The Hands of God

In the recent art exhibit I helped to organize in our town, I saw the hands of God.

The hand of an angel quickly and firmly grabbing Abraham's wrist, just barely preventing what could have been a tragedy. I saw the hand of God saying, "No, I am not that kind of god. In love, I will provide another way."

The shining hands reaching out from a cloud of blinding light, delivering the law, establishing a covenant, reaching down to man, revealing more of himself. Though we cannot bear to see his face, he stretches out his hands to say, "This is who I am."

Again, blinding light, this time radiating from a baby, humble, gentle, yet in whom the fullness of God dwells. The light shining in darkness, the Word made flesh. The one for whom the world is waiting reaches out toward his mother with a tiny and weak newborn hand.

A father welcomes his lost son with two peculiar hands: one larger, placed firmly on the shoulder, the other softer, pulling in his back. The hands of God, firm and tender, just and loving, full of truth and grace, welcome sinners and exhort them to sin no more. "Consider the kindness and severity of God." Romans 11:22

The reigning Christ stretches out his hands at the last judgment. They form the arms of the scale of justice: his rule is impartial, good, true, and right. Though the hands are just, they are not clenched in fists, but open, welcoming, and marked with scars. His justice will be administered according his steadfast love and the righteousness he bestows upon his children, acquired by the nails with which he was pierced. In the hands of God are a loving justice and a just love.

leave a light on

Moving On from ainslie henderson on Vimeo.

papa, what's graffiti ?

the kid and i have been inspired by graffiti lately. it makes me a badly distracted driver, especially on the A86.

i do my best to make it clear that it's a bad thing, against the rules, unless you get permission.

but when you get permission, it can be a really, really good thing.

LeMoDuLeDeZeeR X Les Bains-Douches_Immersion 2013

but practice makes perfect, of course, and therein lies the problem. don't worry, i haven't shown him this yet.

tu nous entends ?

et ça y est, c'est le moment de laisser le foot à côté et réinscrire notre fils au cours de gymnastique.

skip to 1:40 if you're bored.

and it's also time to take my brother to grenoble.

lights

For the record, if I followed my impulse to share all I love on this art blog Colossal, I would not only inundate you but also basically just start up a copycat duplicate blog, like Colossal Jr. or something. I restrain myself as much as I can, but seriously, you should probably just bookmark that site and check on it as often as you might check this, because every day I'm saying to myself, "I've gotta tell someone about this..."

But this...this is an impulse to strong to ignore.

I've been starting a dream of a list of things to do when I'm retired. I think a chandelier tree is going on it. Note to self: add a swing.

Beauty

And of course beauty: the beauty that was for him the link between the ships and the woods and the poems. He remembered as though it were but a few days ago that winter night, himself too young even to know the meaning of beauty, when he had looked up at a delicate tracery of bare black branches against the icy glittering stars: suddenly something that was, all at once, pain and longing and adoring had welled up in him, almost choking him. He had wanted to tell someone, but he had no words, inarticulate in the pain and glory. That nameless something that had stopped his heart was Beauty. Even now, for him, 'bare branches against the stars' was a synonym for beauty.
-Vanauken, A Severe Mercy

-"Mlle A", Miroir, Fabienne Rivory

(photo)

credit

Vintage Tags

The art of tagging was different back then. It was quality over quantity. A certain level of investment, commitment, hard work. And skill: anyone can wield a spray can, few can master a mallet and chisel. Riskier. More permanent. Beautiful.

Delinquents take note, we could learn a thing or two. When your tag lasts 10 times your current age, you're getting somewhere.

(and speaking of breaking cattails)

maybe this is how we should be planting?
Oh Joy! from kut on Vimeo.

Raising Photographers

One of the great responsibilities of parenting is knowing the reality that kids learn the most from you not from what you say or teach but from what you model.

That probably means a lot of things in this case, like my boys won't grow up to exercise, nor will they wash their cars, but they might whistle fairly often.

When our little engineer started asking his mother how her camera worked last night, he took it up in his hands, spun the zoom back and forth, framed up the photo, and took one of his first shots on this digital SLR. Such was his pride and interest that we realized photography is one of the things we model most consistently in these wild lives of ours, and so it will make perfect sense of these boys grow up to be photographers.

And we proud parents would like to think that if this shot as a 4-year-old is any indication, we could be on to something good...

Playing Curator

My wife takes pretty good pictures.

Back when she was a month or so away from having a child, she still found ways to take some pictures most days, but she understandably stopped posting 'a photo a day' on her little photoblog site.

