Recently I have spent some time thinking about art work and what that says to us. Before Christmas Emma asked to go to the store and purchase some watercolors and paper so she could learn to paint. This was not going to be a Christmas present. She said that it was something that she wanted to try. That seemed reasonable to us. Our daughter is very creative. She can sew. She can bake without a recipe. She makes bread from scratch easily. Her chili recipe won 2nd prize last year at the church’s chili cook-off. She plays the violin so beautifully that it makes me wonder how she does it. Where does she find the creative juice?? And, to add to her ever-growing list of creative endeavors, she is learning how to paint (and she has done that as well).
As I examined her latest creation, I wondered, how did the image of a volcanos in the sea come into her mind? I looked at the paper trying see if I could tell where she started and where she ended (my mind is a bit more analytical so I look for a start and an end to things like this). Sadly my eye couldn’t solve that issue—except that I remembered one thing from my first art teacher in grade school. She told us to “use loose lines” to draw. I am not totally certain what that concept meant, but I tired it back then. And I try now when I draw or when I look at Emma’s painting. Loose lines. . . I didn’t see many of those on the paper.
Instead, I began to notice circles. Clean precise circles.
Yale Divinity professor Willie Jennings believes that circles represent movement and invites the church to consider the circles of their daily lives. These circles speak of the cycle and circuit of life. Each cycle, or each circuit, builds upon the next one; they move us forward and can create a sense of belonging for, and in, us. They connect us to each other and form belonging as they build our life together. Consider one of his examples from a talk that he gave:
We rise in the morning. Bath ourselves and we might help our children do the same. We feed ourselves and our children. Get them off to school (or get them logged in for school). Pick them up from school (when we are allowed to meet in-person). After school activities then next item in the cycle is dinner. Then Homework. Then off to bed. Then we go to bed later. Notice that they cycle repeats tomorrow. . . I do it all again. . . and again. . . and again. This cycle is then expanded to include our work lives and it fits into that previous circuits of our lives neatly as well. This is life as I have created it and I will support it.
Those circles then are shared. We become intimate with some people and invite them into the rhythm and movement, the cycle, of our daily lives and the relationships deepen. I no longer just care for myself. Now my circuit includes my wife, my children, and my friends. I gain energy from the circle that I am living in and with. The movement drives me to do the best that I can each day to go onward with those that I care about and who care about me.
The circle contains that sense of movement for life, and it tells me that this is the way that my life will be from now on. . .
or at least it is the way that I hope my life will be.
Herein, we find part, perhaps the greatest part, of the struggle with covid-19 and the unrest that it has caused in us. The normal cycle and circuit, the normal movement of our day, the rhythm by which we affirm that our life is progressing as it should, is interrupted. Frequently. Consistently. My circle cannot be drawn as it was before this. Often, as soon as I soon as I have adapted my circle to the ever-changing landscape of covid-19, and that which this day gives me, someone, or something steps in and stops that movement or forces me to alter its progress. That stimuli stops my process of checking off or completing the cycle that I have started drawing.
So I am left feeling dispirited. Disoriented. Discouraged. I am frustrated because I have not finished my circle as I normally do. Therefore today has been less that it should be (or that is what I tell myself as the day ends just as yesterday did). Another way of saying this is that my productivity has fallen off its pacing and I can get irritated by this conclusion. This is when the metaphor of circles that I am thinking about, and trying to find in Emma’s artwork, takes on a theological tone.
If God and I are not drawing the circle together, if we are not completing the circuit together in the way that God intends, then I can fall victim to the mindset of feeling less-than. I can begin to think that God and I are not on the same page together, and so, rather than pull back and search for God, I am tempted to work harder. I want to work faster so that I can get back onto the right pace or track for my day. But that does not work. It never works. I only get myself more exhausted, more discouraged, because the work of my daily life that God wants to do with me, is best done in communion—NOT in a rush.
I wonder if today you might find some time to stop and consider where are the places where you are pushing too hard, too fast? Is God there with you in that? Perhaps this is an opportunity to draw the circle again, and this time, with God’s help and God’s presence?
Blessings
Rev. Derek
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