Advent Blessings

The other day, I picked up a print at the Washington Printmaker's Gallery, upstairs from Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring. I bought it several weeks ago, when I was taking those printing classes I mentioned in an earlier post, but I had to wait for the show to be over before I could take it away.

The print is by Pauline Jakobsberg, whose work I have been following for a number of years, ever since she had a show, A Story to be Told, here in our own Dadian Gallery.  The piece is called "Life in the Mountains", and refers to her late husband's time in the Altiplano many years ago. A small, golden-toned square floats against a mottled, gray field, separated from it by a narrow black band. Within the square, a few broken lines suggest a man wearing a tall hat, but it's hard to make out what is happening.The wind blows the snow in every direction, and I think I can make out a hand or a foot, but then I think that I must be mistaken. Maybe it's only a rock or a distant peak. It's all like a dream, or a memory that I can't quite catch hold of.

The year that is coming to an end right now feels a bit like that, too. I can't quite make out the shape of those moments that loomed so large last summer, or remember if I actually kept the resolutions that I made so confidently at the turn of the year. In the rush to finish everything at the end of the semester, I lose track of time, of what I was going to do next, of what I was thinking about just a moment ago.

That's about right for Advent, I think. Advent is a time to prepare for what is coming, not for looking backward. While I grade end-of-term projects and tie up all the loose ends of the semester, I wait for Christ to emerge from the maelstrom and guide me on the paths of peace.

A Classroom as Holy Ground

This semester, I've been teaching a course called Art, Visual Culture, and Christian Understanding. This afternoon, I met with my students for the last time as they presented their final projects. The assignment was to create an artistic work, in any visual or plastic medium, that could be used as a focus for private devotion or for use in worship in a church. For some, making an art object felt completely natural, something that they do on a regular basis. For others, it was a huge stretch, something that they haven't done since at least the third grade.

All semester, each student has been required to keep a blog documenting their progress on the project. The first entries were simple descriptions of what they planned to do. In the next weeks, they included photographs of early sketches, lists of art supplies, and frustrated accounts of failed attempts to turn their visions into physical realities. One or two took me up on my offer of up to two weeks of reporting "Too busy with other classes to do anything this week." Over time, each student's project began to take shape, and I thought I knew what to expect when I came to class today.

Of course, I was wrong. Yes, I had seen photographs of each project in its various stages. But, once more, I was reminded that nothing takes the place of real presence. No photographs could prepare me for the visceral response to the textures and colors in a painting about the woman who was healed by touching the hem of Jesus' cloak; the elegant arrangement of elements in a portable altar; the welcoming presence of a clay cross that seemed to invite the viewer to leap into the arms of God like a small child greeting a beloved parent at the end of a long day. These, and all the other works we saw today, were tokens of incarnation, the Word of God, if not exactly made flesh, then certainly materialized, given real presence through the work of a struggling artist's hands. Today, an ordinary classroom became holy ground.

Rethinking the Pre-Raphaelites

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I had the chance to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. Watching Frodo and his friends linger with the elves in Rivendell, ride with the horsemen of Rohan, or fight Orcs and Balrogs and other dark foes, I found myself both entranced and in a state of cognitive dissonance. The ethereal women in long, flowing gowns; the slightly disheveled, handsome swordsmen in cloaks and boots; the earthy dwarves and mysterious sorcerers all inhabited a world that was first envisioned by a group of artists who called themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Schooled in a minimal, rational Modernist aesthetic, I was taught to disdain the florid, overwrought emotionalism of the Pre-Raphaelites. The writers of my art history books put these Englishmen, yearning for a medieval world that never was, outside the mainstream of progressive art, their movement a misshapen eddy that died out as rapidly as it arose. And, like the good student that I was, I accepted the storyline that marginalized them while putting their French contemporaries, Corot and Courbet, at the center.

It was easy to do that because I really do thrill to the ascetic emptiness of Barnett Newman’s zips, the un-nameable depths of Rothko’s color fields, the hard-edged logic of Sol Lewitt’s wall drawings. But as I learned to articulate the goals and glories of Modernism, my equally passionate taste for excess never went away. It just went on flowing silently underground, watering my own work, which never quite looks like the spare, austere paintings that I so much admire.

