HALLOWEEN HAPPENINGS

adult learning, art, CharlieBrown, Halloween, holidays, Imagination, Ministry, Painting, picasso, pumpkins

Michael Jackson: Thriller Video still, 1982

Let’s party like it’s 2025! Nothing takes our minds off the stresses of the real world’s ghouls and goblins like pretending to be a ghost, zombie, pirate, princess or superhero in the All Hallows’ Eve hijinks of the holiday we know as Halloween. Especially if we have the license to eat candy or drink purple fluid to slake our thirst after our door to door “threats of trick or treat.” With all that masked mayhem in the cities, towns, and county seats of the country, the forces of ICE and Homeland Security won’t know which to turn. The INSURRECTION they conjured out of thin air will suddenly become real, only to disappear shortly after sunset. And before troops can surge to all points involved.

Portland ICE protest—October 11, 2025—gives people an opportunity to wear costumes early

How many people in America will celebrate Halloween? Across the country 132.6 million households purchase about 745.8 million pounds of candy during the Halloween season every year. This works out to the weight of 33.9 billion bats or 62.16 million jack-o’-lanterns. Also only about 20% of people don’t celebrate Halloween at all. While I don’t eat loads of candy, I also don’t expect to micromanage other parents. My folks put a limit on our consumption back in the dark ages, plus we only went to a single neighborhood. Once we made the circuit of our city block and arrived home, we were done. The concept of “haul” was nonexistent in the days when dinosaurs lurked in the shadows, along with actual ghosts and other scary creatures.

Vintage Card, reminds me of the Headless Horseman

Most Halloween shoppers (79%) anticipate prices will be higher this year, specifically because of tariffs. Despite these reservations, nearly three-quarters of consumers (73%) plan to celebrate the holiday, in line with last year’s 72%. Top holiday activities include handing out candy (66%), dressing up in costume (51%) and decorating their home or yard (51%).

Economist’s Pumpkin, noting the scary prices of everything

Also, chocolate costs more because of cocoa prices, which have soared in recent years, have hit record highs amid adverse weather conditions, pest outbreaks and supply tightness in West Africa, which produces around three-fourths of the global supply. Cocoa futures have remained choppy but overall eased this year, falling from $8,177 per metric ton at the start of January to around $7,855 in August. That compares with $2,374 three years ago. Your basic Hershey Kiss is up 12% in price. If your favorite chocolate seems a tad lean on the chocolate, remember a warming climate means pests, droughts or floods, and fungi, all of which impact growing food.

Even if candy costs more, it continues to be the most popular purchase, with total spending expected to reach $3.9 billion. Across other categories, 71% plan to purchase costumes and spending is expected to reach $4.3 billion. Another 78% plan to purchase decorations, up from 75% last year, and will spend an estimated $4.2 billion in total. And 38% plan to purchase greeting cards, an increase from 2024’s 33%, with total spending estimated at $0.7 billion.

Picasso: Blue period, The Family of the Blind Man, 1903

Compared with last year, more people also plan to carve a pumpkin (46%), throw or attend a party (32%), visit a haunted house (24%) or dress up their pets (23%). October also means our art class works on a pumpkin still life. This year instead of making a realistic rendering, we looked at Picasso’s different styles. He began as a classically trained artist, and then broke all the rules of realism with cubism by fragmenting his subjects into multiple surfaces or flat geometric patterns. Later he did return to a “balloon” neoclassicism, but reverted once more to flat patterns of color. Picasso was always reinventing and responding to the creative genius within him. He didn’t feel constrained to continue to produce art to please others.

Pablo Picasso, *Mother and Child*, 1921, Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA. © Estate of Pablo Picasso.

Our pumpkin paintings reflect this creative energy. Gail S chose various red hues and deconstructed the pumpkin, as well as imagining it from above. She added some gourd shapes to the mix.

If Picasso had an orange period in addition to his blue and rose periods, my pumpkins would fit right in. They certainly look like his balloon neoclassical period! I confess I spent more time visiting with a stranger who graced the church door and who seemed to need to talk, but could not find her words.

Cornelia’s Orange Period Pumpkins and Leaves

She didn’t want a pumpkin muffin either, so we let her sit. After a bit, I began to talk about how some of my well meaning friends give me advice that doesn’t make any sense. Like if I make one small mistake, they think I’m ready for assisted living!

“What are they thinking?” was Gail’s response.

“Exactly, this comment says more about them than me. I ignore it and go on. Some folks are perfectionists.”

We painted for a while and then I spoke up again, “You can’t please everyone. If you make A happy, B gets upset, or if you make B happy, then A is upset. Group C is just contrary and nothing ever pleases them. I try to make God happy and let people know that is my only goal. I’m not here to choose sides in their puny fights.”

I must have said something that helped her out, for she said she now felt strong enough to deal with her day and its problems. We thanked her for stopping by and wished her well. We didn’t have much attendance in art class, but if there had been more people, this lady might not have felt free to be with us. God must have provided this quiet space for this woman who had an unvoiced need that day. We aren’t always open to the human needs of those on the margins, but we should recognize they struggle with the same need for autonomy and authenticity as everyone else does.

Speaking of pumpkins, the Wôpanâak are a Native American tribe from the eastern coastal region. Their language gives us the loan word for the ubiquitous fruit that “grows forth round,” also known as a Pôhpukun or pumpkin. Marion Webster posits the derivation of this word as follows: “alteration of earlier pumpion, modification of French popon, pompon melon, pumpkin, from Latin pepon-, pepo, from Greek pepōn, from pepōn ripened; akin to Greek pesseinto cook, ripen — more at COOK.”

Of course, this pedigree prefers the Eurocentric derivatives because Native Americans were once considered savages, and therefore unworthy of their historic contributions to our language. We know better today and celebrate the gifts and graces of all persons who contribute to the vast melting pot of the great stew we call America.

What a dull soup we would be if we were just the pale watered down broth with no pumpkins or spinach, no tomatoes or onions, no garlic (to ward off werewolves), and no corn, beans, chicken or beef to provide substance to our stew. We need a variety of spices to make a good soup, just as we need a variety of people’s to build a great community.

One night a year, we can dress up in the costume of our shadow fears or our innermost desires. We get to act like our inner child. We carve our pumpkins with scary faces and put them on porches decorated with all sorts of ghoulish things. The Halloween holiday is cathartic, for it allows us to share with others our innermost selves, an act many of us have difficulty doing.

If we eat a bit of candy here and there, it’s ok. It’s one night, and we can plan for this. The goblins do not win, for they are not real. They are here today, and gone tomorrow. I usually set my candy haul into the freezer where I can’t see it. Out of sight, out of mind. I have a piece now and then, “for medicinal purposes,” as my nanny would say, when she took a nip of the bottle stashed in the linen closet. Always with a table spoon, a measured dose, of course, because she “didn’t drink.”

If it helps to keep your cravings in check, you do what you have to do. I just ask, remember our life is short upon this round ball, so don’t rob yourself of the joy of this time. Find something to celebrate daily. On Halloween, we can celebrate our inner child. Even better, we can give the gift of magic to a small child by entering into the fantasy of the night.

Joy, peace, pumpkin spice, and magic,

Cornelia

USDA List of Retail Prices for Fruits and Vegetables, page 11, pumpkins.

https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/fvwretail.pdf

NRF | NRF Consumer Survey Finds Halloween Spending to Reach Record $13.1 Billion

https://nrf.com/media-center/press-releases/nrf-consumer-survey-finds-halloween-spending-to-reach-record-13-1-billion

The states most mad for Halloween — and candy — revealed in new survey

https://www.scrippsnews.com/life/holidays-and-celebrations/the-states-most-mad-for-halloween-and-candy-revealed-in-new-survey

Chocolate lovers, brace yourselves: Prices are rising, but not forever

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/22/chocolate-set-to-get-more-expensive-but-2026-outlook-looks-sweeter.html

How Americans Are Celebrating Halloween Despite Rising Prices

How Americans Are Celebrating Halloween Despite Rising Prices

Fun with Words | WLRP Home

https://www.wlrp.org/fun-with-words

Two Types of Color Wheels

adult learning, art, color Wheel, Creativity, flowers, Painting, picasso, Rumi

Rumi, the 13^th CE Persian poet and theologian, once said, “Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about…say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe.” Most of us live unawakened to this talent. When we were children, we had no thoughts of “trying to be an artist.” We picked up colors or clay and made our shapes and designs without a care in the world. Our loved ones praised our projects, and we felt good.

Somewhere along the 4^th or 5^th grade, many of us lost touch with that artist within. As Picasso said, “It took me my whole life to learn to draw like a child.” What Picasso meant is he learned all the adult rules for a good painting first and then unlearned them so he could create something completely new. When children are between 9 to 13 years old, they try to draw more naturalistic figures and landscapes by using shadows and perspective. They also start comparing their work with others, but this discourages those who are not discovering the new visual language of realism.

Picasso: Great Still Life on Pedestal, 1931, oil on canvas

As a result, by the time many children reach middle school, they are no longer in touch with their inner artist. Young children do not worry about whether they are wrong. They will forge bravely into unfamiliar territory, even knowing they may make a wrong decision. However, as we mature, we quickly learn that being wrong often has negative consequences. We learn quickly in school that making mistakes brings negative consequences. Not studying for the test brings a bad grade. Talking too much might get a time out in the dark cloak room (traumatic 3^rd grade experiences).

