Like Pawley You Subsume
Art,
Hiding itself from place,
Placed in the misplaced,
Place that we are.
When images vide in power,
When language controls our thoughts,
Art breaches each.
Always misunderstood,
Never properly named,
Absently present.
Like Pawley you subsume,
Something, save the name, larger than life,
You beckon…
I call, recall,
Yes, yes.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Art,
Hiding itself from place,
Placed in the misplaced,
Place that we are.
When images vide in power,
When language controls our thoughts,
Art breaches each.
Always misunderstood,
Never properly named,
Absently present.
Like Pawley you subsume,
Something, save the name, larger than life,
You beckon…
I call, recall,
Yes, yes.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Redemption: The Harvest of Love
1. Introduction
The human intellect is highly evolved, powerful and practical. Nevertheless, the intellectual process is that of divisions. These divisions objectify the world around us, creating artificial barriers between it and I, you and me. This separation, the cause of human suffering, is sought to be relieved through redemption. Therefore, what is redemption? How do we traditionally seek redemption? Is there a more primitive tool available to humans for the act of redemption? How is an artistic process necessary for generating this tool? These questions are the framework for my argument that by returning to Nature, our self-Nature, redemption is an artistic act and can be possible for all.
2. Defining Redemption
Once the whole is divided, the parts need names.
There are already enough names.
One must know when to stop.
Knowing when to stop averts trouble…
-Lao Tsu (Gia-Feng, English, 32)
Carl Jung realized the importance of individuation just as Lao Tsu. Jung said, “…the question of making opposites conscious (conversion) means reunion with the laws of life represented in the unconscious, and the purpose of this reunion is the attainment of conscious life, or, expressed in Chinese terms, the bringing of the Tao”(Jung 95-96). Taoism, just like religion, philosophy, and the arts, are practiced to reconcile opposites, “outer and inner entanglements,” on a higher level of consciousness (122). Redemption can be defined as the process of reconciling the pieces of the whole. Ultimately, redemption is a personal process. Nevertheless, I contend it stems deeper than individualism, and its ramifications hold ontological significance.
3. Inherent Seeking of the “I”
Our intellectual structure is based on an egotistical, dualistic system of subject and object. It is a system that makes it able to distinguish between it and me, you and I. Nevertheless, living within a dualistic system of intellect has its consequences. Automatically we have separated, or fractured ourselves, and the world around us into an unfathomable number of pieces. These divisions, which bring us out of accord with Nature, are the cause of our pain and suffering. We seek redemption inherently based on our intellectual structures that allow us the rational, practical, pleasurable and often painful “I” . René Descartes proves this logic of “I” by displaying distrust in every aspect of existence until arriving at the one thing he could trust. Descartes writes, “…I am, I exist is necessarily true every time I utter it or conceive it in my mind.” His classic conclusion, cogito ergo sum, or I think therefore I am (Descartes 64).
4. Theology: God as Redeemer
In order to try and break the shackles of our intellect we have created theologies, varying in range and scope that attempt to navigate us in reaching the state of becoming redeemed. As Joseph Campbell points out, the myths that structure the world religions point to “that which is beyond even the concept of reality, that which transcends all thought.” He continues, “The myth puts you there all the time, gives you a line to connect with that mystery which you are” (Campbell, Moyers 57).
Nevertheless, with the interruption of the “I,” these myths that provide us with a line to connect to that mystery which we are have evolved to be literal and exclusive, often making them a detriment to humankind and the search for redemption. Therefore, what can we learn from theology that can help us gather an understanding of a more primitive, inclusive redemptive process?
All religions have an anthropomorphic concept of the ultimate reality, or God. There are two main distinctions between the relationship of God and “I.” You can arrive at these distinctions by analyzing the role of sacrifice. Originally, a sacrifice was performed in order to please the Gods, which were perceived to be outside of “I.” For example, a sacrifice might be made in order for the Gods to give rain. Logically, humans realized that because they performed the sacrifice, which in turn elicited rain, their importance in the ritual was equal to that of the Gods. This brings God to the level of “I.” When the split of ideologies revolving around the sacrifice was made the East retained internal Godliness, while the West rejected this notion and God remained external. Nevertheless, we must take into account the origins of God as both within and around us. Therefore, God can be viewed as an anthropomorphic “I” living within complete consciousness. Joseph Campbell speaks about consciousness as other than something particular “to the head”, yet a consciousness of the body or “the whole living world...informed by [complete] consciousness” (Campbell, Moyers 14).
Generally, in the West, this complete consciousness is expressed through Jesus Christ’s offering of himself in the Crucifixion allowing us, as long as we believe, redemption. In the East, the ultimate reality, which varies in its name and description, is usually attained through the meditation of bringing one’s self in tune with the complete consciousness of all things. Both levels of heightened consciousness result in individual redemption.
We can rationalize that God is of a greater consciousness than a “normal I” because God is, within our definition, omnipotent, within and outside “I.” In this respect, God is consoling and has helped answer many pressing intellectual questions. For example, one might credit God for being the first mover of the cosmos. Although this strain of thought is relevant, since God is anthropomorphic one may easily ask why was God moved to create? God, within religious ideologies, also gives us hope that one day we will be banished of our sorrows, redeemed, and live eternity in heaven. But if God is within us, why should we feel we do not have the capacity to create “heaven” on earth? These questions arrive when the literal language of our intellect rationalizes God and fails to speak to the true omnipotence of God.
Furthermore, Freud contests that the hypostatization of God is both consoling yet baleful, and argues against structuring culture, and the ideals of redemption, around it. He states, “God alone is strong and good, man is weak and sinful. Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion“ (Freud 67). His argument is consistent, as we know cultures do not share religions, or even Gods. Beliefs even among philosophers of the nature of God are inconsistent. This great illusion we shakily structure our lives around, according to Freud, must be banished:
He [man] will have to confess his utter helplessness and his insignificant part in the working of the universe; he will have to confess that he is no longer the centre of creation, no longer the object of the tender care of a benevolent providence…Thus by withdrawing his expectations from the other world and concentrating his liberated energies on this earthly life he will probably attain to a state of things in which life will be tolerable for all and no one will be oppressed by culture any more. Then with one of our comrades in unbelief he will be able to say without regret:
Let us leave the heavens
To the angels and the sparrows (87).
As mentioned above, the realization of redemption is ultimately personal, from the egotistical “I,” to the creation of mythologies within theological structures that attempt to lead us to redemption. I am compelled to stress religion is important, for numerous reasons which will not be discussed here, but mostly in seeking personal redemption. Nevertheless, the fracture between varying dogmas revolving around God (Even within religions divisions such as in Christianity: Baptist and Lutheran, or divisions within Judaism such as “Jews for Jesus”) provides a shaky foundation for cultures and further divides humankind. This is plainly evident in the contemporary world as humanity continually rages war in the name of God whose definition is not omnipotent beyond the cultural construct. In revisiting our definition of redemption as the process of reconciling the pieces of the whole, a fractured religious God cannot lead to redemption. Redemption, as concept, moves beyond an anthropomorphic conception, or a personal endeavor because of its cultural ramifications. We hear this echoed at the point of enlightenment by the Chinese Master As Lu Hsiang-shan (1139-1193) when he stated, “All of the affairs of the universe come within the range of my duty” (qtd. In Chung-yaun 83).
