and suggest, “Maybe you might want to work in a different area. Your wet brush is just picking up the paint on your canvas now. Let that area dry and come back later.” Some of my students have been around long enough to have this lesson ingrained in them. If we hit this wall often enough, we learn how futile this behavior is. My old daddy always said, “Experience is the best teacher.” In truth, if we make a mistake often enough, we’ll learn that’s not the right fork in the road to take. Thankfully, we’re not working with electricity.

Our paintings from these two weeks were from photographs which we edited in our phones using the available digital tools. We weren’t trying to work towards a good photograph, but toward an image we could use as a photographic sketch for our painting. Gail S. took two images and blended them together. This is a challenge because each image had a different light and perspective. She solved it by placing the wall behind the tree, rather than using the actual photo image of the wall itself. We also used the color wheel to find a good grey color for the wall. Gail got some good details in the leaf mass. She is more used to creating her images from life.

Gail W. had a spring forest image with a footpath through it. She changed that footpath to a stream. She spent the second session putting shadows and highlights on the trees, as well getting the leaf masses to cover the timber stand. She even used a thin marker to get some dark shadows when she didn’t have a thin enough brush to make those details. Our two Gail’s are putting these lessons to effective use.

I used a photo I took on a recent retreat at Mount Eagle. A photo records everything before it. An artist can use the tools of the camera and the developing room to bring out the best qualities of the scene. My iPhone editing software did its best.

Then I made my painting from it. The great benefit of art is the maker’s decision to include only those parts of the image which stand out. We don’t have to draw every tree in the forest. We only have to paint those who call out to us to be remembered. This decision making action is part of making new neural pathways. Each new experience is a challenge and every challenge is a fresh opportunity for new growth.

The most important achievement we can make at any age is rewriting our brains. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural pathways throughout life and in response to experiences. While the brain usually does this itself in response to injury or disease, when humans focus their attention enough, they can slowly rewire these pathways themselves. We can also do this intentionally by engaging in learning a new language, writing in a journal, doing creative art projects, quilting, woodworking, dancing, or creating new recipes. Anything we do to try a new experience helps to rewire our brains.

After all, we want to be around for many days to say with the writer of Psalms 90:14—

“Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,

so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”

Joy and peace,

Cornelia

Neuroplasticity: How Experience Changes the Brain

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-brain-plasticity-2794886

The Creating God

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In the dead heat of summer, our gardens aren’t putting forth the fruit of our planting. Maybe the animals of our neighborhood have made their too frequent nightly visitations, so our harvest is skimpy. We can forget God is a both a creating god and a recreating god as well. The first words of the alternate NRSV translation of the Bible’s first book Genesis (a word meaning “origin”) are—

First stage: string, fabric scraps, and under painting

“When God began to create…”

In the old KJV, Genesis 1:1 reads—“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.”

I appreciate even more the next verse from Genesis 1:2—

“The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”

Alternate translations read— “while the spirit of God or while a mighty wind” swept over the face of the waters. This reminds us nothingness and darkness aren’t problems for God, who is able to bring glorious light to any situation.

Psalms 139:12 speaks of the nature of God:

“Even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

I’ve lived for over half a century with chronic depression, so I can recognize darkness, not only in my own life, but also in the lives of others. Most of my ministry and even my secular work was done with a calling to bring others to the light of hope and confidence that anything was possible.

In art classes, I asked my students to trust in ABC—Attitude, Behavior, and Consequences. If they had a Positive Attitude, they would have Positive Behavior and work on their assignments. If they worked, they would see Positive Consequences or Improvement over time. Asking people who’ve been told they can’t do art to believe they can learn even if they aren’t “talented” is a big ask, but if they have faith in this promise, they discover it’s true.

When I sold insurance, I asked people to trust in the idea of making a small sacrifice now to prevent a greater loss later. Also, if they had no loss, they shared in a community to underwrite the group losses and keep the cost of protecting their own property low. Not everyone has the light to see this benefit of community, but for those who do, I could help keep their consequences from being a disaster.