Teaching art to middle school students who say, “I can’t draw a straight line without a ruler” always got my retort, “We don’t have straight lines in nature, so you won’t have that problem in this class!” They learned working would bring improvement. This is a lesson learned well by the folks who have been with me for the last five years since Pastor Russ Brashears invited me to teach classes here. While we are saved by faith, not by works, in art class we need to have faith that our work will bring us closer to perfection. (Of course, there’s always an exception …)

Frank Stella: Harran II, 1967, Polymer and fluorescent polymer paint on canvas

At work, the boss penalizes us for being wrong. According to Sir Ken Robinson, an expert in creativity, “If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never produce anything original. Since creativity inherently requires a willingness to be wrong, we begin to avoid it. For many of us, we become so good at avoiding it that we convince ourselves we are “not creative.” Another destroyer of creativity is current need to teach to the test standards. The one right answer for this important test leads children to think many questions have one answer, when in truth, multiple answers might be worthy.

In addition, many factors that seem related to the self-controlled aspect of ourselves—like research, facts, or being grounded in reality—feel like they are helping us mitigate the risk of being wrong. Therefore, we rely more on our executive function skills and behaviors, and less on our imaginative behaviors. Psychologists at Cornell University conducted a study that showed that we have an implicit bias against less conventional, practical-seeming ideas. We tend to like what everyone else likes, rather than original or creative ideas.

Johannes Itten: Bau Haus Color Star with Shades, 1921

This tendency runs deep since studies going back to the 1950’s have shown people are prone to conforming to popular opinions and perspectives. Research suggests that the rote learning and direct instruction used in schools often drives out whatever nonconformist tendencies we may have as children. This type of instruction may counteract our more exploratory and creative modes of thinking and learning. The Fauves, or “wild beasts,” were a group of French artists who scandalized the Academic standards by painting in wild and unnatural colors to evoke emotion, rather than observable reality. Of course, we love their works today.

Mike: Age of Aquarius: moon in 7th house

Half our class has been doing the color wheel multiple times, while the other half is getting their first exposure to it. Gail and Mike have made enough color wheels that I would not ask them to make another unless we changed our medium. Then it is always worthwhile to see how a new set of colors behaves when mixed. I gave them the guide, “Choose any design you want, and mix up the colors to make an interesting design.” Of course, they are two different personalities, so they produced two different paintings.

The basic premise for the beginner’s color wheel exercise is to take the 3 primary colors of red, yellow, and blue, and mix them to form the 3 secondary colors of orange, green, and violet. The tertiary colors are the “in between color” of each primary and secondary color. I was pleased that both Jeannie and Tonya mixed the colors well and kept their brushes clean in between the varied colors. This showed concentration and care, which are attributes of good craftsmanship. This will pay off in the future when we paint more complicated three-dimensional objects.

They also took time to add backgrounds. Jeannie made her color wheel into a giant flower on a green stem, with a softly sun kissed leaf. Tonya set hers against a night sky, as if it were a cosmic wheel of time. I enjoyed the burst of enthusiasm from their hearts when they added these parts of their own imaginations.

DeLee: Doves returning with green leaves after the flood

One of my goals as a teacher is to release the artist within each person. Some people keep a tight rein on that creative genius living within them. Society has acculturated us adults to conform to the common denominator, so most of us have lost our spark of creativity. This is not an individual problem, but a societal fact. Creativity scores among adults have been declining since the 1990’s, even though intelligence scores are rising worldwide due to better health care and nutrition.

If I can have a second opportunity to help create minds which are more flexible, more imaginative, and more productive over the long term, I will have fulfilled my call to teach another generation the joys of the creative life. My own example is from the Genesis story (8:10-11):

“He waited another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark; and the dove came back to him in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth.”

The square is a symbol from the language of the icons for the earth, so I painted it primarily in earth colors. The surrounding is in various shades of blue or blue blacks. The abstract doves hold an edge of green in their beaks. Is it too abstract to understand? This is a creative solution to “color wheel,” not a travel book. It is a painting, not a map. If you need to find Mount Ararat, ask your GPS for directions. Not everything has to be functional. Some things can be “art for art’s sake.”

Leaving you with thoughts and the hope you dream more,

Joy and peace,

Cornelia

Why Art — Give Kids Art

https://www.givekidsart.org/why-art

7 Surprising Facts About Creativity, According to Science – Fast Company

https://www.fastcompany.com/3063626/7-surprising-facts-about-creativity-according-to-science

Kyung Hee Kim (2011): The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance

Tests of Creative Thinking, Creativity Research Journal, 23:4, 285-295

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2011.627805

Frank Stella, Harran II, 1967. Polymer and fluorescent polymer paint on canvas, 10 x 20 feet (304.8 x 609.6 cm), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Gift, Mr. Irving Blum, 1982. © 2023 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Picasso: Great Still Life on Pedestal, 1931, oil on canvas, Picasso Museum, Paris France. 195 x 135 cm

Picasso’s African Masks and Inner Mysteries

adult learning, art, Creativity, cubism, elections, Imagination, inspiration, Painting, picasso, renewal, The Lord of The Rings, Thomas Merton, vision

What is the key to open the door to the hidden mysteries? For Frodo and his fellow travelers in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, they needed to know the elvish answer to the riddle, “Speak friend and enter.” Gandalf knows this language, so they enter with ease. For years, the Egyptian hieroglyphics were unintelligible because we had no living person who knew the ancient language. After the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in Egypt with its three languages depicting the same text, the race was on to translate the pictographic writing.

In art school my fellow students and I worked in our shared studio classes daily, but sometimes we never made any progress. Then the day would come when the light bulb clicked on in one of our brains. When we took a break, instead of giving everyone’s work a cursory glance before going out for a snack, we would linger and take in the special magic of a unique vision. Where does this special insight come from? Is it a visitation from above? Or a piercing of the soul by divine artistic insight? Sometimes I think the rare and the strange shock us out of our ease and complacency.

Picasso: Self Portrait, oil on canvas, 1907.

Art historians divide Picasso’s early periods into his Blue Period (1901-1904), the Rose Period (1905-1907), the African-influenced Period (1908-1909), and Cubism (1909-1919). Some art historians call Picasso’s African Period his “Proto-Cubist” or primitive period. It lasted from 1907 to 1909. Picasso was 24 years old when he saw an exhibit of African art at the ethnographic museum at Palais du Trocadéro. He experienced a “revelation” and began to explore African art further. African masks and sculptures strongly influenced Picasso’s art for several years, when he began to paint in sculptural forms, earth tones, and in flattened sharpened shapes.

*Pablo Picasso in his Montmartre Studio,*1908, via The Guardian

Picasso had first seen an African mask at Gertrude Stein’s home. Recalling his visit to the Trocadéro Museum of Ethnology (now the Musée de l’Homme), Picasso said of the museum:

“A smell of mould and neglect caught me by the throat. I was so depressed that I would have chosen to leave immediately. But I forced myself to stay, to examine these masks, all these objects that people had created with a sacred, magical purpose, to serve as intermediaries between them and the unknown, hostile forces surrounding them, trying in that way to overcome their fears by giving them color and form. And then I understood what painting really meant. It’s not an aesthetic process; it’s a form of magic that interposes itself between us and the hostile universe, a means of seizing power by imposing a form on our terrors as well as on our desires. The day I understood this, I had found my path.”

That path led Picasso to what he called his “periode nègre” (black period) or African period. It lasted only a few years, to 1909, but it turned Picasso into an avid collector of African art, masks, and sculptures that inspired him for the rest of his career.

Picasso: Woman with joined hands, 1907, Paris.

In our art class we chatted about how these masks inspired Picasso. Picasso used a palette of earthy tones, overlapping browns, and yellows with dark reds. By using Cubism, he explored a simplified geometry and the redefinition of perspectives. He tried to reveal objects from a different vantage point—from the mind, not only how the eyes perceive them. His Les Demoiselles d’Avignon signified a radical break from the naturalism that had defined Western art since the Renaissance, derailing former notions of what art was supposed to look like.

Picasso: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), oil on canvas.

People criticized Picasso’s two-dimensional women as unfeminine, for their confrontational demeanor was a complete departure from the traditional depiction of female beauty. Artists and critics alike received the work negatively and saw its menacing sex workers as promiscuous and unfit for Paris salons. Picasso rolled up the canvas, considered scandalous even amongst his innermost circle, and stored it in his studio for years to come. Yet this groundbreaking painting influenced his future works.

As Thomas Merton wrote in No Man Is an Island:

“In an aesthetic experience, in the creation or the contemplation of a work of art, the psychological conscience is able to attain some of its highest and most perfect fulfillments. Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

Picasso broke through the accepted boundaries of Western culture and discovered his true spirit in through the voices of the ancestors speaking from the African past. He met the other and found himself. By bringing the African masks into his studio, Picasso lived out the message of Hebrews 13:2—

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

As artists today, who seek to find their own true self and unique voice, we must both find ourselves and lose ourselves. We must lose our preconceived notions of who we should be and discover our true selves. Some artists use this as license to be caricatures of an artist, but actual artists have work ethics because they have obligations to galleries and clients. Looking like an artist and being an artist are two different things. Finding our true selves is not only a task for creatives, but also a lifetime journey for all people engaged in spiritual growth. We all can recover the image of God, which is our true self, by both God’s grace and our cooperation in doing good to all.

We artists are not here to make pretty pictures, but to break down the boundaries between our walls that keep us estranged from God and neighbor. We are not as bold as Picasso! Most of us are not risk takers. Willingness to leap out in faith is what marks a famous artist. That same riskiness is what marks the prophets of the Bible. Prophets never praise the status quo, but remind the people of the nature of their God:

“For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.” (Deuteronomy 10:17-18)

Isaiah 1:17 reminded the people of his day, “learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow.” Jesus will pick up this same voice in Matthew 25:40, “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.’”

