Blank Walls, Empty Space (and An Announcement)

It began with open space. 

Maybe, that’s how all things begin.  All good things, that is. 

And, it began with need which, so often, provides fertile ground for creativity to take root. 

This is what I remembered as I sifted back through layers of memory and experience, this is the conclusion I reached when someone asked, “How did you begin painting?”

I never intended to paint, that was not the point.  But when we moved to this enormous, old farm house three years ago, I found myself with rooms full of empty wall space and nothing to hang.  Need (or was it desire?) knocked and I answered.  I splurged on one large print from Ikea and two empty frames which I filled with fabric in a color scheme I adored.  But our budget would not allow for more. 

I kept my eyes open, though, and found ornate and tacky old paintings abandoned along back woods roads and languishing in thrift store bins.  I bought acrylic paints in magenta, teal, and tangerine.  I, like generations of women before me, decided I would ‘make-do’ and I did.

In the process of making-do, though, I discovered that painting felt like prayer – calm, clear, and filled with listening.  Painting, also, felt like writing, and I listened as I painted and learned about myself as a writer, as a creative, as an artist. 

All of this, from blank walls, empty space.

//

What open spaces mark your life today?  

What invitation might these spaces hold?  

What opportunity, adventure, unanticipated discovery?

//

I never intended to paint. 

But now I know that words on wood, in color, is part of who I am.  Those empty walls called forth some part of me long buried like a seed, causing the artist in me to sprout and blossom.

Now I continue to watch and wait, like a gardener eyeing empty soil.  What open spaces are here, now and what abundance might be sleeping in the rich, dark emptiness?  

//

Good news, friends, I now have an Etsy shop where you can order prints of my original paintings.  Visit The Broody Hen Shop to see current offerings.  

Pause

 

This morning the world was cloaked,

white on white, as snow fell and the mountains

shied behind a sheet of fog.  The cornfield 

stretched between, like a wide sheet of paper,

empty. 

Lighting the fire, I feel the way

these two days between Thanksgiving

and Advent stretch silent and open.

I want to fall into these days,

to lay down in the great white expanse

of them amidst the absence of color, of noise,

of need. 

This is the moment between satisfaction

and desire when we turn our hearts

from training to see what is,

to longing for that which is to come.  


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Filled With Compassion

"But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion . . ."
                                                                                                                  Luke 15:20

First comes the divestment,

the division of all you have,
blessed, broken and given,  
like bread.   

Then the wait begins,

the long, empty hours and days

wherein you wander the vacant

halls of your life,

emptied of all that owned you.
 

Your life is a bowl now,

open,

hollowed out,

exposing a growing

breadth and depth of love,

a willing humility.  

Then and only then

may you be filled

with compassion,

filled with that which reaches out

beyond the borders of you,
beyond emptiness,
to embrace
one come home.

I Thirst (Following Jesus in the Desert)

Toward the end of our time together, I mentioned to my spiritual director that I was considering what kind of practice I might embrace for Lent, but didn’t really know where to begin.  She grew animated and explained that Lent is a time to join Jesus in the desert and as she spoke, reflecting on the passages in Matthew and Mark, I felt my mouth going dry. 

When I arrived that morning I was thirsty, having downed a good bit of coffee and a little milk with breakfast, but no water.  But I’d already asked to use her bathroom and felt on some sub-conscious level that asking for water might be too much.  So as we sat talking and praying together in that sunlit room filled with windows and plants, as my spirit was fed and nourished, my body was thirsty. 

As she spoke about the desert and the call for us to follow Jesus there, the dryness in my mouth became pronounced and the heat from the gas fireplace beside me grew to feel like the harsh light of the mid-day sun.  I felt the dryness of sand growing in and around me, as though the room itself was being transformed into the desert.  And in the midst of that, a panic arose in me and I said with urgency, “I don’t want to go into the desert.  I feel like winter itself has already been a desert and I can’t handle any more.”

These last few weeks since advent and maybe even before then, have felt barren and empty to me.  There's a dryness to parenting four young children through winter in this small dry house where we fill three humidifiers multiple times a day.  Each day is a barren stretch from the time my husband walks out the door ‘til the moment he comes home and I hold my breath and plod along, parched and weary, too often running on empty. 

Maybe I’m being melodramatic.  Maybe.  But as we talked, my friend suggested that there are many ways to enter into Lent and that maybe I could take on the practice of documenting the desert by simply being aware of the desert.

So I am.  And, as far as I can tell right now, it’s dry and empty and I thirst. 

*   *   *

I picture Jesus standing on the outskirts of everything, his feet sinking into the steadily warming sand as he looks back, his arm outstretched toward me.  He is silhouetted, enshadowed, by the glare of the unknown, the open, empty expanse of the desert, and I'm hesitant to enter it with him. 

But as I pause, holding back, I’m reminded of the blossoms of the desert, those flowers, rare and colorful that thrive in the heat and sand.  As he waits, something in me shifts and it's the possibility of beauty and life even there, where it should not be, that lifts my feet and moves me forward and for now, this is enough. 

 

Christ in the Wilderness - Consider the Lilies by Stanley Spencer

 

What practices feed your spirit and nourish you during Lent?  What questions or hesitations do you bring into this season?