Notre-Dame and Symbolism

"A little consideration of what takes place around us every day, would show us that a higher law than that of our will, regulates events...."  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Twelve apostles flew off the roof of Notre- Dame de Paris a few years ago.  Perhaps you recall hearing about the restoration of these larger than life statues.  A plan long in the making because each of these complex figures weighs a tremendous amount, originally cast from plaster molds in poured iron and then covered with hammered pieces of copper.  There was a pragmatic determination to remove the heads of the figures and then transport the bodies from the roof via cranes and then transport them to the south of France for repair. (In the photo above, note the line at the neck that suggests that the head had been cast separately.)  

Four days after the disassembled figures were moved from the roof of the grand cathedral, remarkably, a fire broke out exactly where they had stood:

“It was a beautiful spring day in Paris on April 15th, when tourists walking about the Île de la Cité in the early evening noticed something unusual at Notre-Dame – smoke was wafting above the Cathedral. Word began to spread quickly, and as the gaze of bystanders was drawn to the iconic spire of the landmark, one tourist tweeted at 6:52 p.m., “It appears Notre-Dame is on fire.” ”

 ~from Tom Brandt, The Tragic Fire at Notre Dame Cathedral

The green guardians of the spire had been moved to safety but the spire was not. 

It burst into brilliant orange flames, consumed along with the extensive scaffolding in place around it and crashed down from the roof while onlookers gasped below in disbelief. At 7:50 pm the roof collapsed into the sanctuary below, leaving gaping holes in the ceiling, fire and charred debris dropped through to the cathedral floor. To save the structure from further collapse, some 500 firefighters focused their efforts on saving the twin towers.

Whatever happened to ignite the fire is not known for certain; investigators believe either someone in the scaffolding crews dropped a cigarette, or a spark from the elevator installed for the restoration set off the blaze.  An alarm sounded and a newly hired security person, working a second shift, checked the site but missed the actual location.  His supervisor did not respond to his call immediately, which delayed the response further. Rapidly, that April evening the fire swallowed the spire and the scaffolding leaving little to examine.

The elegant spire of the cathedral contained relics— teeth, bones or hair — of the patron saints of Paris, St. Denis and St. Geneviève. The relics were placed in the spire by an archbishop to protect the cathedral.**** Tons of rubble, burnt black beams and lead-based dust had to be removed before any further restoration could take place, but remarkably, the main altar and the large gold cross on the altar remained in tact.

The forest of trees used in the original roof will likely be redesigned to be risk managed and more fire-proof safeguards put in place when completed.  Since the fire, Notre- Dame’s signature flying buttresses have been repaired and its enormous rose- patterned stained-glass windows have been sent to contractors for restoration, along with several statues and large 17th and 18th century paintings. **  

A (very brief) History of the Spire and Its Statues

Construction of the cathedral began in medieval times, 1163, under Bishop Maurice de Sully and was largely completed by 1260, though it was modified frequently in the centuries that followed. In the 1790s, during the French Revolution, Notre-Dame suffered extensive desecration; much of its original religious imagery was damaged or destroyed.***

The initial spire was supported by a well-designed system of frames and its significant weight anchored on four pillars on the transept, it functioned as a bell tower and held holy relics for the cathedral. In March 1606, the large cross atop the spire fell due to strong winds and degradation, but the spire structure remained on the cathedral until 1792.  For several decades afterwards, there was no Gothic spire. 

Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, “Notre-Dame of Paris,” published in English as “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” educated readers about the building’s decrepit condition.  Hugo's book helped to awaken the public sphere to make significant repairs from 1844 to 1864, when the architects Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus and after his death, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc recreated a new spire made of lead and oak, 315 feet in height, and additionally 16 copper statues of the disciples and four winged ones, around its base. 

Symbolic Meaning

At the time of the 2019 fire, Notre-Dame was certainly one of the most famous cathedrals in Europe and drew in about 13 million visitors each year.  Notre-Dame, meaning Our Lady, was built on a small island called the Île de la Cité, in the middle of the Seine, it was and continues to be considered a crown jewel of medieval Gothic architecture.

The removal of cathedral's roof statues seemed a practical decision for restoration, but only after a recent conversation with someone, was I inspired to consider the story from a symbolic perspective. One-by-one with a holy wind under their patinated robes the statues descended to the earthly realms. Once the apostles left their medicine wheel of two centuries, guarding the parameter of the roof and the spire, in the pattern of the four directions-- through rain, snow, sleet and hail-- silently, fixed and firm, something shifted. Could it be that the energy of their formation-- copper is a high electrical conductor-- set something in motion energetically when they were moved? 