So how will we find our unique voice and creative expression today? The more we steep our heart and mind in the great spiritual writings of the ages, particularly those of whom have come through great suffering or difficulties, the closer we will come to understanding our own challenges in life. These hardships are not hurdles or barriers to our progress, but refiners of any weakness that needed to be strengthened.

As my teachers always said, “We test you, not to see how ignorant you are, but to see what we failed to teach well.”

I always liked their attitude better! I did not feel so dumb when I missed the right answer on their tests. I always liked art better, for more than one answer could be correct. If we work within the parameters of the assignment, we can interpret the art with our own vision and style.

Our recent class with the African masks was a big diversion from our usual method of working. First, the masks are from a different culture. They are as much of a culture shock to us as they were to Picasso. He had the privilege of buying them in the Parisian curio shops, so they sat around in his environment. We only had images. The mystery of these objects might not connect to us as they did to him.

Mike brought several masks from his home collection. He decided to paint one that spoke to him. Like Picasso, he had an emotional connection to this mask. He made a successful rendering of the object before him. Unfinished, he would bring it back to the next class.

Tim worked on a mask representing his wife. He first painted his background with a dark wash, then began drawing a lighter design on top of it. The contrast of the dark and light without the middle tone was difficult for me to look at, but he seemed to be enjoying getting the big shapes down. I often let people work without jumping into change their activity. I figure they will learn more from going down a dead-end road by themselves than if I stop them before they go there. They will ask about this, and we will talk about it. They will not do it again. A little suffering leads to learning if we do no harm to the body.

Gail S. understood the concept of simplifying the faces into a mask. She chose a photo of herself and her granddaughter. With two mask shapes, she had multiple decisions to make. As with the others, her work was unfinished at the end of class.

This was a difficult and challenging lesson for everyone. Asking students to make an emotional connection and render the object also was aspirational. It also gave me an opportunity to see where they were on this learning journey. I will not issue this sort of challenge again for a while. I was afraid I had been boring them, but maybe not. I may need to bring brownies next Friday to make up to them. For some, they may be “grief snacks,” while for others, they will be “encouragement food.” If my bunged-up shoulder permits, I will indulge in grief baking. Otherwise, I will just eat the chocolate ice cream in my freezer, and ask for understanding.

I painted a Trump mask to get my emotions out and not have them bottled up inside. If we dislike an attribute in another person, it is because we have that attribute in our own life. I can get incredibly angry, but I bottle it up and it hurts me. I do not often let anyone else see it, so it can make me sick from holding it in. Whenever someone calls you a name, I remember the old song my parents taught me when I was a child:

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

Anger is a difficult emotion for many people, especially for women. It is a “culturally unacceptable behavior,” for we have always expected strong emotions from men, but this expectation is changing over the generations. Proverbs 14:29 reminds all of us,

“Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but one who has a hasty temper exalts folly.”

The Old Testament often speaks of God’s anger, but this is because God’s people keep finding other gods to worship instead of the one true God. Psalms 145:8-9 reminds us of God’s true nature:

“The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.”

The hidden mystery is in plain sight. It is the word of hope we hear: We are not sinners in the hand of an angry God. We are all beloved and God’s everlasting grace is redeeming us always. When things fall apart, God works to reframe and renew, even if we have difficulty recognizing God’s new creation or wanting to take part in God’s plans for the new heaven and the new earth.

Joy, peace, and recovery,

Cornelia

Historical Influence of African Art in the Modern Art Movement – ARTDEX

Historical Influence of African Art in the Modern Art Movement

Pablo Picasso – Artists – Mnuchin Gallery

https://www.mnuchingallery.com/artists/pablo-picasso#:~:text=Picasso’s%20early%20work%20can%20be,Cubism%20(1909%2D1919)

Stealing beauty | Art | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/mar/15/art

Historical Influence of African Art in the Modern Art Movement – ARTDEX

Historical Influence of African Art in the Modern Art Movement

Sticks And Stones May Break My Bones – Meaning & Origin of The Phrase

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/sticks-and-stones-may-break-my-bones.html

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

Creating a Picasso Still Life

art, brain plasticity, Cezanne, change, Creativity, Habits, Healing, Imagination, inspiration, Painting, perspective, picasso, purpose, renewal, Spirituality, vision, war

Einstein never said, “If we do the same thing every time, but expect a different result, this is the definition of insanity.” So why do artists return over and over to the still life? For that matter, why do preachers repeatedly use the same scripture texts for their sermons? Some of my former congregation members might have said I was overly fond of certain verses. The scalawags among them might have thought I did not get my point across the first five times I preached a version of the sermon text. As Jesus was wont to say in Luke 14:34-35 about Salt:

Picasso: Self Portrait, 1907, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Prague

“Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste,

how can its saltiness be restored?

It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile;

they throw it away.

Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

I always kept my sermon notes just in case I had a difficult week and might need a backup sermon, but I never used these notes. I wrote each of those sermons for a time and a place, but they were never useful for the current time or the present location. Likewise, an artist brings their emotions and experiences of the present time to each working session in the studio. Sometimes an artist is chock full of energy and power, full of joy and life. Their paintings or works exude these same emotions. At other times, the cares and chaos of the world intrude into the otherwise peaceful precincts of the artist’s workplace. These emotions and troubles will also be visible in their work, for artists are in tune with their times.

Picasso: Still Life with Dead Pigeon, oil on canvas, 1941, Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum

This year in the adult art class I’m teaching at Oaklawn UMC, the students are getting lessons not only on how to paint, but on awakening their individual creative voice. These lessons are part art history and part “thinking like an artist” by painting in another artist’s style. The week before, we worked on a typical still life painting. For this session, we worked on what we saw in front of us, but tried to make an emotional connection with the objects. When most of our energy is going to getting proportions in proper order, shadows cast in the right direction, following the shape of the objects, and the colors correct, putting our emotions into the work comes in a distant fifth or last.

Morandi still life: he painted the same vessels so often, they became as friends who shared their innermost secret thoughts with him.

To be sure, our class is still analyzing the containers as physical objects more than feeling or experiencing the vessels as objects with personality. We have not yet become friends with the objects, or really gotten to know them on a deep and intimate level. This is also a problem in our society today. We are not willing to know others too deeply, and we aren’t likely to let many others know us too deeply either.

This isn’t a problem confined to older people. For my own demographic, meeting new people seems a mite risky these days in the online world because we never know who is behind that chatbot or Facebook account who seems so charming. For younger people, who sometimes never seem to come up for air from the online world, this online reality can seem more real than the three-dimensional world in which we live. (I was today old years when I learned the latest online AI fad is personalizing your own chatbot companion. I wonder if these chatbots have Asimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics ingrained in their program guardrails.)

Having empathy with inanimate objects is difficult. Artists bring into their own studio the objects which interest them. A teacher brings in objects her students can approach, given their skill level. I will blow that concept out of the water this Friday with some crazy Halloween pumpkins but, if the subject matter is consistently too difficult, many students will give up if the challenge is too far out of reach.

Picasso Still Life, oil on canvas, 1937, private collection.

In the second session when our class saw these same liturgical vessels, we chatted about Picasso and cubism. Cubism had several different forms of expression, but we focused on synthetic cubism, a later phase of the cubist style dating from about 1912 to 1914. It had simpler shapes and brighter colors. Synthetic cubist works also often include collaged real elements such as newspapers and cardboard. These works have interesting designs, such as multiple points of view (perspective), overlapping shapes which make their own patterns, and linear outlines. This style is an outgrowth of the work of Cézanne, who said: “A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.”

Gail S. took a cubist vision to our same three pots

If you’ve ever tried to put on your socks in the morning beginning with a different foot than normal, you can begin to appreciate how difficult it is to imagine how to create an artwork in a fresh style. If we were to ever have a stroke or a traumatic brain injury, relearning how to do simple tasks is much the same.

Tim’s first effort. He was one week out from surgery. His body was devoted to recovery, not to thinking about cubism.

Our brains can handle the rebuilding project, but we will feel strange doing it! This is because we are building new neural circuits and pathways in our brains. Going to work or the grocery store by taking a different route also feels strange, as does a golfer trying to reconstruct their swing pattern.

Tim took a second week to elaborate on his still life. It’s a better solution! Amazing what happens when our bodies have extra energy to give to creative projects.

As a comparison, we can look at the great hurricane which came through North Carolina recently and took out the big interstate highway that runs through the mountains and valleys. The sooner the highway construction engineers can come inspect the ground, the better. They must decide if the land is safe for rebuilding and then check the infrastructure also. They may need to redesign the road to current standards and also the underlying roadbed. When the great 1900 hurricane hit Galveston, rebuilding the city took twelve years. People were still living there, and life was going on, but the city began a process of raising the land levels and building a sea wall that took that extensive time.

Cornelia’s overlapping shapes and shifting perspectives

Change doesn’t happen overnight. Every sales or leadership training session I’ve been in has emphasized the idea “Three weeks are necessary to build a habit.” The origin of this myth has nothing to do with habit formation. Instead it comes from a 1960 self-help book Psycho-Cybernetics, in which plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz wrote how his patients took about 21 days to become used to their new appearance after surgery.

He did no double blind, peer reviewed study to verify this, but his book applied this 21-day timeline to many other wide-ranging aspects of self-transformation in life. He also believed three weeks was the time people needed to adapt to a new house or change their mind about their beliefs. (He also didn’t live with a preteen girl child who enjoyed rearranging the living room every night just to see how her mom negotiated a new obstacle pattern in the dark when she came home from a sales call.)

