Redtree Times

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. … It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

— Mahatma Gandhi (Young India, 23rd January 1930)

I always hesitate in using the word prayer in the titles for my work. I have never had the certainty of belief that faith requires so prayers for me felt like mailing wishes in an envelope without an address on it. It felt to me like a fruitless exercise if the message never went anywhere beyond myself. 

After a time though, I began to realize that prayer was not asking some astral father figure for things and situations that suited my personal preferences in any given moment. It was not about changing circumstances, about personally gaining, about winning battles or defeating enemies or overcoming disease.

No, it was more about finding the peace of mind and the sense of acceptance needed to cope with life as it is.  About finding a path through chaos. About finding stillness amidst the din. 

It was about simply finding an understanding of some sort.

I began then to see that prayer was as much inward as it was outward bound. It was about first affecting the change in oneself in a way that allowed one to feel as part of the light of the grand scheme laid out before us so that it no longer felt like a dark mystery.

It might be called prayer or meditation or ponderance or any number of other words. Anything that expresses, as Gandhi called it, a longing of the soul.

Anything that seeks an answer to the eternal question: Why?

That’s what I gleaned from this new painting, A Prayer For Understanding. There’s more to say, of course, but I am going to leave it right there this morning. You can fill in the blanks in your own words and thoughts, if you so desire.

Art is like that.

For this Sunday Morning Music here’s George Harrison and his hit from 1973, Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth). Seems to fit here.

A Prayer For Understanding is 30″ by 15″ on canvas, and is included in my solo exhibit of work, Guiding Light, that opens this coming Friday, October 17, at the West End Gallery. The Opening Recption on Friday runs from 5-7 PM.

Something Beyond— At West End Gallery

But We Had Music

Right this minute
across time zones and opinions
people are
making plans
making meals
making promises and poems

while

at the center of our galaxy
a black hole with the mass of
four billion suns
screams its open-mouth kiss
     of oblivion.

Someday it will swallow
Euclid’s postulates and the Goldberg Variations,
swallow calculus and Leaves of Grass.

I know this.

And still
when the constellation of starlings
flickers across the evening sky,
it is     enough

to stand here
for an irrevocable minute
     agape with wonder.

It is     eternity.

— Maria Popova

This poem, But We Had Music, is from Maria Popova, who has written the wonderful blog The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) since 2006. I have gleaned so much from her insights and sharing of the writings and thoughts of so many great thinkers. I seldom come away after reading her blog without a wealth of new perceptions.

But this time her own poem instantly hit me as a fitting companion to the painting at the top, Something Beyond. It is, of course, one of the paintings featured in my new solo exhibit of work, Guiding Light, that opens next Friday, October 17, at the West End Gallery.

For me, this piece speaks to the same realization that comes in Popova’s poem– that though our lives here are so often filled with busyness, worries, sorrows, joys, opinions, and accusations, there sometimes come moments that remind us of the temporary nature of our time here. We are so often lost in the boiling, roiling, and turmoiling of the minute details of everyday life that we lose sight of the miracle and wonder of it all.

I had such a moment as the one described in the poem just yesterday when I had to run into town early in the morning. It was cold, our first freeze of the season, and there was an icy fog hanging on the road. After a few miles there was a break in the fog and the morning sky softly broke through. There was a lovely and delicate salmon pink color created by the sunrise on the low cloud above. A group of eight or nine geese was rising out of the field off to my right and flew in line across that pale pink sky. They were flying perpendicular to me, both of us moving toward the same point ahead, so that I was able to watch them for more than mere glance. It was a lovely few moments, so tranquil and natural that it felt like a small bit of grace from somewhere beyond, a simple reminder of the wonders that surround us. 

It’s easy to lose sight of that. We live our lives in what could and should be a simple and wonderful world. Unfortunately, it all too often seems tangled up with the stupidity, anger, hatred, and confusion usually brought about by those who forget that we are ephemeral beings living on borrowed time and that no amount of money or power will change that fact. 

A handful of geese in the sky on a cold October morning can sometimes feel like a remedy to all that. 

Below is a reading of Maria Popova’s poem from singer/songwriter Nick Cave with visualizations from filmmaker Daniel Bruson. I have also included a piano piece, Spanish Waltz, from Spanish pianist Nel Aique. It came on while I was writing this and it mirrored the feel of the flight of those geese yesterday morning. Lovely.

To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world is almost a palpable movement. To enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars.

― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

There’s often a dichotomy in art that illustrates our connection to all of humanity– our commonality with all things– while at the same time pointing out our own uniqueness and sense of difference. 

It’s a delicate dance that requires a cooperative balance between the two, with neither dominating and each strengthening the other.

Having a sense of our value as individuals brings a depth of understanding and an acceptance of others that enhances our connection with our humanity.

And recognizing that connection brings a sense of humility that keeps us from thinking that, even though we perceive our own uniqueness, we are any more special than the next person in line at the grocery store. 

I think art can do this; make you feel both common and special at once.

Both part and apart.

And I think that is something that we need. It’s easy to see what happens when people feel too much of one or the other, when people begin to believe that they are unimportant– faceless and voiceless– while others believe they are above all others in every way.

It is hopelessness and hubris. The delicate dance falls apart.

That’s a lot to see in a what seems like a quiet and peaceful painting on its surface. But that is how I read this new painting, Far and Away. For me, it is about that delicate dance of connection and apartness. About finding the balance and rhythm between the two and losing yourself in the dance.

You might not see it that way. That’s okay. Some dances aren’t for everybody. 

Far and Away is 18″ tall and 6″ wide on canvas. It is currently at the West End Gallery where it is waiting to be hung on the gallery walls later this week as part of my solo show, Guiding Light. The exhibit opens next Friday, October 17 with an Opening Reception that runs from 5-7 PM.

Here’s an obvious choice for a song to go with the painting and the words at the top from Thomas Hardy. This is Moondance from Van Morrison from 1970, a mere 55 years ago.