All depictions of male figures and/or symbolic images of them, guardians of the holy grail, (if you follow the meaning of the grail as Jesus’ blood-line, as an analogy or something else*) departed the roof of Notre Dame, sans heads and four days later the historic nine centuries old cathedral burst into flames! Dream Master teacher and writer, Robert Moss, after a lifetime of dream study, claims that one might consider dreams more real and everyday existence more symbolic. With that in mind, could the unexpected fire be viewed as a mark of change in the world in general and in Christianity specifically? A burning bush of our times?

The statues embody the essence of the sacred circle surrounding Christ Jesus during his lifetime. They were stationed around the spire in four groups of three plus four additional figures symbolizing the Four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John-all looking down over Paris except for the figure of St. Thomas who was portrayed looking up at the spire with a face patterned after the designer, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. From a shamanic perspective, a medicine wheel holds space, sacred space and the attributes of the four primary directions. This archetype is a living mutable medicine that one can connect to at any time.

The Tetramorph

Each of the four sections of the roof had a row of three Apostles, standing one behind the other and staggered by elevatioin above one another.  In front of each grouping was another statue, a tetramorph: the bull for St. Luke, the lion for St. Mark, the eagle for St. John and the angel for St. Matthew. Each grouping faced one of the four cardinal directions. A tetramorph is a symbolic arrangement of four differing elements, or the combination of four disparate elements in one unit. The word tetramorph is derived from the Greek tetra, meaning four, and morph, meaning shape. 

In Christian art, the tetramorph is the union of the symbols of the Four Evangelists, derived from the four living creatures in the Old Testament, Book of Ezekiel, into a single figure or, more commonly, a group of four figures. The most common association, but not the original or only, is: Matthew the man, Mark the lion, Luke the ox, and John the eagle. In Christian art and iconography, Evangelist portraits are often accompanied by these tetramorphs, or the symbols alone used to represent them. Evangelist portraits that depict them in their human forms are often accompanied by their symbolic creatures, and Christ is often depicted surrounded by the four symbols.***

The Book of Ezekiel speaks of a strange vision, difficult to interpret: “Each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. ….Each had the face of a man in front, the four had the face of a lion on the right side, an ox on the left side and the face of an eagle at the back.  Such were their faces.”  One might also think of this description as a medicine wheel with the faces representing the four directions. Or perhaps the arrangement of the constellations in the heavens. 

The Christian tetramorph originated in the Babylonian symbols of the four fixed signs of the zodiac: the ox representing the constellation of Taurus;  the lion representing the sign Leo; the eagle representing Scorpio and the figure of a man or an angel representing Aquarius. Scorpio is connected to the Eagle, and also the Phoenix. These four fixed signs fall in the middle of each season. Astrologers say, fixed signs are gates of power! They are known as the workhorses of the zodiac. In Western astrology the four fixed signs are associated with the elements of, respectively, Earth/Ox/Taurus/St. Luke, Fire/Lion/Leo/St. Mark, Water/Eagle/Scorpio/St. John, and Air/Angel/Aquarius/St. Matthew. All of the four elements were present on the day of the fire: Earth, Air, Fire and finally, quenching Water. 

The figures of the Christian tetramorphs were also common in Egyptian, Greek, and Assyrian mythological stories and sculptural reliefs.  The early Christians adopted this symbolism and adapted it for the four Evangelists, which first appear in Christian art in the 5th century, but whose interpretative origin stems from Irenaeus in the 2nd century.  (See Note 1).  Is this assembly of God disassembled, revealing a larger shift? If so, the sacred light of the fire consuming the spire after the apostle statues were removed, is a theophany, or Divinity for all to see. The appearance of Our Lady in a form that is visible and sends a message.

Fire is a release of the old. Perhaps Our Lady is communicating, it is time to transform and reset to a higher expression of living. 

 

(Video footage of 2019 Notre-Dame fire can be found online at the NYTimes.com). 

Notre-Dame on Fire:

A film by Jean-Jacques Annaud, with Samuel Labarthe, Jean-Paul Bordes, Mikael Chirinian, Jérémie Laheurte, Chloé Jouannet and Pierre Lottin 

References from:

Online eutouring.com

Quotation fromTom Brandt: The Tragic Fire at Notre- Dame Cathedral

*By analogy, any elusive object or goal of great significance may be perceived as a holy grail by those seeking it.