If artists want to make paintings which are technically proficient and resemble the objects they see, they are only halfway to creating a good painting. They must also bring who they are and allow the voice of God to speak through their hand to make a masterpiece. In this way we separate artists into the good and the great, the ordinary and the masters. Not all of us will be prophets who listen to God’s word, but all of us can and should silence our hearts and minds of the world’s chatter and claims so the word of God can pierce our hearts.

Picasso: Guernica, 1937, 11’ x 25.5’,
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS), Madrid, Spain

Rabbi Nahum Ward-Lev describes how the ancient prophets listened for God’s liberating word:

“At its heart, the prophetic witness was a way of listening, listening beyond the social norms of the day, listening to the word of the liberating God. The prophets urged the people to listen to God’s word because the discourse of the king, princes, and wealthy landowners was too narrow and was limited to the interests of these elites. This conversation did not include the voices of suffering people. The prophets, in God’s name, offered a much broader discourse, a conversation that listened to and addressed the needs of the poor and the disadvantaged….

The prophetic listening tradition is alive today to inspire people to listen beyond the established conversation. The prophetic tradition challenges us to listen especially to the cries of those who suffer and to listen to the voice of alternative possibility, to the voice of God.”

Picasso: Still Life—fruits and pitcher, oil and enamel on canvas, 10 3/4 x 16 1/8 inches, Guggenheim Art Museum, NYC.

Making a painting is quite different from making a work of art. This is why house painters aren’t called artists. They may cover a surface with color and not make a mess, but their heart and soul isn’t in their work. Learning to risk our vulnerability and emotional expression is also part of art class, just as much as learning what colors to mix to make orange or green. Picasso, quoted in Alfred H. Barr Jr.’s Picasso: Fifty Years of his Art (1946), understood this:

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.”

We have these same experiences also, but we don’t realize these are part of the artist’s toolbox. These ordinary moments of life are also the extraordinary means of God speaking to us, if only we have ears to hear and a heart and hands ready to be used by God for God’s good purposes.

Joy, peace, and prophecy,

Cornelia

Quote Origin: Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results—Quote Investigator®. The origin of the quote is misattributed to Albert Einstein, but it originated in the 12-Step Anonymous groups in the 1980’s.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/23/same/

Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics”:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

https://webhome.auburn.edu/~vestmon/robotics.html#:~:text=A%20robot%20may%20not

How Long Does It Really Take to Form a Habit? | Scientific American

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-does-it-really-take-to-form-a-habit/

Nahum Ward-Lev, The Liberating Path of the Hebrew Prophets: Then and Now (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2019), 133, 134, 135–136.

https://cac.org/daily-meditations/living-presence-liberating-journey/

Meet My AI Friends, by Kevin Roose, NYTimes gift article

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/technology/meet-my-ai-friends.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Uk4.9sLW.VYS9bW4dc3ib&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Pablo Picasso – Oxford Reference
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.0001/q-oro-

The Chair

adult learning, art, Creativity, Forgiveness, Holy Spirit, hope, Imagination, incarnation, inspiration, john wesley, ministry, Painting, perfection, photography, picasso, purpose

The everyday objects around us are like so much white noise: we know they’re present, but after a while, we tend to ignore them. A running joke among the clergy is “Never move anything at the new appointment for six months because you don’t know what objects are the sacred cows.” I learned this the hard way in my first full time appointment when I suggested we rid ourselves of an aging, olive green, velvet curtain hanging on the back wall of the fellowship hall stage, since “It was just hanging there for no purpose.” Oh, the outcries of rage! Little did I know this was the one and only curtain to survive the fire which destroyed the old church building. The people saw this ragged banner as a symbol of hope for the church they were rebuilding for the future. They had invested spiritual meaning into this curtain, even though it no longer served a spiritual purpose.

In the same way, we treat our Bibles as holy objects because they contain the inspired writings handed down over the centuries. We recognize they tell us important truths about God, humanity, and our relationship with the God whose steadfast love for God’s creation never wavers. In worship, we often say after reading from scripture, “The word of God for the people of God.” When many read John 1:1—

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

These same readers connect the “word of God” with the ”Word and the Word (who) was with God, and the Word was God.” The English translation of LOGOS to WORD derives from the Greek principle of Logos, or divine reason and creative order, which is identified in the Gospel of John with the second person of the Trinity incarnate in Jesus Christ. This is how the early Christian writers argued for the preexistence of Christ and for the existence of the Holy Trinity. When we refer to the Logos/Word of God, we are speaking of Christ. If we read the Old Testament, we’re speaking of the one God who has spoken through the ages, but only revealed God’s Son to humanity during the New Testament era. The Spirit has been active always.

This reminds us to honor the Bible for revealing the Incarnate Christ through inspired words, but not to idolize the Bible as a object greater than the God it reveals. After all, over the centuries, the Bible has been interpreted differently by various schools of thought. This brings up the question of how do we know what we know. There’s a whole body of philosophy dedicated to how we know what we know, called epistemology. There are various kinds of knowing:

Sensory perception or observation of facts
Reason or logic
Authority of tradition or common wisdom
Intuition, revelation, or inspiration

Some of us use one way more than others, but each has both good and bad points. In the case of the authority of tradition or common wisdom, for instance, some have been time tested across the ages, but deference to authority without critical thinking can be a mark of intellectual laziness on our part.

John Wesley’s famous understanding of what we now call the Quadrilateral comes from Albert Cook Outler’s discussion on how Wesley understood authority. When challenged for Wesley’s authority on any question, Wesley’s first appeal was to the Holy Bible. Even so, he was well aware that Scripture alone had rarely settled any controversial point of doctrine. Thus, though never as a substitute or corrective, he would also appeal to ‘the primitive church’ and to the Christian Tradition at large as competent, complementary witnesses to ‘the meaning’ of this Scripture or that.

However, Scripture and Tradition would not suffice without the good offices (positive and negative) of critical Reason. Thus, he insisted on logical coherence and as an authorized referee in any contest between contrary positions or arguments. And yet, this was never enough. It was, as he knew for himself, the vital Christian Experience of the assurance of one’s sins forgiven that clinched the matter.

In reality, Wesley’s diagram for how we know is really a triangle— consisting of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason—which leads to the Christian Experience of being a Child of God, forgiven for our sins. It’s based on the Anglican tripod of the faith: scripture, reason, and tradition. Wesley took the tripod and added the firm “seat of experience” of God’s loving mercy to forgive all our sins. This insight came out of Wesley’s life changing Aldersgate experience, which he recorded in his journal on May 24, 1738.

“In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Wesley understood he could spend his whole life learning about God, reading about God, and even serving God to the best of his ability, but he was in his words, an “almost Christian” because he didn’t have the faith of a son or daughter who served God out of love, but had instead the faith of a slave or a servant, who served only from fear of punishment. One of Wesley’s Standard Sermons is the “Almost Christian,” which you can read in its 18th century glorious English at the link below. Most of us would be glad to be accounted in the “almost” category, but Wesley asks, why don’t we go farther and become “altogether Christian?”

In Methodist terms, this is “entire sanctification,” or “going on to perfection.” We don’t talk much about this any more, but it’s the purpose of our Christian life to be conformed to the image of God. We aren’t trying to be like Beyoncé, JayZ, Taylor Swift, or Jake Owen. Instead we have the promise in Romans 8:29—

“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.”

We don’t do this on our own, but with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. That’s why the Spirit is called a helper, for it’s a coworker in the process of perfection or sanctification. This epistemology for knowing is useful for art classes also. Some of us believe we need to be perfect from the get go and can’t accept our raggedy messes we produce as we learn the techniques of color mixing and shading, much less the fine motor coordination required to connect our thoughts with our hand movements. If we aren’t able to endure the rough edges of imperfection as we “go on to perfection,” we won’t last long in art class. Just learning how to see the three dimensional world and translate it onto a two dimensional surface is a Mount Everest accomplishment in itself. Some days we have no energy to cope, and that’s when we need to come for support and encouragement.

Last Friday we painted chairs. Every artist’s work we viewed for inspiration had a different take on the chair. We no longer have to make a photographic rendering of an object because we have cameras for this purpose. We can use the chair as a reason to break up the picture plane and organize the spaces. I found a funny little poem called “The Chair,” by Theodore Roethke:

A Funny Thing about a Chair:
You Hardly Ever Think it’s There.
To Know a Chair is Really It,
You Sometimes have to Go and Sit.

As the class went on, Sally decided she wanted to copy one of the inspiration images. She’s new, so she was practicing color mixing with her limited palette. When she couldn’t get the bright turquoise color, I brought my manganese blue over and mixed it with her titanium white. The color she wanted came popping out, much to her delight. “I’m going to buy me some of that color.” Sometimes all we need is the right materials.

Lauralei’s humor takes the cake with her shower chair. She can imagine the model chairs in a new environment. She doesn’t let the reality limit her options.

Gail divided up the canvas into various planes of colors, which sing for joy. I think she had fun. As the only one of our group who took the challenge of the entire scene, Mike took a bird’s eye view of the table and chairs. I hear he may be traveling again, or at least yearning to fly away from the day to day grind of full time work to something closer to retirement.

I can understand that feeling. After years of teaching school, I look forward to summer vacation. We’ll have art class on the last two Fridays of May, and then take the summer off. Our current plan is to return on September 9, the first Friday after Labor Day. In the meantime, if you want to know how God really is,

“Be still, and know that I am God!” ~~ Psalms 46:10

A fun summertime activity is building a chair fort or a chair cave. All you have to do is turn over a couple of chairs on the floor and throw a sheet or blanket over them. This provides a quiet place for a child of any age to have a “time out” alone during a long summer. I recommend a quiet place for children of all ages, even those who’re long of tooth.

