Starting
Point Like an artist working a canvas, God wont rest until
were perfect
By JAMES STEPHEN
BEHRENS
Susan Sontag once said she could
always tell when a writer was in love. Its the intensity, the passion and
the joy that reveal the dizzying heights of the writers heart.
What Sontag found in a book, I once found in an artist.
A number of years ago a friend of mine was working on an oil
painting that includes a portrait of his wife. When I visited their home one
night, he offered me a sneak preview. He had progressed quite well, but he
confessed a dissatisfaction, an unease with the portrait. He said that he could
not quite get his wifes face right and had gone over it many times, even
having to start that part of the canvas over again.
It looked good to me, I told him, to which he said no, it
wasnt quite right yet. He said he knew he would get it right, with time
and patience.
And, I thought to myself, with love.
His wife is a very pretty woman. There is a loveliness to her
smile, to her face. She has deep blue eyes and radiates a sense of peace. Some
deeply human qualities have found a comfortable home in her heart.
They are much in love with each other. The person that she has
become is quite literally a living response to the love her husband feels for
her. Her loveliness is, in great measure, a reflection of being so loved. It is
really that simple and that beautiful.
I was deeply moved by the labor my friend went through, moving
onto the canvas the love he feels so deeply, removing layers of oil paint,
trying over and over again to capture what he sees with his heart.
If the oil paint and the canvas could speak, I am reasonably sure
they would say, Do not touch me, do not erase me. And, of course,
the canvas and the oil paint are humble, dispensable in and to the hands of the
artist, until love brings them to near perfect expression. It is only through
time that the image reflects the hearts desires.
We are the oil paint and the canvas of God. We are Gods
medium for the expression of Gods heart.
As we go through life and feel pain, disillusionment, when we wish
things could be better, I think it is wise to trust the Artist, as he paints
and moves us to his own likeness.
Life is a process of becoming. A bit of wisdom and love involves
no small measure of trusting the God who is lovingly drawing us unto his own
likeness.
We all are Gods work of art, in process. We are being
created, day by day, with the sure brush and loving talent of the Creator
Artist. We are as yet not finished.
Growth hurts at times, as does love. These bring out the finer
details of the human heart.
So look at life as if you are living oil, living color and your
entire life is a canvas. Trust the pains and joys of this movement that is
life, and know that God will not rest until there is brought out the best, the
most loved and the most beautiful that you have been destined to be.
A man is in love, and it shows.
God is in love with all that has been created, and will not rest
until the fullness of that love is reflected in all that exists.
Trappist Fr. James Stephens Behrens lives at Holy Spirit
Monastery in Conyers, Ga.
National Catholic Reporter, May 14,
1999
|