The Gleanings Project: Contemplative Vision

Photo Collage of Paintings and Shells
Deborah Torley Stephan

Benner, Juliette. Contemplative Vision: A Guide to Christian Art and Prayer. Downers 

Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011.

493 words

“What images and inner associations form for you when you think of contemplative prayer . . .  nuns sitting in prayerful stillness . . . monks in a monastery walking in silence in a cloister . . . Can you see yourself in the picture that forms for you?” (Benner,11)

“Contemplative prayer is for all Christians. It is our response to God’s invitation to relational intimacy . . . a receptive form of prayer . . . “ ( “ )

“Teresa of Avila has described it as the gaze of faith that is fixed on Jesus –– sharing time alone with a good friend . . . Regular practice of this type of prayer is not merely a discipline but is a way of moving prayer from the closet to the rest of your life.” (12)

“My training as a visual artist first oriented me to the priority of careful noticing . . . docent in an art gallery . . . teaching people how to really see what they were looking at. This translated well into my subsequent work as a spiritual director . . . physical seeing a doorway to spiritual seeing . . .  Judeo-Christian art . . . as an aid to contemplative prayer.” (13)

“These great works of art . . . were central to the way churches proclaimed the Word.” (15)

“It opens us to the mystery of that which cannot be reduced to thoughts or beliefs. It helps us love God with all of our heart, all of our mind, all of our soul and all of our strength.” (16)

“As we carefully gaze on the painting, we enter the world it depicts –– into its time and place. When we do this, all time becomes present time, and we are led into the eternal presence –– into the One who is ever present to us. Such openness allows us to be filled more completely with the Spirit and drawn into a deeper relationship with God.” (19)

“Becoming attuned to the Spirit of God through the practice of contemplative prayer, we find that we also more attuned to others.” (20)

“We will examine how transformed vision will shape the way we live in and relate to the world.” (21)

“The questions are intended to provide you with an opportunity for deeper engagement with both the paintings and the biblical texts they are based on. Use them as a way of noticing and responding to the gifts and invitations that you may have received from the Spirit of God.” (23)

“We are so used to being busy that we treat it as an essential characteristic of the good life.” (27)

“Rather than thinking of prayer as communicating with God, think of it as an openness to God. Unceasing prayer is, then, unceasing openness to God. ” (55)

“Jesus created a close-knit community of followers bound strongly together in love.” (121)

“Journal about your experience . . . “ (173)

Heavenly Experience

In my visit  a while ago, to an Eastern Orthodox church in Vancouver, it was indeed a heavenly experience to sit with a cupola of saints as a cloud of witnesses above, larger than life colourful paintings all around the domed room and a large circular 18 carat gold, gently lit, chandelier hanging low over us as we worshipped. 

I felt at home as a Christian artist, yet uncomfortable too. Later it dawned on me that I was the only woman present wearing pants and not a dress. I recognized this tradition from my grandmother’s church.

“Pink Pampas Grass” Photo by DS

Writing as a Spiritual Discipline and a Request

“Shellseeker Pilgrimage” two paintings and various shells, Deborah Stephan (copyright)

I have written as early as – swapping little biographical quote/poetry/comment books with 8-year-old Scottish friends in the school playground.  The poem beginning: Roses are red, violets are blue, was always a favourite as well as the skipping song: On the mountain stands a lady, who she is I do not know…  Composition books at school were full of the required writing and at one point I sat with a friend on a brick wall recording all of the license plate numbers of cars passing by.  The object of the daily writing exercise was to see who could fill her notebook first.  Various ways of writing have formed me over the years.  I now know that writing has been a spiritual discipline in my life.

As I do some research for my Shellseekers Art + Soul Life Writing workshops, I find these quotes helpful:

“[Writing] allows them to reach across the boundaries of geography and time to be in intimate communion with people they will never meet… it also requires that each writing project begin and end with others…”

“The God known by this woman is a God who writes, an author whose chosen parchment is the human heart.”

“The woman writing the letter seems to say that it is in the work of expression, in the struggle to unite human and divine creativity, that understanding begins.”

“We do not do these things because we know exactly what they mean.  We do them to find out what they mean.”

“Writing might be practised as a creative, meditative, intellectual activity that might gradually change our lives.”

Stephanie Paulsell “Writing as a Spiritual Discipline” in “The Scope of our Art”

Another writing project is inspiring my activity right now and I note a further idea from the book: it is not just that we write alone that is important but the work we do together.  I am wondering if you will join me in my “Pilgrimage Project,” the written part for an art exhibition I hope to hold in the spring by sending me a message in the comments section.  I am collecting examples of the main places where people have lived in their lives e.g. for me it has been – N.B, Scotland, Ontario, and B.C.  This is your chance to be part of an art project!