Joy, peace, and a quiet place,

Cornelia

Experience in the so-called “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” | Kevin M. Watson
https://kevinmwatson.com/2013/05/13/experience-in-the-so-called-wesleyan-quadrilateral/

The Wesleyan Theological Heritage: Essays of Albert C. Outler: Albert Cook Outler, Thomas C. Oden, Leicester R. Longden: 9780310754718: Books
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0310754712/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0310754712&linkCode=as2&tag=deeplcommi-20

Sermon—The Almost Christian by John Wesley via Words Of Wesley Quotes
http://www.wordsofwesley.com/libtext.cfm?srm=2&

Great Blog by Adam Hamilton on biblical authority and how we read the Bible in different eras
https://www.adamhamilton.com/blog/the-bible-homosexuality-and-the-umc-part-one/

To Be or Not To Be

Alexander the Great, art, city, Civil War, cognitive maps, Creativity, Faith, Forgiveness, Healing, Holy Spirit, hope, inspiration, Painting, picasso, Reflection, renewal, Spirituality, vision

Hamlet’s famous soliloquy begins with these very words,”To be, or not to be: that is the question.” In seminary I learned one of those big fifty cent words I often had to check my dictionary for its meaning. Ontological is a word we don’t throw around in ordinary conversations. I never used it in a sermon, for its strangeness would have been a stumbling block to folks without similar training. Who am I kidding? It was often a stumbling block when I tripped over it in my reading. I finally understood it after my first year of Greek. I needed to know its meaning fully and completely to comprehend it.

Current events, however, make an auspicious teaching moment for this weird word. Ontology is a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being. Ontology is the the branch of philosophy which deals with abstract entities. It’s concerned with the nature of being or the kinds of things that have existence, but are outside objective experience. It deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space. Our word essence carries the meaning well, for it means “the permanent as contrasted with the accidental elements of being.”

An example of an ontological statement in scripture is the discussion Jesus has in John 8:56-58 with some of the Jews who opposed him:

“Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad.”

Then the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”

Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.”

In Shakespeare’s play of the same name, Hamlet’s whole soliloquy is about his existence, and whether he should live or die:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

Ontology comes from the Greek root ontos, ōn, which is the present participle of einai, of the verb to be. As I’ve watched the unfolding horror of this “Russian special exercise” on Ukrainian soil, I’m struck by the sense of Hamlet’s description of the struggles of life:

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?

“To be” is the ontological insistence for the Ukrainians, for they desire to exist as a free people in a free nation. They resist occupation and occupiers. Dictatorship isn’t in their five year plan, or in their distant future, if they can help it. The surrounding nations have suddenly come alive in their recognition of Russia’s unfortunate foray into this breadbasket of Europe.

Yet even as the Ukrainian people are being killed in their streets, for no reason other than their citizenship; and their homes, hospitals, museums, and public buildings are reduced to smithereens by cluster bombs and artillery fire; they fight for their land and their freedom. I watch for one hour on the evening news, for I believe our world must stand witness to this horror.

Yes, some will turn away, for they have too much trauma in their own lives to bear the pain of others. Others will watch and say this isn’t our problem. If we remember our scripture, the chosen disciples abandoned Jesus in his hour of pain and need, but the women stayed by his side until his last breath. Then they came to dress his dead body’s wounds, but found an empty grave, while the men were holed up in a locked room for fear of the Jews (John 20:19).

Humanity is always our concern and when inhumane acts or conditions prevail, the human responsibility is to bear witness and to share the burden. As Paul writes in Galatians 6:2—

“Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

Hamlet muses on, dithering as contemplates taking his own life, but he takes no action for fear of what awaits him in the world beyond.

who would fardels (burdens) bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn (boundary)
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

While none of us know with certainty what lies beyond this world, for no one has ever returned with souvenirs, people of faith have trusted God to be always with them, even in the worst of times. As Paul writes in Romans 8:35, 37-39—

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Battle of Issus Mosaic, Detail: Portrait of Alexander the Great

Artists across the centuries have responded to the horrors of war, if they aren’t held in thrall to the purveyors of such deeds. Those who exist to magnify the glories of battle are there as servants of powerful leaders, not as representatives of the fragility of the human condition. Think of Alexander the Great and his route to deification, first as a glorious leader, then as a god.

The Alexander Mosaic depicts a moment of victory in Battle of Issus in which Alexander has broken through to Darius of Persia, whom he defeated and shocked, before Darius was at the verge of fleeing. The mosaic is as great as Alexander himself, for it’s about 9 feet by 17 feet in size and contains over 1.5 million individual blocks of color, or tesserae. This Roman copy of an original Greek fourth century BCE painting dates from the second century BCE and is in the Museo Nazionale, Naples, Italy.

Goya: The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid, or “The Executions”, oil on canvas, 1814, Prado Museum, Spain.

Here we see Goya painting the horrors of war and its impact on humanity. His inspiration comes from the French army’s assassination of a group of Spanish patriots during the 1808 rebellion. The Spanish heroes are illuminated by the intense light, but their faceless enemies aren’t easily visible in the darkness from which they operate. Not only does the design make plain Goya’s feelings, but his psychological understanding of the scene as well.

As Matthew writes in Jesus’ teaching kernel known as “The Sound Eye,”

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (6:22-23)

Probably the best known war painting of our modern era is Picasso’s Guernica. He painted it in response to the Nazi bombing of Guernica, a Spanish town in the Basque region during the Spanish Civil War. At about 16:30 on Monday, 26 April 1937, warplanes of the German Condor Legion, commanded by Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, bombed Guernica for about two hours. Germany, at this time led by Hitler, had lent material support to the Nationalists and were using the war as an opportunity to test out new weapons and tactics. Later, intense aerial bombardment became a crucial preliminary step in the Blitzkrieg tactic.

Guernica, Picasso’s most important political painting, has remained relevant as a work of art and as a symbol of protest. It has kept the memory of the Basque town’s nightmare alive. While Picasso was living in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II, one German officer allegedly asked him, upon seeing a photo of Guernica in his apartment, “Did you do that?” Picasso responded, “No, you did.”

Käthe Kollwitz, Woman with Dead Child, 1903, etching on paper. Courtesy: © Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Lest we forget, while wars are often started by those in power, it’s the mothers who suffer when young soldiers are killed in action. Some are fortunate enough to have the body of their loved one to hold, but it’s a sad consolation prize. How heart rending it must be for the families whose children were left behind as casualties of war. As the old Cold War era 1985 Sting song about nuclear war reminds us—

There’s no such thing as a winnable war
It’s a lie we don’t believe anymore…
We share the same biology, regardless of ideology
But what might save us, me and you
Is if the Russians love their children too.

The great sadness of this brutal war foisted on the Ukrainian people is while we’re free to see and own the pain inflicted on others, too many of us will turn away. Then again, we often have difficulty acknowledging our own pain and weakness, for we prefer to see ourselves as whole, strong, and unconquerable. All of us have a weak place and we all have an emptiness that needs to be filled. Some of us fill this emptiness by seeking power and control, while others choose various substances or activities to overuse. A few will let God’s Spirit fill us, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:7—

“But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.”

Cornelia DeLee: Obliterated Ukrainian Landscape, Maxar Satellite Image, Apple Pencil, 2022.

When I see the satellite imagery of the obliterated Ukrainian towns, I recall my childhood memories of the old ones in my family repeating their ancestors’ stories of the troubled times during the Civil War. I can easily imagine in Ukraine, for several generations to come, all the stories of pain, survival, and resilience that will be told as they rebuild their nation from the ground up. In the midst of this ongoing disaster, they’re already thinking “How can we build back better?”

This is a great lesson for all of us. If our life hits a major roadblock, we can either give up, scale the wall, or find a way around the wall. Another option is to make peace with the wall and find a way to be happy there. Since Putin is tearing down all the walls for the Ukrainian people, they’ve decided to double down on being Ukrainian. “To be me” is “to be free” and that means “to be Ukrainian.” As their land lies in ashes about them, those who once also spoke Russian, a similar language to Ukrainian, now find that language dead as ashes in their mouths.

Cornelia DeLee: Ukrainian Town Reduced to Ashes, acrylic on canvas, 2022.

To win friends and influence people requires a gentle hand, not the ham-fist of a dictator. I only wonder if the Russian people will ever understand this. But they may have been slaves of their state for so long, they don’t know the sweet taste of freedom. Perhaps only those who believe in a forgiving God, who allows God’s people the freedom to make mistakes and gives them through the reconciling grace of renewed fellowship, are able to come through such disasters. Those who are “sinners in the hands of an angry god” must think their fate is destiny and accept it.

So the questions remain:

What IS the nature of YOUR God?
How does God’s nature affect your understanding of human nature?
Does your view of humanity reflect your image of God or do you see humanity through “God’s eyes?”
Read the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-30 and answer the questions again

Some days I AM Joy and Peace,
Cornelia

Hamlet, Act III, Scene I [To be, or not to be] by William Shakespeare
https://poets.org/poem/hamlet-act-iii-scene-i-be-or-not-be

Why is the Alexander mosaic significant?
https://www.rampfesthudson.com/why-is-the-alexander-mosaic-significant/

The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid, or “The Executions” – The Collection – Museo Nacional del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-3rd-of-may-1808-in-madrid-or-the-executions/5e177409-2993-4240-97fb-847a02c6496c

Pablo Picasso: Guernica
https://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp

Portraits in the Style of the Modern Masters

adult learning, art, Creativity, Holy Spirit, Icons, inspiration, Matisse, Ministry, Painting, picasso, risk, Spirituality, vision

“ Good artists copy, great artists steal,” Pablo Picasso once said. If we’re going to learn art, we should learn from the masters, and not from ordinary purveyors of paint. In art school, we often copied the old master paintings and drawings to learn their techniques and develop those traditional styles of execution so we could “break the rules” later on if we so chose.