What substance then is our journey to redemption? Roger Lipsey best describes the journey as something spiritual, “ an incursion from above or deep within to which the ordinary human being in each of us can only surrender…a dramatic shift in experience and an undoing of what we take to be ourselves” (Lipsey 10). Dag Hammarskjöld described this feeling stating, “In the point of rest at the center of our being we encounter a world where all things are at rest the same way” (Hammarskjöld 174). Both suggest an ordinary strand that runs within and between all things that fall within our duty, commitment, and faithfulness.
5. A Supremely Primitive Locus and Redeemer
At the root of all becoming is Nature. Nature is, and is not unique unto anyone or anything. It belongs to the ordinary, existing without class or culture, and is essential to all including humankind. John Sallis says, “At the limits of all Nature are the elements that are unassimilable and that delimit the very expanse of self-showing of all things: earth and sky. Even when one does not see them at all, they are elementally operative, bounding all that one does see and all else that is implicated in what one sees” (Sallis 172). In this sense, we are bound and elementally linked to Nature.
Our highly developed “I,” as subject, treats Nature as an object. The results are pollution, destruction and perversion of not only Nature, but of our very self-Nature. A turn back to Nature means the preservation of the bounties of the world, also the wellness of humankind. If Nature is the whole from which the pieces have been removed, how would a return to Nature, re-understanding it as our very self-Nature, impact our ability to transcend the “I” which contaminates the religious God?
Nature has a working that is largely unexplainable and uncontrollable. Nevertheless, without turning to science, we, as a part of Nature, have a role in its working and are bred into its works. Therefore, we must assume within Nature, consequently within our very self-Nature, lies a ubiquitous tool that is elemental in the process of becoming redeemed. This tool is as habitual to humans as Nature is to our essence.
6. Naming a Tool
At the limits of language we must encounter the realm of feeling. My attempts to begin to tell some of my former girlfriends, “I know how you feel,” is met with resistance due to the subjective inconsistency of their definition and the way in which we each perceive our feelings and their potential relation to others. Perhaps the hardest emotional state to explain, or describe, is love. Even so, love remains the working tool which makes possible compassion, affection, charity, goodwill, kindliness, unselfishness, humbleness and meekness just to name a few. Feelings such as love, in all of their indefinable complexities are nonetheless practical tools whose duties and bounties are continually revealed to humanity.
Since love is perceived as an extremely personal experience, and using a tool has a specific function, allow me to regress to remind myself of a time love was a tool in my life. When my grandfather was dying with pancreatic cancer I felt an urgency to be with him. Every weekend I traveled to be by his side, knowing the experience we shared between the earth and sky would soon subside. It was the love we fostered between us that I lost – I cried.
I feel we all seek and crave the concept of love. The feeling of love is one of sharing, being one, united as a part of a redeemed whole. When we live outside the sensation of love we constantly seek to become one with it. Love for the self, and love for others.
My relationship with my grandfather harvested an unbounded tool of love. When the tool of love was engaged the action resulted in an unexplainable and indefinable, yet real, personal, and interpersonal redemption. Therefore, we can deduce that Love, through a loving exchange, is a practical tool for fulfilling our definition of redemption.
Nevertheless, if Love is a tool to redemption, is it necessary to have a concrete definition for it? I feel everyone’s definition will vary, and necessarily so due to Love’s subjective essence. Even so, maybe we can agree that at the core of Love is unbounded emptiness or wholeness, a feeling that is free and available in and around us all, breaching cultural and manufactured boundaries created by “I”. Love is elemental, one of Nature’s tools that allows us to mystically transcend the “I” that divides the whole.
7. The Performance of The Act
If Love is a tool that can be utilized in the act of redemption, what would this process look like? Engaging with the tool of Love for practical purposes requires a movement from non-action to action, action to non-action. This act, which negates itself, is the art of letting go of oneself (Jung 93), healing, doing nothing, and involves allowing our self-Nature to act within us. The process of redemption, which occurs Naturally if not interfered with, begins with locating our “I;” an action that is necessary for human intellectual activity and inherently thrusts us to seek redemption. From there we relinquish the “I” to reach Godliness, a state of omnipotence within our very self-Nature. At the point of return to Nature we are able to grasp the elemental tool of Love and engage it in the act of redemption leading to an undivided whole. The performance of the act of redemption is an undulating flux within and outside “I”, an expansion and contraction that is constantly serving the very Nature of all things.
Furthermore, the performance requires a sacrifice of who and what we believe to be. For example, the term “God is Love” is often used. Nevertheless, that particular pairing may be backwards after analyzing our tendencies towards God as an entity that is fractured and rarely shared. Hegel demonstrates that a subjective feeling is necessary before any objective consciousness (Mills, “Ontology of Religiosity”). I propose a more proper representation of this phrase would read, “Love is God.” Even more precisely, in the collapse of all knowable identity, where an inexpressible identity reveals itself through Nature’s void, we understand Nature is Love, Love is God, God is Human, Human is God, God is Love, Love is Nature.
8. The Harvest: An Artist and Artistic Process
If Love can be named as a tool that allows us to perform the act of redemption, how then is such a transcendent tool harvested? Furthermore, can everyone perform this harvest, and how is an artistic process necessary in performing the harvest?
The harvest of Love can best be put to language through an artistic framework. The term artist, paralleling our understanding of God, refers to a person who is an originator or creator, fashioning an object/act that has never before existed. This artistic act is, and can be performed by the ordinary in all of us.
In order for the artist to create works of art, artists enter a cycle of, as stated earlier, expansion and contraction. It is a constant process of recognizing ourselves through our “I,” relinquishing the “I” through finding our Nature, in this instance, connecting with our imagination. John Sallis states, “In composing artwork…the artists reenacts the drawing of [N]ature from which issues the open expanse of all self-showing.” Furthermore, he goes on to tell how this process can yield “poetic imagination,” or can cease to merely “imaging.” This “imaging” lacks a true self-showing of the imagination (Sallis 228). Nevertheless, regardless of the resulting art object/act that is then to be or not be included into the art world and determined more or less poetic “imagination” or “imaging” through critique, theory and the history of art, the importance lays in the process of an artist. The act is one in the same as the aforementioned performance of redemption through the harvest of Love. John Dewey stated, “...Art weds man and nature…Art also renders men aware of their union with one another in origin and destiny” (Dewey 271).