What I realized as I watched the Lord of the Rings is that my own work draws from the same well that inspired William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and, yes, J.R.R. Tolkien. The graceful curves, fanciful animals, dense patterning, and formalized flowers and vines that glow out of the pages of illuminated manuscripts inform my imagination as much as it did theirs. The medieval world, with all its spiritual mysteries, is an endless source of images and ideas for me, as much as it was for them.

And so I must begin to reconsider the Pre-Raphaelites, to learn what they have to teach me about looking, about art, about myself. What an adventure!  

Learning to Print

first print from plex plate

Two weeks ago, I went to the first session of a two-part class in drypoint at Pyramid Atlantic. The knowledgeable, patient, good-humored instructor showed us five students how to make marks on plates using gravers, roulettes, and drypoint needles; how to bevel the edges with a file so to protect both our hands and the paper from being sliced by sharp corners; and how to ink a plate, wet the paper, and run them through the etching press. Sending us home with a small plexiglas plate, a larger one of copper, and a wood-handled drypoint needle, he told us to come back the following week ready to print.

second print from plex plate after reworking

Since then, I've spent hours scratching lines into both plates, trying to figure out how to adapt my hard-won understanding of color and paint into a new language of value and line. I started by working on the plex, which is both softer and more brittle than copper. It also has the virtue of being transparent, so placing it over a white piece of paper allows me to see a shadow of the image as it emerges at the end of the needle. Still, since I have never worked in this way before, I don't really know how deeply I need to cut into the plate, or how much cross-hatching is really needed to make some areas as dark as I hope they will be.

first print from copper plate

The copper is both easier and more difficult than the plex. I love its warm glow and the solid feel it has in my hands. As I draw, the copper sometimes seems to part, allowing the needle to move smoothly in the direction I intend. But at other moments, some irregularity in the metal catches the point, and a line I see in my mind as a smooth, elegant curve becomes in reality a crooked, harsh barb that cannot be erased. Like sin, which can be forgiven but still changes the course of one's life, these ugly lines will never disappear, but can be incorporated with grace into the final image.

print from reworked copper plate 

The shiny surface makes it impossible to see the entire image all at once. I move the plate around, but at every angle some of the lines reflect the light brightly while others sink invisibly into the surface. I keep on working, alternating between frustration and delight, allowing the rhythm of repetitive, short strokes to take me into a meditative state.

Last week, the results of these experiments were be revealed by the pressure of the press, forcing the soft, wet paper into the ink-filled lines of the plate. I was surprised by the range of tones, by the reversal that I had failed to take account of, and by the appearance of lines in the print that I had not seen on the plate. Having done this much, I can see just the faintest outlines of how much more there is to do. It feels like a good start to a very long journey. The question is, is it a journey that I really want to take?

Seven Deadlies

Karen Swenholt, Gossip Tree (Envy),
2008, terra cotta and found wood

A few days ago, Karen Swenholt spoke to an overflow audience about her show, The Seven Deadlies, currently on exhibition in the Dadian Gallery. In Karen's visionary world, trees and people share juicy confidences, the earth is an angry woman with storm clouds gathering overhead, Adam creates himself without need of the divine hand or breath, and the crucified Lamb of God really is a lamb.

Karen Swenholt, Lamb of God (Redemption),
2002, terra cotta and steel

These elegant, attenuated figures seem to exist in some parallel universe, where nothing is quite what it seems to be and everything quivers on the edge of revelation. Each sculpture is simultaneously alluring and repugnant, the artist's sure hand grounding each pose in an knowing command of both anatomy and gravity, while defying both for expressive effect. Here, there are no easy answers, and grace, far from being cheap, is infinitely costly.

In her artist's talk, Karen said that we should not condemn those who commit the sins that she depicts, but rather see them, as Christ does, with compassion. In this show, the ugliness of sin is redeemed, transformed by the artist's hand and heart into moments of revelation.

To see more photographs of The Seven Deadlies in the Dadian Gallery's Flickr gallery, click here.

Here and Now

A few days ago, I went to Philadelphia to see the acclaimed show, Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus. This exhibition was inspiring and illuminating, filled with information about Rembrandt's technical achievements as well as his innovative depiction of Jesus as a portrait of a living human being rather than an instance of a received visual type. In the seven, small portrait sketches of a young man described as most likely a Jewish neighbor of the artist and the painting called "Head of Christ" derived from them, the humanity of Jesus overshadows his divinity. This is Jesus as sensitive, thoughtful, and vulnerable -- not an icon or an idea, but a person that one might encounter on the street. In this remarkable departure from tradition, Rembrandt changed the way that people imagine Jesus even today.