Second stage: overpainting, printed circles, and added ruler lines

When I entered the ministry, I discovered congregations who had lost their faith in the God who could make something out of nothing This began with the creation story, the choosing of the nation of Israel to be God’s people (even though they were once no one’s people), and feeding them in the extended wilderness wandering before they arrived at the promised land. The Bible is full of examples of God’s providing more when people have too little to sustain them: Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, the feeding of the crowds with a few fish and loaves, and the water turned into wine. These modern people didn’t have a “recreating faith” that God could work in their lives today, just as God had once worked in the lives of others in the days of Christ.

That is what we call a “dead faith,” or as John Wesley put it in his notes on the New Testament at 2 Timothy 3:5— “An appearance of godliness, but not regarding, nay, even denying and blaspheming, the inward power and reality of it.”

It’s dead, because the Spirit isn’t at work in it. I used to tell my beloved evangelism professor, the late Dr. Billy Abraham, the first place we needed to do evangelism was in the local church, because folks hadn’t heard the good news. If they weren’t excited enough to have a living faith, they wouldn’t go out and spread the good news to others.

I’ve never been a cheerleader, although I did have some time in my high school pep squad. I was more often involved in making the football banners and pep posters for the other sports activities. Also debate team took up much of my time. One of the best practices I learned in debate was positive points sell better than negative ones. Also, it’s better to make the same point over and over with different facts and examples.

When I say our God is a creating and recreating God, I can point to the beautiful verses of John 1:1-5—

As believers in the Holy Trinity, the Word made flesh is Christ, so he was co-creating with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit from the beginning. By virtue of the incarnation, Christ takes on our flesh to redeem us and make us whole again. This comes to completion through the cross. When we place our faith in Christ’s act of love for all creation, we are made one with Christ, and one with God. The Holy Spirit brings us ever closer to the true nature of Christ, until we’re perfected in love of God and neighbor.

I painted on unprimed canvas, just to see what would happen. Also, because I knew the paint surface would be different than the usual texture on the primed canvas. After I painted several different colors in blocks with the scrap pieces of cut canvas used as “masking tape,” I decided to use a mix of iridescent gold and silver acrylic paints to glaze over the under painting. I also added some circles and straight lines. I’ve collected a few jar tops recently, I used some string elements, and I had a school ruler left from my last teaching job back in the 1980’s. (Yes, I keep things. They are tools of the trade. My Sears Craftsman staple gun from art school finally died after half a century of use.)

I’ll be working some more of these experiments for a while. Creating and recreating our lives is what keeps us new every morning. As someone who has been renewed and recreated more than one time can attest, along with the prophet Jeremiah,

“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” (29:11)

Joy and peace,

Cornelia

John Wesley’s Notes on The New Testament, 1755:

2 Timothy 3:5—“holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them!”

The Witness of the Cross

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We are a people who follow Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and (who) has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God,” as the writer of Hebrews 12:2 reminds us. The suffering servant motif of Christ was once a model all early Christians expected to inherit and emulate.

The Suffering Servant

Paul spoke to this suffering model in his letter to the Romans:

“…How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (6:2-5)

Paul’s first sentence is perceptive because he recognizes many who call on the name of Christ nevertheless go on living an unchristlike life. In the early Christian centuries, many didn’t get baptized until they were near death because they weren’t ready to change their wicked ways. The early Christian habit of hyper-delayed baptism is well attested by the later fourth century. Apparently, the reasoning behind waiting until fairly late in life was the belief baptism cleansed sin once and only once. Consequently, any meaningful sin after baptism could leave one in a serious lurch in the economy of salvation. We have the well-known example of the early 4th CE Emperor Constantine who delayed baptism until his deathbed.

