Views of Heaven

What do you think heaven will be like?

I'm not asking how you think it will look—streets of gold, pearly gates, all that jazz. How do you think it will feel?

When I was in my twenties, I was part of a counter-cultural church that had about 20 to 30 minutes of free-form worship every Sunday. Anyone could suggest a song. People could even suggest doing a worship dance. (Usually these were celebratory line dances, similar to an Israeli hora.) For the period of time of that worship lasted, I always felt that I was one with a body of other believers adoring God and being lifted out of myself.

Ever since, that has been my primary image of what the experience of being in heaven will be like. It meshes with some medieval conceptions of heaven that use the image of a great rose--all the faithful are like petals circling God and focusing totally on him/her.

However, yesterday, I began to wonder if it won't be more nuanced than just one eternal, never-ending worship session. You see, I started thinking about the experiences here on Earth that make me feel most connected to the divine and the eternal: worship, certainly, but also losing myself in serving a hurting person, doing my creative writing, sketching, meditating, sometimes gardening.

In fact, anytime I lose myself in doing something that is one of the characteristic actions of God (healing, creating, nurturing, etc, etc.), I can get that feeling of being lifted out of time.

So I wonder, will we lose all that in heaven? Doesn't it seem like heaven will lose some of the richness of Earth if we aren't allowed to do that wonderful variety of things? And yet what need will there be for our creativity and service and nurturing in heaven?

Maybe that's why I usually don't think about heaven very much. I don't want to contemplate the idea that it might lack the very things that help give my life meaning now.

So I'm asking all of you:

Do you have an idea about heaven? It can be personal or it can be theological. I'm interested in anything you have to say.

Great Blue

I am the heron

standing in the shallows

of a man-made lake,

balanced on bamboo legs,

feet splayed firmly

on a precarious bed of eroded stones.

Focused on the water,

waiting so intently for a sweet-fleshed fish

that I do not heed the humans

gawking on the bank.

Beneath the shimmering surface

just a flicker of racing shadow.

Plunge toward it, beak open . . .

Sudden displacement of water

stirs up a silty murk

yet cannot obscure the vision

of my future.

P.S. A couple of comments have made me realize that I forgot to explain something. This isn't my photo. I lost all my digital photos last week because of a hard drive problem. I snagged this off a government site (hoping that would make it public domain).

Gorging Myself

Whenever I get a new interest, I tend to gorge myself on things related to it. I've been watching movies about painters (an old one called Rembrandt and the recent Girl with a Pearl Earring) and I'm currently reading a novel about Renoir. And I wanted to recommend a DVD series that was shown on PBS a few years back.

It's called Simon Schama's Power of Art and it was written, produced, and narrated by art historian Simon Schama. There are eight episodes, and each one examines one artist through the lens of one significant work that had a profound impact on culture. For example, the 7th episode analyzes how the non-political Pablo Picasso came to paint the profoundly moving Guernica.

The other episodes deal with the following artists:

Caravaggio (a brawler who painted about Christian grace)

Bernini (a sculptor who captured movement beautifully)

Rembrandt (a brilliant painter who fell out of favor--and into poverty--in his own time)

David (a painter who used his art to fuel the French Revolution)

Turner (an artist popular for pretty English landscapes but who broke out of that mold)

Van Gogh (his struggle to use art to show his vision of God and to save himself from madness)

Rothko (I know he's a modernist, but I haven't watched this one yet)

The series is fascinating, and if you have any interest in the history of art or its emotional impact on the human spirit, I'd recommend trying to rent it, buy it (it's not that expensive), or check it out from a library. Truly, it is one of the most compelling series I've ever watched.

Bits and Pieces

Life hasn't been conducive to blogging lately. At the moment, I can't even imagine composing a coherent blog post on any kind of single theme or topic, so I guess I'll just post snippets.

Technology has been an issue lately. I recently downloaded the latest version of Safari, and it was not compatible with the stuff I was doing for my job, so I had to go through a huge ordeal Tuesday of archiving all my files and system preferences and then reinstalling my computer's basic operating system and updating all my software except for Safari. It took most of an afternoon. Not fun. Then, I took my computer into the shop for two days this week getting the memory upgrade and tune up I wanted to do a month ago. (Just a coincidence that these two things happened in the same week.) Now I have some more new software to upload, but I really haven't had time this weekend to do it. I guess that's how I'll start my workday tomorrow.