The Rembrandt show was not the only treasure in the museum, however. While I was waiting for my ticketed entrance time, I stopped in to a gallery on the lower level where they had a show called Here and Now: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs by Ten Philadelphia Artists. I was especially entranced with a set of prints called “Round Robin” by Astrid Magdalen Bowlby. The suite of six etchings were all made from the same plate, reworked over and over again until the initially spare, open image became a dense, dark black that pulsated with the nearly-invisible forms of the previous states. It seemed to be a metaphor for the way that everything that happens leaves traces in our lives, however obscure the past may become.

Another intriguing set of prints were Serena Perrone's  "Phantom Vessels and the Bastion of Memory V (fron the In the Realm of Reverie series I - VII, 2004-2008)". These large-scale woodcuts suggested some earlier, mythical, and slightly disturbing time, with serious-faced children playing in an unnatural landscape, or  appearing as disembodied heads peeking out of trees, . A large, open portion of the frosted mylar, left untouched by surrounding the dense black of the woodcut, suggested a dreamy river upon which floated delicate silverpoint drawings of sailing vessels in full rig. As I looked at it, it seemed to speak of the tension between the awareness of a current, all-too-real danger and the ethereal, entrancing memory or hope of a better time or place.

It seemed that no matter which way I turned in that space, yet another clever, technically excellent, visually seductive artwork caught both my eye and my imagination. I was surprised and oddly pleased that all the photographs had been printed, digitally and impeccably, in large formats that allowed close inspection of each detail without any visible grain. I was delighted by the inventiveness and playful seriousness of Mia Rosenthal's drawing that visually catalogued all the breakfast cereals found in a certain supermarket, or a watercolor painting by the Dufala brothers that depicted hundreds of liter-sized soft-drink bottles floating improbably in an indeterminate space. Mostly, I was excited to see that there in Philadelphia -- and, I suspect in pretty much any city -- there are so many artists who engage the eye and the mind in equal measure. Such artists invite us to follow them on a journey which, like Rembrandt's exploration of the face of Christ, honors tradition while departing from outworn forms that keep us from living in the present.

Ofrenda

2009 Ofrenda before the community's additions

Two years ago, one of our Artists-in-Residence, Lauren Raine, put together an ofrenda--a place of offering--in recognition of El Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Traditionally celebrated on November 2, the Feast of All Souls. While originating in Mexico, the custom of celebrating the lives of those who have died with a gaily-decorated shrine filled with flowers, paper lace, salt, bread, and candles, as well as photographs of the deceased, candy skulls, and dancing skeletons has spread to many other places. Here, the community added to Lauren's basic design, adding tokens and photographs of their loved ones to create an organic, collaborative artwork.

detail of the 2011 Ofrenda

This year, our Program Administrator, Amy Gray is helping us build another ofrenda. Many of the same elements used previously are present once again, but the addition of Amy's large, bright yellow paper-lace backdrop changes the overall effect, making it even more celebratory. As in such hand-made shrines and altars in every culture, a certain similarity is preserved even as the specific details change in response to new circumstances and new ideas.

the 2011 Ofrenda a few days before Dia de los Muertos

This year, the Wesley community has been adding elements to the basic Ofrenda, making it their own. When I went to look at it this morning, I saw photographs of loved ones that I hadn't seen a few days ago as well as a few new objects. Bread, salt, water, and a bowl of coins serve as signs of hospitality to those who live in this world, as well as to those who live in the world to come. The flickering light of candles invites the passerby to stop in the midst of a busy day to reflect, to pray, perhaps to light another candle. This  kind of participatory art-making, where everyone is invited to add items as they please, anything is possible, and no one is really in charge, taps into a desire to be known in ways outside our ordinary means of communication. In its over-the-top exuberance, it reflects a deep longing for both celebration and remembrance that is at the heart of the Day of the Dead.