** Notes from Friends of Notre- Dame de Paris

***Notes from Wikipedia

****https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/world/europe/notre-dame-cathedral-facts.html

1. See Wikipedia on Irenaeus (/ɪrɪˈneɪəs/; Greek: Εἰρηναῖος Eirēnaios; c. 130 – c. 202 AD)[3] was a Greek bishop noted for his role in guiding and expanding Christian communities in the southern regions of present-day France and, more widely, for the development of Christian theology by combating heresy and defining orthodoxy. Originating from Smyrna, he had seen and heard the preaching of Polycarp, who in turn was said to have heard John the Evangelist, and thus was the last-known living connection with the Apostles.

Medicine Wheels Part II: December 2021

 

Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into your life.  Then, without effort, you are impelled to truth and to perfect contentment.  Ralph Waldo Emerson 

On Walden’s Pond

My mother sent me two books of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) when I was living in Boston many years ago. She knew I had visited a property near to where he lived.  Of all the gifts she gave me through the years, those books, one still nestled on my shelves thirty plus years later, were such thoughtful gifts.  We may have talked about Emerson and Walden Pond (where he walked along a footpath from his house in Concord), I do not recall, but she came upon these used books, maybe at a library book sale and made the decision to send them to me. It was 1988 or 89, and they arrived as a surprise, I doubt I ever told her how much that gesture meant to me. She could not have known that I would soon be applying to graduate school and would be moving away from Massachusetts.  She could not have known that one of Emerson’s essays in the books, would be an ongoing inspiration to my artwork and my healing process. She could not have foreseen that, as I am missing her now, those essays, and memories of Walden Pond are a solace to me.

     Emerson wrote, ‘the eye is the first circle, the horizon which it forms is the second.’  Perhaps the arms of mother should be first.  Being at Walden’s Pond with my friend Claudia one afternoon, walking the perimeter of the pond, I noticed many mothers were there with their children.  The setting was full with play and laughter, I wonder if old man Emerson was looking down upon us with a twinkle in his eyes and if he was pleased that his circle was still so full with life from when he walked the circumference in another century.

He had the tragic experience of losing his five year old son to illness.  Knowing the circle of life continues must, on some other plane of reality, touch his soul.  The pond has continued to be a living mandala of a mother’s nature, holding the community throughout each season. The mandala, the medicine wheel, the sacred geometry of the circle is everywhere, in the rim of the eye, the planets, the structures of cells, as it is at Walden’s Pond.

Nature centres into balls…

Another geometric shape that is also a portal, or signifies a portal like a mandala or medicine wheel, is the mandorla.  Mandorla means ‘almond’ in Italian.  It is a shape that is also known as the Vesica Piscis, a fish shape, the literal Latin translation meaning, fish’s bladder.  The shape is often used as an architectural form to enclose the Virgin Mary or Jesus Christ in medieval art, an aureole.   The shape is the form of the outside of our open eyes, and the shape created when the outlines of two perfect circles are partially overlapped. This is the form, the almond shape, that the Goddess known in Mexico as the Virgin of Guadalupe stands within. Her figure, cloaked in a star-studded mantle of blue, is surrounded by what appears to be fiery flames or the brilliant energy of her auric field within the mandorla. 

This almond shape is exalted as a portal of reverence for the holy Virgin within a golden haloed light. Her day is celebrated in Mexico as a national holiday  and across the border in New Mexico on December 12th. It’s common here in New Mexico to see images of the Virgin of Guadalupe painted onto natural formations of mandorlas in trees.  I saw one recently that was beautiful, a pastel drawing on the raw, ‘unbarked’ opening along the trunk of an old an elm tree, soft and abstract but immediately recognizable and very tender.  Sometimes when a tree forms a natural portal to the interior surface of itself, like this one, the shape is altar-like, it becomes a natural place people are drawn to embellish.  Individuals frequently make offerings of loose change, Mardi Gras plastic beads, rocks, crystals and other things in spontaneous gestures to these feminine, natural altars. 