Of course, this is a misunderstanding of the Holy Spirit’s work of perfecting our human nature, but it took many centuries to work this out. We can thank John Wesley for our understanding the works of grace in the ongoing process of Christian Perfection. Baptism washes us from the stain of original sin, which is common to all humanity. Baptism also anoints us with the Holy Spirit to be continually with us and bring us to know God’s saving love in Jesus Christ.

As we grow in faith and the Spirit of God calls us to give our lives to Christ, we are justified from past sins. Some faith communities stop here, so they need over and over justification. They have no ongoing theology of sanctifying grace. We United Methodists do have this great gift, which we can give to the world. When we aren’t going on to perfection in love quite as fast as our neighbors wish we were, it’s because we’re being stubborn and resisting God’s grace.

W. H. Auden says it best:

“We would rather be ruined than changed,

We would rather die in our dread

Than climb the cross of the moment

And let our illusions die.”

The Cross and Self-Denial

The cross is ever a witness to our willingness or unwillingness to bear the cross of Christ. As Jesus told his disciples:

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? (Matthew 16:24-26)

Often we interpret this verse in terms of giving up material possessions, but we can never give up outward things unless we’re first willing to give up our false images of ourselves. We might want to be large and in charge, or soft and sweet. Perhaps our self image is invested in being holy and serious. We may even be the class clown. These are only masks behind which we hide our truths and vulnerabilities.

Jesus spoke a parable in John 12:24-25—

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

If we want to be changed, we must die to our ordinary selves, and then rise as a new creation. If we remain the same, we won’t be much, but if we’re willing to take on the image of Christ, we can be a new creation of the first order.

How The Witness was made

Ukrainian children’s hospital bombed by Russia

This is how art gets made. I saw an image of a bombed-out children’s hospital in Ukraine. Because the photographer had cropped it in a certain way, I saw an image of a cross on the brickwork. Those rectangular bricks contrasted with the diamond shaped wire work in the darkened areas in the four outer quadrants. I usually weave the whole painting surface, but this time I wove only the cross area. That was a challenge. I had to invent a new way to secure the woven canvas strips on the wooden stretcher strips.

As I painted the first layer, I made all the contrast of bright colors in the cross and dark blues and reds in the outer quadrants. The next day, I added a gold wash over the cross squares and painted diamond line patterns over the dark quadrants. I came back to add silver into the diamond shapes and to touch up the diagonal lines. I also painted the sides of the canvas to unify it.

Adding blocks of color to the cross of witness

I began with a gritty black and white image, but ended up with bright colors, silver and gold. This too is a metaphor for for the change which we undergo when we die to old selves and begin our transformation into the wholeness of the new creation in Christ. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

Gold cross and diamond shapes in the dark quadrants

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-19)

The cross isn’t a means to divide us from one another, just because we hold varying views on baptism, holy communion, pastoral authority, and scriptural authority or interpretation. The cross stands as a witness to all who are willing to give up their identities to their old egos and claim the only one uniting all persons every day.

Unity through the Cross

This is the Christ, whose love was so great for all creation, he was willing to be lifted up on the cross to draw all humankind unto himself. As Jesus said in John 12:32-33—

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.)

We want to have our Big Mac and Eat it too.

Delusional Mathematics

As we self interested people today have difficulty with many of the words of Christ, we resort to our cafeteria style of choosing which bites we want to enjoy. If a dish in the line is too expensive or not on our diet plan, we can ignore it. The problem with Christ is how we can ignore one claim upon our faith, reject another, and keep another. As a dieter from way back days, I splurged on many a Big Mac or Whopper and large fries, which I washed down with a giant Diet Coke. Unfortunately, my body didn’t follow the same mathematical logic of my mind. I was practicing delusional math.

“Cheeseburger and fries, with a side of Diet Coke.”

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:12-14). John Wesley, in his sermon, The Almost Christian, talks about those who have the outward form of Christianity, but not the inward being. They can be recognized by their attendance at Sunday services, their good deeds, and their attention to the outward shows of ritual. Inside, however, their hearts aren’t filled with love, but with anger, spite, or mere duty instead. They lack sincerity, which is a classic characteristic of one who wears a false mask.

