Levitan painted this picture: Fog, Autumn in 1899. His physical heart was giving out; he was dying. Still he mustered the strength to create and share this image born of his symbolic heart which was alive and strong. What a gift to us!
It is an autumn day, the year is drawing to its close. Some of the leaves have already fallen, knocked out of the trees by the bracing wind. See the Birch trees leaning! This is the kind of day when we might wake up to frost on the ground. A killing frost. The ground is seizing up and we'll have to wait through the long winter to the spring before we'll see bright green again.
It's said that while Levitan was Jewish, he seemed to possess deep Christian instincts or awareness-es. Maybe leaving this world and going to the next, is like passing through a fog of unknown. This has got to be one of the most beautiful lines of scripture:
You must see what great love the Father has lavished on us by letting us be called God's children - which is what we are! The reason why the world does not acknowledge us is that it did not acknowledge him. My dear friends, we are already God's children, but what we shall be in the future has not yet been revealed. We are well aware that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he really is. 1 John 3:2
We're so dragged along in the immediacy of outer life demands that we don't much consider what the next life will present. But St. John's letter invites wonder - wonder about our passing through the fog to the light of encounter. An encounter! That's better than eternal rest, which might soon get boring.
I want to step into the dying Levitan's painting (that's not morbid at all) and imagine walking through the Autumn fog: feeling the misty air on my skin, the sound of the wind, the hardening ground, the quiet - as the birds have left, even squinting my eyes and concentrating my focus - what will I encounter having passed through the fog?
P.S. Scroll back to Sunday, February 26 to see what's going on here these Lenten days.
P.S. Scroll back to Sunday, February 26 to see what's going on here these Lenten days.