In Disarray

My office, and thus my mind, is in disarray. I'd been unhappy with the arrangement of my office for some time, and today my new office furniture finally arrived. Of course, that meant taking everything out of every drawer and storage area, putting it all into boxes, and then sorting through it before taking it out of the boxes and putting into the new drawers and cupboards. It's a lot of work, and makes a big mess.

the view from the window - still in process

When I was a curator, I used to talk about designing a show as a kind of 3-dimensional collage in which the rule was that someone else got to choose what the elements look like. Reorganizing my office is not unlike curating a show, except that I don't have to please anyone but myself. As in making any artwork, what I need to do is to balance the colors, shapes, sizes, functions, and meanings of each individual element so that everything settles into a harmonious, balanced whole.

the view from the door

Now, the mess is pretty well gone, and I've re-hung most of the art. It's taken every spare corner of the day, and most of the spare corners of my mind. When something is out of balance, it's hard to ignore it and concentrate on anything else. At the moment, I'm still not convinced that I have it right. Like any other work-in-progress, I'll live with it for a while the way it is, and then decide.

Smiling at Mona

On the bulletin board over my desk, I have twelve reproductions of the Mona Lisa. They are pins, fastened four across by three down, to a rectangular piece of card stock that has been perforated so that it can separate easily, allowing them to be sold or given away one by one. Above each pin is the legend, "Fashion", and below lettering informs me that it is "imitation jewelry" -- in case I was in any doubt of their intrinsic value.

twelve Mona Lisa pins

These twelve smiling faces have been in front of me so long that I barely even notice them. Today, as I look at Mona, I see that the plastic in which the cheap, color prints are embedded is scratched. Some of the medallions are askew in their soft, metal backings. A few of the harmless, pointy prongs have bent backwards, giving them a slightly dangerous air.

These pins don't even show the whole painting, just a close-up of the woman's head and chest. The colors aren't quite right, either -- the greens of the landscape behind her are too green, the red of her bodice and lips too red. In fact, it's hard to know how many generations this image is removed from Leonardo's famous painting. Someone must have photographed the original at some point, but how many copies of copies were made before this garish imitation found its way to a factory in Hong Kong?

paintings, prints, and photographs in my office

Aside from the twelve identical Monas and some equally odd reproductions of Leonardo's equally famous Last Supper, my office walls are filled with a mixture of original prints and paintings, snapshots of my family, and postcards announcing exhibitions. These works feed my spirit, connect me with people I love, and help me to remember why art matters. In the midst of such richness, I ask myself why I keep these talismans of a painting that I don't even like all that much.

I did see the real thing, once. It was protected by bulletproof glass and velvet ropes that cordoned off the crowd of people pressing as close to it as they could. The crowd was oblivious to the other not-as-famous paintings in that large room at the Louvre. Meanwhile, I gaped in astonishment at familiar sights from my art-school days, now vividly real on the walls around me.

What I learned that day, or maybe re-learned, was that looking at a reproduction is no substitute for seeing the real thing. Paintings that I never before had understood or cared about when seen as slides or photographs in books suddenly came to life. In one painting after another, I saw the painter's hand, the sheer size of the canvas implying the physical movement of the artist. I saw how changes in thickness of paint, or changes in the angle of vision, changed how the image appeared. I saw details that had always escaped me as my eyes slid over the homogenized surfaces of prints and posters. In that company, the relatively small, over-publicized, much-admired Mona Lisa couldn't really command my attention.

The twelve, small reproductions on my bulletin board, however, manage to do just that. As the imitation jewelry twists and turns on its flimsy, cardboard support, the cheap, cheesy copies ask me to think about the value of art, the value of history, the value of fame. It often seems that Mona is smiling at me at as I work, sometimes with a smirk, sometimes with compassion, and at other times with simple amusement. I look up from the words shimmering on my computer screen, stretch my back and rub my eyes, and just smile back.

Art as Gift

I find myself bemused by people who want to assert that art is a gift, rather than an achievement. Often, these are the same people who work hard at their chosen profession, keeping up on the latest developments, honing their skills, looking for ways to be more efficient, productive, and successful. Or, if they play a sport, they know that regular practice will allow them to run faster, hit the ball with more accuracy, or stay in the game longer, no matter how much natural talent they may have been blessed with.

Somehow, though, when it comes to art, the benefits of education and practice are often unappreciated. We say that a person is gifted, talented, a genius. To paint a picture, to compose a tune, to choreograph a dance—these things seem marvelous, magical, the result not of work as it ordinarily understood but rather the product of a divine gift.

