Steady On! – paper and gold ink – 20″ x 24″ – Pentecost, 2009
Recently, I heard someone tell a story about a king who held a contest for the painting that best expressed the idea of peace. At the end there were two finalists. The first painting was unveiled, and it was such a beautiful scene; a cozy cottage in the foreground of a wonderful pastoral landscape. The sun was setting over rolling hills, washing the clouds with wonderful colors, and a man was coming in from the fields, waving to the woman setting a pie in the kitchen window to cool. Everyone smiled to behold the peacefulness of the scene, and thought to themselves “there is nothing more peaceful than this; surely this painting will be the winner.”
When the second painting was unveiled, the people standing close involuntarily took a step back. The scene was a stark contrast to the first canvas; a craggy mountain rose up on one side, gnarled trees clinging precariously to cracks in the rocks. The sky was filled with the ominous underside of a thundercloud, and a waterfall tumbled down the side of the mountain and plunged into a roiling pool below. To the great surprise of the audience, the king declared that this, THIS! was the winner as the painting that best described peace. For there at the bottom, right next to the turbulent pool below the waterfall, misted by the spray from the incessant splashing, stood a little tree, and at the end of a limb that stretched out over the pool sat a bright little bird, head tipped up and beak open, just singing, singing her little heart out…
We’ve just celebrated the glorious feast of Pentecost, which celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit. Although it seems unrelated, the story above gave me the inspiration that I wanted my art offering for Pentecost to be about peace. Peace, even in the midst of chaos.
In the biblical story, by the time of Pentecost, those first disciples had been on an emotional roller-coaster. First their dear teacher was arrested and executed, then he reappeared, raised from the dead. For 40 days, he walked and talked with them again. But at the end of 40 days, he led everybody up to a hilltop, gave some final instructions, and disappeared into the clouds. Now what? Well, one of those final instructions had been to go to Jerusalem and wait, so that is what they did. Not sure exactly what they were waiting for, and fearful because their movement was unpopular with both secular and religious authorities, they went into hiding. After 9 long days of waiting, the Holy Spirit showed up, accompanied by the sound of a mighty wind, and the appearance of fire resting on each person’s head. And now these timid confused folks were empowered to go out and speak boldly the good news they had experienced.
The whole story seems turbulent to me; the ups and downs, the fear, the excitement. The color for the season is red, and the most common symbol is flames. So why did I want to make art about peace? Because that is the real transformation I undergo when I get connected with that Divine Spirit. The One who created all the universes, who is great beyond our ability to understand or describe, that same One is always present right with us, whether we are aware or not. When we think that nobody understands what we are going through, when we are lonely or fearful or in anxiety, we are forgetting that presence. The promise of the Holy Spirit was the promise of “peace that passes all understanding.” This is not a guarantee of peaceful circumstances or the absence of conflict. It is much much better than that. It is a guarantee that the presence of the Lord will never leave us. Like the hot blue center of a flame, which does not flicker, it is a sure and steady knowledge of the presence of God within us, which is exactly at its strongest and most necessary when the chaos level around us is the highest.