I’ve been pondering dark places lately. As I mentioned in a previous post, my current stage of life feels like I’m standing on the precipice of deep, dark waters. It is, in many ways, an Advent season of life, waiting to see what God is bringing to life within me in the fullness of time. So, of course, everything is intensified right now as we teeter on the brink of Advent and the birth of a new year. It has me curious about the darkness and what it has to offer.
I don’t consider myself an artist, but I do tend to process my theological ruminations through art, so I’ve spent a lot of time in the studio lately, painting and praying and wandering in the darkness with God. It’s how I would spend all my moments if I could. Couple that with the Poetry Pub’s November Poem-A-Day challenge, which invited me to explore those deep, dark waters through poetry on a daily basis for a month; add to that Dark Waters: Advent as a Container for our Longings (an Advent retreat offered by my spiritual director) and you start to get an idea of where my brain is living right now, swimming in imagery and words, writing poems and painting pictures because it’s the only way I know how to process what God is teaching me in this season. It’s layers and layers of metaphors that just come out in a jumbled mess when I try to wrap them in prose. The dark waters won’t be contained by the hands I have cupped, but these hands are all I have, so I hold them out anyway, and collect what I can.
This season is stretching me, growing something in me, and I find that I can do nothing but stand barefoot in this holy place, waiting for what will be born as the season shifts. It’s uncomfortable, and it’s beautiful, and it’s hard to run through the dark with bare feet. So I walk softly, feeling my way forward, inches at a time, if that.
I’m looking forward to Advent this year, even if it’s the shortest Advent possible. There will be cold, dark mornings, candlelight, and continued exploration of the dark waters, which are full of more wonder and mystery than I can even imagine.
Thoughts: On Light in the Darkness
The painting above is part of what came about when I stepped off the ledge of fear and decided to float in the dark waters. It, like most of my paintings, is more prayer than product, and it carries with it some lingering questions for me. One of those is: Why is the underpainting yellow? Here’s what it looked like before I added the dark waters…
I’m not usually one for underpainting (see above: not an artist), but this needed the golden light before anything could be added to it. And the question of why wouldn’t leave me alone. So I sat with it, in the darkness of the finished painting, until I awoke with the following thoughts some mornings later.
Light holds it all. Underneath all the darkness is light. Underneath all the sadness is joy, and hope is the candle we hold in the dark room.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. But the darkness tries to cast shadows in the light and the shadows cannot exist outside the room. The darkness never stood a chance, because the light was the point all along. Death never stood a chance because life was the point all along. The kingdom of the world never stood a chance because the kingdom of God was the point all along. My will never stood a chance because being one with God was the point all along.
It’s not that we’re in the dark with a light that will eventually grow and obliterate the dark, but that the light undergirds everything, even the darkness we see all around. The lantern light we see, and by which we see, reminds us of the deeper truth that it is light that holds it all, even the passing darkness we think goes on forever. That darkness that feels so immense, so deep and wide and all-encompassing? It’s like one dead pixel on the world’s largest jumbotron.
There I go with my metaphors coming out in a jumbled mess again. God, grant me the capacity to hold more of what you have to offer.
Poems: Better at holding metaphors, right?
While all of this has been swirling around in my head for the last month, here are some of the poems (fair warning: these are first drafts) that have come directly or indirectly from the November Poem-A-Day challenge.
untitled
I don't call myself an artist,
but I work out my theology
on canvas with paints,
plumbing the depths
in watercolor, failing
to capture fleeting images
before they're washed back
out to sea. I hold open hands,
receiving, sand and salt
collecting like prayers
falling through my fingers
as I offer back
what I am given
in paint on canvas.
I don't call myself an artist;
An artist makes, but I
am being made.
—
untitled (prompt: Deep Time)
How deep does time go
if we dive into this moment
if I swim in the seconds
it takes to memorize your eyes?
If I plunge to the abyss
will I have enough breath
or will time swallow me
whole as I sink deeper in?
This is life: plumbing the depths
of time to reach the place
where it ends before I am crushed
by the weight of it all.
But if I succumb to the pressure,
if I am swallowed by the dark,
my journey continues
to the end of time
where I rest in the deep,
salt and light in the trenches,
though I die to my senses
and am unaware time has ceased
to pass me by
and I float in the eternal.
If I swim in the seconds
it takes to memorize your eyes
I am lost in the fathomless,
pupil of the Image for all time
finally seeing forever who
we truly are. In the blink
of an eye we are changed
and time shows its hand:
it is a droplet of mist
evaporating in the sun
and my deepest dive
but skates along its surface
as it hovers over the deep
mystery of the One I see
in you.
—
I named my cat Mary
Even a knife's edge
sliver of light
is enough for the cat
to throw herself on
sacrificing everything --
herself and whatever plans
she had for the day --
to rest in that one bright ray
and just be.
It must be worth it,
it must be nice
to be her, purring
disciple of light.
The light
draws me in, too,
while I move through
sweeping up all
the little hairs I can see
in the light where she
has left them
on the floor.
It must be nice
to be her, purring
disciple of light.
You ARE an artist! Picture books don't lie. 😉
https://books.google.com/books/about/I_Am_an_Artist.html?id=D2J8EutWUZsC