Please comment below with your ‘main places lived,’ so my writing can begin and end with you:

Renovations

“Scaffolding WVBC” phone photo DS

Perhaps the playing field is being relevelled

Perhaps postmodernism brings equality

After the fall of Christendom

A First among equals will re-emerge

 

Five hundred years after Luther

A new set of theses is on the door

Let my people go is top

Bottom reads my Spirit reigns

 

My house needs renovation

Cracks are on the walls

Nicks from the vacuum on baseboards

Leaks along the patio where

Water falls

 

My heart cries from the dug-up soil

Hardness is being enfleshed

Forgiveness is on my lips

A new thing rises

In its place

Gratitude for grace.

DS

When Art is Not for Sale

“Intolerance and Materialism” Acrylic and Ink on Canvas, DS

Recently my art was exhibited in a public alternative space.  It went mostly ignored until the last day of the show.  When I was taking down the paintings and carrying them out to be packed for transport, someone brought out the next one for me.  Someone insisted they take my picture in front of them. Four people grabbed my arm and attention and introduced themselves and asked if the art was for sale.  They seemed to like it without really looking at what it was.

As an introvert in a hurry to meet someone a few kilometres away, I said to the first: “I can carry them.” To the second, who wanted me to pose here and there and not where I wanted to, I blurted: “I am in a rush.” The last group, I fear, saw that I was very non-artist-like.  I said, nice to meet you, and quickly left, extricating myself from their kindly grip.

The display was installed to promote thinking and awakening to new ways to consider the Christmas story. The ideas visually presented were not heresy but they were alternative like imagining what Mary and Jesus would look like in today’s culture.  I dreamed one night that angels had meetings to discuss how they might help us with our issues.

The everyday person, educated but not in art, has probably been to European galleries exhibiting traditional, historical paintings.  The new, the avant-garde for them, is maybe Van Gogh or Picasso in extreme.  Perhaps anything contemporary does not register on their consciousness as art.  After all, as a non-musician uneducated in music appreciation, classical music has only appealed to me in the past decade.  My rhythms flow in the era of disco and ballad.  After all, I am a narrative painter.

We need more shows of art that is not for sale: art that can challenge our current ways of thinking and being in a changing world.  Lately most shows that offer art, not-for-sale, are self-funded by the increasingly silenced artist.  The arts used to be totally supported by the church.  Patrons paid artists to paint for the church.

Art reflects life. The way a society supports the arts reveals its inner health and outer vibrancy.  Perhaps we need venues for viewing and circles for discussion.  I like that ad I think it is for Levi’s jeans where everyone of many cultures just dance together to the great music.  Art is like that.  Art for art sake, not sale.

“Art Makes Us” Vancouver Art Gallery

http://vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/upcoming_exhibitions.html

Conflict and Confrontation

“Knitted Tent, ‘Material Obsessions’, Roth and Morton, Belkin Gallery, UBC”

Photo DS

Sometimes life can only be expressed in a nonet:

It was a week of conflict

A week of speaking my mind

A week of correcting paperwork

A week of calling people out

A week of phoning to say no

A week of advocating

A week of maneuvering a plan

A week of staying quiet

While I can

 

This summer week intended to be

A creative studio week

A week of picnicking with friends

A week of rest at the beach

A week of seeing what I need

A week of laughing with children

A week of sightseeing

And meal making

Together

 

Next week I will attend a festival

I will make the best of all

I will get back on the treadmill

And on the seawall

I will read Barbara Brown Taylor

I will paint the portraits that call me

The collages that long for me

The geranium baths eluding me

I will breathe and pray

This again is the only way

To sustain me other than

The gallery.

 

Nonet:

A group of nine people or things, especially musicians.

A musical composition for nine voices or instruments.

A poem with nine lines

Art Can Imitate Life

Installation View “Holy Cups” DS

At some point during the week between Christmas and New Year I find myself reviewing the year and setting priorities.  Both the studio and the prayer are quiet, sporadic, ad hoc, and unfocused.  Self care is taking its turn, finally.

Since the summer, shredding papers has been my contemplative activity.  Many of those papers are articles kept for writing essays, the essays themselves, and images for collage. This morning I came across one of my papers about the life of faith as an artist.  A quote from philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorffe expresses both the temptation of an artist and, in my case, how faith and art practices co-exist so well:

The art lover, like the mystic, turns away from ordinary concerns to be caught up in the bliss of contemplation… art takes over the function of this worldly salvation, no matter how this may be interpreted.  It provides a salvation from the routines of everyday life… Picasso expresses [about art]: “I love it as the only end of my life.”… Thus works of art become surrogate gods, taking the place of God the Creator; aesthetic contemplation takes the place of religious adoration…  “Art in Action”

Choices must be made.  In the life of faith, art making serves God, not money.  The unpopular image is enfleshed when one knows it will not be well received.  One does not build a career so much as follow Jesus on an art journey that imitates real life.