It is in the utilization of our imagination in an artistic act that allows the harvest of the tool of Love. Our imagination is the locus of humankind’s very self-Nature: the place where becoming redeemed can be realized and achieved by and for all. Our imagination tells us the eternal story of the beginning of any knowable experience (our origin), and our fate (or destiny). As John Dewey stresses, life is art and it should be lived artfully (Dewey 3-19).
In conclusion, the act of redemption is performed by individuals, for individuals, for the necessary well being of the whole. Redemption involves sacrifices of our current states of being, and the understanding that we have the power to harvest Love from Nature, within our self-Nature of our imagination, and cultivate it in the world with as little boundaries as it was received. Joseph Campbell said, “What is the kingdom? It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us” (Campbell 107). Lastly, John Keats summarizes my argument for a harvest of Love when he stated, “What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth-whether it existed before or not“ (Keats 187).
Works Cited
Campbell, Joseph. Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2001. Print.
Campbell, Joseph and Moyers, Bill. The Power of Myth. New York: Betty Sue Flowers,1988. Print.
Chung-yuan, Chang. Creativity and Taoism. New York: The Julian Press, Inc., 1963. Print.
Descartes, René. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993. Print.
Jung, C. G.. The Secret of the Golden Flower, Translated and Explained by Richard Wilhelm. New York: Hardcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962. Print.
Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Capricorn Books, G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1958. Print.
Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion. Garden City, New York.: Doubleday, 1964. Print.
Gia-Feng and English Jane. Lao Tsu; Tao Te Ching, A New Translation. New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1972. Print.
Hammarskjöld, Dag. Markings. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knoff, Inc, 1964. Print.
Mills, Jon (1999). The Ontology of Religiosity: The Oceanic Feeling and the Value of the Lived Experience. Religious Humanism, 33(3/4) 20-41. 6 October 2010. Web.
Roger Lipsey. An Art of Our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth Century Art. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc., 1988. Print.
Rollins, Hyder Edward, The Letters of John Keats 1814-1821, ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958. Print.
Sallis, John. Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000. Print.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Introduction
The human intellect is highly evolved, powerful and practical. Nevertheless, the intellectual process is that of divisions. These divisions objectify the world around us, creating artificial barriers between it and I, you and me. This separation, the cause of human suffering, is sought to be relieved through redemption. Therefore, what is redemption? How do we traditionally seek redemption? Is there a more primitive tool available to humans for the act of redemption? How is an artistic process necessary for generating this tool? These questions are the framework for my argument that by returning to Nature, our self-Nature, redemption is an artistic act and can be possible for all.
2. Defining Redemption
Once the whole is divided, the parts need names.
There are already enough names.
One must know when to stop.
Knowing when to stop averts trouble…
-Lao Tsu (Gia-Feng, English, 32)
Carl Jung realized the importance of individuation just as Lao Tsu. Jung said, “…the question of making opposites conscious (conversion) means reunion with the laws of life represented in the unconscious, and the purpose of this reunion is the attainment of conscious life, or, expressed in Chinese terms, the bringing of the Tao”(Jung 95-96). Taoism, just like religion, philosophy, and the arts, are practiced to reconcile opposites, “outer and inner entanglements,” on a higher level of consciousness (122). Redemption can be defined as the process of reconciling the pieces of the whole. Ultimately, redemption is a personal process. Nevertheless, I contend it stems deeper than individualism, and its ramifications hold ontological significance.
3. Inherent Seeking of the “I”
Our intellectual structure is based on an egotistical, dualistic system of subject and object. It is a system that makes it able to distinguish between it and me, you and I. Nevertheless, living within a dualistic system of intellect has its consequences. Automatically we have separated, or fractured ourselves, and the world around us into an unfathomable number of pieces. These divisions, which bring us out of accord with Nature, are the cause of our pain and suffering. We seek redemption inherently based on our intellectual structures that allow us the rational, practical, pleasurable and often painful “I” . René Descartes proves this logic of “I” by displaying distrust in every aspect of existence until arriving at the one thing he could trust. Descartes writes, “…I am, I exist is necessarily true every time I utter it or conceive it in my mind.” His classic conclusion, cogito ergo sum, or I think therefore I am (Descartes 64).
4. Theology: God as Redeemer
In order to try and break the shackles of our intellect we have created theologies, varying in range and scope that attempt to navigate us in reaching the state of becoming redeemed. As Joseph Campbell points out, the myths that structure the world religions point to “that which is beyond even the concept of reality, that which transcends all thought.” He continues, “The myth puts you there all the time, gives you a line to connect with that mystery which you are” (Campbell, Moyers 57).
Nevertheless, with the interruption of the “I,” these myths that provide us with a line to connect to that mystery which we are have evolved to be literal and exclusive, often making them a detriment to humankind and the search for redemption. Therefore, what can we learn from theology that can help us gather an understanding of a more primitive, inclusive redemptive process?
All religions have an anthropomorphic concept of the ultimate reality, or God. There are two main distinctions between the relationship of God and “I.” You can arrive at these distinctions by analyzing the role of sacrifice. Originally, a sacrifice was performed in order to please the Gods, which were perceived to be outside of “I.” For example, a sacrifice might be made in order for the Gods to give rain. Logically, humans realized that because they performed the sacrifice, which in turn elicited rain, their importance in the ritual was equal to that of the Gods. This brings God to the level of “I.” When the split of ideologies revolving around the sacrifice was made the East retained internal Godliness, while the West rejected this notion and God remained external. Nevertheless, we must take into account the origins of God as both within and around us. Therefore, God can be viewed as an anthropomorphic “I” living within complete consciousness. Joseph Campbell speaks about consciousness as other than something particular “to the head”, yet a consciousness of the body or “the whole living world...informed by [complete] consciousness” (Campbell, Moyers 14).
Generally, in the West, this complete consciousness is expressed through Jesus Christ’s offering of himself in the Crucifixion allowing us, as long as we believe, redemption. In the East, the ultimate reality, which varies in its name and description, is usually attained through the meditation of bringing one’s self in tune with the complete consciousness of all things. Both levels of heightened consciousness result in individual redemption.
We can rationalize that God is of a greater consciousness than a “normal I” because God is, within our definition, omnipotent, within and outside “I.” In this respect, God is consoling and has helped answer many pressing intellectual questions. For example, one might credit God for being the first mover of the cosmos. Although this strain of thought is relevant, since God is anthropomorphic one may easily ask why was God moved to create? God, within religious ideologies, also gives us hope that one day we will be banished of our sorrows, redeemed, and live eternity in heaven. But if God is within us, why should we feel we do not have the capacity to create “heaven” on earth? These questions arrive when the literal language of our intellect rationalizes God and fails to speak to the true omnipotence of God.
