Labor of Love

One night, some years ago I picked up some acrylics and some paint brushes and just poured out my feelings on the canvas. Through brush strokes and color I engaged with my inner dialogue, actually, it is a running dialogue that I have with myself.  In this conversation, between my  Self and my ego, I struggle to balance my feelings, my emotions, my intellect, my desires, and my destiny. See, the ego is that part of me that is on display to all, connected to the world.  My Self is who I am authentically. We can also call the Self, our soul; it is that part of us that is connected to our Creator.  The Self is that part that calls us to a higher truth, beauty, goodness.

So when I was done with this intense midnight exercise I stood back and looked at what I had created…..at first I wasn’t pleased because I felt it didn’t really capture what was going on inside me.  My ego however, said, “hey, very expressive…you should call it “Labor of Love”!”  I wanted to hear what my Self thought about this work…. I continued to contemplate the explosion of cool and warm colors.  I set it in a place where the light allowed the reflective areas to glisten and the matte areas to recede.  As I walked by it the next few days I started to notice a form emerge. I began to notice that the yellow and ochre shades delineated a soft vertical form that looked somewhat like a torso and there was an obvious horizontal/vertical sharp band along the top third of the image.  Outside this torso like form the textures and colors were varied and more obscure.

It surprised me….in this image I realized a perspective…. I was standing on the back side of Christ crucified. The strong axial lines represented a cross and the torso in the fleshy ochre pigments symbolized my Lord’s bruised and broken body.  I began to think about what this means metaphorically speaking:  to be standing on the back side of the Cross. 

Could it mean that I am not courageous enough to face the truth?  Does it mean that I prefer to accept only those areas of my faith that comfort me, but no more?  This is what I love about art and contemplation, it  is how I communicate best with God, he challenges me to come closer and he reveals himself to me and I learn more about myself. He will always be a mystery, I am learning to embrace that mystery…..Lord, give me courage to walk around you, to see your loving face, the face that expresses true love, and to come to know you through others, through my  experiences, to express your truth through my labors,   in more ways than I my Self can imagine. Allow me to understand your Labor of Love.