Thought Collections on Art and Life through an Artist’s Eyes # 6

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