The Last Presidential Assassination

When Ronald Regan was shot by a would-be assassin, his diary recorded his thoughts on his excruciating experience.

“Getting shot hurts. Still my fear was growing because no matter how hard I tried to breathe it seemed I was getting less & less air. I focused on that tiled ceiling and prayed. But I realized I couldn’t ask for God’s help while at the same time I felt hatred for the mixed-up young man who had shot me. Isn’t that the meaning of the lost sheep? We are all God’s children & therefore equally beloved by him. I began to pray for his soul and that he would find his way back to the fold.”

The Altogether Christian

To be a Christian in the true sense, Wesley says the “Altogether Christian” requires us both to “love God and neighbor in our hearts until nothing else exists.” This means even our enemies. I personally find this the most difficult part. I can hold a grudge with the best of the nonbelievers. Yet I don’t find myself calling those people evil or deranged, like so many others who seek to find a reason for their scapegoating.

I can still see people, even myself, as part of flawed and fallen humanity.

Christian Perfection

Wesley defines the pure faith: “Now, whatsoever has this faith, which purifies the heart, (by the power of God, who dwelleth therein,) from pride, anger, desire, from all unrighteousness, from all filthiness of flesh or spirit; which fills it with love stronger than death, both to God and to all mankind; love that doth the works of God, glorying to spend and be spent for all men, and that endureth with joy, not only the reproach of Christ, the being mocked, despised, and hated of all men, but whatsoever the wisdom of God permits the malice of men or devils to inflict: whosoever has this faith, thus working by love is not almost only, but altogether a Christian.”

Under John Wesley’s exacting standards, we may all be “almost Christians,” but the good news is we can always hope in the one who gave his life to begin a new life in us and others. If we pray for our enemies’ faults, which we spot so easily because they are our own, God will help to heal both them and us.

The Cross Supplants Division

An ancient wisdom story told among the rabbis says the students were questioned on the difference between night and day. All their answers marked divisions: some prayers are said only at certain hours, or there isn’t enough light to distinguish one field or a house from another. The rabbi grew frustrated and cut them off. “You only know how to divide! Daylight begins when you can look on your neighbor’s face and see a friend, not an enemy.”

In this time of division, the witness of the cross reminds us Christ died for all humanity, so no one is outside the love of Christ. If we’re to love our neighbor as ourselves, caring for the poor and marginalized should be a priority for the people of faith. Our neighbors don’t stop at our borders, for our world is interconnected.

Migrations were a fact back in Abraham’s day, when Egypt was the land of opportunity. We ought to treat immigrants better than the Pharaohs treated the Hebrew people. Moreover, in our current political landscape, we might want to quit name calling and playing to the lowest denominator of our bases. Policy statements won’t get sound bites on television, but that’s a good thing. Sound bites play to our false selves and not to our true selves in Christ Jesus.

DeLee: Sun Mandala, 2022, private collection

I can close with a poem from the Persian poet Rumi:

I only speak of the Sun
because the Sun is my Beloved
I worship even the dust at His feet.

I am not a night-lover and do not praise sleep
I am the messenger of the Sun !
Secretly I will ask Him and pass the answers to you.

Like the Sun I shine on those who are forsaken
I may look drunk and disheveled but I speak the Truth.

Tear off the mask, your face is glorious,
your heart may be cold as stone but
I will warm it with my raging fire.

No longer will I speak of sunsets or rising Moons,
I will bring you love’s wine
for I am born of the Sun
I am a King !

Joy, peace, and sacrificial love,

Cornelia

—W. H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 105.

