Category: Uncategorized

Jesus Meets His Afflicted Mother

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment
This station brings up for me, and probably for every parent, all of the deep, continuous fears that we have for our children.  My own daughter is thirteen now, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop being afraid for her.  Throughout the day little fears grip me, and I pray for her, asking God to protect her.  I don’t entertain the illusion that this means she’ll never suffer harm or hardship.  The prayers are for me, so that I can feel that I’ve done something.  If God incarnate had to suffer, it seems unlikely that my own beloved child can escape it.  And of course she’ll learn and grow through suffering, as we all do.  But, oh, is it hard to watch.
Mary’s child lived in a more dangerous time and place than I do, and reflecting on her heightens my awareness of all of those parents in the world who are living in constant and rational terror that their children will be killed.  Again and again I see photos of refugee children washed up on the shores of the Mediterranean, their dead bodies held by strangers.  An illusion of some degree of control is probably necessary for surviving parenthood, but for these children’s parents that illusion no longer exists.  They couldn’t control war, or the sea, or the actions of strangers who might or might not be kind to them.  I know that they reached towards their children, trying to bless and save them.  I know that, if they are still alive, they are living on the cross.

Jesus Falls for the First Time

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment
I wrote this small prayer when I started this project:
A Prayer Before Painting
May I give up control.
May the image be my friend, and speak to me.
May it assert itself gently, and sometimes agree to the direction of my hand.
May it see me as I, patiently, try to see it.
May the quiet of God sit in my mind as I paint.
May my own quiet listen.
Having written this prayer, I’ve been having a hard time living up to it.  The paintings I made for the first two stations were overworked, because I was trying very hard to control them.  The painting I made for this third station is more willful.  I told myself that I would allow it to be as free as I could, that I would accept accidents as they happened, that I would rejoice in all the small serendipities that develop when I try to put paint to paper.
I’m glad that I was able to give up some of my control as I painted the third station, because Jesus’s first fall while carrying the cross is his own moment of lack of control.  It comes early in the stations – not when he’s physically or spiritually exhausted, but when he’s just starting out.  In some ways this makes it harder to take.  There’s no excuse that can be given for it, it just happens.  I find it to be true in my own life that I’m more willing to accept my mistakes when I can rationalize them.  It’s the mistakes that catch me unawares and that I make for no apparent reason that I struggle with the most.

Jesus Takes Up His Cross

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I painted the cross small, because I don’t think I’m the only one who minimizes hard experiences at their outset.  One way of coping with coming pain is to tell ourselves that it’s not going to be that bad.  And when we begin the journey to our own personal crosses, it often really isn’t that bad at first.  The upset of change hasn’t really taken hold yet, and we have a lot of old resources to draw on.  It’s only when we realize that the process of change will take a long time, and that those resources will diminish and maybe be forgotten, that the true agony of bearing our crosses really sets in.  So here, at the beginning of Jesus’s journey to his crucifixion, the cross is rather small, although still significant.

The Holy Spirit

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

I had an idea for an image of the Holy Spirit, knowing that the very idea of an image of the Holy Spirit was foolish. Of the three persons of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit seems most resistant to description, both in words and images. A dove. A flame. But what else? When we try to describe our experience of it, we can only talk about the enlightened feeling that comes upon a group of people when they’re together and helps to guide their decisions. Beyond that, words seem inadequate.

I went looking for prayers to the Holy Spirit, but couldn’t find any. Then I read that we don’t pray to the spirit because the spirit is prayer itself. The spirit is the spark of divinity in us, and it speaks, and listens to, the bonfire of divinity in everything around us. Yet we do pray to the Holy Spirit, at least in song. “Come, Holy Spirit,” we plead, and while we’re singing it’s not unusual for the spirit to descend, or, at least, for us to notice that it’s been there all along.

I know the spirit, and yet my capacity to depict or describe it is limited. Others have done it better. Here’s what Meister Eckhart had to say about the spirit:

“The Father laughs with the Son; the Son laughs with the Father.
The Father likes the Son; the Son likes the Father.
The Father delights in the Son; the Son delights in the Father.
The Father loves the Son; the Son loves the Father.
This laughter, liking, delighting, loving is the Holy Spirit!”

And here’s what Rilke said about the spirit:

“If I don’t manage to fly, someone else will. The spirit wants only that there be flying. As to who happens to do it, She has only a passing interest.”

So maybe it doesn’t matter if I can’t perfectly depict or describe the spirit. It’s action in me helps to depict and describe me, and its action in other people will bring about the necessary work, even if I have only a marginal role in it.

The Spirit Helps Us in Our Weakness

~ KPB Stevens ~ Leave a comment

Since I started thinking about the Holy Spirit I find references to it everywhere. Take, for instance, this quote from Richard Rohr, which I read yesterday:

The Holy Spirit is that aspect of God that works largely from within and “secretly,” at “the deepest levels of our desiring,” as so many of the mystics have said. That’s why the mystical tradition could only resort to subtle metaphors like wind, fire, descending doves, and flowing water to describe the Spirit. More than anything else, the Spirit keeps us connected and safely inside an already existing flow, if we but allow it. We never “create” or earn the Spirit; we discover this inner abiding as we learn to draw upon our deepest inner life…Home is another word for the Spirit that we are, our True Self in God. The self-same moment that we find God in ourselves, we also find ourselves inside God, and this is the full homecoming, according to Teresa of Avila. (1)

That helpful, sighing spirit is, in effect, us, ‘Our True Self in God,’ at least according to Rohr. It feels vainglorious somehow. I’m uncomfortable with equating myself with the Trinity, even my best and truest self. But I suppose that he means that my True Self is only a fragment of the spirit, and that everybody else has a fragment, too. Or maybe fragment is the wrong word, maybe it’s like a fractal, where the smallest part contains all of the whole. Regardless, the realization that everyone has this True Self, this fractal spirit, means that no one person can claim any kind of spiritual supremacy over any other person. If I participate in the Trinity, so do you, and we do so equally.

It’s comforting to think that our True Self in God is active and working on our behalf, even when the rest of us seems dead as a stone, mute with grief and confusion, unable to think beyond the bare exigencies of existence. I think that’s why I always want to give Paul’s words to people who are suffering. As a reminder that they have a true home inside of them, and that it’s as mute as they are, but still acting, still sighing. Participating in their grief but also still reaching out from it to the rest of the Trinity, and to the fractal spirit in other people.

 

(1)Rohr, Richard (2011-02-11). Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (p. 90). Wiley. Kindle Edition.