Learning to paint and draw is a process. In ancient times, young people were apprenticed out to a master. In this workshop, they would learn their trade from the ground up, from cleaning brushes and sweeping the workshop floors, to later mixing colors, and then painting backgrounds. Later on they’d be drawing figures, so when they were competent, they would fill in the lesser people in the painting. By the time they achieved master status and were able to leave and establish a studio of their own, they could paint faces, hands, and the complete figure with appropriately draped clothing. This was about five to ten years of full time work in their master’s workshop and included the journeyman designation by the local guild.

When I taught art in the kindergarten through eighth grades at a private school, I always reminded the high achieving parents, “Your children’s art is an exploratory and experimental exercise. It may not look like a beautiful finished product, although it might have gone through that stage at some point in the process. If it’s a picture of daddy cutting the lawn, but all you see is black circles covering the page, that’s the sound of the lawnmower engine and the smoke it makes as it crisscrossed the yard.” For children that age, the story is more important than the image. For the parents, the image is more important, but parents have to learn where their children are in their development.

We can’t judge a book by its cover, nor can we judge a painting done in a weekly art class the same way we look at a painting in a museum. Still, we look to the better image for our inspiration, rather than to a lesser image, as 2 Corinthians 3:18 reminds us:

And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

DeLee: Repainted Icon with fabric and multimedia embellishment

Edgar Degas once said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” The past two weeks our group has been working with faces and master artists. We looked at Picasso in his multiple styles, along with Matisse and his more decorative style. We also painted portraits from our own photos in the styles of these two masters. Both Picasso and Matisse transitioned through several different styles during their artistic lifetimes, so we weren’t limited in our inspiration.

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep,” said Scott Adams, the American cartoonist who created Dilbert. Or as the late Bob Ross would say, “There’re no mistakes, only happy little accidents.” Most of us can’t bring ourselves to make mistakes, however, even though mistakes are how we learn. Falling off the bicycle is part of learning how to find the proper balance to stay upright. We take tests in school to discover what we need to restudy. Tests aren’t a measure of our worth, but a measure of our learning. This desire to “appear faultless” often keeps us from trying something new, for fear we might not be good right out of the gate. Mature people know life isn’t a horse race, but everyone has their own gifts and graces to hone and embellish. If we don’t try, we might always be a diamond in the rough. We’ll never rise to our best if we don’t extend ourselves beyond our safe places.

Mike took a look at an image and went to work on his painting. He worked mostly from memory, adding designs and colors as he felt moved to place them on the canvas. “Likeness” wasn’t his goal, but the joy of playing with color and shape instead.

Matisse’s portrait of his wife caused a scandal at the 1905 Salon Exhibition. Matisse’s studio colleagues asked the painter, “What kind of hat and what kind of dress were they that this woman had been wearing which were so incredibly loud in color?” Matisse, exasperated, answered, “Black, obviously”.

“The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense,” is another Picasso quote. After all, those who always stay within the lines and always color the sky blue won’t be able to imagine sunsets or sunrises. This is why James Whistler said, “An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.”

What is vision in the world of art? We’re familiar with visions from God, or the lack thereof in certain times, as when Samuel was called:

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli. The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.
(1 Samuel 3:1)

In God given visions, the prophet is open to God’s word, hears God’s voice, speaks for God, calls God’s people back to God, and reminds people of the consequences of their actions, both good and bad. Like a prophet, an artist needs to be open to the same move of the Spirit in the natural world, for the light calls and the trees speak, and the waters whisper of the deep mysteries of God’s Providence for God’s creation. Perhaps we need still hearts and quiet minds to receive these messages, but thankfully nature has a way of renewing the life of the human soul.

As we become more our true selves before God, we begin to find our artistic vision. Cezanne called Monet, who was famous for his Waterlilies, “only an eye, but what an eye!” If the eye is the window into the soul, we also reflect outwards what we are inside. We keep working on both our inner selves and our outer talents, with the thought one day the two might intersect. As Picasso said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” He could learn all the art techniques in a short time, but to become his true self, without pretense before others, took him a lifetime.

We Methodists should have a good jump on this goal, since we have the spiritual tradition of “going onto perfection.” This is one of our classic grace teachings. Prevenient grace brings us to know the saving grace of God before we’re even aware of God’s working in our lives. Justifying grace is the work that lets us understand Christ’s gift on the cross for our salvation, and Sanctifying grace empowers our works to renew us in the image of God.

If God’s grace is available for our spiritual development, it’s also there for our personal development. Is art a frill, or a necessity? Those of us who make art, find our lives are enriched by our creative endeavors. Neuroaesthethics is the emerging field in the science of how art affects the brain. These scientists define creativity as “the generation of something new,” and art as “the most homogenous form of total creativity.” However, we still have no understanding of how the brain generates new ideas, despite a tidal wave of neuroscientific research. This is why my art classes have always had learning environments with projects with no one right answer, but rather multiple possible solutions. All art comes from a true self, not from a stockpile of manufactured and multiplied standardized reproductions.

Recent thinking suggests art should be regarded as a cognitive process in which artists engage the most perplexing issues in their present experience and try to find a way of symbolizing them visually so they can bring coherence to their experience. As a result, the definition of art is constantly changing. Understanding how we symbolize our experience, how we use symbolic form to organize our thinking processes, and what are the neuroanatomical corollaries to these processes will have obvious implications for future learning. Additional neuroscience research supports the idea of enhancing transfer of learning abilities from the arts to other cognitive domains. More importantly, as Yayoi Kusama, the painter of polka dotted pumpkins says, “I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live.”

One of the best reasons to pursue art is for our spiritual and mental health, rather than to make salable products. Improvement is a goal in itself, as is persistence. Also, concentrating on creating an object that has no real purpose, but to allow the artist to express their inner emotions and solve the challenges of a three dimensional world on a two dimensional surface. “Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one,” said Stella Adler, the American actress. In the studio, we find our true self, not who others think we are or what we do for a living. We can be children once again and paint because we want to.

In art class we lift up “studio habits of mind” or the skills we teach in painting class. For every painting or project, we always first

Observe—to see with acuity
Envision—to generate mental images and imagine
Express—to find their personal voice
Reflect—to think meta-cognitively about our decisions, make critical and evaluative judgments, and justify them
Engage & persist—to work through frustration
Stretch & explore—to take risks, “muck around,” and profit from mistakes
Develop craft skills and
Understand the history of art.

These are thinking or reasoning skills anyone can apply to any area of their lives, even if they’re improvising or “working in the Spirit.” We all can build resilience for our lives through our experiences in art. For some of my former students I taught in the classroom, art class was the only place they were well behaved, for they didn’t have to come up with one right answer, but had the opportunity to discover their own answer within certain boundaries. Also, they were graded on improvement, as well as their work ethic. “Practice makes perfect, or at least improvement, so keep working.”

Just remember what Salvador Dalí said: “The reason some portraits don’t look true to life is that some people make no effort to resemble their pictures.”

Excellent discussion of Matisse and Cezanne here:
T.J. Clark · Madame Matisse’s Hat: On Matisse · LRB 14 August 2008
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n16/t.j.-clark/madame-matisse-s-hat

The Salzburg Global Seminar: The Neuroscience of Art
https://www.salzburgglobal.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Documents/2010-2019/2015/Session_547/SalzburgGlobal_Report_547_FINAL_lo_res.pdf

Art, Creativity and Learning
June 11-13, 2008 National Science Foundation
https://www.nsf.gov/sbe/slc/ACL_Report_Final.pdf

Art Inspired by the Covid Blues

art, at risk kids, beauty, cognitive maps, coronavirus, Creativity, Faith, Family, generosity, greek myths, Healing, Holy Spirit, Imagination, Painting, pandemic, picasso, renewal, The Odyssey, vision

After the initial burst of summer excitement, my community is not only sweltering in a heat wave, but we’re also smack dab in the midst of the third wave of this Covid-19 pandemic. We might be more than halfway through 2021, but at the rate my home state of Arkansas is pursuing vaccinations, it’ll be years before we reach the holy grail of herd immunity, estimated to be at 80% immunity. Only 37% of our people are fully immunized, with Alabama and Mississippi pulling up the rear nationally with 35% and the states of Louisiana and Wyoming tied with us at 37%.

@rdaily—Arkansas hospital bed availability. Getting nearly impossible to find an ICU bed again. Many really sick patients being held in ER beds all over the state.

Like the old gal who’s always worn a certain size shoe or dress, my state now tries to fit an increasing number of Covid patients into a fixed set of ICU beds in our state. My days of a size seven shoe or skirt are a dim memory, as are the days of empty medical facilities.

“We have nowhere to send COVID-19 patients within the State of Arkansas. There is limited bed capacity at trauma centers increasing pressure on the time-sensitive healthcare system,” said Jeff Tabor, program director for the COVIDComm system, which helps match covid-19 patients with hospitals.

Tabor said the one COVID ICU bed which is available is located in southern Arkansas. There are five hospitals, also in southern Arkansas, showing limited COVID bed space. Tabor said some COVID-19 patients are so critical at rural Arkansas hospitals that they cannot be transferred to other hospitals because the patient is too critical and because of bed space.

Recently our state legislature adjourned a special session without amending their misguided law mandating no masks ever in public schools or government agencies. Act 1002, by Sen. Trent Garner, R-El Dorado, prohibits state and local governments, including public schools, from requiring people to wear masks. Act 1002 became effective on July 28.

The state’s largest school district, joined by a small district already suffering from Covid quarantine attendance problems in its early opening days, filed suit in court to stop this law from going into effect. The judge issued a temporary restraining order. The reasons for this aren’t political, but are found in the Arkansas constitution.