Baptismal Trajectories in Early Christianity, Part III: Toward an Explanation – Ad Fontes
https://adfontesjournal.com/church-history/baptismal-trajectories-in-early-christianity-

Wesley’s Sermon Reprints: The Almost Christian | Christian History Magazine
https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/wesleys-sermon-reprints-almost-

The Regan Diaries—

https://www.amazon.com/Reagan-Diaries-Ronald/dp/006087600X?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&linkCode=sl1&tag=jeffjaccom-20&linkId=472649155c0e042b8192d46f0dbbfcb8&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

Rumi: Ghazal (Ode) 1621
Translated by Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam Mafi
Rumi: Hidden Music, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001

Great American Eclipse Paintings

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After the Great American Eclipse, I’m reminded once again how great and wide is the love of our God. We say, “Our God,” as if we could own or possess the one who holds us, since God is beyond our knowing or possession. We can own a boat, a house, or a work of art. In the bad old days before the Civil War in America, people once owned other human beings. We fought a mighty conflict so our nation could be made up of free people, all of whom have equal rights. Unfortunately, not all have equal opportunity.

In America, we are so privileged, we often look at most everything through red, white, and blue lenses. We don’t take off our “American eyes” to see as God sees. To make this point, the Great American Eclipse actually began over the Pacific Ocean, so perhaps whales and sea birds would have been the first to experience it. When the eclipse reached land in Mexico, those in Mazatlán saw it before anyone in Texas did. I have lived in Texas, so I know they like to be the “first, best, and biggest” in everything, so they’ll ignore the fact this eclipse actually was seen by others first.

We don’t need to be first or best to deserve God’s love and providence. God proves God’s love for us every day the sun rises and sets. God gives us the rain in its season and grass for the herds to feed upon. We don’t have to exclude others to get God’s love, for God’s love is wide enough to include all. A God, who can call an entire universe into being with just a word, has the infinite resources to love all fully and completely. We are the finite ones, having limited resources and understanding, who find the need to limit God’s love to a few.

We tend to think in human terms of competition, in which one person gets a blue ribbon or a trophy and everyone else is a “loser.” That’s the Rickey Bobby of Talladega Nights school of theology. God made the entire universe, even tiny Pluto, which our astronomers demoted from planet status to a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt. Just because we relegated Pluto to a minor status doesn’t mean God diminishes God’s love, care, and concern for God’s creation.

Bill Maxey: Total Eclipse at Hot Springs AR

When we have the opportunity to view an awesome event of creation, such as a total eclipse of the sun, we have to consider ourselves privileged to be alive and part of God’s care. When the moon fully covers the sun and darkness falls upon the face of the earth where you stand, the cool air touches your skin, and your heart burns within. The excitement and rush of energy is so great I had to shout! I’ve heard some people cry. I guess I’m an exuberant sort.

On 20 August 1892, “The Times” published an article by Kipling, “Half-a-Dozen Pictures”: it was one of a series of travel articles called From Tideway to Tideway. The article described a visit to an art gallery and Kipling’s reflections on the failure of most painters to match the beauty and vitality of the world around them. He offered some attractive verbal sketches of his own, though it wasn’t part of his purpose to contrast the approaches to nature of writers and painters. His main concern was to urge artists of all kinds to get out and see the world for themselves: (Letters of Travel 1892-1913 p. 40):

Now, disregarding these things and others – wonders and miracles all – men are content to sit in studios and, by light that is not light, to fake subjects from pots and pans and rags and bricks that are called “pieces of color”. Their collection of rubbish costs in the end quite as much as a ticket, a first-class one, to new worlds where the “props” are given away with the sunshine. (Letters of Travel 1892-1913 p.77).

Eight days later, the same article was published in the New York Sun. This time it closed with the untitled poem ‘When Earth’s Last Picture is Painted…’ which changed the article’s emphasis from an exhortation to artists to become travelers and pioneers, to what sounds very much like a manifesto for realism in art:

“And only Rembrandt shall teach us, and only Van Dyck shall blame:

And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,

But each for the joy of working, and each, in his separate star,

Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!”