Furthermore, Freud contests that the hypostatization of God is both consoling yet baleful, and argues against structuring culture, and the ideals of redemption, around it. He states, “God alone is strong and good, man is weak and sinful. Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion“ (Freud 67). His argument is consistent, as we know cultures do not share religions, or even Gods. Beliefs even among philosophers of the nature of God are inconsistent. This great illusion we shakily structure our lives around, according to Freud, must be banished:
He [man] will have to confess his utter helplessness and his insignificant part in the working of the universe; he will have to confess that he is no longer the centre of creation, no longer the object of the tender care of a benevolent providence…Thus by withdrawing his expectations from the other world and concentrating his liberated energies on this earthly life he will probably attain to a state of things in which life will be tolerable for all and no one will be oppressed by culture any more. Then with one of our comrades in unbelief he will be able to say without regret:
Let us leave the heavens
To the angels and the sparrows (87).
As mentioned above, the realization of redemption is ultimately personal, from the egotistical “I,” to the creation of mythologies within theological structures that attempt to lead us to redemption. I am compelled to stress religion is important, for numerous reasons which will not be discussed here, but mostly in seeking personal redemption. Nevertheless, the fracture between varying dogmas revolving around God (Even within religions divisions such as in Christianity: Baptist and Lutheran, or divisions within Judaism such as “Jews for Jesus”) provides a shaky foundation for cultures and further divides humankind. This is plainly evident in the contemporary world as humanity continually rages war in the name of God whose definition is not omnipotent beyond the cultural construct. In revisiting our definition of redemption as the process of reconciling the pieces of the whole, a fractured religious God cannot lead to redemption. Redemption, as concept, moves beyond an anthropomorphic conception, or a personal endeavor because of its cultural ramifications. We hear this echoed at the point of enlightenment by the Chinese Master As Lu Hsiang-shan (1139-1193) when he stated, “All of the affairs of the universe come within the range of my duty” (qtd. In Chung-yaun 83).
What substance then is our journey to redemption? Roger Lipsey best describes the journey as something spiritual, “ an incursion from above or deep within to which the ordinary human being in each of us can only surrender…a dramatic shift in experience and an undoing of what we take to be ourselves” (Lipsey 10). Dag Hammarskjöld described this feeling stating, “In the point of rest at the center of our being we encounter a world where all things are at rest the same way” (Hammarskjöld 174). Both suggest an ordinary strand that runs within and between all things that fall within our duty, commitment, and faithfulness.
5. A Supremely Primitive Locus and Redeemer
At the root of all becoming is Nature. Nature is, and is not unique unto anyone or anything. It belongs to the ordinary, existing without class or culture, and is essential to all including humankind. John Sallis says, “At the limits of all Nature are the elements that are unassimilable and that delimit the very expanse of self-showing of all things: earth and sky. Even when one does not see them at all, they are elementally operative, bounding all that one does see and all else that is implicated in what one sees” (Sallis 172). In this sense, we are bound and elementally linked to Nature.
Our highly developed “I,” as subject, treats Nature as an object. The results are pollution, destruction and perversion of not only Nature, but of our very self-Nature. A turn back to Nature means the preservation of the bounties of the world, also the wellness of humankind. If Nature is the whole from which the pieces have been removed, how would a return to Nature, re-understanding it as our very self-Nature, impact our ability to transcend the “I” which contaminates the religious God?
Nature has a working that is largely unexplainable and uncontrollable. Nevertheless, without turning to science, we, as a part of Nature, have a role in its working and are bred into its works. Therefore, we must assume within Nature, consequently within our very self-Nature, lies a ubiquitous tool that is elemental in the process of becoming redeemed. This tool is as habitual to humans as Nature is to our essence.
6. Naming a Tool
At the limits of language we must encounter the realm of feeling. My attempts to begin to tell some of my former girlfriends, “I know how you feel,” is met with resistance due to the subjective inconsistency of their definition and the way in which we each perceive our feelings and their potential relation to others. Perhaps the hardest emotional state to explain, or describe, is love. Even so, love remains the working tool which makes possible compassion, affection, charity, goodwill, kindliness, unselfishness, humbleness and meekness just to name a few. Feelings such as love, in all of their indefinable complexities are nonetheless practical tools whose duties and bounties are continually revealed to humanity.
Since love is perceived as an extremely personal experience, and using a tool has a specific function, allow me to regress to remind myself of a time love was a tool in my life. When my grandfather was dying with pancreatic cancer I felt an urgency to be with him. Every weekend I traveled to be by his side, knowing the experience we shared between the earth and sky would soon subside. It was the love we fostered between us that I lost – I cried.
I feel we all seek and crave the concept of love. The feeling of love is one of sharing, being one, united as a part of a redeemed whole. When we live outside the sensation of love we constantly seek to become one with it. Love for the self, and love for others.
My relationship with my grandfather harvested an unbounded tool of love. When the tool of love was engaged the action resulted in an unexplainable and indefinable, yet real, personal, and interpersonal redemption. Therefore, we can deduce that Love, through a loving exchange, is a practical tool for fulfilling our definition of redemption.
Nevertheless, if Love is a tool to redemption, is it necessary to have a concrete definition for it? I feel everyone’s definition will vary, and necessarily so due to Love’s subjective essence. Even so, maybe we can agree that at the core of Love is unbounded emptiness or wholeness, a feeling that is free and available in and around us all, breaching cultural and manufactured boundaries created by “I”. Love is elemental, one of Nature’s tools that allows us to mystically transcend the “I” that divides the whole.
7. The Performance of The Act
If Love is a tool that can be utilized in the act of redemption, what would this process look like? Engaging with the tool of Love for practical purposes requires a movement from non-action to action, action to non-action. This act, which negates itself, is the art of letting go of oneself (Jung 93), healing, doing nothing, and involves allowing our self-Nature to act within us. The process of redemption, which occurs Naturally if not interfered with, begins with locating our “I;” an action that is necessary for human intellectual activity and inherently thrusts us to seek redemption. From there we relinquish the “I” to reach Godliness, a state of omnipotence within our very self-Nature. At the point of return to Nature we are able to grasp the elemental tool of Love and engage it in the act of redemption leading to an undivided whole. The performance of the act of redemption is an undulating flux within and outside “I”, an expansion and contraction that is constantly serving the very Nature of all things.
Furthermore, the performance requires a sacrifice of who and what we believe to be. For example, the term “God is Love” is often used. Nevertheless, that particular pairing may be backwards after analyzing our tendencies towards God as an entity that is fractured and rarely shared. Hegel demonstrates that a subjective feeling is necessary before any objective consciousness (Mills, “Ontology of Religiosity”). I propose a more proper representation of this phrase would read, “Love is God.” Even more precisely, in the collapse of all knowable identity, where an inexpressible identity reveals itself through Nature’s void, we understand Nature is Love, Love is God, God is Human, Human is God, God is Love, Love is Nature.
