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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday March 26, 2001 Volume III Number 13 |
FOCUS - Windows
Towards the end of the era Western historians call the Renaissance Period, about the time Shakespeare wrote and directed his stage plays at the Globe Theater in London, and King James commissioned the translation of the Bible into modern English (The King James Version), about the same time the Captain John Smith with three ships and one hundred five other English cavaliers landed on the Virginia coast forming the first Settlement (Colony) at Jamestown, Rembrandt, the Dutch Master, refined his style as a painter and engraver in Amsterdam.
It was our second tour of Buckingham Palace
(two days before Diana once Princess of Whales was memorialized at Westminster
Abbey while the world watched) that for the first time, an original Rembrandt
caught my eye. Really caught my
eye. Such enormous detail on a
giant oil canvass four hundred years old, and faces illumined by soft sources
of natural light and shadow, bordered by the signature black background of
Rembrandt’s most famous work. I
turned to Carolyn and said, “I’d like to know more about him.”
Rembrandt’s portraits made him reasonably wealthy early in the Seventeenth Century. Commissions came from all over the world. Between 1608 and 1660 he painted furiously. And then he developed a technique for etching that became a standard for mass production of art around the world.
But his favorite subjects were biblical.
Henri Nouwen, a thoughtful and prolific Catholic priest, tells of his fascination with Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son. Actually, there are two Prodigal paintings.
The first portrays a rather Dutch looking Prodigal squandering his inheritance in a local tavern, in the company of a young woman one supposes not to be his wife. She sits on his lap; he turns toasting us with one hand raising a tall tankard of a dark brew of some sort, his other hand on the lady, giving us a devil-may-care grin that tells us he is master of his universe, gleefully draining away whatever reserves of dignity and character may remain. She turns to us as well, but her look tells us we are interrupting. Whatever it is that is happening between these two is none of our business. She doesn’t seem at all engaged by this swaggering celebration of self-indulgence. She’s a woman at work. His sword remains sheathed. But one wonders if in this groggy state he would have any capacity at all for self-defense. One wonders if at this moment of foggy inebriation he is even capable of standing upright. This prodigal of Rembrandt’s is loathsome indeed. Pathetic.
The second painting Rembrandt called simply “The Return of the Prodigal.” It is quite a contrast to the first portrait. Here, the prodigal is prostrate before his father. Gone is the expensive suit of clothes. The jeweled handled sword. The ostrich feathered hat. The ruffled sleeves. The expensive woman. The silly grin.
This
prodigal’s face is buried in his father’s warm embrace.
As the father looks down in compassion, you can see the pathos in his
eyes. He wears a cape of red, and his sleeves tell us of the
father’s considerable wealth and the hands are gentle on the shoulders of his
son. The prodigal’s head is
closely shaven, as though fighting a disgusting disease, maybe lice. The boy’s clothing is tattered, torn, soiled.
And his feet are exposed from underneath the ragged robe.
They are bare. The leather
from the shoes, gone. Standing
beside the two, looking on with contempt is the prodigal’s brother.
He is well dressed, scrubbed and layered in fine cloth, holding back,
hands tightly clasped, and we can feel his disgust and annoyance at the
inappropriate warm welcome for the shiftless, indolent, good-for-nothing
ne’er-do-well he once called his brother.
A third character looks perplexed; arms folded, suspending judgment. A fourth - a blur in the shadows; as though Rembrandt is inviting us to figure it out - who is right? How do you unravel the mysterious complexities of this dysfunctional family? Rembrandt captures all that on his canvass.
Nouwen, before he died in 1996, told his readers and his audiences that we don’t take time to let art speak to us. We are in a perpetual rush. We miss it entirely.
When he first looked at the “Return of the Prodigal,” Nouwen was spellbound. He sat, pondering the detail. The rich texture of the painting. And he asked God to speak to him about his own condition as a spiritual being. As he gazed and thought, and thought again, he wept.
He picked up some history books. He learned about Rembrandt’s desire to communicate Biblical truth to the generations through his work. He discovered that the original painting was on display in an art museum in Russia. He bought a plane ticket to St. Petersburg.
In that museum, he pulled up a chair. And far away from home, lost in his thoughts, the priest sat alone before the classic Rembrandt oil and let the healing flow.