Four years later, Kipling changed the first line of that stanza to:

“And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame,”

Kipling, the son of an artist, knew the true joy in life comes from one’s dedication to whatever work is in hand, and the task of the Artist is to convey to others the excitement and wonder of an expanding world. By changing the last line from artists’ names to the Master, Kipling heightened the spirituality of his poem. The artist’s task isn’t merely to render a faithful image of the landscape or person before them, but to bring forth all the inner energies and personality they see and feel.

Cornelia DeLee: Memory of the Last Great Eclipse, acrylic on canvas, 12” x 24”

This is why we don’t copy nature, since it’s three dimensional and we have a two-dimensional surface on which we make our marks to represent what we see. Perspective is our visual language to fool the eye into believing our flat surface has depth. Often we paint abstract shapes and colors because these are the best means to convey our emotions about an experience. Photography captures one way of seeing, but painting can render emotions with brush strokes and colors.

Cornelia DeLee: Door to Another Reality in the Eclipse, acrylic on canvas, 18” x 24”

I subscribe to a wonderful poetry series by Steve Garnaas-Holmes, which I receive daily. This poem’s theme of universal love spoke to me as I felt the in-flooding joy of God’s creating power during the Great American Eclipse:

I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. —John 10.16

We think we’re being open-minded
when we include “all of us,” Protestant and Catholic,
Orthodox and Coptic, as if we see the whole landscape.
But the pasture and the Shepherd are far greater than that.
Believer, unbeliever and other-believer alike
are all shepherded, each in their own language.
And still there are more, and more other, sheep.
Like, well, sheep.
Do not the deer and otter, whale and fungus
follow the Shepherd faithfully?
Is not the bird migrating its continents shepherded as well?
Christ is not the partisan figurehead of a religion,
Christ is the infinite embodied grace of God,
the Shepherd of all Creation,
who leads rivers to the sea and winter into spring
and each of us into life.
So there are still other, and more “other,” sheep.
For Copernicus isn’t done with us yet:
we admit the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth,
but we still think God does.
No, little one: we are in a small corner.
Yet even the far galaxies,
the trillion trillions of stars and their planets,
and yes, their doubtless forms of life,
are also under the calm eye of the Shepherd,
and follow the Shepherd’s voice.
All of us, Baptist and Sufi, fish, bug and bird,
earthling and alien, village and nebula, all are one flock. One.
And, behold, even on the remotest planet
in the farthest flung galaxy—like ours—
or the most desolate spot in a life like yours,
under the loving gaze of the Shepherd who seeks out the one,
there is no one who is not at the center.

May you each find joy in your working, each in your separate stars, and draw the Thing as you see It, for the God of Things as They are!

Not only can God watch the sparrow, but also all the many suns and planets of creation.

Joy and peace,

Cornelia

When Earth’s last picture is painted – The Kipling Society

When Earth’s last picture is painted

Steve Garnaas-Holmes: Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Total Eclipse of the Heart

adult learning, arkansas, art, Astrology, cosmology, Creativity, Faith, Great American Eclipse, Imagination, inspiration, Light of the World, Love, mystery, nature, Painting, photography, shadows, Spirituality, Travel, Uncategorized, vision

In the Bonnie Tyler song, “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” her rock and roll soul pines for a young man as she sings:

“Every now and then

I know there’s no one in the universe

As magical and wondrous as you.”

Love struck teen heart ballads tend to elevate the beloved to a high pedestal, while hymns lift the praises of God to the highest heavens. If we look at John Wesley’s Notes on the New Testament, one of the doctrinal standards of the United Methodist Church, his commentary on 2 Corinthians 4:6 (KJV) is instructive:

“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

We might be more familiar with this verse in the NRSV, a more modern translation, which wasn’t available in the middle of the 18^th century:

For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Bailey’s Ring, from an earlier total eclipse over the South Pacific Ocean

Wesley’s commentary in his Notes on this text is succinct:

For God hath shined in our hearts—The hearts of all those whom the God of this world no longer blinds.
God who is himself our light; not only the author of light, but also the fountain of it.
To enlighten us with the knowledge of the glory of God—Of his glorious love, and of his glorious image.
In the face of Jesus Christ—Which reflects his glory in another manner than the face of Moses did.