I do not, of course, deny that some people do seem to have more innate talent than others. However, it is important to recall that even those who are more gifted than most still must work hard to develop that raw talent into something that others will recognize as great. I am indebted to my friend, John Morris, for pointing me to the following story by Alan Jay Lerner, in his memoir, The Street Where I Live. Noting that every great star he had ever worked with never rested on talent alone, but worked harder, cared more, and had a greater sense of perfection than anyone else, he wrote,

I remember when I was doing a film with Fred Astaire, it was nothing for him to work three or four days on two bars of music. One evening in the dark grey hours of dusk, I was walking across the deserted MGM lot when a small, weary figure with a towel around his neck suddenly appeared out of one of the giant cube sound stages. It was Fred. He came over to me, threw a heavy arm around my shoulder and said, “Oh Alan, why doesn’t someone tell me I cannot dance?” The tormented illogic of this question made any answer sound insipid, and all I could do was walk with him in silence. Why doesn’t someone tell Fred Astaire he cannot dance? Because no one would ever ask that question but Fred Astaire. Which is why he is Fred Astaire.

Such a story might be told of any talented, disciplined artist who strives continually to move towards a vision of perfection.  The gift of talent is only a beginning, perhaps a necessary—but never a sufficient—condition of artistic achievement.

Love and Art

In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Arthur Danto writes about Rembrandt's painting of his mistress, Hendrijke, as Bathsheba at her bath (http://tinyurl.com/hendrijkebathsheba).  The woman so convincingly portrayed is not an idealized image of feminine perfection, but rather appears to be drawn from life, complete with sagging folds of skin and irregular features. And yet, Danto points out, Rembrandt has given us an image in which a rather ordinary woman "with just those marks of life upon her, is Bathsheba, a woman of beauty enough to tempt a king to murder for the possession of her." And, he goes on to say, to paint a "plain, dumpy Amsterdam woman as the apple of a king's eye has to be an expression of love."

It seems to me that Danto is onto something important here, something too easily missed in most discussions about the nature of beauty. That Rembrandt could see the woman that he loved as beautiful is not remarkable. Indeed, this is an experience that is common to anyone who has ever fallen in love. When we are in love, we delight in the way a tendril of hair curves over a cheekbone, the particular way the skin around the eyes crinkles when the beloved laughs, the incomparable melody of our loved one's sighs. New parents, too, are can stare by the hour at the delicacy of their child's fingernails, their hearts melting at the smell of newly-washed skin or the soft resistance of a pudgy thigh.

Artists often see this way. It is a commonplace of life drawing class that the favorite model is not the one who is lean and athletic, but rather the one who has interesting folds and contours to explore with pen or brush. In the process of attempting to follow the curve of a fleshy hip, the sinews of an aging hand, the wrinkles that define a sagging breast, the artist comes to see the model with the eyes of love.

What is remarkable in Rembrandt's painting, then, is not that he saw Hendrijke as beautiful, but that he invites us to see her as beautiful, too. When I look at his painting of Bathsheba at her bath, I do not see a plain, dumpy Amsterdam woman. I see a woman who already is a queen, thoughtful, composed, and fully herself. And she is beautiful, seen as Rembrandt saw her, with loving attention to every inch of both her inward and outward self.

about language . . . poetic and sacred.

One of the pleasures of my life recently is a class that I am taking on poetry. The format is simple: each week, we gather to share poems that we like or that have particular meaning to one of us, reading them aloud and then talking about what makes them "work." This week, we were asked to reflect on the connections between poetic and sacred language.

This is something that I think about quite a bit, as I also participate in a group that meets weekly to write liturgical texts collaboratively. As we wrestle with which word or phrase best expresses a particular image, or where to break a line so that the congregation can read it easily in unison, many of our decisions are based on poetic considerations. What makes the language both poetic and sacred is the attention to detail, both in the Does the rhythm scan easily, or does it clunk? Is there too much or too little alliteration, repetition, or internal rhyme? Do the sounds of the words flow easily from one to the next, or will people stumble over awkward combinations?

