Along this Lenten-Way we've considered a number of Levitan's paths, trails and roads. They are symbolic of the life-path we each walk: the lessons life has taught me, the people I've met, the places I've visited, the books I've read, my decisions and choices, the crises I've navigated, the dreams, inspirations, insights and ideas.
While surveying my life-path there are moments I'll be tempted to label as regrets. But as I've said elsewhere, I think we should use that word sparingly - God can be encountered most wonderfully in the regrets. Peter, all tied up in the sad regret of his having denied knowing Jesus, meets him in the depths of forgiveness and friendship on the Easter morning beach. John 21: 4-17
This gospel scene isn't just about Peter, but as much about myself: God, rushing to me in my ignorance, immaturity, brashness, mistaken haste, reactive fear.
Maybe The Alley isn't the best translation for the painting's title. Rather, notice that the path here passes through a tunnel of living trees. Perhaps The Tunnel would be a better title.
Tunnels can appear in dreams as a passageway fraught with dangers and fears. A tunnel can be a secret place. Most people have at least one kept secret: a secret fear of rejection, a confidence that's been entrusted, perhaps some serious error I haven't come up for (yet). Our first life-experience is to pass through a tunnel to get born.
But Levitan's tunnel is green, alive and shaded. It's a wide path, so I needn't feel claustrophobic. And perhaps best of all, way down at the far end is an opening of blue sky - blue being the color of divinity.
Someone might say, "Oh, this is the path to heaven." I'd say it's much more than that. All along the life-way I want to keep my inner eye on the divine presence: reassuring, beautiful, inviting, encouraging. In every moment, God is here, like the mother who pulls in her anguished child so close, right up against her.
Actually, in case we think the divine is to be encountered just at the end of our long life-road, a kind of reward for good behaviour, Levitan has got the blue of divinity bouncing off the bark of the trees inside the tree-tunnel. Nature itself sparkles with divinity.
Actually, in case we think the divine is to be encountered just at the end of our long life-road, a kind of reward for good behaviour, Levitan has got the blue of divinity bouncing off the bark of the trees inside the tree-tunnel. Nature itself sparkles with divinity.
