March 29, 2016 – Painting redemption

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Most weeks, by the time Tuesday morning rolls around, I know what I’m going to write about. Today isn’t one of them. I’m stuck today. I didn’t sleep well – I woke at something like 3:30 and lay awake for a couple of hours. After getting back to sleep, I woke up about 7:15, really groggy. I was in a fog as I made my tea, pondering the possibilities. What am I going to write about today? Yikes! So, I took my hike with Bo before writing today in hopes that it might give me some clarity. One idea seemed to resonate. I started writing and after about 400 words, it felt flat and lifeless, and I had no idea where to take it. Ugh.

I keep a file in my “Posts” folder called “Ideas for Posts.” So I just went to the file. The first sentence is this: “I want for us to have the capacity for our own suffering.” Oh, yay! Suffering! Now isn’t that a cheery thing to write about? But it grabbed me. And it seems a fitting follow-on to last week’s missive about grieving. Easter was two days ago, but it appears I’m still in Lent. So, why would we want to have the capacity for our own suffering? Wouldn’t we want to do all we can to be rid of it? We go to the doctor, the therapist, our loved ones, other professionals to seek healing, resolution – to be free from our pain – whatever form it takes. Yes, this is the natural thing to do, and I do all those things. I don’t want to suffer any more than anyone else.

But guess what? We will still suffer. It’s part of the bargain. We get to taste a bright, ripe raspberry or sip and smell coffee in the morning, we get to listen to the birds chirping, we get to caress a dog’s soft ear, we get to see the color green on the springtime hills and the vivid blue-violet of the Dutch irises, that have just bloomed among the grass. We get to read and be inspired by the words of a poem or a moving story. And we get to love each other and experience others loving us. There is no light without darkness, so to get all these goodies, we must endure some suffering too.

Since I’ve started to notice when people have the capacity for their own suffering – and when they don’t – it’s become really obvious to me. I met someone a couple of years ago who is coming to mind. She had lived a very difficult life and was telling me all about it. As she was sharing her story: drug addiction, prison time, losing her children, I felt heavier and heavier. It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle what she was sharing; the heaviness I felt come from the place from which she was sharing it. It felt to me, that she had little capacity for her own suffering. There was no container for it, so it spilled out on to me. Although she was living a life free of all these conditions, she wasn’t, at that point anyway, free from the darkness of it. There wasn’t yet any triumph over it – no redemption.

I’ve had many conversations with redeemed people, who have lived lives just as trouble-filled. These people, who have gained the capacity for their own suffering, have spirits that shine even more brightly, than those who’ve never lived in the dark. I’m finding it hard to articulate how this is, but what comes to me, is that redeemed people have fully digested their suffering. They’ve gained perspective, and reaped the rewards of it – which I believe are always there. Even as suffering returns, (as it does over and over), they continue to have the capacity to hold it, to contain it. The sad thing is, is that I find it hard to have compassion for those who can’t hold their suffering – I just feel repelled. It’s as if there is an unconscious intent to drag me into their darkness. On the other hand, I feel drawn to those who are suffering with awareness and perspective – even if that perspective is that this is really, really hard and awful. With these people, I find an easy connection and the compassion just flows from me.

So what does all this have to do with art and being creative? I speak on no authority besides my own – but my sense is that it has everything to do with our art and our creative lives. When I first learned to paint, I was still living the dark – married to an alcoholic and desperately lonely for real connection. I was able to paint only very sporadically, and what I painted had little energy in it. A couple of years later, I was working towards extricating myself from that life, and had no inclination to paint at all. The refuge that my creative life is now, which I spoke about last week, wasn’t yet available to me. I was still doing life-triage and building capacity for my own darkness.

But as my capacity has developed, to understand and have a place to hold my suffering, my art and creative life becomes a companion to it. I’m not one to paint my process, as in, to paint my anger or my wild, disturbing dreams. I get there is great value in doing that, but what I’m called to do, is to paint my redemption. My most recent painting “Together”, is a reflection of a break in a long standing friendship. But even those that don’t have that direct connection, they are a reflection of what I have the capacity to hold within me – as it is with all of us.

I just thought of this recent painting by Win, one of the artists in our Thursday group. Win was there the very first day I led a painting group at the Fairfax Church, four and a half years ago. She has lost two people very close to her – her mother and her son. The anniversaries of their deaths are at the beginning of the year, which renews her grief in their loss. In February, she showed me the image that was the inspiration for this painting. She wanted to paint it but was uncertain about painting a fading rose. I encouraged her to – and the result is stunning. “Mourning”, contains Win’s love for her mother and son, and her grief in their not being here anymore. The same beauty in this painting shows up in her every Thursday, too. In our hello and goodbye hugs, I can feel her tender heart as well as her love and joy at being here, and sharing her life with us.

I come back to my deep appreciation for having an active, integrated creative life – for the way we can reflect our humanness – our love and our suffering – in these creative works. I know that many people come to our groups for instruction, help with technique and color and all the tech support I provide, but what I see they are actually doing, what we are actually doing is painting our redemption. Whether we know it or not. There’s hardly a better reason to learn to paint.

With my love,

Cara