For four straight hours.
* * * * * * *
Ken Gire, friend and author, tells this story in his book, Windows of the Soul. He quite agrees with Nouwen. If, as we like to say, all truth is God’s truth, then we can hear from God and see his truth in many places. Some of them unexpected. Unlikely. If Bible characters heard from God in a whirlwind or a burning bush or a donkey or in a pastoral meadow or a running brook, then perhaps, so can we. And we may even learn something about our spirituality from a work of art.
Gire was moved by the priest’s experience in a Russian museum of art.
So, Ken says, if Nouwen can learn from Rembrandt, perhaps I do the same.
But he’d never taken an art appreciation course, or an art history class. He’d been to museums, but they seemed so musty and stale. Dullness blurred his vision whenever he ventured in.
But an old song contained a clue for Ken. It was written in the sixties by a poet named Don McLean. The lyrics spoke of a painter who lived and died over a hundred years ago. McLean’s song had the same name as a famous painting by this artist, also Dutch (like Rembrandt) – “Starry Night.”
It’s a ballad about a troubled painter who wrestled with his own personal demons. The introspection and self-doubt led to isolation. And when he died, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, nearly no one knew of his prolific work. Only later would he be called the greatest Dutch Master since Rembrandt.
But according to McLean’s woeful ballad, on one starry starry night,
You took your life as
lovers often do -
I could have told you Vincent
This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.
The Vincent in McLean’s 1968 song was Vincent Van Gogh. Ken Gire thought, “I’ll find a Van Gogh painting and see if perhaps it will mean as much to me as the ‘Prodigal’ meant to Nouwen.”
And then he learned that Van Gogh’s
painting, “Irises” was on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum – a
painting acquired recently at a Sothoby’s of London auction for tens of
millions of dollars. Certainly,
Ken thought, this will be an intellectually expanding and spiritually rewarding
moment in my journey towards wholeness.
He made his museum reservation. Traveled there alone on one smoggy Southern California summer day. And when he found the painting, he pulled up a chair. All the way there, he felt one with the gentle Catholic Priest, Henri Nouwen.
There, alone, in the echoing halls of the great museum, Ken sat before Van Gogh’s Irises and pondered the yellows and blues and the textures of the flowers, taking in as much as he could.
He lasted ten minutes.
Nothing happened.
* * * * * * * * *
Me, I don’t know much about art, either. In fact, I always thought that Dutch Masters were cigars.
But I do know that there is a world beyond the world I can see and touch and feel. And I believe that we humans are more than the sum of our parts. We are flesh and blood. But there is something mysterious in us that transcends the physical. And that’s where our real needs are.
We need to eat. We need to breathe. We need exercise. We need shelter from the elements. We need water.
But even when all those needs are met, we need something more. And that ache to know and to be known, to understand, to connect with others… and to connect with the world we live in. To know that someone beyond time… and to connect with the Master Designer… these needs are just as real.
We will never plumb the depths of all of these great mysteries. But all around us are windows… windows of the soul.
Ken Gire thinks we need to take a little more time to look for those windows, and when we find them, stop and see.
I quite agree.
* * * * * * *
Ken left the museum disappointed. He expected epiphany. He got a yawn. He hoped for a blinding revelation. He wanted answers. Instead, he walked away with more questions.
He wanted to know more about this painter of Irises.
So he bought a book in the Museum store. Van Gogh wrote long arduous letters, many to his brother Theo, that reveal much about his painful journey.
Ken started reading.
Vincent Van Gogh, born in 1853 the son of a minister, wanted to be an evangelist. He studied theology, and became a missionary. He loved to sketch and paint. His brother, Theo, became an art dealer.
Vincent’s teachers and church leaders considered him bright, articulate, but too sensitive. He preached on street corners, looking for converts. But he was frail, and overbearing. The church hierarchy sent him as a missionary to a poverty stricken mining town in England. He was destined for obscurity.
He developed a keen sensitivity to these hardworking, poor men and women, families who suffered dangers and disease and suffering hammering and chiseling black dusty walls in the bowels of the earth. As he counseled them, and prayed with them, and taught them Bible stories, he identified with their poverty, followed the teaching of Jesus, literally, and sold everything he owned to identify with those he cared for.
