Painting as a Spiritual Practice

Painting as a Spiritual Practice

Guest Writer: Ken Fellows MD

Window and Reflections

   An old, white farmhouse perched on a hill overlooking a large Atlantic Ocean marsh called Brave Boat Harbor resides in our little Maine town. I’ve long wanted to compose the scene, but couldn’t imagine how to incorporate the house and the directly opposed marsh in one effective painting. Then, one day, the solution materialized while exploring the marsh shore, as reproduced in the accompanying watercolor image. But it’s a bit complicated.

     The window displayed in the painting is on one side of a small, marsh-edge shack. The farmhouse is far behind the viewer, who is looking through a weathered window into the old shed. In the lower two rows of window panes, the observer sees the shack’s contents – a patterned table-top supporting dried flowers and a pottery bowl …and beyond them, a window in the far side of the shed through which the water, trees, and marsh islands of Brave Boat Harbor are also visible. Most of the upper two windowpane levels are reflections of the quaint white farmhouse, its surrounding landscaping, and a large tree with crooked branches, all in the back of the viewer.

    I’ve been painting in retirement for over 20 years. I create scenes that are intriguing to me, and I paint for pleasure. My artwork intends no hidden meanings, no messages

     However, when I consider this painting done several years ago, it occurs to me that it contains a subliminal metaphor about life – that whatever we think, imagine, or observe is overlaid by reflections from our past, reflections of things far behind us. These reflections comprise large parts of our emotions, which are a huge part of human decision-making. In varying ways, reflections are part of the human contemplative life.

     All this seems quite involved and more than was ever intended. But ultimately, it’s just a painting, and any meaning or interpretation belongs entirely to the viewer.

Ken Fellows MD  

Joanna   https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

 

 

 

The Clark Fork River and Love

The Clark Fork River and Love

“And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us, but we can still love them. We can love completely without complete understanding.”—Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It (University of Chicago Press 1976).

I remember being in Missoula, Montana, visiting our daughter, Joanna, and her husband, Dennis, with our oldest grandson, Mac, and his dad, John. Our hotel is directly on the banks of Clark Fork, and the river is racing in real-time by our small porch on the first floor. We are mesmerized by watching the high-speed water, but the sound of the raging river enters our being and, indeed, runs through us. It calms. It soothes. In its orchestral movement, it is peaceful. It sounds like a wind instrument, perhaps a distant Native American flute. Sometimes, it has the “Om” sound chanted in yoga and Eastern meditation. We begin to know the stillness of sitting or standing, and simply observing the wonder of something too magnificent for words as it rapidly passes by. We can become so relaxed that we fall asleep.   Water, moving or still, has healing powers we cannot understand.

I watched Robert Redford’s movie A River Runs Through It with all of our children and most of our grandchildren. We can often quote lines in the film and answer back the responses. Stop now if you have not read the book or seen the movie, because I will spoil it for you.

The story is about the Maclean family, a father and two sons, Norman and Paul, growing up fly-fishing in Missoula, Montana. The words quoted today are near the movie’s end, preached in one of the father’s last sermons.

I could almost hear Norman’s father when we rode by that same brick Presbyterian church yesterday on the way to get ice cream. The father indirectly talks about Norman’s younger brother, Paul, who died an early traumatic death related to his addictions.

As I watch and listen beside the Clark Fork, where the Macleans lived and loved a century ago, I also think of those I could not understand but wanted to love completely. Today, my prayers are to continue to try to hear these words from Norman’s father about them. Of course, there are also those I cannot understand and may never want to love the slightest bit, much less completely. I pray to see them in a new light, seeing the Christ in them.  

Loving without understanding may be on the path to unconditional love, God’s love. It is also the balm to heal our differences. Om.

Joanna  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

Inauguration Day

Remembering January 20, Inauguration Day of a New President

“The Rock cries out to us today,

You may stand upon me,

But do not hide your face.”— Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of Morning.”

Every four years, this is the usual date of inauguration of a president. I have been to two presidential inaugurations. Both were in the last century. One time, I was with my daughter, and once with my husband and friends. I remember festivities the weekend before the inaugurations, with Peter, Paul, and Mary singing in a tent on the mall. We go to a Blue Jean Bash with Bob Dylan and eat catfish and hush puppies. There is an air of excitement on inauguration day as crowds fill the mall. The music is uplifting. There is always a sacred reading, the national anthem, as well as the hopes of the new president.

There is a feeling of newness, a new beginning with all its possibilities of making changes to give opportunities to people of our country whose lives seem hopeless because of suppression or disease, as Maya Angelou reads her poem written for the day. “On the Pulse of Morning.”

We offer thanks for the opportunities we know we have. We are empowered to make a difference in the lives of others. There is hope. We are there with every form of humanity: young babies crying, older adults who can barely stand looking for a place to sit. We are so close together in one melting pot that getting our gloved hands out of our heavy coat pockets is sometimes tricky.

Only once did we try to go from the inauguration to our ticketed seats for the parade. I can only remember telling my teenage daughter, “We will never make it,” trying to move against a tsunami wave of people. She kept telling me, “We can do it. We can make it,” and finally, we did.

Most recently, we fear danger may be uninvited to the inauguration. We still fear for the lives of the new president, vice president, and members of Congress. We would never have believed this would be the scene for an inauguration in our country in our wildest dreams, but here we are.

 What can we do? 

We pray.

I know that prayers change the prayer-er, and prayers are heard. Prayers are like some mystical force that goes out into the universe, which can bring healing to places unknown and known. We pray to send love and protection to our country and its new leaders. We pray for those whose only response has now become violence. We know something led them to that path. We pray to hear their story and tell them about love that casts out fear.