What do the Total Eclipse of the Heart and Paul’s words to the Corinthian community have to do with art and faith? We’ve just experienced, what was for most of us, was a once in a lifetime experience. The last time a total solar eclipse was visible across the entire continent was in June 1918, when a total solar eclipse was visible from Washington to Florida, according to the US parks service. Nearly 100 years passed until this present Great American Eclipse.

At the 1878 total eclipse, Maria Mitchell led the Vassar College eclipse party, an all-female expedition from that pioneering women’s institution, which came to Denver in an era when science was a male bastion. Even higher education was deemed risky for the “fairer sex.” In 1873, the prominent Boston physician Edward H. Clarke had warned in an incendiary book titled “Sex in Education,” that the recent push for female colleges and coeducation could undermine women’s health by taxing their brains and causing their reproductive organs to atrophy — leading to “a dropping out of maternal instincts, and an appearance of Amazonian coarseness and force.” Nearly 150 years later some men still concern themselves with outmoded and 19th century views on women’s health concerns.

I drove over four hundred miles to Kentucky in 2017 for the prior Great American Eclipse and got to stay home to see this second Great American Eclipse in my own front yard. Some folks couldn’t have been bothered about this current grand event, while others were convinced God was informing America of her impending doom. Moreover, multiple conspiracy theories abounded, none of which came true, of course. For instance, the world didn’t come to an end and our cell phones still work. Even the electric grid held up, even though the sun didn’t shine for all of a few minutes as the shadow traveled at over 1,600 miles per hour as it raced along the path of totality. This wasn’t even Y2K, which we all remember was a nonstarter at least and a dud at best.

In art class Friday Tim and I talked about the experience of this celestial event. We humans often elevate our own importance when we measure ourselves against one another and the works of our hands. When we go out into nature, we’re faced with the grandeur of God’s creation, especially when we visit the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. In Psalms 19:1, we read:

“The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”

We see the beauty of nature and feel a warmth in our hearts. Our spirits soar. This intimacy with nature is one of the reasons we send our children to our United Methodist Church Camps, not just because they’ll have a great Christian experience, but because they’ll have that faith experience in nature with trusted leaders. I still remember my adventures and experiences in nature at those camps as part of my spiritual journey.

Even in seminary, when I was having difficulty with some of my courses, I could go for a walk on the campus under the tree lined walks and search the skies for hopeful signs. Sometimes I saw the towering cumulus clouds in the Texas sky as a sign God was with me “in the cloud by day.” In those times of difficulty, even the cloistered realm of preparation seemed like a wilderness journey, but I was glad for a guide.

Bill Maxey, from Nebraska, taken at Hot Springs, AR.

When I was actively serving as a pastor, sometimes I just had to get away. I’d drive until I found some nature, a national park, national forest, or some fields outside of town. If it was a hot summer, I looked for some deep woods and cool shade to shelter me. In the cool spring, I drove until I found flowers. Maybe this is why I retired to a lake in a national park. I don’t need a big house, since I’d rather go out into nature instead.

Totality on Lake Hamilton, with sunset in the west, outside the path of totality

It was the heat of summer in 2017, so you’d think I’d remember the temperature drop right before the eclipse was halfway through. This year I was on Lake Hamilton, and the breeze off the lake combined with the cooler air was decidedly noticeable. When we entered totality, the lights on the Highway 70 bridge and at Bubba Brews automatically came on. The distant sky in the southwest, outside the path of totality, looked like a summer sunset. My neighbors and our visitors from afar were cheering.