LRSD and MSD are likely to succeed on the merits. Act 1002 violates the Education Article of the Arkansas Constitution, Article 14, § 1, which requires that “the State shall ever maintain a general, suitable and efficient system of free public schools and shall adopt all suitable means to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education.” A suitable and efficient system of public education would not require students to risk their health and their lives to get the education promised to them in the Arkansas Constitution, especially when the State is required to “adopt all suitable means” to provide them “the advantages and opportunities of education”.

An affidavit provided by Dr. Glen Fenter, the superintendent of the Marion School District, said that incentives, including gift certificates, groceries, and even big-screen televisions, didn’t entice many local citizens to take the vaccine. Only one out of every three students in the district has acceptable home internet service, making remote learning difficult; even then, “very few” students who did “participate in the virtual education option last year achieved an acceptable level of academic progress,” the affidavit said.

The Marion superintendent said that his district was forced to “quarantine over 500 students and employees” based on CDC and state health department guidance after the second week of school. The school year in Marion began July 27, 2021. This rural system has only 3,325 students enrolled for the 2021-22 school year. Their math proficiency score averages 22% and reading averages 31%, compared to the statewide averages of 47% and 45%.

The broader lawsuit argues that the Act violates an education clause of the state constitution, the equal protection clause of the state constitution, and that certain federal laws preempt the state from enforcing the Act. It also argues that the Act violates separation of powers principles, conflicts with a subsequent state law, and violates the premise of Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Mass., the 1905 U.S. Supreme court case during the smallpox scourge, which allowed mandatory vaccination policies — and penalties for those who refused to comply — to stand.

On another front, the mayor of Little Rock, Frank Scott, Jr., said the capitol city’s covid-19 task force had recommended to him that “masks be worn again in public spaces for which the city is responsible.” He strongly exhorted businesses to follow suit. Scott made note of the many children who visit city parks and community centers and who will be returning to school later this month, adding that “right now, they don’t have the ability to mask up.”

“The Lotus Eaters” by James Dromgole Linton

In the middle of all this stress, I ponder these questions: “What inspires a work of art? In our search for beauty in this world, do we have to forget our pain and become as the lotus eaters of the ancient myths?”

Edward Marle: The Lotus Eaters, 1970, Glasgow Museum

Worn out from the years of the Trojan war fought in a foreign land and tired from an unending journey full of trials and tribulations on the way home, Odysseus found his men succumbing to the hypnotic lure of the magic flower. When eaten, it caused people to forget both their troubles and also their future plans. In the words of the hippies of yore, they were content to “get high and get by.”

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem, The Lotus Eaters, inspired Robert S. Duncanson, an African American landscape painter, prior to the Civil War:

Hateful is the dark-blue sky,

Vaulted o’er the dark-blue sea.

Death is the end of life; ah, why

Should life all labour be?

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,

And in a little while our lips are dumb.

Let us alone. What is it that will last?

All things are taken from us, and become

Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.

Let us alone. What pleasure can we have

To war with evil? Is there any peace

In ever climbing up the climbing wave?

All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave

In silence; ripen, fall and cease:

Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

Robert S. Duncanson, Land of The Lotus Eaters, 1861

Odysseus had to bodily carry his men back to the ship and tie them to their seats to keep them rowing on a straight course for home. Today we’re treated to videos of airline passengers taped to their seats because of their unruly behaviors. Rage flying has taken the place of rage driving. Neither the roads, the post offices, nor the skies are friendly anymore. “Going postal” has almost lost its meaning when no workplace is safe these days.

In the midst of the record deaths of despair, come now the increasing deaths of our most precious inheritance—our children. The number of children contracting Covid-19 has increased fivefold since the end of June, with a “substantial” 84% jump in the last week alone, according to a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics. This number comes as numerous states report upticks in child hospitalizations amid the ongoing delta surge. In Arkansas, we’ve had three children die from Covid.

Picasso: The Weeping Woman, 1937 (Portrait of Dora Maar)

Some would say this is an “acceptable loss or trade off to allow others to have freedom.” I find this line of reasoning heartless at best and cruel in reality. I wonder what these folks would say if their child had lost their life instead. It seems not too long ago some of these same persons were advocating for the elderly to accept a shortened lifespan, since their productive lifetimes were expended. They seem to value people only for their economic ability, rather than for their humanness or for their lived experience. Allowing the “weak” to die in this part of the pandemic also devalues those who aren’t yet ready to produce economic gain for the big machine. (Yet, they fail to recognize the loss of future gain of these young “production units.”)

I would rage blog at the inhumanity of our legislators, who couldn’t find an giant acorn in the midst of an empty football field, even if they had the scales removed from their eyes, but then there’s always the hope they might learn the lesson of Job, for whom suffering brought new understanding of God. Then they’d call themselves back into session and amend their own misbegotten law so it’s flexible enough to meet our current, extreme circumstances. Who knows, they might even rescind this unconscionable law, for persons who truly have the capacity to lead with courage also have the ability to change their minds. Some say it’ll never happen, but I’ve always been afflicted with incurable optimism.

Google Map of National Park Medical Centet

In the meantime, I paint and pray. Even this dire event can inspire a work of art. One of our local hospitals has already canceled elective surgeries in order to concentrate on Covid care. The other hospital has very limited intensive care unit availability. Right now, no one in our tourist town needs to get sick and we certainly don’t need a mass casualty incident. Of course, I could live in a rural county and my nearest medical facility with a trauma unit could be hours away. I remember my early years of ministry when I reminded people, “If I’m ever unconscious, please just have them stabilize me and send me off to the big hospital in Little Rock or Memphis.”

Today I blog about another painting based on a Google map of my adopted city, so it’s another “cognitive map.” I used scraps of an old preaching stole. I made the stole from odd pieces of fabric, plus an old pair of overalls, and a garden glove. I deconstructed the stole, since I’m no longer preaching in my retirement years, and added a few worn out face masks, in which I sewed small pleats. I took some of my grandmother’s old crochet and rickrack trim to mark some of the roads, but let the three dimensional shapes mark the other directional lines. My mother made Belgian lace collars for my young daughter’s dresses, so I’d used these for masks.

Layout on Raw Canvas of Primary Fabric Elements

I too wore these masks until I was tired of them. I was hopeful when those who know more than I do believed the virus had subsided and we were safe to shed our face coverings. One day in early July at Kroger I had an hour long conversation with a young man who was also glad to be shed of the mask, just to see people’s smiles. We talked for a while and I learned he was just a few weeks past a suicide attempt. This pandemic has been hard on him. We talked some more, for I’ve been in the dark place before too.

I don’t need a preaching stole anymore, for preaching isn’t what I do best in this season of my life. God sets people in my path who need an encouraging or healing word. The world, in its beauty or its sadness, inspires me to paint a new vision of the world as it could be, for I don’t think I’ve ever painted what was ever “real.”

People ask, “Why don’t you make a painting that looks like real life?”

I answer, “We have cameras today for this. In any event, how do we know this ordinary world we see today is what God intended? This could be the fallen world, and not the original world of colors and joy, which God originally created.”

Perhaps we need to rethink our cognitive maps or how we view our world. If we consider all persons to be made in the image of God, then caring for them becomes important also. We can’t separate the Spirit of God from the body in which it resides. We also have to recognize God works through extraordinary events as well as through ordinary events. If we are to reject the inspiration and special providence of God in the matter of scientific discovery, then we’re going to go back to living in caves for a long time.

Posted on Homes to Warm of Highly Transmissible Disease

I remember when my daddy came home from his medical office with a small vial and a special double pronged needle. The windows were open, so it wasn’t yet the heat of summer. He stood next to the light, as he always did in his office when he worked, and gave us children the smallpox vaccine.

“Let’s put a little light on the subject, shall we?” I laughed as I proffered my left arm. He washed it with a cotton swab and alcohol, in his usual calm way. I went first because I was the oldest. Also, I was a role model for my brothers, but I was used to this because of my birth order. I knew to trust my daddy and to show my brothers the way forward. A few tiny pin pricks later, a bandaid, and I was good to go. My brothers followed suit, and we were all told, “Hands off.” We were restricted from playing with our friends because of our parents’ fear we’d end up with a limp or in an iron lung. Polio was eradicated in the USA in 1979, but it still occurs in war torn and poverty areas worldwide.

Finally, while some will write off as heartless idiots the ones using the tired canard of freedom of choice (the ones who fail to protect our vulnerable children), I remind them we require measles, mumps and rubella vaccines to enter schools because medical professionals deem it important for the children’s health and welfare. Of course this same group throws back to us the name “liberal whackdoodles” in return. Maybe we’d all be better off if we thought less of our own egos and territory, and cared more about the welfare of our future generations.

We could then fulfill the promise of God in Isaiah 57:19—

“Peace, peace, to the far and the near, says the LORD;

and I will heal them.”

God is full of grace and love, given to offering gifts of healing to those who are both close to us—our neighbors—and those who are far from us—the strangers. If only we humans could love one another as God loves us all.