His superiors were unimpressed by his fervor. The mission board fired him. They said he was too much the zealot. He carried his faith to unrealistic extremes, they said..
The shunned minister turned to his easel and pallet. He painted landscapes and portraits. He tried to sell some through his brother’s dealership, but no one seemed interested in his work.
He traveled to Paris and London and Amsterdam, seeking out the great masters and learning technique and color and texture.
But the humiliation of failure in the church, and the disappointment he caused his father the clergyman haunted him. Tormented him. He grew more and more isolated. Until finally, he admitted himself to be institutionalized for psychological treatment.
His bouts with depression and high anxiety became more and more intense. He turned inward, blaming himself for his failures. With a sharp blade, he cut off a piece of his own ear. His paintings reflected the dark passions of his battle to become whole. He became the master of color. His stunning combinations created moods. Feeling. Pathos. Swirling brush strokes, agitated motions and twisted shapes. Yellows. Mauves. Pinks.
And from a small square room in 1889, where he sat a voluntary patient at St Remy’s asylum, he looked through a single small window on a flower garden. Outside, irises in full bloom. Iris – in Greek mythology the goddess of the rainbow. Flowers, blue blossoms against the greens and browns and yellows of the garden outside the asylum walls. Van Gogh put his brush in the pallet of colored oil and then on the canvass – and created a painting, which survives to this day as a window to the soul of a gentle man.
I could have told you Vincent,
this world was never
meant for one as beautiful as you.
Now that painting hangs on the wall of the J Paul Getty Museum of West Los Angeles California with an armed guard standing by to protect the multi-million investment of the heavily endowed foundation.
And after reading Van Gogh’s letters to Theo, Ken Gire sees that painting with a different set of eyes.
So do I.
* * * * * * *
Tony Campolo addressed a large gathering of husbands and wives in an after dinner talk in Orlando Florida a couple years back. There were chandeliers and round tables with crystal goblets and china coffee cups. A crew of servers kept the coffee warm as dessert plates were cleared. Most everyone was dressed for the evening.
East coast charm dripped all over the room.
He spoke of marriage and love and keeping the fires of love and passion stoked. It’s dangerous out there, he said, and the commitment and care and hopes and dreams that brought you together are all to easily lost in the shuffle of modern day living.
And then he said something simple. But profound. He told us husbands and wives that we needed to look at each other again. Sustained eye contact. It’s probably easier for wives than husbands, he explained. We need to take time to look deeply into each other’s eyes just like in those early days, and see past the externals… in search of heart and soul.
“Men… look into her eyes.” And then he threw back his head and laughed, knowing that for many of us tough guys, it all sounded rather silly. “No, I’m very serious. Look into her eyes, and don’t look away until you see something of her soul. Something of the person she is. Something of the abundance of love she has for you and your home and your children. Do not look away until you see it. And then cherish it. Those eyes are windows. Windows that enable you to see the person she really is. You need to know her that deeply. And your affection will blossom like a red rose. Trust me.”
And there was silence in the room.
We knew he was not only serious. He was right.
Tony Campolo drew us in to a holy place. To sacred ground. He accompanied us all to a window not on the world, but to a window on the soul.
* * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
When Bill Gates took his company to yet another quantum leap towards PC dominance, he introduced a new graphical operating system. It would replace MS DOS, the clunky old program that put nothing but letters and numbers on our computer screens. Now we would see pictures and “icons” in brilliant color. We would see photographs, and even videos. And we would control those programs with a “mouse.” It’s no surprise, really, that he called this magical new technology “Windows.”
The computer has indeed become a window on our world. What are we looking at through that window?
Your world is fast paced. The demands never let up. It’s quite possible that as you race down the hall, you are running past windows that may well give you a whole new perspective on your life, and the decisions you need to make, and the people who are most important to you.
Today, just for today, stop in front of that window. Stop long enough to take in the truth you see through the glass. Like Henri Nouwen, look at the Rembrandt until its message penetrates and teaches and touches you. Like Van Gogh, look out the window and let the garden speak. Like Campolo, sit across the table long enough to see into the eyes of the person you love, look long enough to capture the soul message.
It’s something you need to see. Listen. It's something you need to hear.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2001
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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