8. The Harvest: An Artist and Artistic Process
If Love can be named as a tool that allows us to perform the act of redemption, how then is such a transcendent tool harvested? Furthermore, can everyone perform this harvest, and how is an artistic process necessary in performing the harvest?
The harvest of Love can best be put to language through an artistic framework. The term artist, paralleling our understanding of God, refers to a person who is an originator or creator, fashioning an object/act that has never before existed. This artistic act is, and can be performed by the ordinary in all of us.
In order for the artist to create works of art, artists enter a cycle of, as stated earlier, expansion and contraction. It is a constant process of recognizing ourselves through our “I,” relinquishing the “I” through finding our Nature, in this instance, connecting with our imagination. John Sallis states, “In composing artwork…the artists reenacts the drawing of [N]ature from which issues the open expanse of all self-showing.” Furthermore, he goes on to tell how this process can yield “poetic imagination,” or can cease to merely “imaging.” This “imaging” lacks a true self-showing of the imagination (Sallis 228). Nevertheless, regardless of the resulting art object/act that is then to be or not be included into the art world and determined more or less poetic “imagination” or “imaging” through critique, theory and the history of art, the importance lays in the process of an artist. The act is one in the same as the aforementioned performance of redemption through the harvest of Love. John Dewey stated, “...Art weds man and nature…Art also renders men aware of their union with one another in origin and destiny” (Dewey 271).
It is in the utilization of our imagination in an artistic act that allows the harvest of the tool of Love. Our imagination is the locus of humankind’s very self-Nature: the place where becoming redeemed can be realized and achieved by and for all. Our imagination tells us the eternal story of the beginning of any knowable experience (our origin), and our fate (or destiny). As John Dewey stresses, life is art and it should be lived artfully (Dewey 3-19).
In conclusion, the act of redemption is performed by individuals, for individuals, for the necessary well being of the whole. Redemption involves sacrifices of our current states of being, and the understanding that we have the power to harvest Love from Nature, within our self-Nature of our imagination, and cultivate it in the world with as little boundaries as it was received. Joseph Campbell said, “What is the kingdom? It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us” (Campbell 107). Lastly, John Keats summarizes my argument for a harvest of Love when he stated, “What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth-whether it existed before or not“ (Keats 187).
Works Cited
Campbell, Joseph. Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2001. Print.
Campbell, Joseph and Moyers, Bill. The Power of Myth. New York: Betty Sue Flowers,1988. Print.
Chung-yuan, Chang. Creativity and Taoism. New York: The Julian Press, Inc., 1963. Print.
Descartes, René. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993. Print.
Jung, C. G.. The Secret of the Golden Flower, Translated and Explained by Richard Wilhelm. New York: Hardcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962. Print.
Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Capricorn Books, G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1958. Print.
Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion. Garden City, New York.: Doubleday, 1964. Print.
Gia-Feng and English Jane. Lao Tsu; Tao Te Ching, A New Translation. New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1972. Print.
Hammarskjöld, Dag. Markings. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knoff, Inc, 1964. Print.
Mills, Jon (1999). The Ontology of Religiosity: The Oceanic Feeling and the Value of the Lived Experience. Religious Humanism, 33(3/4) 20-41. 6 October 2010. Web.
Roger Lipsey. An Art of Our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth Century Art. Boston: Shambhala Publications Inc., 1988. Print.
Rollins, Hyder Edward, The Letters of John Keats 1814-1821, ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958. Print.
Sallis, John. Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000. Print.
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Dear Mark
I felt you today,
Imagined you,
Floating in your pool of blood.
The song sang,
“Like the youth I looked above”.
Now that you are looking down,
What do you see?
I am convinced it was your masterpiece.
A color field of merlot,
Tinted with love,
Shaded with reds bound to heaven.
I know we are all dead,
But I feel so alive.
I am simply writing to ask,
Where did you go, and can I join you there?
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I felt you today,
Imagined you,
Floating in your pool of blood.
The song sang,
“Like the youth I looked above”.
Now that you are looking down,
What do you see?
I am convinced it was your masterpiece.
A color field of merlot,
Tinted with love,
Shaded with reds bound to heaven.
I know we are all dead,
But I feel so alive.
I am simply writing to ask,
Where did you go, and can I join you there?
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Like an Infant or the Wolf
Every night I question the purpose of my life. This question propels me to experience life as if a newborn. Everyday I awake with innocence, but this innocence is manifest in adulthood, therefore hindering the same growth as an infant who truly experiences life.
It is this experience I yearn.
I have a strong longing to be able to run wild like the wolf. The wolf, like an infant, draws, or shows Nature in every act. Their eyes speak of the essentials of living; it is an honest conviction for the sharing of love within struggle for life.
Today, let us celebrate our Nature, the truth of our self-Nature that propels us towards a fulfilled life.
How?
I challenge you to imagine Love. Then, today, and everyday that now shall pass, spread it into the world with as little interference as it was imagined.
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Every night I question the purpose of my life. This question propels me to experience life as if a newborn. Everyday I awake with innocence, but this innocence is manifest in adulthood, therefore hindering the same growth as an infant who truly experiences life.
It is this experience I yearn.
I have a strong longing to be able to run wild like the wolf. The wolf, like an infant, draws, or shows Nature in every act. Their eyes speak of the essentials of living; it is an honest conviction for the sharing of love within struggle for life.
Today, let us celebrate our Nature, the truth of our self-Nature that propels us towards a fulfilled life.
How?
I challenge you to imagine Love. Then, today, and everyday that now shall pass, spread it into the world with as little interference as it was imagined.
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Everything in the present moment, nothing for the present moment. And nothing for your future comfort or the future of your good name.
- Dag Hammarskjöld
Hammarskjöld, Dag. Markings. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knoff, Inc, 1964. Print.
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- Dag Hammarskjöld
Hammarskjöld, Dag. Markings. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knoff, Inc, 1964. Print.
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Painting in the Dark
I head home from the studio to my less luxurious studio apartment. I am always greeted with darkness. In an act of self-preservation, conserving money by conserving energy, I have learned to function by the trickle of light from the street lamp outside. I fiddle to fit my key in the lock, working by sense of touch. When the door releases I am met with a rush of cold air. I equate darkness with cold, both barriers that, throughout my life, have heightened my sensitivity to being a low class painter. I enter my space, bumping into the blankets on the floor that make up my bed, and I encounter the confining walls that are of such short distances from another that they squeeze the air from my lungs that appears between by the rays of light that penetrate the dusty window shade. It is off with my cloths to warm myself in the shower. I bask in the cleansing steam, recalling brighter days in the warmth of the sun; the ocean, the sand, Gray man and Pawley by my side. A towel acts as the cloak that dries the imaginary salt water from my face. I open my eyes and stare into the density of darkness that contains my belongings, or maybe my life? I coach myself to sleep by wiggling my toes and counting my blessings. I constantly hold faith that the morning will bring light, for how can a painter work in the dark?