Since having a child, she's still taken plenty of photos, and some really good ones, but that site has sadly laid dormant for well over a year. Because the task just becomes increasingly daunting: it doesn't seem right to just start again; but it seems impossible to catch up.

Now that there are over 17,000 pictures on our hard drive and we keep getting messages that there is not enough space for things, I've been the one that gets to sort and clean a lot of them off. And so, once I got up to April 2011, I realized something needed to happen before clicking delete. (Don't worry, we're saving them on an external hard drive...not just deleting...)

And so, I've taken it upon myself to become the official curator of "1000 words." And I'm having a blast! So, head on over there and check out her work, being revealed slowly but surely. Enjoy it while it lasts, because I'm not sure how long she'll let me be in control of this endeavor... :)

Art Museums with Kids

Musee de L'Orangerie may have become my new favorite museum in Paris. Much, much more manageable and digestable than the Louvre, and full of beautiful work. Of course, it is most famous for housing Monet's huge "Nympheas" the wall-to-ceiling water garden paintings hanging in two oval rooms, and for good reason.
The only semi-problem is we visited with two small children.

E had the other kid in a sling, and the security guard asked to put it through the x-ray machine. He was a bit embarrassed when he discovered the baby, and his colleague laughed and laughed as though this were the funniest thing to have happened in a long time. The lady at the bag check did the same thing, and then fawned for several minutes.

The kid loved the echo-inducing acoustics of those large oval rooms more than the huge paintings of water lilies. Unfortunately, the rest of the public loves basking in that beautiful grandeur in complete and utter stillness and silence.

The other kid settled down with me and looked at art quietly while others spent more time looking at him than Renoir. But something happened to make him explode into tears shortly thereafter, and we had to wonder if this museum ever heard so much noise.

The kid loved running through at rapid pace, hurrying us along. We kept trying to pull him back and circle around, but eventually even the security guards shushed his little stomps. I'm sure we're overly sensitive, but it definitely seemed like at certain points those guards were more stressed out about us than we were.

And so we learned the hard way that most art museums are not really meant for kids and babies. And yet I'm not quite willing to give up; I call it only a semi-problem because I think there is something wonderful about exposing kids to great works of art--especially when it's so easy to do in Paris. (This is me hoping my boys turn out to be like my astute fifth graders when visiting the Met.) Perhaps it would be prudent and productive of us to find those days when they do guided family visits.

And we learned that you must go at their pace. The kid ran through pretty much the entire thing, looking but looking quickly, until he got to one huge piece of Harlequin and Pierrot by Derain. Two clownish characters carrying guitars: what's better for a three year old? Sure beats fuzzy water lilies. He stopped, looked, pointed, sat, gazed, asked, and camped out for a little while, showing it to each of us, resting for several minutes. I liked that.

For us, on the other hand, we were forced to gaze in passing, with sorts of double takes, one eye on the kid, half an eye on the painting, and another half an eye on the name of the painter. It was an exercise on taking notes of where we will want to gaze the next time we visit without kids, whenever that might be. I was excited to discover some new names that I hadn't known before. I can't tell you what I liked about them and their paintings, really, other than the rushed feeling of "Oh! I like that!" and quickly letting go of the little one's hand long enough to scribble names into my notebook: Laurencin, Derain, Utrillo, Soutine.

And that leaves me here alone with Google Images, trying to remember what I saw and what I want to see again someday. And all in all, that's not a terrible place to be.

let's be honest

it's a big, confusing place, people.

Subtleties of Prosperty

It would be audacious to say Jesus died so that we could have more stuff and better stuff. The man gives up his life and I expect—nearly demand—my flat screen TV, large, HD, brand new. After all, Jesus came to give life, and a life more abundant, right? I’m sure there are some out there preaching that message, but most wouldn’t dare to be quite that blatant.

The prosperity gospel is much more sneaky and subtle than that. And it seeps in even in circles that make an effort to preach against such things.

My little family just finished being homeless for three weeks. In the grand scheme of things, it was a very minor affair—we were very well cared for—but once the third week rolled around it wasn’t feeling so minor anymore.

When the first apartment fell through in the middle of the first week, we were a bit disappointed, but the message came through loud and clear. We felt it, thought it, heard it. “Well, God must have something better.”

The next apartments we visited were perfect. Spacious, convenient, clean, what we were looking for. “This is the reason!” Everyone had told us so, and we believed it ourselves, the first fell through so that we could have something even better.

But those fell through too.

And so the line of reasoning must continue. Something even better! Though slightly annoying, this was getting exciting. Because sure, we could hold out for just a little longer if it meant God was waiting to really bless us.

