Wondering while Wandering…
…an artist’s limp toward finding ‘Radiance Through the Rain’
‘May the Rain of Suffering Soften Our Hearts,
Seeping Radiance to Our Thirsty Places.’
J. Douglas Thompson© 2022
Todays thought via this poem relates to the strong winds of disconcertion regarding world events that pervade our spaces daily and how the White Pine of the north gives us thoughts of response.
Granite Places*
Inhospitable – hard – windswept – bare
Granite horseshoe wildly flung
Vast and north, strong and free
Canadian Shield.
Emaciated quilt of threadbare soil thinly carpets vast expanse
Quilts – so easily displaced – lay bare this giant’s plate
Revealing slightest pink – textured lines striate – memories from icy wars.
There they rise – emerging
Seeming impossibility
Deriding dust so wafer thin
Titans tall of windswept green – reach to touch and kiss the sky
Swaying stately splendour strong.
Below at base – the fissure waits
Giant’s lonely seed is blown
Tumbling red faced, to the void
Whack!
Naked and exposed it falls
Avian breakfast seeks above? Whew!
Shiver shakes it full awake
Decisions nose right in the face
To hope and dream for future’s sake?
Thoughts – these crazy thoughts
Visions – vast with arms to sweep
Expressions praise and shade to give.
Digging deep – to cut through stone
Really?
Granite?
Imperceptible topsoil
Ridiculous
Kill the dream!
Impossible – growth – that large?
Roll over – take a nap
Give rest a try
Go back, they say – and close your door
Dream your dreams – but far away
Expose your head?
Annihilate?
I hear it speak – that lowly seed
Throbbing choices to endure
Reaching down and reaching up
Pushing back the darkness deep
Gestation’s travel now complete – new life’s about to come
Tiny head peeks skyline’s orb and – groans
Scorching heat of summer’s sun
Blasts of autumn’s freezing rain
Depth of frostbite’s bitter bite
Year to follow lonely year.
Faithful faces tests of time
Mock and ridicule deride
Sneering, laughing, shaking heads
Walking backs again depart
Bother?
Why? Just shrivel up – and die
No one there to see or care
Yet…
Monolith’s monicker, great white pine
Grandeur’s dance from stage afar
Bent with windswept backs they stand
Trademarks of the stalwart north.
Wild framed warriors – scars abound
Contorted mar of deepest scar
Groans of grief – misunderstood
Twisted broken limbs that speak – and so they lean
Quietly, humbly into view.
Artist paints His masterpiece
Single focal point he claims – astounding art – all that remains
Image of decided truth
Gracing palace walls where
Thousands come to stand and gaze
Stay to revel and to praise
Giving up?
Yes, YOU!
Crushed with pressure-crevice living?
Walk away?
To be sure – temptations strong
Softness winks her warm caress
Enticingly says, ‘disengage’
Constant storms too much you say?
Long and lonely vigils wait
Broken through obedience
Surrounded and embraced by few
Raising standards very high
Billowed, bent and sails all full
Driving roots through solid rock
Framed in grace a light to spot
Short-lived lives – to count or not?
So let me say, keep at it, despite the heavy legs and elbows worn thin having done what is right, for, when all is said and done, when the King arrives back, there will be fair reward, if we hang in there, not having slipped out the back door, but rather keeping on keeping on with tenacity Galatians 6:9 JDT paraphrase
* Excerpt from ‘Radiance through the Rain’ Copyright 2020, J. Douglas Thompson
My previous book ‘Radiance through the Rain’ is a self-published, hard-cover limited edition coffee table book showing more than 100 images of my paintings. Alongside of the paintings are sixty-one essays on how the act of painting is a metaphor for doing life and relationships. Much of that thinking will bleed into this blog, but here, this is just you and I quietly pondering our devotional lives. For those of you who purchased ‘Radiance Through the Rain,’ maybe you think some of my wandering thoughts are worth sharing. This blog is the venue!
Carpe Diem, 48″ X 60″ Acrylic on Canvas © J.Douglas Thompson