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I head home from the studio to my less luxurious studio apartment. I am always greeted with darkness. In an act of self-preservation, conserving money by conserving energy, I have learned to function by the trickle of light from the street lamp outside. I fiddle to fit my key in the lock, working by sense of touch. When the door releases I am met with a rush of cold air. I equate darkness with cold, both barriers that, throughout my life, have heightened my sensitivity to being a low class painter. I enter my space, bumping into the blankets on the floor that make up my bed, and I encounter the confining walls that are of such short distances from another that they squeeze the air from my lungs that appears between by the rays of light that penetrate the dusty window shade. It is off with my cloths to warm myself in the shower. I bask in the cleansing steam, recalling brighter days in the warmth of the sun; the ocean, the sand, Gray man and Pawley by my side. A towel acts as the cloak that dries the imaginary salt water from my face. I open my eyes and stare into the density of darkness that contains my belongings, or maybe my life? I coach myself to sleep by wiggling my toes and counting my blessings. I constantly hold faith that the morning will bring light, for how can a painter work in the dark?
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Conversations With You
You have eyes of passion. They are seeking eyes, emptying all they know. It won’t be long until you will be blessed with blindness. Don’t be afraid, there will be no pain, no suffering, and no scaring. Finally what you have been straining to see will be shown. You no longer will perceive Nature’s dance, yet but be one with it. What a joyous moment it will be when heaven is shown, your eyes turn pure white, and the war against darkness subsides. You are almost there. Just let go.
Why do you yearn to fly away?
Learn not to yearn.
You are the wind.
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You have eyes of passion. They are seeking eyes, emptying all they know. It won’t be long until you will be blessed with blindness. Don’t be afraid, there will be no pain, no suffering, and no scaring. Finally what you have been straining to see will be shown. You no longer will perceive Nature’s dance, yet but be one with it. What a joyous moment it will be when heaven is shown, your eyes turn pure white, and the war against darkness subsides. You are almost there. Just let go.
Why do you yearn to fly away?
Learn not to yearn.
You are the wind.
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Dear Gray Man
I have seen you around here before,
Warning of eminent storms.
You dissolve into the gray seas,
Protecting Pawley’s shores.
I have not seen you lately,
Since I drowned in mire.
I keep my eyes clear of everything,
Seeking signs between tides.
Gray Man, the secrets you hold,
Are the secrets we should know?
As the seasons turn,
I will wait longingly for your return.
Only a fool speaks of the unspeakable,
I remain a fool, seeking ignorance.
Waiting for you,
Drowning in the deep empty hue.
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I have seen you around here before,
Warning of eminent storms.
You dissolve into the gray seas,
Protecting Pawley’s shores.
I have not seen you lately,
Since I drowned in mire.
I keep my eyes clear of everything,
Seeking signs between tides.
Gray Man, the secrets you hold,
Are the secrets we should know?
As the seasons turn,
I will wait longingly for your return.
Only a fool speaks of the unspeakable,
I remain a fool, seeking ignorance.
Waiting for you,
Drowning in the deep empty hue.
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"Florence, Mother of Little Love"
If it ever come to pass that the sacred poem
To which both heaven and earth have set their hand
So as to have made me lean for many years
Should overcome the cruelty that bars me
From the fair sheepfold where I slept as a lamb,
An enemy to the wolves that make war on it,
With another voice now and other fleece
I shall return a poet and at the font
Of my baptism take the laurel crown...
Dante: (Paradiso, XXV, 1–9)
He towers in the square with a stare as solid as the stone that forms him, ominously welcoming the visitors whose heads are hung low to the ground. He welcomes them with a serious stare into a land he was once exiled from. I passed him every day, looking up from my feet to be blessed with his powerful message.
Exile is like creating a wall. A wall is an interesting creation. Within every day use they function to enclose or divide, protect or restrict entrance. This can be literal such as the walls of the room which you are reading this text within, or metaphoric, such as the racial barriers that painfully exist in the United States of America, or the political differences that existed in Florence between the “Whites and Blacks”. Nevertheless, no matter how much we build walls for this specific function, we have a necessary impulse to also create doors or openings. These openings are used as a means of access, entrance or exit.
Each day is, in someway, spent in exile. It can be because you are far from the love of your family, or you are letting go of a lover’s touch, or being consumed in a spiritual journey. In any case, it is within this impulse to create openings that we all are allowed to exit our exile and return home.
Listen to your impulse. Create an opening.
Welcome home Dante.
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If it ever come to pass that the sacred poem
To which both heaven and earth have set their hand
So as to have made me lean for many years
Should overcome the cruelty that bars me
From the fair sheepfold where I slept as a lamb,
An enemy to the wolves that make war on it,
With another voice now and other fleece
I shall return a poet and at the font
Of my baptism take the laurel crown...
Dante: (Paradiso, XXV, 1–9)
He towers in the square with a stare as solid as the stone that forms him, ominously welcoming the visitors whose heads are hung low to the ground. He welcomes them with a serious stare into a land he was once exiled from. I passed him every day, looking up from my feet to be blessed with his powerful message.
Exile is like creating a wall. A wall is an interesting creation. Within every day use they function to enclose or divide, protect or restrict entrance. This can be literal such as the walls of the room which you are reading this text within, or metaphoric, such as the racial barriers that painfully exist in the United States of America, or the political differences that existed in Florence between the “Whites and Blacks”. Nevertheless, no matter how much we build walls for this specific function, we have a necessary impulse to also create doors or openings. These openings are used as a means of access, entrance or exit.
Each day is, in someway, spent in exile. It can be because you are far from the love of your family, or you are letting go of a lover’s touch, or being consumed in a spiritual journey. In any case, it is within this impulse to create openings that we all are allowed to exit our exile and return home.
Listen to your impulse. Create an opening.
Welcome home Dante.
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To Pawley, in Pink and Gray
“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. “ Genesis 1:1, 2
Around seven in the morning the merlot touched my tongue. I gazed deeply at the wine that rest on my chest. Through the foggy glass my eyes wandered, resting upon a window that stood wide open. It was only moments before I had opened it to banish the steam and feel the cool air. The breeze was a rush of Carolina, and the gaping window was a distraction. Meanwhile, my beautiful bluebird flew away.
As I drank the alcohol it seemed to ferment into deep sorrow. Two days I wasted in that tub, water to my eyes, skin wrinkled and rot. As the water eventually drained away I gawked at the waif in the mirror. The walls surrounding me were not home. Home had caught breeze to another atmosphere.
I confronted the void revealed by pink and gray paint. I cursed the useless empty space. All my life I have convinced myself to have faith in things I can’t see; the spaces that bind you and me.
I run, chasing the air out of my lungs, a little boy wading through spaces drowned with emptiness.
