Light Examen, ThPM 7/22/04
Where did you most experience God/Light this week?
The skyscrapers – actual skyscrapers! – are sprouting upward all around us. Nearly every one of them is adorned with some Gotham-esque ornament, or an outrageously large public art installation, or some impossibly high sleek surface. It’s sunny, but not hot, an amazing feat for Chicago in July. We are walking through my husband’s old haunts, hand-in-hand with our children. To Portillos we go, for Chicago-style hot dogs with Mr. Jim! After a week with family (who loves us, but doesn’t always understand us) we are with a friend who speaks our language, and we are all, all five of us, giddy to be in this city (which we love but our family views with fear, or ambivalence, or both.)
We decide on the Sears Tower and a breathtaking view, but warned of a 45 minute wait we settle instead for a picture with Jim’s cameraphone – our 50-something friend lying on the city sidewalk to take an upward shot. (Fellow sightsee-ers see us and join Jim on the sidewalk, snapping a pic of their own.)
Then, it’s a bus ride and a free-and-breezy walk to the Art Institute where we are greeted by seven drummers banding furiously, artfully on plastic tubs. Beyond the lions lies the Impressionist Rooms – wall after wall of masterpieces. I kneel down again and again. I explain and I ask and I listen to questions from my children. Jim takes photo after photo “to impress Judah” (his daughter.) He snaps my small pastel, color coordinated children in front of the bright panels of a huge Dali. We pose in front of my favorite Van Gogh.
Finally, I turn a corner into the last room of Monet’s. So cliché, so everyday we’ve made him with our posters and our postcards and our calendars. The painter of light, less honored than the commercial Kincaid. I turn a corner, and I instantly weep, struck dumb once again by the light in his canvases.
This was my moment with Light.
Morning on the Sein, Giverny 1897
Wheatstacks: Snow Effects 1890-91
Houses of Parliament, London 1900-01
Charing Cross Bridge, London 1901
At least Monet was not cloyingly sentimental. Don’t worry, he’ll outlast Kincaid by centuries…
Thank you for this reflection, Rachelle.
Peter
Every other year the Mendocino Music Festival performs a symphonic/choral masterwork and invites singers from all over the county to participate. This year it was Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms”, a setting of the Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin version) of Ps 38:13-14, Ps 39:2-4 and Ps 150. Being Stravinsky, the music is challenging- not difficult, but full of dissonance while being structurally very tight, making it something a singer has to purposefully stick with. Even more so for me, because it’s only been the last few years that I have been able to listen to 20th century music with some kind of appreciation, and I really have been grateful for the opportunity to sing this. We were in the last dress rehearsal on Friday and reached the part of Ps 150 where the text is going through all the instruments. There’s a huge crescendo at “strings and reeds”, and then the music falls back to a very intense, soft, sweet, insistent (”rigorously”, S. writes to the performer) 3/4 section to wrap it up with the injunction to praise God with cymbals, and just praise God period.
Well, the heavens opened for me. It was one of those Transcendent Moments that don’t come along very often in this life. The whole universe was quivering with praise, from the ocean outside the performance tent, from all the diffused light in the water droplets of the fog, from the peppery scent of the blackberry bushes all around, and most especially from these musicians and singers. By exercising their creativity and skill, flowing with the Muse given to them in the first place, they were joining that praise. Some of them wouldn’t care, wouldn’t be able to see beyond the vehicle of producing beautiful sound together, which of course is wonder-full in itself. Some of them would be horrified that they were praising God. But they were anyway! It was magnificent. It was awesome. My whole being reacted to the Presence. My spirit tingled with connection. My heart welled up in my chest. Of course I cried, and it’s hard for me to make a good sound when I’m crying, but I wasn’t going to stop praising, no way was I going to disconnect from this moment! I made it through to the end, tears dripping over my chin and down my neck. When I could finally talk, I was blessed to be able to communicate this to a fellow soprano and Jesus-follower. She got it.
Thanks for asking, Rachelle. Thanks for sharing your moments with Monet. Great art is always transcendent, even when we don’t recognize that in the moment we’re in; and when we do, well, Wow!
Dana
Just realized–you were in Chicago and I’m about to say “d’oh!” because there is a magnificent artist who lives in that area: Tim Lowly. He is on the faculty at Northwestern U (I think) and does these powerful, visceral paintings of the overlooked people in life, and the sudden, transcendent moments. One of his often-appearing subjects is his developmentally handicapped daughter, who is now a young teen. It’s brilliant work, full of praise, compassionate yet unflinching in its gaze on life. Check out www.timlowly.com
Peter
P.S: To Dana: I get those type of moments of joy and transcendence with acoustic folk gospel, especially a cappella. Bright Morning Star, etc.