In a recent post, Kathy Staudt spoke of Mary Oliver’s advice to “Just//pay attention”. That quality of careful attention, both in the writing and in the reading, is what evokes the sense of the sacred, whether or not a poem is explicitly about matters of faith.  What makes something poetic rather than prosaic is the poet’s attention to such matters as how the words sound, both singly and in relation to one another; the metaphoric quality of specific, concrete images; and a kind of inner logic holding together images and ideas that don’t logically seem to go together at all.

To speak particularly unpoetically, I might say that sacred language is a particular use, or subset, of poetic language. The difference between sacred language and poetry is that, while poetry may have virtually any subject matter, and may take virtually any stance towards it, sacred language is intended to speak of or to God, to engage specifically religious ideas, or to evoke certain spiritual states. Some poetry does this, of course, but poetry has many other modes and intentions, as well. Nevertheless, when we really pay attention to the particular moment of the poem, we may be transported into the realm of the sacred, no matter what the poem seems to be about.

More Visions of Church

A few weeks ago, I wrote about an "instant art" project that my colleagues and I did at our faculty retreat. Today, I would like to reflect on a somewhat more deliberate art project that, like the construction paper visions of church, will never be reviewed in one of the glossy art magazines but, nonetheless, carries deep meaning for the person who made it and the community in which she works.

burlap backing with a few hands glued on

The work in question is a 4' x 6' burlap banner, made by one of of my Doctor of Ministry students for an event at the school where she works. At a faculty/staff retreat a few days earlier, the student had asked those present to trace their hands on colorful pieces of felt, writing a word inside the hand evoking something of their sense of the retreat. Back at home, the student cut out the 147 hand shapes, praying for each person as she did so. She notes that this was a long process but very peaceful, making her feel close to each one of the participants.

Once all the hands were cut out, she glued the them onto the burlap, leaving the fingers loose and overlapping them to fill in the shape of a cross. Finally, she wrote the words "Christ has no hands....on earth....now....but ours" on smaller pieces of burlap that she also glued to the main banner.

The student writes,

the finished banner in the chapel

Yesterday I used the banner in the Freshmen Parent mass.  I told the 400  parents present about the banner and that we, as a community, offered our hands to love and guide, to teach and inspire their daughters.  The banner is the symbol of this welcoming, accepting, attitude, grounded in God and in Mercy.

This morning I hung the banner in our chapel.  It will be a daily reminder as students, faculty and staff, parents gather for smaller prayer services in that space.

The colors are vibrant depicting the life in our community, the burlap is rough depicting the dark times that will come, the cross holds us all together as our faith does.

When I look at this banner, the fluttery fingers seem to be the feathers of angels' wings, lifting the prayers of my student and her community into a place that is far beyond the humble materials of burlap and felt. The words reminding us that we are the hands of God on earth are present, but serve only to anchor the busy energy of the hands that reach out in all directions. This visual analog to Paul's image of the community as the living Body of Christ is, in a very real sense, the work of the people, a liturgical moment transfigured into art. That this is not great art is not the point. What matters to those who will encounter it every day is the story of its making, and the meaning that it has for those who know that story.

"Just Pay Attention": The Practice of Writing in Place

by Kathleen Staudt (Kathy), Adjunct in Religion and Literature -- more on this on her blog at poetproph


A kind of “core text” for my teaching about poetry and spirituality has become Mary Oliver’s poem “Praying,” included in her 2006 volume Thirst and now used widely, I've noticed, in workshops and classes where people are exploring what it means to pray, and how poetry might help with this. It’s a good place to start as I reflect on the role of poetry and contemplative in my own spiritual practice, both as a poet and as a spiritual guide and companion. Oliver’s poem begins

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together, , , , , ,

Here are two things that are important both in the life of prayer and in the writing life. It doesn't matter so much what we choose to write or pray about: often it's a matter of letting the world give itself to us: “Just//pay attention”: that’s the hardest part. To slow down long enough to let what is happening around us claim and deepen our attention. To “wake up” to life, as the Sufi poets invite us to do. And then to “patch/ a few words together,” not for self-promotion, but as a prayerful response to what we are noticing.
This can happen in a contemplative journal entry, or sometimes in a poem, where the white spaces on the page, and the shimmering of the words tell me something more about what I am seeing and experiencing. This kind of writing becomes for me a way of entering into dialogue with the place I am in.

Paying attention and patching words together. This can indeed become a spiritual practice, opening, as Oliver says later in her poem, “a doorway into thanks."