Author Archives: Emily

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About Emily

midwestern belle, Episcopal priest.

happiness list

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1. Pastrix.  Nadia Bolz-Weber‘s memoir.  Not only did it make the trip back from NYC painless, but it’s inspired me to take on a project for NaNoWriMo. Somewhere on the internets last week, I read the suggestion to write about whatever you want to for NaNoWriMo, to write in any way you want–this first-born rule-follower hadn’t thought of that!  My plan is to insert God anywhere I can in my lifetime of memories, especially in my relationships.  Nadia’s witness has made me reflect on the person of Jesus and his particularity more than I have been recently, and I’m excited to find and insert Jesus in all the dear people whose relationships have made me who I am.  Thank you, dear people in my life, for being used by God, whether you knew it or not! (whether I knew it or not!)

I’d love for you to join me–thinking about your past, considering how God might have been at work in events, people, relationships, and times in your life–maybe we could even post some here to share.

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2. A super sweet surprise box of bath-time fun when I arrived home, a week out from the accident (I’m fine; the car is not so much).

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3. Sisters on the Runway–last week in NYC, my super fashionable brother took me to my first ever fashion show!  It was icing-on-top that SOTR is a charitable group that both helps young designers (students at Parsons) get their work out in the world, and supports good work in the world, last week, we raised money for domestic violence awareness.

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4. This past week hosted National Cat Day, or some such; I celebrated with our used-to-be scaredy-cat, Lion, who has come to be super sweet and affectionate in the last year (since she and her litter-sister, Frances, found us last October).  Good pictures are hard to find!

What’s making you smile this weekend?

Quotation of the Day

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“Of course, we tend to forget the big picture and focus on the minor details.  We take the world and our existence, even Jesus, for granted, and we concentrate on the parts that seem to go wrong.  We discover our family isn’t as happy or straightforward as other families, and we look for someone to blame, one of our parents perhaps.  We find ourselves isolated from the way other people are woven into God’s story, and so we take to imagining that we have a level of pain or hurt that is so much greater than anyone else’s, and until that pain is heard and listened to and understood and affirmed, we refuse to trust or engage or enjoy the bigger story at all.  To a life that is mired in resentment, gratitude is a stranger.  But the only medicine for a life turned in on itself is rediscovering the art of saying thank you.”

from Learning to Dream Again, Sam Wells (p 167)

how to view art

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Just last week, a favorite blogger of mine, Cup of Jo, highlighted this article which suggests a different approach to visiting an art museum: choosing one or two or three art works that speak to you in some way and spending a good chunk of time in front of each one.

When I visited the Met on Friday, I tried it.

There’s a room with three or four El Grecoes; we’ve got one of his Adoration of the Shepherds (above) prints in our dining room, but this time, I was struck by El Greco’s Healing of the Man Born Blind (below).

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I sat and stared at this painting for probably about seven or eight minutes; studying its intricacies, noticing the way light was reflected off draped clothing, gazing intently at the faces and their displayed emotions.  I’d had a really strange and wonderful experience earlier in the visit (to the Metropolitan Museum of Art) with John the Baptist and St. Francis, and the tree of Jesse (more in a post coming soon!), and in this particular image I was struck by how familiar the bald man in the right-center of the picture seemed to me.

And was here was a ton of energy because of what Jesus was doing in the middle of the painting, or in spite of` what was happening with Jesus and the man born blind?

It didn’t even really register with me till I found the photo of this painting online that the characters near the center-bottom of the image, who in the little info card next to the painting in the museum referred to as possibly the blind man’s parents, seem to be at least somewhat inter-racial–of course, I’d observed their skin tone, but it hadn’t struck me as strange till I electronically grabbed the image and remembered it’s about 500 years old.

El Greco is so much about texture, it’s hard to appreciate the image without his super gloppy painting style.  It was well-worth a few extra minutes’ time.

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In hot pursuit of Spanish-influenced artists, I sought the Met’s collection of Caravaggios.  That day, The Denial of Peter caught me.  I sat and watched.  Caravaggio’s use of light has captured my imagination since I saw something of his in a museum in Dublin.  Peter’s face is fully lit–his aging bald head similar to the one I observed in El Greco’s piece–and all hand in the painting (even his own!) point toward him.  We see the glint of the soldier’s armor, and the suspicious eyes of the woman near the fire, all judging whether Peter is part of the rabble-rousing troupe who had populated the courtyard that night.

How many times had I been in that courtyard, full light glaring in my face, trying desperately, defiantly, not to shield my eyes from the truth while at the same time denying its power over me?

Meditating on a few pieces, looking deeply into the true, hard work which the artists had put into their paintings, helped me to understand more deeply God’s movements in our lives.

What do you see in these paintings?  Do you have a painting or piece of art that changed or expanded your understanding of God, or the divine, or the world?