When abstract circles overlap within the context of the world, we merge with something, an idea, a landscape, or a person and through our interaction, we create something new.  The significance of two becoming three is the center point of all creation and myth. The convergence of hand with spirit, eyes on nature, transforming the medium of paint or chalk to the tree surface, is an offering back to creator.  This shape, commonly used to denote the third eye, during meditation, becomes a visual portal, an inner doorway to spirit.

When I am too focused on the physicality of my existence and not in the wonder and  mystery of how spirit creates matter, I miss something.  Yet, with each action I have the opportunity to create a new portal of energy for the highest vibration. I am not always mindful, but if I set the intention to be heart-centered rather than in a linear mind, it’s always a benefit.  My mother sent me two books; Emerson, founder of the Transcendentalist movement, feels like a mentor friend.  Living in harmony with nature, as he so avidly advocated, seems crucial at this critical time. 

Medicine Wheel: The Power of the Circle

The famous pen and ink drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man, renders the proportions of the human form as they relate to the geometry of a circle and the square. When we stand with our arms stretched out and our legs spread wide, like a cartwheel, (think snow angels) our bodies make a shape that relates to a circle. We are medicine wheels in our human forms.

Our bodies are an expression in the physical dimension, similar to the growth of a tree with roots, limbs and trunk. Our crown like the crown of a tree radiates energy and light.  If we imagine the cross section of our skull as a mandala, at the very center is the mysterious place that when awakened allows us to be visionary, the place where the pineal gland sits within the center of the two halves of our brain. Leonardo da Vinci balanced the perspective construction of another painting, The Last Supper, so that its vanishing point is immediately behind Christ's right temple, pointing to the physical location of the centre, or sensus communis, of his brain. The sacred point of the sixth chakra. 

The Circle as Medicine

Medicine Wheels are not so much art forms though they are visual forms, but more importantly, place holders for healing.  They are guideposts to the energy of non-ordinary reality, portals into timeless space. They can create a sacred and safe space, a functional form of support. 

When I go to the river, I often draw circles in the sand with a long stick reaching out around me from the center. I sit down in the center and ground myself into the elements of earth, air, fire from the sun and water from the rio.  I send down a wide grounding cord, which I visualize as a corkscrew type of shape, that spirals down into the earth, like a big drill bit the width of my hips.  (It is very different for me than visualizing the connecting root as a straight line of energy.)   This is a very simple yet very helpful practice for grounding and connecting into the power of Pachamama. 

There is an infinite container of support in the medicine wheel. It is an archetypal form found in many cultural teachings, I came to the mandala through more than one culture. Almost simultaneously, I was attracted to the sand paintings of Tibetan Buddhists and the Medicine Wheels of Native American traditions in New Mexico, when I was in graduate school. I wanted to paint mandalas before I really knew why. 

The medicine wheel is one way to acknowledge the six directions. There are many ways of interpreting the directions, but I will share the way I have learned,  a simple practice of centering to begin the day:

Orient the body by planting yourself, your feet, and/or your seat onto the earth. Sit or stand facing the east to begin, but this can change given the season or what we are facing in our lives as we cycle through the year. Each direction has meaning which can correlate to the seasons and cycles of life. Call upon the spirit of the east as a place to begin, to open the heart center to peace as opposed to chaos.  I like to consider the dawn light as a visual for this ritual practice, imagine the rosy pink light of a new day beginning, if you can be outside, all the better. Sit or stand in peace, calm and equanimity.

When I sit early in the morning just after the sun has risen, during that quiet time when everything feels at peace around me, the sense of outer stillness helps me to reflect that within myself. This is the way it has been taught in India throughout recorded time, to face the new day with the rising sun. Take time to bring into your awareness each of the directions: east, south, west, north and Father Sky and Mother Earth. Consider what each direction has to offer in terms of energy: new beginnings in the spirit of the east, in the west the spirits of clarity and completion, and in the south, the energy of support through the movement of the sun. The north brings in the energy of effortless action through the movement of the holy winds. 

At the river it had been raining a slow deliciousness all day and dragging a stick through the wet sand was satisfying, I felt the resistance at the end of the stick as I circumscribed a line in a rough circle.  I marked the four directions and scratched the Rune symbols, from the ancient Celtic alphabet for All- That- Is, around the perimeter: an offering for spirit, a thank you, and a recognition.

Through the process of inscribing circles, whether drawn in the sand, painted on canvas, made from little stones, or great monolithic ones like Stonehenge, the circle establishes a place of power. It relates to the womb of mother, the act of nurturing, holding arms around another and motherhood. It relates to Mother Earth.