My mother's doctor called my brother Thursday and said Mom probably has breast cancer. She's 90 and her health is very poor, and so they're not going to do anything to treat it. (I'm guessing that treatment would probably kill her faster than the disease.) I'm not sure I've processed this new situation yet. At one level I think I should be really upset and yet . . . I already knew that she was in failing health and probably wouldn't be with us too much longer, so in one sense, it seems like just one more thing. I don't know if I'm being realistic or just numb.

The day I found out about my mom I happened to be doing a sketching session at the Botanic Garden and, afterward when I took a walk, I was able to see a Great Blue Heron stalk and then catch and eat a fish. That doesn't really have anything to do with anything except that it was a remarkable and rare thing to witness and I was grateful for it.

Today we spent some time with Michael's sisters and one of our grand-nieces. We went to see a performance of Lipizzan horses doing classical dressage and a series of moves called "airs above the ground." It's hard to describe. The horses are trained to do amazing foot work and to do some tricks while they are reared up on their hindquarters. The performance ends with four stallions doing a very intricate routine together. This type of horse and performance originated in Europe centuries ago, but at the present time, the world's largest private herd of Lipizzans is located on a farm about 20 minutes from where I live. It's just another one of those things that I thought was a privilege to experience. I found a couple of youtube videos that someone else took there last year. Here's one of the airs above the ground.

Finally, my class and the work I'm doing for it is keeping me busy. I'm liking the class a lot better than I did at first. The instructor figured out that we needed more basic help than she assumed at first, so she's giving us color blending exercises to do this week. I also had a chance to talk to her yesterday about what I should do next. She thinks I have a good eye and a good hand, and I already draw pretty well but I'd benefit from a good basic drawing class to learn the techniques to help me get what I see down on paper. I won't be able to do that at the Botanic Garden, so I might take a class with the same instructor at an Art Center in a nearby suburb. If we can afford it and it fits into my schedule.

Here are two of my recent practice sketches and the latest version of my class project. It's almost done--I still have about an hour's worth of refinement to do to it, but it's complete enough for you to get the idea. Clicking on it makes it bigger.

Prayer Request

Please pray for Evan. He has not had a relapse of the leukemia, but he is very, very sick with a host of post-transplant issues. They involve blood pressure, blood sugar, his pancreas, and an infection, among other problems. You can read more details in the journal entries here.

This family has been through so much. He and his parents could really benefit from widespread prayers.

Thanks.

a favorite season

I love mid-June. It's the most beautiful, lush season in my garden . . . even when I've neglected tending to my plants.

This is how I grow our lettuce, in a self-watering planter on the deck. No slugs that way.

I can't imagine how Michael and I are going to eat the fruit from six tomato plants, but they came as a set of heirloom varieties, so I bought them all. It should be fun to sample the different kinds.

Just a little progress report.

Class was much more enjoyable today. I didn't get the shakes. :-) And I was able to make normal conversation and ask about specific things I was working on. (Phew)

The sketch doesn't look much different because I spent some time refining the shading of the petals. I'll post more later when you can see the change. The really cool thing is that everyone in class really loves it, and they think I should keep working on it till it's a complete drawing.

Just to offer you a little visual tidbit, here's what is in bloom in my garden right now: Felix Crous peonies. (Everything is running late because of our cool, wet spring.)

a gratitude list

I've been feeling a little too self-absorbed lately. I often get that way when I'm going through a process of change, and I think that's understandable, but sometimes it gets to be a little much even for me.

One good antidote to self-absorption is to list things I'm grateful for. I like to do that occasionally anyway, and it's been a while since I've done one, so that's what I'm posting today.

1. I'm picking my own lettuce for salads these days. Few things make me happier than eating food I grew myself.

2. I've been feeling overwhelmed with things to do. Having been sick for three-and-a-half weeks in May really put me behind in my garden chores. So I've hired our mow-and-blow guys to do weeding every time they come. I am grateful they are reasonable enough (and responsible enough) for me to be able to do this.