A table painted with checkerboard circle and vines, a round glass mirror, with hand-built pottery cups with holes around the edge and butterfly handles, and a little brown basket.  Is there any meaning here?  One could never drink from such cups with rows of holes.  Even so I am impressed to display them as some kind of worship.  There is no doubt that these items in their hand-made imperfect form are no competitor for the worship on offer.  It seems to me that God is pleased with this offering of my talents, such as they are.  Will it be another year of creating work that does not sell?

Experiences of Art Series – Sheryl M.

Bio:

Raised in a Christian home and on a spiritual journey since then

Psychotherapist and spiritual accompanist

Working on PhD in new field of Theopoetics

Caribbean-Canadian ethnicity

Moved from Toronto

Lives in lakefront home in remote B.C. wildfire country

“Wise Elder” by Len Butcher

The Art: in Sheryl’s own words:

This oil painting by Len Butcher is about 30+ years old, the Toronto artist an old acquaintance of my youngest brother. I am not sure if he is still living, but our family made his acquaintance many years ago when he married my brother’s elementary school teacher. I always liked the painting. After my father passed away, I reclaimed it from my parents’ home basement, brought it back to B.C. with me, and had it mounted and framed to complement my antique oak dining furniture. Since marrying, my husband has also claimed it as his favourite, and we enjoy it daily as it is positioned, suspended above our current dining space, above our lakefront window.

The painting reminds us of a posture of humble gratitude to God for our daily sustenance. No matter how simple it may seem to us during times of our life when what we possess represents a categorical contrast to the things that are often proclaimed as the necessities for living. This wise elder signifies one who takes time to sit down and carefully prepare his bread and butter, and to ground himself in the living bread which comes from the Divine.

 

This is the view from Sheryl’s remote ‘café’ – her own dining room where she has the painting hanging. She and her husband of 8 years are reminded of their blessings especially during their Friday afternoon coffee dates.

“View from ‘Lakefront Cafe'” by Sheryl M.

This interview was done on Skype, though I wish I had actually visited the ‘Lakefront café’.

Experiences of Art Series: Interview with Joyce T.

“White Spot Patio” 2017 DS

Bio:

• Born in Dumfries, Scotland where Robbie Burns (famous poet) was buried
• Family of musicians (6 generations of mouth organ, accordion, violin, guitar, organ), loves the bagpipes and dancing
• Worked for the Vancouver School Board
• Has a vast collection of pink roses and rose memorabilia

Art:

• Oil on canvas, 4’ x 3’, ornate gold frame (made by the artist too)
• “Heart Lake” on Vancouver Island with soft pinks and greys (a lake she has never seen)
• Painting was bought when she was 21, a visit with her parents to the artist’s gallery (her classmate from high school’s father Mr. Kaip who was moving to Vancouver Island)

“Something about the painting called out to me. I just loved the colours and the sense of peace it gave me. I guess I must have some artistic sense.

I have had it in every home I have lived in over the decades. It has been in my bedroom and living room. Right now it is in the upstairs hallway.

I will tell my sculptor son it’s history one day and leave it to him.”

Joyce T.

We met at the White Spot at Park Royal. In fact Joyce invited me and blessed me twice with an interview and a lunch on her. I am intrigued by this giving of interviews with various people who rarely talk about art yet their passion sparkles their eyes as they are asked the same question: “Is there a piece of art that has a particular meaning for you – from art history, your own childhood etc.?” DS

http://www.hellobc.com/ladysmith/things-to-do/outdoor-activities/hiking.aspx

 

Experiences of Art Series: an interview with Deborah T.

“Starbucks, Cap. Mall”  2017 DS

Deborah T.’s Bio:

– Web designer, business coach

– Paints watercolour animals, landscapes

– Has lived in Vancouver for 20 years

We met at Starbucks for the interview. Deborah T. let me know that she has travelled the world taking groups with her. She held ‘café talks’ to find interested solo travellers for her trips. She complimented me on the genuine followers I have for my blog.

The Art:

– An oil painting, 24” x 24”, hangs above her living room sofa

So the meaning of the art piece she chose to discuss dawned on me gradually as she described her experience of art.

A painting of a photograph

A photograph of an experience

A hot air balloon ride

No balloon appears, only the blues and green of the landscape below

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_air_balloon

Deborah met the talented artist Amy Joy Dyck, through a coaching client on the balloon trip. The trip was a birthday gift to her partner from his family. She commissioned a unique piece of art from someone really talented as a way to preserve this memory.

Deborah wants to give a shout out to Amy:

http://amyjdyck.com/about-the-artist/