Layers of Beauty and Waiting
*We invited our friend and Sustainable Faith's Spiritual Direction Instructor Danny Muillins to our email today. Welcome, Danny!
It’s been a long slog. In some ways like a prison sentence, an enforced confinement. An endless stream of days that lost distinction. Is it Monday? Thursday? We carried the burden of boredom and sought out ways to relieve it. You can only watch so much Netflix. There’s a finite number of closets to clean and drawers to organize. Once they’re done, they’re done. Sales of exercise bikes, jigsaw puzzles and pajamas went through the roof. My pursuit of some sense of joy led me to an earlier-in-life interest: oil painting. Little did I know life lessons were in store. Here’s a couple of them.
Lesson #1: We Were Created To Create
Makoto Fujimura, a premier artist and author has said, “The essential question is not whether we are religious, but whether we are making something.” Creating, or making, is a vital part of the nature of God. One of the ways we most clearly reflect the imago Dei is when we are “making” something. A vegetable garden, a backyard swing, a handmade birthday card (a tradition in my family), a delicious meal. There is a joy which comes from making that comes from nowhere else.
It’s probably important to point out a difference between productivity and creativity. Production is generally linked to demand. Creation is always linked to desire. For many, creativity was dying a slow death during the pandemic. The life, the breath, was being sucked out of us. Creativity is linked to the Breath of God. God “said” let there be, and there was. They breathed things into existence. When we create, we are recovering the Breath of God. Oil painting was a way I reconnected with God’s breath. I moved more fully toward being a “living soul.”
Lesson #2: You Have To Let Paint Dry
Beauty is achieved through layers. You can’t paint layers unless you’re willing to wait for paint to dry. I was deeply frustrated I couldn’t get the effect I desired the first time I put a brush to canvas. Turns out, however, there are no wasted brush strokes. A previous stroke may eventually get covered up, but that stroke is what got you to the present stroke.
It’s a layer at a time. And each layer must dry before you apply the next, and the next, and something of the previous layer shows through and adds complexity and beauty to the present layer. It takes time. You have to wait. And I mostly hated it . . .
as I looked at an unfinished landscape
and wondered if I would be able to create what I saw in my head,
but couldn’t do anything about adjusting what I saw on canvas for a few more days,
and lived in the tension and fear of wondering if I could create the look I was reaching for,
and was afraid I’d experience feeling like I “failed” if I couldn’t,
and then feel like throwing it away and starting all over,
or just throwing it away period.
But I waited. I waited for the paint to dry. And I learned. And I experimented. Creation is an act of faith, yes, but I also think it feels a whole lot like experimenting in a good way. And then I loved it, and chose to do it all over again encountering the same frustrations, the same waiting, the same faith, and experienced the same joy.
I was just looking for something to do during the pandemic. I didn’t know life lessons were on the agenda. God was and is in the process of creating me. He isn’t simply fixing me, He’s creating me. We aren’t headed toward being fixed. We are headed towards restoration, to New Creation.
Thank you, Danny, for this beautiful offering and painting! A new co-hort for Spiritual Direction Training is starting in Atlanta (and around the country) this fall. Check it out! (Beth is a graduate and Judy a volunteer instructor, so we obviously recommend Sustainable Faith.)