It is a solemn life being the man that ruined the world. A mystic is a lonely occupation. While beautiful bluebird remains above the clouds, I am lucky to still have you. I am returning to your shores for my duties. We will keep a lookout. Man the lighthouse. Focus the telescope. You can take post by day, and I by the dark blue night. We will build the sanctuary and record the signs; renew faith.
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“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. “ Genesis 1:1, 2
Around seven in the morning the merlot touched my tongue. I gazed deeply at the wine that rest on my chest. Through the foggy glass my eyes wandered, resting upon a window that stood wide open. It was only moments before I had opened it to banish the steam and feel the cool air. The breeze was a rush of Carolina, and the gaping window was a distraction. Meanwhile, my beautiful bluebird flew away.
As I drank the alcohol it seemed to ferment into deep sorrow. Two days I wasted in that tub, water to my eyes, skin wrinkled and rot. As the water eventually drained away I gawked at the waif in the mirror. The walls surrounding me were not home. Home had caught breeze to another atmosphere.
I confronted the void revealed by pink and gray paint. I cursed the useless empty space. All my life I have convinced myself to have faith in things I can’t see; the spaces that bind you and me.
I run, chasing the air out of my lungs, a little boy wading through spaces drowned with emptiness.
It is a solemn life being the man that ruined the world. A mystic is a lonely occupation. While beautiful bluebird remains above the clouds, I am lucky to still have you. I am returning to your shores for my duties. We will keep a lookout. Man the lighthouse. Focus the telescope. You can take post by day, and I by the dark blue night. We will build the sanctuary and record the signs; renew faith.
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Exhalation
The television tells me that it takes a crisis to bring change. Not to be pessimistic, but I think it is nonsense since crisis happens everyday and change always seems far behind. The latest crisis is the Gulf oil spill. The oil is the pain that fuels our indecencies. Not only does it fill the Gulf, but it also invades our schools in the form of armies who teach our children, as a former friend and lover once told me, that sometimes we must kill to bring any semblance of peace. Is war not the stage for the ultimate oxymoron?
Have our souls always felt this yearning for pain, or do our souls know a better life than this? With all of the pain we live with constant hypertension. It is like taking one large breath without ever really beginning to breathe. We are strangling ourselves as earth, our kingdom, bellows from its loins. We are experiencing its death the same as our own. It is teaching us that the earth’s cycle does not start with inhalation, but exhalation. Before you receive the air you must give it back.
Day to day we constantly fight natures calling, the cycle of giving, the embodiment of love. The imaginary human food of pain is at very least, or most, an American delicacy sadly satisfying you and me. Therefore today, consciously begin your breathing cycle with exhalation. When you have given all back that you can, when you feel emptiness, inhale.
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The television tells me that it takes a crisis to bring change. Not to be pessimistic, but I think it is nonsense since crisis happens everyday and change always seems far behind. The latest crisis is the Gulf oil spill. The oil is the pain that fuels our indecencies. Not only does it fill the Gulf, but it also invades our schools in the form of armies who teach our children, as a former friend and lover once told me, that sometimes we must kill to bring any semblance of peace. Is war not the stage for the ultimate oxymoron?
Have our souls always felt this yearning for pain, or do our souls know a better life than this? With all of the pain we live with constant hypertension. It is like taking one large breath without ever really beginning to breathe. We are strangling ourselves as earth, our kingdom, bellows from its loins. We are experiencing its death the same as our own. It is teaching us that the earth’s cycle does not start with inhalation, but exhalation. Before you receive the air you must give it back.
Day to day we constantly fight natures calling, the cycle of giving, the embodiment of love. The imaginary human food of pain is at very least, or most, an American delicacy sadly satisfying you and me. Therefore today, consciously begin your breathing cycle with exhalation. When you have given all back that you can, when you feel emptiness, inhale.
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A Short, True, Story
It is a situation I never thought I would be in. Completely shut off to the world, an awful smell permeated from the only drinking holes that would allow me to survive this dire situation.
It was awful. The smell made my head spin as the heat of the room began to rise. In a panic I kept asking myself, “How did I get in such a horrible position?”
What do I do? The door handle just spun and spun; the lock was not catching. With the mechanics of the door shot, I began to knock on the door. Nevertheless, no one took time to investigate the noise coming from inside the public bathroom. Do you blame them?
And at the height of my frustration I realized there was no way out. I put my head on the metal door to cool my rosy cheeks. I gazed at the names that had been scratched into the paint. I wondered how many of them had shared the same fate. My eyes connected with the lock. Embarrassed, the door had defeated me.
In my mind I traveled to the ocean. I encountered the horizon that always makes me feel so small. In this instance the door was that horizon. Larger. Stronger. Mysterious. Instinctively I tried turning the bolt one last time.
A refreshing click released the smell and me. Freedom.
I learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes you get locked in the bathroom at the laundry mat. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation simply remember - It is always important to remain modestly humble. Doors will open.
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It is a situation I never thought I would be in. Completely shut off to the world, an awful smell permeated from the only drinking holes that would allow me to survive this dire situation.
It was awful. The smell made my head spin as the heat of the room began to rise. In a panic I kept asking myself, “How did I get in such a horrible position?”
What do I do? The door handle just spun and spun; the lock was not catching. With the mechanics of the door shot, I began to knock on the door. Nevertheless, no one took time to investigate the noise coming from inside the public bathroom. Do you blame them?
And at the height of my frustration I realized there was no way out. I put my head on the metal door to cool my rosy cheeks. I gazed at the names that had been scratched into the paint. I wondered how many of them had shared the same fate. My eyes connected with the lock. Embarrassed, the door had defeated me.
In my mind I traveled to the ocean. I encountered the horizon that always makes me feel so small. In this instance the door was that horizon. Larger. Stronger. Mysterious. Instinctively I tried turning the bolt one last time.
A refreshing click released the smell and me. Freedom.
I learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes you get locked in the bathroom at the laundry mat. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation simply remember - It is always important to remain modestly humble. Doors will open.
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To Be or To Become, That is the Question
To be or not to be? A question posed in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
What does it mean to be? If you are to be you are present and occupy a single position in space and time. Furthermore, what are we to be? Human is the only answer.
Shakespeare realized you must face this question for life or death depends on it. Nevertheless, the contemporary world is faced with an even more daunting question. For the question “to be or not to be?” seems dated in a time when modern technology allows us to be easier than ever. To be in our contemporary world is not enough. We are living in desperate times with a famine for peace.
To simply be ignores what we can become. To become is to grow or evolve. To become a more considerate, understanding, sympathetic and tolerant being.
To be or to become, that is the question.
