This painting is titled: Footpath in a Forest, Ferns. I might change it to Footpath Through the Forest, because the word through seems to convey the sense of movement. I want to walk on this winding path. We don't take along our cellphone while walking here. Levitan presents this still place, where we listen and observe.
These days we're inclined to think we're communicating well because we're talking on the phone all day. Not really. I'm thinking of the primaries leading up to last November's election - so much interrupting, talking over the other with raised voices. It happens on the television discussion panels. There's no real dialogue, each looking for the moment to spout the truth. Listen! - they get their moment and can't stop talking, because if they take a breath, someone else will steal the time.
These days we're inclined to think we're communicating well because we're talking on the phone all day. Not really. I'm thinking of the primaries leading up to last November's election - so much interrupting, talking over the other with raised voices. It happens on the television discussion panels. There's no real dialogue, each looking for the moment to spout the truth. Listen! - they get their moment and can't stop talking, because if they take a breath, someone else will steal the time.
Some years ago I spent two weeks in a little hermitage at the edge of the forest on Monte Corona in Italy. In the 1500's the Camaldolese Hermits built the beautiful monastery, surrounded by hermitages where monks lived and prayed. The Camaldolese were driven out by Napoleon and the monastery fell into disrepair until the Monastic Community of Bethlehem took possession of it. Now there are about twenty monks re-claiming the monastery and making it a center of monastic discipline and inner life. How hospitable they were, taking me into their community.
Following the Carthusian Rule of St. Bruno the monks live silent lives, talking only for necessities and during their four hour Sunday walk through the forest and meadows. During this walk (the Spatiamentum) the monks walk in pairs, rotating every half hour. Community is built that way.
So I asked the young monk, "What do you talk about for four hours, your families?" He answered, "No, we don't even know the stories of our brothers here, unless a monk chooses to share something of his family, where he's been or what he's done in his life." I laughed because the first thing an American asks of someone they've just met is, "What do you do?" So I pressed further, "Do you talk about the week's food?" He answered again, "Our food is uneventful." "So, what then?" "We talk about the ferns uncoiling, about the tree leaves coming out in succession, what birds are singing, can we identify that tree by its bark, what the are clouds telling us about the afternoon weather."
So I asked the young monk, "What do you talk about for four hours, your families?" He answered, "No, we don't even know the stories of our brothers here, unless a monk chooses to share something of his family, where he's been or what he's done in his life." I laughed because the first thing an American asks of someone they've just met is, "What do you do?" So I pressed further, "Do you talk about the week's food?" He answered again, "Our food is uneventful." "So, what then?" "We talk about the ferns uncoiling, about the tree leaves coming out in succession, what birds are singing, can we identify that tree by its bark, what the are clouds telling us about the afternoon weather."
There are Americans who would like to tear up Levitan's forest path with their crashing Land Rovers or all-terrain vehicles. The message of this winding path is, Go slowly. Look! Listen! Notice that Levitan has painted only the lower part of the forest. There's so much to attend to there, we don't need to be looking up to the tree tops. Maybe that's for another walk.
Some people are only close observers of store windows and magazine ads. Lent invites us to more: Come Easter, might I be able to identify the trees in my neighborhood by looking at the tree's bark and leaves. That would please God who has invested so much of God's imagination and creative energies into such lovely and generous diversity.
