Calm & Prayerful

 

I saw a quote from one of our modern Orthodox saints recently that said to always be “calm and prayerful”.  

So, so simple.  It has attached itself to my consciousness and seized my imagination for some unknown reason.

I find myself reminding myself of it from time to time as I wander the hospital or when I am at home in the evening.

I added “C&P” to my phone’s home screen to assure it stays in my awareness throughout the course of the day.

Lord knows I look at that silly thing enough.  It’s like I’ve tricked myself into turning a negative into a positive.

But boy do the days challenge me in various and sundry ways to lose my cool, to feel irritated, to want to lash out.

Frustration tells me I’m trying to force the square peg of my own understanding into the round hole of faith.

(Woody Woodpecker was able to do it in the cartoons of my youth, but the laws of physics did not apply to him!)

So, I keep thinking about it.  It’s so simple.  I immediately take a deep breath and say a prayer of some kind.

“Always be calm & prayerful” makes me available to the wider world instead of being so insular, sad, and alone.

***

Bravely Creating Art

 

It was a still life arrangement of bowl, bottle, iron, & plant.  I’m not sure where the art teacher got the iron from but it was a captivating piece from a bygone era.  The bottle was green and unlike the slender soda bottles I was familiar with (my parents were teetotalers and alcohol was considered to be morally suspect).  The plant was just a plant and the bowl was not becoming.

So, the challenge was set.  We were to draw them on paper and then paint them.  And what a challenge that was!  The objects existed in three full dimensions, not to mention time, and we were being asked to remove one of those dimensions while still making them identifiable as what they were.  It was obvious that magic would needs be involved, but I was not a magician.

Regardless, the drawing began.  It seems obvious now, but at the time I did not fully appreciate the fact the final painting would all hinge on an adequate drawing.  I was new to this but boy oh boy did I like it!  My normally scattered attention was beginning to come together like that Flannery O’Connor title “Everything That Rises Must Converge”.  It was uncharted territory.

The shapes came out nicely, but I did not know how to transition colors one into another within their borders.  This resulted in a kind of paint-by-number look that I didn’t like.  I’m sure there are techniques for that sort of thing but I was approaching everything with a 12 year old’s intuitive sense and these were unruly watery paints.  Some things worked but others didn’t.  

I was particularly pleased with the look of the rusty iron and the green shadings on the bottle but the reflected light on the bowl didn’t look so reflecty and god-help-me I tried to outline the upper plant fronds before my time was up.  Which was, in fact, part of the problem.  My time was up and I had to rush the plant to disastrous results otherwise it would not be graded.

I do have some bitter feelings towards that art teacher in the sense I felt like I was creating something worthwhile and potentially beautiful, but she was always rushing me and not allowing me to put in the time I felt I needed to do my best work.  It seemed to be disrespecting the process whereby we naïve middle schoolers were bravely creating art.

***

Beauty Can Find Us

 

There are those that would chafe

at ignominious chores thinking 

that their time is being wasted.

But even as a dog is doing its 

business and a flower is dying,

beauty can unexpectedly find us

in a solitary dandelion waiting 

for a breeze to send its progeny

out into a potentially cruel world.

***