The materialistic world revolves around being. Its substance is artificial and static. It is simple and comfortable to be. To become takes action, active imagination, spirituality, humility, strength and dedication in actively facing a lifetime of change. By seeking this new question, we realize in a war torn world, in order to live, or be, we are forced to constantly become. Without becoming we shall cease to be.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To be or not to be? A question posed in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
What does it mean to be? If you are to be you are present and occupy a single position in space and time. Furthermore, what are we to be? Human is the only answer.
Shakespeare realized you must face this question for life or death depends on it. Nevertheless, the contemporary world is faced with an even more daunting question. For the question “to be or not to be?” seems dated in a time when modern technology allows us to be easier than ever. To be in our contemporary world is not enough. We are living in desperate times with a famine for peace.
To simply be ignores what we can become. To become is to grow or evolve. To become a more considerate, understanding, sympathetic and tolerant being.
To be or to become, that is the question.
The materialistic world revolves around being. Its substance is artificial and static. It is simple and comfortable to be. To become takes action, active imagination, spirituality, humility, strength and dedication in actively facing a lifetime of change. By seeking this new question, we realize in a war torn world, in order to live, or be, we are forced to constantly become. Without becoming we shall cease to be.
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Residual Childhood on the Importance of Art
Friday evening marked the Sabbath. Seventh Day Adventists tend to be dedicated believers, and being a preachers son meant your family took the lead. There were many storms in that house near Washington D.C., although my memory of the weather isn’t fond. There was constantly a burglar. I believe it was him who stripped me of my childhood.
As a mature, inward child, I recall the church seemed larger than life. There were many paintings. One in particular is etched in memory. The inscription read something to the liking of “keep your eyes on the Lord.” Those who apparently did against what they were told were falling off a narrow cliff to hell.
After encountering that painting I can fondly remember walking along cracks in the sidewalk. I would look forward and pray to God to keep me from straying from the line. I always fell off. We always fall off.
Hell is not a place we want to be. So our family found a little heaven in Pawley’s Island, SC. The ocean provided me - among certain adolescent pleasures that come with beach life - freedom, a sense of awe and the feeling of being small.
I conceived the church and ocean one in the same. With the exception that one felt confined, the other vastly open. This realization made church walls fall and flooded these spaces with light.
I have never forgotten God. In fact, communication with God became clear and a renewal in relationship was found with greater strength. Questioning God became easier. Within these questions God’s response was always the same – and I could always count on it. God is mute. At once confusing, but now enlightening, it is in hearing this silence that spirituality is born.
Spiritual
adjective
1 of, relating to, or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things
The idea of spirituality in the modern world is a strange and unwelcoming subject. Things consume us. Furthermore, we force ourselves to run a rat race to accumulate these things that make us feel comfortable with where we stand in the hierarchy of the world. More importantly, modern man is defined by these things. The modern world is a physical, measurable, bottom line.
Materialism
noun
1 a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values.
2 Philosophy the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.
Of course the idea that modern men put little stock in the so unknown is not new. The Gay Science, written by Friedrich Nietzsche and published in 1882 makes it perfectly clear.
---
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: "I am looking for God! I am looking for God!"
As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.
"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."
Here the madman fell silent and again regarded his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time has not come yet. The tremendous event is still on its way, still traveling - it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the distant stars - and yet they have done it themselves."
It has been further related that on that same day the madman entered divers churches and there sang a requiem. Led out and questioned, he is said to have retorted each time: "what are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"
---
As Piet Mondrian said, “If we cannot free ourselves, we can free our vision.” Inherently, I believe if our vision is free, we can free ourselves.
Whether it is the church, the ocean or any combination or alternate you realize, let us move forward in our humanistic quest. To humanize is to spiritualize.
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Friday evening marked the Sabbath. Seventh Day Adventists tend to be dedicated believers, and being a preachers son meant your family took the lead. There were many storms in that house near Washington D.C., although my memory of the weather isn’t fond. There was constantly a burglar. I believe it was him who stripped me of my childhood.
As a mature, inward child, I recall the church seemed larger than life. There were many paintings. One in particular is etched in memory. The inscription read something to the liking of “keep your eyes on the Lord.” Those who apparently did against what they were told were falling off a narrow cliff to hell.
After encountering that painting I can fondly remember walking along cracks in the sidewalk. I would look forward and pray to God to keep me from straying from the line. I always fell off. We always fall off.
Hell is not a place we want to be. So our family found a little heaven in Pawley’s Island, SC. The ocean provided me - among certain adolescent pleasures that come with beach life - freedom, a sense of awe and the feeling of being small.
I conceived the church and ocean one in the same. With the exception that one felt confined, the other vastly open. This realization made church walls fall and flooded these spaces with light.
I have never forgotten God. In fact, communication with God became clear and a renewal in relationship was found with greater strength. Questioning God became easier. Within these questions God’s response was always the same – and I could always count on it. God is mute. At once confusing, but now enlightening, it is in hearing this silence that spirituality is born.
Spiritual
adjective
1 of, relating to, or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things
The idea of spirituality in the modern world is a strange and unwelcoming subject. Things consume us. Furthermore, we force ourselves to run a rat race to accumulate these things that make us feel comfortable with where we stand in the hierarchy of the world. More importantly, modern man is defined by these things. The modern world is a physical, measurable, bottom line.
Materialism
noun
1 a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values.
2 Philosophy the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.
Of course the idea that modern men put little stock in the so unknown is not new. The Gay Science, written by Friedrich Nietzsche and published in 1882 makes it perfectly clear.
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Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: "I am looking for God! I am looking for God!"
As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.
"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."
Here the madman fell silent and again regarded his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time has not come yet. The tremendous event is still on its way, still traveling - it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the distant stars - and yet they have done it themselves."
It has been further related that on that same day the madman entered divers churches and there sang a requiem. Led out and questioned, he is said to have retorted each time: "what are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"
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As Piet Mondrian said, “If we cannot free ourselves, we can free our vision.” Inherently, I believe if our vision is free, we can free ourselves.
Whether it is the church, the ocean or any combination or alternate you realize, let us move forward in our humanistic quest. To humanize is to spiritualize.
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Albert Einstein, 1954
"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive."
This passage creates a discussion within the context of my work and within modern and contemporary art. I find it profound and relative, thus presented here.
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"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive."
This passage creates a discussion within the context of my work and within modern and contemporary art. I find it profound and relative, thus presented here.
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Under Constant Construction - A Timeless Disclaimer
Greetings! This site is still under major construction. I am currently working to update with descriptions, medium and sizes of paintings. After that I will always be adding new work and new commentary! If there is something you would like to see happen on this website that is not taking place, contact me! Otherwise, check back often and enjoy the site as it is under constant construction...
Greetings! This site is still under major construction. I am currently working to update with descriptions, medium and sizes of paintings. After that I will always be adding new work and new commentary! If there is something you would like to see happen on this website that is not taking place, contact me! Otherwise, check back often and enjoy the site as it is under constant construction...
