In the late 80’s and early 90’s, I was studying fine art at a community college; painting, drawing, sculpture and design. I loved it, and I often reflect on how I could just lose myself in an abstract watercolor or in the brushstrokes that leapt like flame from a canvas of sunflowers or a field of wheat by Van Gogh. It was always incredible to watch something come to life, so to speak, from my own paint-spattered or clay covered hands… to see it start to fill in and fill out of the void of a bleached canvas or a lump of clay.
I remember one project in particular; we were each commissioned to make a copy of the work of an old master. I chose a painting of Carravaggio’s called The Lute Player. A great way to learn, in the way of art, music or for that matter the spiritual life, is to mimic the art of the masters, to trace the outlines of their marks and movements, and by habit to acquire some of their gift. We catch the sparks from the fire of their creative genius and carry it back to the kindling in our own souls.
– Sirach 23:19
Today’s Gospel from Mark 4 has Jesus speaking of this light, this blazing, penetrating beam of brightness that just will not leave us alone… “For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible; nothing is secret except to come to light. Anyone who has ears to hear ought to hear.”
Now I’m older. I look back and I see more clearly. I think there are two kinds of light. One is man-made, like the light of flash bulbs from paparazzi; those annoying money-hungry celebrity photographers who are forever hovering over Hollywood and endlessly snapping shots of the famous and the vulnerable. And the other light is the light of God. It is claritas, lux mundi, the Morning Star and the Sun of Righteousness. The man-made light is merely a flash. It intrudes, grasps, glares, and exposes weakness for the sake of gossip, mockery, or transference. Or it beams on the beautiful for their moment in the sun, splashing a false light, a dream decoy to us in an effort to sell something.
God doesn’t do that with His Light. His Light is simply reality. It is Truth…. and “in His Light we see Light.” We see ourselves, the world, other people in the correct sense, and in the clarity of that Light, we let the Master’s Hand enter in, touch the clay, shape the heart, move the brush and color the mind with the image of His Son.