Sharing our Story

This morning I visited a new art exhibit at Grace Church.

Called Sharing Our Story, the exhibit features works of art by several of the women in the congregation, and parts of it are incredibly moving -- especially if you read the artist's statements that accompany the works.

I was particularly touched by the three pictures closest to my own. They were black and white shots, beautifully composed and executed, of a baby, and my first instinct was (I confess) to write them off: I consider baby pictures in a league with pictures of puppies and kittens; just too easy, too obvious.

But there was a prayerful quality that drew me in, and when I read the artist's statement and learned that this was a child whose life had hung in the balance due to severe medical problems, I understood in my head what my heart had already told me: these were no ordinary baby pictures.

If you have been reading this blog since its inception, you know it began because my friend Karen's daughter died. Karen and I haven't seen each other in over a year, but we still share emails, read each other's blogs and comment occasionally. So this afternoon I got an email from another friend who had followed one of Karen's comments over to Karen's blog, and was deeply moved: she, too, has known the experience of mothering a child whose life hangs in the balance.

This thought, in turn, leads me to the memory of another friend, Leigh, whose son committed suicide while vacationing in Italy with his family a little over six years ago. And I remember Leigh telling me that the images of Mary which litter the Italian countryside and fill the Italian churches were an incredible solace to her.

Because, of course, Mary, too, knows what it means to sit with a child whose life hangs in the balance.

It was also Leigh who shared with me a set of Eckhart Tolle CD's called Stillness Speaks. And on one of those CD's Tolle says something that has become a life lesson for me. Now (to tie this in to my previous blog post) Eckhart Tolle would probably also be viewed with suspicion by many of my Christian friends. But I think that God, or the Divine, or the Universe, or whatever you choose to call That Which is Truth in your life, speaks through him as readily as He/She/It speaks through the Bible, or the Torah, or the Koran; through you, through me, through our children; through all of creation.

And what Tolle says, that I was reminded of again this morning, by those photos and by my friends, is that "the purpose of all art is to be a portal to the Sacred."

Amen.