In the beginning of my own journey, the circle emerged rather spontaneously one day in the studio when I was trying to resolve a large oil on canvas and glass assemblage. I still recall the feeling of placing a big sable brush filled with a bright Chinese Red glaze upon the canvas. Not knowing for certain if I should let go of an expanse of patterns across the surface that I had labored to achieve, in order to arrive at the clarity of a circular image in the composition, it was a risk. There would be no way to go back once I made the decision.

First, I had to be willing to let go of what I had already created. This painting would eventually mirror my own healing, letting go of old patterns in order to get to a more resolved place. Finding more clarity would become an ongoing theme in my art and life. Years later, I would see the mandalas of the Swiss psychotherapist, Carl Gustav Jung in his extraordinary dream study, The Red Book.  His work gave me a much greater understanding of what my psyche was drawn to create during a time when my emotional needs were great raw wounds.  I didn’t know it then but I was on a desperate quest for wholeness, and a deep sense of grounding. Creating circles was natural enough, a geometric form for resolution.  Jung might say I was drawn to the power of the archetypal form through the collective unconscious. Maybe I was, or maybe it was something already present within each cell of my being.

I had not known that Jung was a supremely gifted visual artist until I saw the publication of this large scale reproduction. I was and remain stunned by his skill, the scope of his illustrative dream imagery and his expert calligraphy. The illuminated manuscript, a weighty tome of dream investigation, his magnum opus, was a work in progress for sixteen years between 1914-30.  It was left unfinished, mid-sentence.  I have an intuition that that was his intention, though, we will never know for certain. 

In November of 2013, I had the good fortune to be able to walk around the actual book, enclosed in a protective round glass case, in the Central Pavillion at the Venice Biennale.  On my first trip to this dreamland, watery Venice along with the dreams of Jung, brought me easily into a heightened state of reality. The exhibition, Encyclopedic Palace, curated by Massimiliano Gioni was an incredible achievement, bringing together drawings from Rudolph Stiener’s lectures; the mystical paintings of Hilga af Klimt; Jung’s Red Book; anonymous Tantric paintings from Southern India, and many artists -- a plurality of visions.

Gioni said that the “representation of the invisible [as] a central theme” and the “challenge of reconciling the self with the universe,”was the intention. A sense that the spiritual was alive within this vision coincided with the curatorial decision to hang fine artists along side of unknown artists, artists within the canon and as well as outsider artists and Jung was the bridge to both, and to the unconscious realms. His mandalas and illustrated dreams were the gateway to this show.

Indeed red, weighty and bound in a thick leather cover, embossed in gold leaf, Jung’s book is something one might expect to see during the Renaissance, mid-fifteenth century in a Florentine palace. His monumental imagery, like the book itself, is too large to hold, it needs to be on a table or a pedestal to view. I find a New York Times article from 2009 written by Sara Corbett about the Red Book’s coming out from hiding from the Union Bank in Zurich.  It’s a cold day in Switzerland in 2007 when as Corbett says, a change was under way:

…the book, which had spent the past 23 years locked inside a safe deposit box in one of the bank’s underground vaults, was just then being wrapped in black cloth and loaded into a discreet-looking padded suitcase on wheels. It was then rolled past the guards, out into the sunlight and clear, cold air, where it was loaded into a waiting car and whisked away.

The images and calligraphy, -the examination of his dreams, visions and fantasies- were presented as the center piece of the rotunda as you first enter the exhibit hall for the biennale, 2013.   The book, opened to one illumination and enclosed under a dome of thick glass (probably bullet -proof glass,) was slightly angled on an easel so that as one circumambulated it, the red leather cover was revealed. Around it, in the exhibit space, were mounted reproductions of other illustrated pages from the book. I would have travelled far to lay eyes on this holy relic and it is not an exaggeration to say the marriage of Venice and Jung was a dream come true.

During Jung’s lifetime, the actual Red Book had only ever been viewed by people within his family, friends and his patients. I guess one could say that, the book was hidden in plain sight. Later, the board of his foundation, close advisors, and those who worked on the reproduction were fortunate to view it first hand. Known widely as a psychotherapist, psychiatrist and writer, Jung, was also an exceptional artist. His mandalas, dream illustrations and the accompanying calligraphic text are exquisitely crafted in the manner of a fine illuminated manuscript. Examinations of his profoundly complex dream imagery, Liber Novus or The Red Book, was a personal journey and an archetypal reference to the unconscious, a healing tome of epic undertaking that he worked on following the ravages of World War I. It’s not hyperbolic to say, his dreams were of mythic proportions. 

