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| Camille Pissarro 1830-1903 |
This past Sunday used to be called Septuagesima, the first of the three pre-Lenten Sundays with the engaging Latin names. Septuagesima means roughly, seventy - seventy days until Easter. These are get ready Sundays; a kind of front porch to Lent.
For many people, the world is moving too fast. "I don't have time to think," people complain. So these three Sundays (Sexagesima and Quinquagesima to follow) serve as a kind of heads up. Lent is a big deal; it needs time - like the winter turning to spring takes time. For me, it's regrettable that these three preparatory Sundays were dropped from the liturgical calendar in the late 1960's. Now Ash Wednesday just shows up - ready or not.
But okay, the three Sundays can still inform and help us along the inner way. In 2017 we contemplated forty paintings created by the young Russian painter, Issac Levitan. This Lent we might reflect upon the paintings of the Danish-French Impressionist, Camille Pissarro (1830-1903).
The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, said: "The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inner significance." The artist then isn't so much interested in doing what a camera would have done, if cameras existed centuries ago, but to open windows within to the unconscious, eternal, deeply human, spiritual things. Pissarro's new technique or new approach, called Impressionism, may help us with this. Even the word, Impressionism or Impressionist, gives us a clue: "What impression does this painting make upon me?" A person can go through a lifetime and never ask a question like that.
To that end, we'll see that apart from an occasional far-distant church, Pissarro doesn't employ overtly religious themes or images at all. But he believed everything was beautiful, and his response to beauty can spark insight and awareness, thought and feeling within ourselves these approaching Lenten days.
Pissarro said, "Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing." Sounds like an invitation to wake up in a sleepy world. And isn't that what Spring is - a great waking up? Jesus is often telling us to wake up, and every account of his healing a blind person is an invitation to see!
I might invite you then to spread the word - that folks might find something new and different here this coming Lent which begins with Ash Wednesday, March 6.
Pissarro said, "Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing." Sounds like an invitation to wake up in a sleepy world. And isn't that what Spring is - a great waking up? Jesus is often telling us to wake up, and every account of his healing a blind person is an invitation to see!
I might invite you then to spread the word - that folks might find something new and different here this coming Lent which begins with Ash Wednesday, March 6.