3. I'm grateful that Michael is so supportive of my new interest in art. He encouraged me to buy whatever I wanted for the class. He's also going to introduce me to someone whom he took art lessons from a couple of years ago. (Michael was writing a screenplay about a painter, so he needed to learn how to paint in order to portray it realistically.) We're thinking this artist might be a good instructor for me in the future.

4. I'm grateful for my dog. He's so affectionate, and he tries so hard to figure out what we want of him and to please us.

5. I'm grateful that it's summer. I'd be more grateful if the temperature would get above the sixties, but I'm still grateful. :-)

6. I'm grateful that we have steady work right now after so many months without it.

7. I'm grateful that my brother survived his heart attack.

8. I'm grateful for music. It adds such a wonderful dimension to life.

9. I'm grateful to be exercising again. (I wasn't doing it when my cough was bad.) It makes such a difference in my physical and emotional well-being.

10. And because I'm art-obsessed these days, I'm grateful for one of the techniques the instructor showed us in our first class. I experimented with drawing on black paper today, and it was so fun. This is just a practice sketch--if I'd seriously intended to depict a hosta, I would have drawn more than three leaves. I just wanted to play around with putting white highlights on dark paper. It would have been much less dramatic to do white-edged hosta on white paper, don't you think?

a neurotic goes to art class

I had my first class last Saturday, and it didn't go exactly as I expected.

It wasn't a bad class, but there was less practical instruction than I anticipated. It was more geared toward hands-on practice and learn as you go.

Normally, that is absolutely my favorite method of instruction. When I was in grade school, I used to resent it if the teacher did more than one sample arithmetic problem. I wanted to prove I could do it myself. (I have mentioned that I'm an over-achiever, haven't I?)

But Saturday, I wanted more teaching about drawing techniques than we received. It took me a while to figure out why, but I finally realized that I was putting this totally unrealistic pressure on myself--I was expecting this one six-week class to make up for the 35 lost years of not doing art.

Crazy, huh? 

But this will illustrate how I was pressuring myself. Saturday, we had a couple of hours to sketch during the three-hour class. We sat on folding chairs in a greenhouse with our sketch boards on our laps and drew plants. The entire time (and I do mean the entire time), my legs were trembling beneath the sketch board. I'm pretty sure the teacher could tell how nervous I was, and I think she was perplexed by it.

I felt really down by the time I got home . . . not just disappointed in the class but upset with myself for letting my expectations get so out of proportion. I have the rest of my life, however long that may be, to develop as an artist. I can't recover the lost time no matter how hard I push myself.

I think I've calmed down by now and gained a more realistic perspective. More realistic . . . but I'm still in hyper-drive by most people's standards.

Somehow on Saturday, I missed that we were supposed to be drawing leaves. Either the teacher didn't say so explicitly or she said it before we were all gathered around. Or maybe she didn't actually expect us to draw leaves but everyone else chose to do so because the teacher did aloe vera leaves in her demonstration drawing. Anyway, the instructor said to draw what interested us, and I decided to draw a flower. None of us finished our drawings in class; we're going to work on them again next Saturday. And at the end of class, after I'd spent two hours working on this drawing of a blossom (which the instructor saw in progress several times), she said to me, "I hope that flower is still there in a week."

Grrr. So what did I do? I drove down there this morning and sketched another 90 minutes to make sure I could get the finishing touches on the blossom before it fell off the plant. That way I would have only stems and leaves to do Saturday. While I was there today, I even got half the leaves done. (Like I said, I'm an over achiever.)

It's been a long, long time since I was a student, and it's odd to discover I haven't changed that much. It used to be when I was out sick for a week I'd ask my mother to get my assignments from the teacher, and I'd go back to school and be ahead of the rest of the class.

Oh well. This is what I've done so far. It's an impala lily, and the actual blossom is much smaller than the sketch.

An Evening Stroll with the Wife

A pair of mallards keep wandering through our neighborhood, even though we really don't have any water for them.

I took these shots of them in the next-door neighbor's yard tonight.

I love irises . . .

It seems I'm doing all my blogging through visual media these days. I'm sure I'll have something to say eventually. I have a couple of ideas percolating.

In the meantime, I love irises . . .