|
The Artist’s Almanac
December 2011
download and print this installment as
a PDF
(you will need Adobe Acrobat reader to open this file, you can
get
it here free)
He who made Adam in the beginning resolved in his
mercy to make a new Adam,
and by a further ineffable condescension determined
that the new Adam should be himself.
John
Henry Newman
I love December. I love it for
its bright mornings when the sunlight sparkles and dances on the
lake and I can see for miles through the naked trees lining the
summits of the distant hills. I love it for its foggy mornings
as the drizzle turns to snow in the afternoon and I am thankful
for a warm fire on a stone hearth with friends sipping wine. I
love it for candlelight and good smells and good music filling
the house. For now, at the darkest time of the year, light has
entered our benighted world.
For some the light is the
blazing glitter of shopping centers thronged with jostling
crowds Black Friday. Secularization of the holy season continues
unabated and now only a minority of holiday cards mentions the C
word. For many of us it offers a round of parties at which we
see old friends and make new ones. For most it is a time for
family - family near and far, for reunion and remembrance.
Fruitcake, fellowship, and fun fill our dreams of Christmases
past.
At the root of all of this joy
lies the greatest news the world has ever heard: at this darkest
of times The Light comes into the world and the darkness has
never put it out.
December is the hinge of the
year, when the sun begins its return to us. All we meet this
month talk of going home – home, where every sacred custom is
revived and cherished, recalling seasons long past. Holly
wreathes doorways and candles shine from windows. Carols season
the air and in cold city streets the barest acquaintances
exchange smiles and greetings. We are moved now by generosity
for the homeless and humble among whom our Lord was born.
Yet how can we celebrate today,
in a world replete with sickness and sadness, wars, injustice,
persecution, starving children? Samuel Johnson in his famous
letter to Lord Chesterfield, who denied him help when he
desperately needed it, only to claim him once he was a
celebrity, closed one trenchant paragraph with this line:
The Shepherd in Virgil grew at last
acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks
What Johnson was saying was that
opportunities for expressing love are not so readily found among
the well-off and comfortable as among the uncelebrated desperate
who constitute the majority of mankind.
An arthritic grandmother
commutes two hours each day to work in the market where we buy
groceries. She is full of generous cheer and greeting for us
each day despite the burdens she has accepted of supporting in
her home a grandchild abandoned by its mother and a crippled
unemployed husband.
A grandfather brings to church
his beautiful little granddaughter who will struggle with
crutches all her life.
A black man born blind as one of
13 children to a family living in a one room shack with a
drunken sharecropper father educates himself at the School for
the Blind to become the founder of a model after-school for 25
black children, teaching them to read, speak well, appreciate
classical music and free themselves of resentment.
A convicted murderer, after
serving his long sentence in penitentiary where he experienced a
religious conversion, establishes a home for the homeless in his
home where he shelters men of the streets using whatever friends
can spare him.
A housewife uses her entire
social security to give to all who ask and is godmother to many.
A grandmother keeps vigil at the bedside of a comatose
granddaughter. A husband tenderly cares for his wife bedridden
with a dreaded brain disorder.
Our Savior was born to poor
parents. They had to flee their native land with him by night to
avoid the murderous jealousy of a king who felt threatened by
this helpless babe. When he grew to full manhood, cripples and
outcasts sought him out; the powerful came only to question and
scorn.
Using color, form and symbolism,
art has unique power of summation. Here we see the holy mother
and child set against a background of thorns, which will one day
be her son’s crown and pierce her heart. Yet rising among the
spiky thorns are the stems of Garden Angelica, once known as the
Holy Ghost plant. It was used as a specific against the bite of
the serpent. When crushed, it had a delicious fragrance like
honey.
We remember Christmases past,
when those who loved us realized all our hopes and we hope that
today’s children will have the same memories. Why is tradition
so important to our holiday season?
Tradition enacts our most
cherished beliefs that assure us we are loved and meant to love
others. When the Creator of the stars of night bent down to
touch a Hebrew maiden, representative of all mankind, all
creation held its breath. Then we were saved by her quiet
Yes.
Madonna and Child, 1907-08 (tempura on panel) by Marianne Stokes
(1855-1927)
© Wolverton Art Gallery, West Midlands, UK / The Bridgeman Art
Gallery
|