Jung said this was the ....”the culmination of his self-analytic search for meaning”. He began the preliminary work for the Red Book one hundred years ago at a time after he was in the service during WWI, as a commander of the English prisoners of war.  “Swallowed by war” as he wrote, he felt he was in a state of psychosis which began to clear at the end of the war. From August of 1917 to the end of September, he drew a mandala nearly every day in an army notebook. These drawings would become the precursor to the Red Book. He said, “my mandala images were cryptograms on the state of myself, which were delivered to me each day.”   

His conversations with his soul-self could be considered as a way through. He said, “[w]hoever speaks in primordeal images speaks with a thousand voices; he enthralls and overpowers...he transmutes our personal destiny into the destiny of mankind, and evokes in us all those beneficent forces that ever and anon have enabled humanity to find a refuge from the peril and to outlive the longest night."

 

 The Red Book on Jung's desk

1. The Red Book Reader, pg. 43-44

2. Ibid, pg. 63

In the Pursuit of Healing

In times gone by, the idea of alchemical processes was somewhat of a sacred pursuit, a desire to transform lead into gold, the medieval forerunner of chemistry concerned with the transmutation of matter.  Was it a fairytale?  Was it a metaphor for spiritual pursuits? As a painter, I have been inspired by a desire to make images that transport the viewer into stillness through the process of mixing and applying oil-based substances; a pursuit with a long historical tradition of alchemical processes. 

My studio, like many other artist's spaces, is a clutter of bottles, mediums, cans of paint, jars and tubes of pigments, brushes, palette knives, powders, glitter and glues. Rolls of canvas, finished pieces, pieces in process line the perimeter of the space. There are two large chunks of beeswax that I use to make encaustic mediums in the drawer of an old armoire, baskets of tools and boxes of outdated slides are stacked on top.  All the material stuff that gets mixed and melted, stirred and spread around on surfaces-- in the hope of making something meaningful-- unfortunately sometimes has its own toxicity. 

When I was in graduate school, I read a book by Suzi Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art.  It stopped me in my new found tracks. Gablick deconstructed the art of making things as part of the problem. I couldn’t imagine what to do for awhile because my lifelong goal of painting was clearly a toxic pursuit. Almost all the mediums for painting have harmful substances contained within them.  Photographers work with noxious chemicals in the dark room or they did, pre-digital.  Painting has its own hazards. All manner of substances in each department of art have pernicious qualities. One couple, mentioned in Gablik’s book, quit working in photography all together. Another woman I have met in New Mexico made her practice cleaning up litter daily, for ten years she would get up and go collect garbage in Santa Fe and that became her art form.

I struggled for awhile with all of this and still do to some extent. 

Ms. Gablik came to speak at UNM thirty years ago after her book was published in 1991.  She said then that she didn’t know whether it was right to fly to give her talk in New Mexico.  She was thinking about the destruction that we were doing to the atmosphere ahead of others, but we still have not changed course. Now we find ourselves in the place of no return, Arctic ice melting and with climate disruption, pandemics may become more and more common. 

Yet, I decided then, as now, that painting has a place in the world.  And I wouldn’t wish, for instance, that Leonardo da Vinci had not painted his masterpiece, Salvator Mundi, Christ the Savior of the World or any other of his paintings that are now hanging in museums. But what of the unhealthy ingredients that make up the materials an artist uses currently?  What of the damaging effects chemicals have on the climate?

My first public outing after the year of quarantine was to see a Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Albuquerque Museum, from the collection of Jacques and Natasha Gelman. The show underlines Mexican Modernism of her time and includes paintings of her husband, Diego Rivera. Her work always gets to me in a way that is about the intrinsic powerful nature of her spirit.  It’s personal but it speaks to everyone. She was resilient in her life, a lifetime of tremendous hardship, full with pain and suffering do to a terrible accident, subsequent surgeries, loosing a pregnancy and ultimately a leg. One can barely imagine how she had the fortitude to keep painting.  Yet, her oeuvre would not exist, at least as we know it, had it not been for the profound experience of her suffering.  

