Adoption

Art has become a very spiritual tool lately. One of my daughters gave me a canvas and asked me to paint how I saw myself (today) and how I would like to evolve(future.) The painting above is the result of this agonizing endeavors. I have titled it "ADOPTION." I have become in many ways a "Midlife Mystic," and a spiritual orphan.

Mystics see life with more depth, more hues, more complexity than most. The forbidden fruit that initiated me into this experience was no longer being able or willing, as a Christian, to decide who was in or who was out???

As a seminarian I had the good fortune of spending a weekend retreat with Henri Nouwen, the late writer-priest who so aptly spoke about reaching out in faith from our own wounding and healing. The other author who has had a profound influence of late is Parker J. Palmer, a Quaker, and no surprise, once a good friend of Nouwen.

These profound people plus many other men and woman initiated me into the mystical, the spiritual, the radical faith, wherein embodiment and presence are one's greatest assets.

This leads me back to my artistic creation. The hands almost touching seem to be the experience of the mystic. A longing to belong. A need to be adopted and endorsed. Yet a realization that the freedom that results from being un-chained from dogma and formulas terrifies those who must embrace such as part of their worldview and as a means of embracing the world around them.

The painting signifies for me a strong desire to belong. To be recognized. I began the canvas with the large hand on top and soon flipped it over as I realized that God is more of the playful child than I can ever be.

And so, the inner longing of the mystic is revealed in acrylic - to belong, to be adopted, to be no longer the orphan who remains when all the other prospective parents and children leave.

Yes the divine has adopted me, and yes the world around me warms to my openness and compassion, yet the question of prospective parents is always the same: "By whose power do you do these works?"