But somewhere between the second and third week, the true response hit us. Someone told us one more time: “God has to have something really great, just right, in store.” And finally it hit us. No, you know what? No he doesn’t. He might want us to live in a terrible apartment. He might want us to be homeless for all we know. Who are we to presume what he does and doesn’t want to give us?

We had just talked a big talk back home about sacrifice, and here we are presuming the perfect apartment, convenient, comfortable, not too expensive.

Did Jesus Christ come to earth so that we could have the best Parisian apartment? Tres chic? One into which we could put all our pride?

If the son of man is born in a cattle shed and grows up to have no place to lay his head, why are we expecting to be moving on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky?

I only share this because these are the sort of ideas I talk about often, and yet I was believing the prosperity gospel along with so many others. That’s how subtle it can be. Sure, God had a reason for those frustrating weeks, but the reason wasn’t so that we could have our happy ending.

God knows, he’s in control, he has a plan? Yes. For something better? No, not necessarily.

So here we are, in an apartment we find to be more than a little aesthetically displeasing. After our first visit, we may have mourned a little bit, and honestly, described it as a place that would suck the life out of us. Now that we’re here and slowly making it our own, it’s not so bad and there are plenty of perks. Not our first choice, but of course much better than being homeless. Maybe the reason for all this happening was simply to relearn this lesson. A lesson of finding contentment in places other than earthly possessions and worldly comforts.

I was recently told about this piece of art by Banksy. Most reactions I’ve read look at it in light of Christmas/consumerism/materialism, which is probably its intent. But to me it’s a strong critique of the prosperity gospel. Like any good prophet, Banksy holds up the mirror to show us quite frankly what we’re really saying, actually believing, practically living.

I went to kindergarten with this guy.

Join the Hype Wagon

I'll cut to the chase: I want all of my friends to watch Exit Through the Gift Shop.
It's a documentary by Banksy. If you don't know who he is, I'll skip the superlatives so often thrown around and just tell you, basically, he's a famous graffiti artist.

I'm sort of delighted by this street art thing. Not obsessed--because I really don't know all that much about it. But just curiously delighted. So clever and intriguing. Witty and exciting. So to learn more about some of it and see some of it in action is just a lot of fun.

Just that--the first 20 minutes or so--would be enough for me. But then we get the extra surprise of this character, this wonderfully complex documentary subject that Banksy finds. Or did he find Banksy? Or did Banksy create him? And to what degree did Banksy create him? And what exactly in the world is going on here? No one is really sure, but it's so much fun.

And from there it opens the floodgates yet again on the art world just like My Kid Could Paint That and Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock?. And if I were sticking around, I'd hold an all-day controversial-art-world-documentary festival with these three. And no one would get tired watching three movies in a row because all three are just as engrossing and involving and entertaining and question-raising and debate-sparking. In Banksy's own words: "This is from the frontline, this is watching an art form self-combust in front of you. Told by the people involved. In real time. This is a very real film about what it means to ‘keep it real’."

And after you watch it (which you should, don't forget), you'd do well to read this interview.

(It feels good to write about a movie again.)

Art of Anderson

Choose one:
A) Field trip to San Francisco
B) Christmas Presents
C) All of the above

Haven't seen this much fun since Terrible Yellow Eyes.

For you, Christian, from an Artist

I am not an artist. To be honest, I really don't even know that much about art. I do my best to appreciate it, and often succeed, even if I don't always understand it.

Part of "my call" (I've been wanting to write about that concept, too) to "full-time ministry" (still getting used to that term, too), as lame as it might sound, was a revelation that I'm passionate about a lot of things I'm not very good at. For just one example, I feel really strongly about somehow bringing the arts back into the church, but I'm not an artist myself. And so there was this revelation that maybe God gave me all these strange desires that I couldn't complete myself in order to encourage others to put their gifts to good use.

So, for the rest of you Christians who aren't artists, this eloquent and powerful letter was written for you. Do not be tempted to think of it as an artist whining because he feels left out. We've done that for too long, and that's exactly the problem. I challenge you to read with a bit of empathy, trying to understand, eyes to see, ears to hear.

Worthless and Meaningful Stuff 2

I saw this quote hanging next to a painting in Paris once:

"Remember that a picture--before being a warhorse, a nude woman, or an anecdote--is essentially a flat surface covered with colors in a certain order."
-Maurice Denis

Colour

OK, I think I'm quitting life and joining this project tomorrow. Who's in? www.letscolourproject.com