I believe in the power of art to be healing. Academics have put that down in the past and certainly, I have felt I had to keep that belief to myself. But there is shift currently and especially through the voices of indigenous faculty, I have noticed a return to knowing art making as a sacred pursuit; there is power in the making and a secondary power in viewing that is undeniable.

Many artists love the materiality of their mediums, the colors, yes, and especially the plasticity of it.  That’s where the term ‘plastic’ derives from, in the sense of being easily shaped or molded.  The process of turning compounds into images of landscapes we feel we can step into, portraits we imagine we can reach out and touch, forms of pain or grace, heaven or hell, abstractions that transport us to another reality is often the driving force. Painters lose their ego selves when working intently on something outside of themselves; time sometimes gloriously ceases while we work.  Somedays, unexpectedly, when I am particularly immersed in the process, I might find myself in a meditative space. Fleeting, yes, but one reason the alchemical nature of the act of painting is so compelling to the artist. 

Kahlo had some of these moments when she was painting, moments where she was elevated beyond her human condition, of that I am certain.  Her work continues to touch us in the way that the alchemical processes of painting can - visually her images hit our hearts, fill us with compassion, yearning and the aspects of human suffering we can all identify with, a sacred pursuit.

Women in Conversation

Northern air blows in a cold and tumultuous day in New Mexico. I take out a bag of sweaters from my old pine amoire and pull on a new pair of boots to take my dog, Belle, out for a walk.  I think about the poet, Mary Oliver all morning after listening to a superb interview she did with Krista Tippet for On Being in 2015. She has passed away and yet, hearing her recorded voice, calms my heart and so I listen to the podcast two mornings in a row.  

During the months of quarantine, I am blessed to be in a small chat room conversation with another extraordinary woman, South African, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge.  She is a politician/activist who was South Africa's Deputy Minister of Defence from 1999 to April 2004 and then, Deputy Minister of Health until August 2007.  She speaks about the healing work she has done to develop the belief that change is possible.

In my mind, these two women are in conversation, one, the poet, Mary Oliver together with the activist, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge. I listen closely. Oliver asks, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?  Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge shares with her, her amazing life story.  She begins to study medicine and then, becomes a very different sort of medicine woman. Not the kind that goes to medical school, a different type.  She will tell Mary Oliver how she endured a year in solitary confinement after three arrests for political activism in the 1980s. And later, how she comes to be a strong leader in part because as a practicing Quaker, she accepts that God is in everyone.  This is key to the transition post-apartheid in South Africa and must be key in the United States if we are to evolve beyond racism: God is in everyone. She would tell Mary that she is the first Black woman, South African Quaker, and pacifist to serve as Deputy Minister of Defence. 

Madlala-Routledge, elected to Parliment in 1994, and inspired by her pacifist beliefs was appointed the Deputy Minister of Defense five years later. She came to raise the consciousness of the country, "if you want peace, you must prepare for peace". She is a fierce example of what we need in order to redirect the world toward equality for all. 

Mary Oliver and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge speak in the poetics of action about how grace can happen when we focus on the exercise of ending sentences with peaceful resolutions. When we stand up for women and girls who suffer because of the imbalance of power between genders, people of color and whites, and the inequalities of wealth, then at least we are speaking truth. Madlala-Routledge has done much difficult work.  She has campaigned to end sex-trafficking of women in South Africa and continues to be a healing voice for her country. She worked to change the HIV/AIDS denial to a national emergency when she took on the position of Deputy Minister of Health in 2004.*  She is one of the wise women in the world leading us to see the importance of consciousness and to holding ourselves to high standards.   

Yes, God is in everyone, every person, every child is of God.  Will we really get that in our heart of hearts? I wonder each day of this most unusual time if we will awaken to a higher vibration?  

May 29, 2021

Months of quarantine have passed and we are now, it would seem, on the side of new potential. A fragile egg has cracked to reveal the birth of something. When the mother bird sings to her babies, what will this new form become?  Change is possible, (I know it is) I hope when we speak of change, it will be for the betterment of all.

A Thousand Mornings

All night my heart makes its way

however it can over the rough ground

of uncertainties, but only until night

meets and then is overwhelmed by

morning, the light deepening, the

wind easing and just waiting, as I

too wait (and when have I ever been

disappointed?) for the redbird to sing.

~Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings

* Founder and Executive Director of Embrace Dignity, a non-profit campaigning for legal reform to abolish the exploitive system of prostitution and support South African women wanting to exit the sex industry.