Bill Maxey: multiple exposure of the Great American Eclipse, 2024

Not everyone can make an artwork that expresses their emotions as well as the shapes of the image. We can learn the rules of perspective and color, but then we have to learn to let our heart rule our head. This is what I call an “artistic leap of faith.” When we were young, we accepted the basic ideas of Christianity. As we got older, life happened, and we might have begun to struggle with our childhood beliefs not being equal to our adult needs. If we keep our childlike faith, we risk losing our faith. If we are able to wrestle with our faith and find a new and more mature faith, we can handle the major challenges of later life. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:11-12—

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

Tim’s Partial Eclipse painting using red, blue and brown to build the sky

Tim experimented with mixing colors to get richer depth. Using the Prang watercolor palette, he mixed the red, blue, and brown to get the black sky of the eclipse event. The red orange of the sun has some brown in it too. He layered the colors with multiple strokes, with a nod to Van Gogh. He worked from a photograph I brought. I pulled many of them off the internet, and many of my friends sent me some too.

I worked on an image I’d taken from my iPhone. I had placed one of my eclipse glasses over the lens and was wearing another pair. It wasn’t that easy to get the sun lined up with all that blocking! My image looked a lot like a fried egg or an eyeball. I used several jar lids to get the circles painted cleanly. My dark sky is red, blue, and violet. The shape of the corona was not distinct, due to the quality of my camera. NASA has a very high-resolution image, which breath taking. Our tax dollars at work are bringing great scientific research and development to benefit us in everyday life, such as solar panels and heart implants.

NASA: High Resolution Image of the Total Eclipse

Thomas Merton, in No Man is an Island, in a chapter called “Being and Doing,” wrote—

“We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony. Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm.”

I was a bit exhausted after all the excitement of this big event. I’d met new people from three different states, visited around our patio, and been gifted crystals that had been dug from Mt. Ida and “energized by the eclipse.” I’m not a crystal person, but I understand from those that are these crystals are “special.” I was feeling every bit of my new age as the calendar flipped over for another year.

Bourbon Codex: Aztec priestly document recording astronomical observations: eclipse

But today is another day, I had a night to sleep, and we had fun in art class. As long as we find joy in life, we know we’re alive. Our joys aren’t just collections of peak experiences, but some are the joy of the assurance of God’s enduring presence in our later lives when our youthful vigor has left us. We need to remember just as the moon eclipses the sun, once it passes, it also reveals the sun’s glory. One day this Bible verse from Philippians 3:21 will be true for each one of us, who has a heart full of love for God and neighbor:

“He will transform our humble bodies that they may be conformed to his glorious body, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.”

Joy and peace,

Cornelia

Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse Of The Heart Lyrics | AZLyrics.com

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bonnietyler/totaleclipseoftheheart.html

John Wesley: Explanatory Notes on the New Testament (With Active Table of Contents) [Kindle Edition], first published 1757

John Wesley: Wesley’s Notes on the Bible – Christian Classics Ethereal Library—online free edition of this book

https://ccel.org/ccel/wesley/notes/notes.toc.html

The Solar Eclipse Is the Super Bowl for Conspiracists | WIRED

https://www.wired.com/story/solar-eclipse-conspiracies/

Solar Eclipse 2017: Sun and moon put on celestial performance – CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2017-eclipse-dazzles-million-watch-celestial-performance-sun-moon/

Thomas Merton—“No Man is an Island” in a chapter called “Being and Doing” [TMHI]: 1955

A Woman in Eclipse: Maria Mitchell and the Great Solar Expedition of 1878

https://undark.org/2017/08/17/wilo-maria-mitchell-astronomer-eclipse/

NASA: Benefits Stemming from Space Exploration

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/benefits-stemming-from-space-exploration-2013-tagged.pdf?emrc=ca90d1#:~:text=Overcoming%20the%20challenges%20of%20working,information%20technology%2C%20and%20industrial%20productivity

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Total Eclipse of the Heart

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