Changing the way we see our world, one map at a time, brings

Joy and Peace,

Cornelia

More Poetry By W. H. Auden: Funeral Blues

https://allpoetry.com/funeral-blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

What Percentage of Arkansas is Vaccinated? | Arkansas Vaccine Tracker | USAFacts

https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/state/arkansas

UPDATE: ADH announces additional COVID ICU beds after hospitals reached limited availability | KARK
https://www.kark.com/news/health/coronavirus/the-perfect-storm-rural-hospitals-facing-critical-situation-as-covid-icu-beds-fall-to-only-one-available-in-arkansas/

Legislators Who Voted for Act 1002 — Arkansas Citizens First Congress

http://www.citizensfirst.org/act-1002

Little Rock mayor reinstates city mask mandate in defiance of state law

https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/aug/06/little-rock-mayor-reinstates-city-mask-mandate-in/

LINK TO COURT DOCUMENTS HERE:

Arkansas Judge Blocks Statewide Ban on Mask Mandates

https://lawandcrime.com/covid-19-pandemic/arkansas-judge-blocks-statewide-ban-on-mask-mandates-the-law-cannot-be-enforced-in-any-shape-fashion-or-form/

Jacobson v. Massachusetts :: 197 U.S. 11 (1905) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/197/11/

Are Vaccine Mandates Constitutional? | The National Constitution Center

https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/podcast/are-vaccine-mandates-constitutional

Covid Cases Among Children Jumped 84% Last Week—Here Are The States Where Kid Hospitalizations Are Increasing

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/08/04/covid-cases-among-children-jumped-84-last-week-here-are-the-states-where-hospitalizations-are-increasing/

Marion School District 2021 Review

https://www.publicschoolreview.com/arkansas/marion-school-district/509390-school-district

Springtime Is A Golden Age

adult learning, arkansas, art, beauty, brain plasticity, change, cosmology, Creativity, Evangelism, Faith, flowers, Health, Ministry, nature, Painting, pandemic, photography, quilting, renewal, shadows, Travel, trees, vision

Every nation has its Golden Age. Usually, it’s a bye gone time, located in the dim past, and remembered faintly only by the oldest of the old. My Golden Age is my childhood, for I spent much unfettered time out in nature, whether it was in the backyard, the neighborhood, or at camp. I was so excited about camp, I would lay out my clothes for day camp, and pack my dad’s old army duffle bag a whole month in advance for week long camp. Mother would see this overstuffed cylinder, and laugh, “What are you planning on wearing between now and then?” My excitement and my planning didn’t always get all the facts together.

Going out into nature has always revived my soul, even as a child. Walking under trees, beside a lake, and sleeping with the sounds of the wild places instead of civilization has always appealed to me. If I have a choice between traveling on a major highway or on a back road, I often choose the back road. Today with GPS, we know how far the next gasoline station or rest stop will be. The back roads often have the most interesting sites and sights. The main highways are efficient, but the little roads retain their charm.

Whenever I longed for the gentler days and the healing powers of nature, I would seek out the back roads of Arkansas. Sometimes I would get into my car and drive until I found the solace of the natural world. If I got lost, it didn’t matter, for I had no particular place to go. I would find the place I was meant to discover, as Aldous Huxley, the English writer said, “The goal in life is to discover that you’ve always been where you were supposed to be.”

I’ve always trusted the word of the prophet Isaiah (58:11):

The LORD will guide you continually,

and satisfy your needs in parched places,

and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water,

whose waters never fail.

Of course, those who know my navigating skills might question how I ever found my way anywhere. The secret is all small roads lead to a larger road. Also, if I ever grew concerned, I’d stop and ask for directions back to the big highway. I’ve met some interesting folks by getting lost, just as I’ve found some beautiful landscapes. I’ve never been in such a hurry I can’t stop and take a photo. These images I use for inspiration for future paintings. I took this photo by the roadside off interstate 30 west, near Texas 44 west, near Simms, Texas, in 2014.

While the flowers by the side of this road were only yellow, I decided to add in notable reds and blues, since those are well known colors from Texas also. These primary colors represent lazy Susans, Indian paintbrush, and bluebells. The wind and light in the trees were beginning to freshen up, a true sign of spring on the plains. The whole is full of light and has the promise of the new life and hope, which every spring brings to those who find renewal in nature. William Allingham, an English Poet of the 19^th century, wrote a poem called “Wayside Flowers.”

Pluck not the wayside flower,

It is the traveller’s dower;

A thousand passers-by

Its beauties may espy,

May win a touch of blessing

From Nature’s mild caressing.

The sad of heart perceives

A violet under leaves

Like sonic fresh-budding hope;

The primrose on the slope

A spot of sunshine dwells,

And cheerful message tells

Of kind renewing power;

The nodding bluebell’s dye

Is drawn from happy sky.

Then spare the wayside flower!

It is the traveller’s dower.

When we speak of a dower, this is a treasure or endowment gifted to a future visitor who passes by. Because of this, all travelers should respect the wildflowers and leave them in situ. All living organisms need to reproduce. Digging up wildflowers, picking wildflowers, or collecting their seed will reduce a plant’s ability to reproduce and will adversely affect its long-term survival in that location. Removing wildflowers from the wild can have a detrimental affect on pollinators and other animals that depend on that species for food and cover. Removing wildflowers from our national forests and grasslands prevents other visitors from enjoying our natural heritage. Most wildflowers when dug from their natural habitat do not survive being transplanted.

Every nation has its Golden Age, an idyllic past in which all her citizens were supremely confident, filled with energy and enthusiasm and utterly convinced that their country provided the heights of artistic, scientific, and civic achievement for all. The Greeks had their Golden Age after the Persian Wars with the building of the great architectural monuments on the Acropolis, the morality and philosophy of Socrates, Plato, and their followers, as well as the physician Hippocrates, who’s considered the father of western medicine. “Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now,” remarked Pericles, the Greek statesman, orator and general of Athens during the Golden Age.

The Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens

America had her Golden Age also, that period time we know as the post-World War II economic boom when manufacturing and employment were at their peak. Many people my age wonder why these present times don’t continue the past prosperity, but most forget our world economy has changed, especially since the 1980’s. To give an example, I had friends in the oil business back in Louisiana. They let the roughnecks go and they went out into the fields to take their place. At the same time, when oil prices were so low, the private school where I taught art let me go, since they considered my subject an elective. The art classroom was the only place some students could achieve and find positive affirmation during the school day, but the school would oversee the increased discipline needs. Even during this decade, employers were cutting jobs and asking employees to do the work of two people. Labor has taken a beating in the decades since.

In the forty years since, our whole life has changed. When I was young, a high school education was sufficient for many entry level jobs. Back in 1941, less than half the U.S. population age 25 and older had a high school diploma, while today, 90 percent has that achievement. When my dad was a young man, an 8^th grade education was more than sufficient for blue collar jobs. Today at least two years at a community college is the new “Union Card” for employment. Why is this, you ask? Our young people need to know more than we did! Our adults also need to keep learning! This is why I keep teaching myself new things, going to seminars, and writing blogs that require research.

I’m very proud of our class members who attend the Friday Art Experience at Oaklawn UMC. Work can sometimes take a priority over this enrichment experiment, and we went on hiatus for part of the pandemic. One of the goals I gave the group was to find their own voice and not to copy mine or someone else’s. We can learn from each other, for we all have a unique perspective on life and how we interact with the world. When we stretch ourselves, we create new pathways in our brains, a process called brain plasticity. A new activity that forces you to think and learn, plus require ongoing practice can be one of the best ways to keep the brain healthy, since eventually our cognitive skills will wane. Thinking and memory will be more challenging, so we need to build up our reserves.

Much research has found that creative outlets like painting and other art forms, learning an instrument, doing expressive or autobiographical writing, and learning a language also can improve cognitive function. A 2014 study in Gerontologist reviewed 31 studies that focused on how these specific endeavors affected older adults’ mental skills and found that all of them improved several aspects of memory like recalling instructions and processing speed.

I don’t know about you, but I was born with only two brain cells and one of them seems to travel regularly to the planet Pluto. I need to be in the studio as often as possible if I’m to call that wandering cell back from its journey elsewhere. Art for me is life, just as a walk among the trees or beside a creek renews my soul. As the Psalmist writes in Psalm 19:1, The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

Artist’s logarithmic scale conception of the observable universe.

Gail was the only one attending this week. Graduations, which were happening in various academic settings, kept others away. She brought a photo of a field of yellow flowers, with a house up on a hill. In the middle ground was a pond and on the crest of the hill were a windrow of cedars. We discussed the formal elements for a bit. I showed a series of wildflower ideas as a slideshow to give a sense of the varied way artists across history have approached this subject.

Then we got down to work. Note the sense of light and air in Gail’s painting. The windrow of trees shows the direction of the sun and we can sense the breeze coming from the same side. This is an unfinished painting, so we can’t tell if the yellow meadow will have more varied colors, but the first layers of the wildflowers in the foreground give us the sense it might.

Sometimes we can finish a painting in one sitting, but other times, even a small work takes another session. Life is a work in progress. We can’t hurry it. When we finish a work, we often find flaws in it. This is because we’ve learned new skills, and we judge our work by our new abilities, rather than by those skills we had when we began. Artists aren’t like those who look to the past for a Golden Age. Instead, they look to the future.

Benjamin Franklin said, “The Golden Age was never the present age.” Usually the Golden Age is a fondly remembered past, but only the best parts of it are treasured by those who benefited most by it. We need to remember, as William James, the American philosopher reminds us, “There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.”

Or as 2 Corinthians 5:17-20, so aptly puts it:

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. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

If we do this, we can bring the Golden Age into the present for all people.

Ethics and Native Plants

https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/ethics/index.shtml

The Golden Age of Greece

https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/civil/greece/gr1050e.html

Train your brain – Harvard Health

https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/train-your-brain

Artandicon's Blog

Crossroads of art and faith

picasso

HALLOWEEN HAPPENINGS

Two Types of Color Wheels

Picasso’s African Masks and Inner Mysteries

Pumpkins and Gourds

Creating a Picasso Still Life

The Chair

To Be or Not To Be

Portraits in the Style of the Modern Masters

Art Inspired by the Covid Blues

Springtime Is A Golden Age

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: