The Raised Right Hand of Maria Advocata

Here again is the icon  of the Mother of God titled, Maria Advocata - Mary, Our Advocate, found in the Roman Church of Saint Alessio. Her empty left hand intercedes for humankind in our struggle and sorrow. She is blessed from above.

But her right hand is empty, open and raised. Is she waving a hello to us? Does she have her hand in the air because she wants to ask a question? I'd suggest perhaps she shares the vision and voice of God's ancient prophets. A hand in the air can be saying, STOP.  

Now some Christians are familiar with everything Mary has said in her many appearances, but they can't recall what she said in the prayer she prayed while pregnant and visiting her elder relative, Elizabeth. The prayer is called, The Magnificat. There's some pretty tough stuff in that prayer. Why are so many people disinterested in her message? No flowers of the fairest and the rarest; it's not Mary meek and mild. Mary said of God:

He has used the power of his arm,
  he has routed the arrogant of heart.
He has pulled down princes from their thrones
  and raised high the lowly.
He has filled the starving with good things,
  sent the rich away empty.  Luke 1:51-53

This sounds like Mary, pregnant with the one who will announce God's Kingdom-Rule among us, is already upending the world's business as usual. In this icon, perhaps her raised hand might be saying:

STOP aborting to extinction the Down Syndrome children, whose presence is all love.

STOP the annual destruction of the three trillion trees God has planted.

STOP the militarization of the planet that ends in the blowing up of school buses.

STOP turning God's oceans into a plastic soup.

STOP this fascination with outer space while your neighbor-countries dissolve into poverty and internal chaos.

STOP sexualizing and sensualising your children.

STOP your gun lust which leaves scores of young people massacred.

STOP placing your anxieties in other groups of people.

STOP your consumptive affair with money, owning and having.

STOP this fascination with your own face and figure and learn again to look outward towards others.

STOP your addictions to food and narcotics and feed your inner life.

At the Start of May ~ Maria Advocata!

While staying at a Camaldolese guest house in Rome, I discovered the nearby Church of Saint Alessio, where this splendid 12th-13th century icon of the Mother of God is enshrined. She is Maria Advocata ~ Mary, Our Advocate.

The visitor gets the feeling that the Holy Mother is in motion - on her way - and catching sight of us, she stops and rotates slightly, as if to leave the frame, to interface with each of us, whose hearts are heaped up with concerns.

To emphasize this connection, the artist has edged Mary's maphorion with gold. Her lock-on gaze is the first thing we notice. She looks to the margins, where we can hide in anger and fear. She misses no one. 

I have nicknamed her: Mary Without A Phone. She is other-referred, which means her energy, her direction is other people, without the techno or emotional walls we place between ourselves and others. In the bowling alley the other day, the young dad, busy text-ing, missed his ten year old son's first strike. 

Notice that while she is not carrying the Divine Infant, her hands are active. Her left hand (under the fancy broach someone gave her along the centuries) while interceding or advocating on our behalf, is an empty hand. That's all we have - our emptiness. There are great paintings which depict the saints and benefactors laden down with crosses, palm branches, candles, books, instruments of their suffering, miniature churches and monasteries they founded. But  really, for all our achievements, we come before God with surrendered, empty hands, anticipating the searching kindness of God's love, which fills and fulfills.

Next up: Some thoughts about Mary's raised right hand. Stay tuned.

Intercessions ~Second Sunday of Easter ~ Sunday of Divine Mercy

Next weekend/ Pope Francis travels to Bulgaria and Northern Macedonia/ where he will meet with Muslim and Orthodox leaders./ We pray for his safety/ and that his journey would be fruitful in advancing peace./ We pray to the Lord.

Mary's Month of May begins on Monday./ May we love and honor her in her discipleship./ And as Islam reveres the Virgin Mary as well,/ may she be a point of healing and mutual acceptance between Muslims and Christians./ We pray to the Lord. 

Spring is the season of nest building./ May we be built up in faith,/ humility,/ patient endurance and joy./ May we know Divine Mercy,/ which is the kindness of God in Christ./ We pray to the Lord.

We ask for the health,/ safety and renewal of our families./ We pray for those who are struggling with emotional or financial troubles./ For the healing of marriages/ and for those who are having a difficult time in the raising of their children./ We pray to the Lord.

This past Monday was Earth Day,/ observed in one hundred and ninety three countries./ We ask for our own nation to have the wisdom and will to lead the world/ in the saving of our stressed planet./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for the President of the United States,/ our Congress and those in local government./ For leaders around the globe who commit crimes against humanity through the abuse of power./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for those who have died since last Easter/ and for the comforting of mourners./ We pray to the Lord.

Easter Greeting ~ The Roses of Nice ~ 1902

Unlike other Impressionist painters, Camille Pissarro did not paint many vases of flowers. The few he did paint, however, are very beautiful.  Bouquets are the ultimate indoor painting, and we know well how much Pissarro preferred working outdoors. 

But it is 1902, the year before Camille's death. He is largely confined to being indoors on doctor's orders, as light, dust and city pollution aggravated his persistent eye disease. There's some suggestion that an artist friend brought these flowers when paying a visit - a sensitive gift for someone who enjoyed being in a garden. 

These are roses from Nice (rhymes with geese and fleece). We might be glad that Julie placed the roses in a clear glass vase rather than a decorated vase, which might have detracted from the beauty and fragrance of the flowers themselves.  The vase has been placed on a wooden table; there are unfinished canvases on the wall behind. 

So I send these same flowers through cyber-space to you this Easter Sunday. I send them with a blessing and prayer, that your home would be joyful in Jesus-Risen, that you and those you love would be well and built up in all goodness - in Christ's justice, mercy and peace. 

I thank you for coming along with me these Forty Days. "Remember, you're only a pointer," my sister said to me six years ago when this blog began. I've tried to follow that sound advice and am glad for your own good prayer and participation. 

Christ is Risen! Blessed Easter to you!

The Gardener, Afternoon Sun ~ 1899

This is my favorite Pissarro painting, and so I have saved it for the end of our Lenten weeks. It is a brilliantly lit day. We can feel the pleasure of sun, scent, breeze and sky. There is short-stroked energy in the ground and plant life behind the young gardener. 

We don't know who this fellow is. Carrying a bucket, he's wearing muck boots, an apron and straw shade-hat. He is setting out. Perhaps he's carrying water to a young tree he's planted that is beyond the reach of the hose. Or he is off to collect potatoes or tomatoes. Or has he got fertilizer in the bucket? All of that is for our imagining. But for me, what's most important is that he's in motion, stepping into his afternoon's work. 

We are ready to hear the Easter story again. The word "story" doesn't mean fiction. Story means the unfolding of our lives. After his resurrection, the gospel evangelists share a number of Risen-Jesus stories: The women at the tomb, Jesus meeting Magdalene, Jesus meeting Thomas, Jesus meeting Peter, Jesus walking with the disciples on the evening road to Emmaus. 

Some Christians just admire Christ's Easter story. But the gospel writers didn't give us the story to admire, but to pick up and make our own. This is at the heart of the Christian spiritual life. Like the gardener boy in bright light, we're invited to set out in the living and telling of the Easter event internalized and personalized - one story at a time, as our own lives unfold.

So, can I tell the personal story of waking up from what I might call sleep? Can I tell the personal story of having been buried and come forth again? Discovering joy out of sadness? 

At Easter, Christ enters into the greatest contest of life over death. Can I tell of some inner, lived-identification with that contest? Some personal sharing in Christ's movement from darkness to light? Some personal renewal and restoration? Some redemption, this side of heaven? 

This is living Easter, not just admiring it. 

Washerwoman, Study ~ 1880

Over these Lenten weeks we've seen how Pissarro includes people of the peasant class in almost all of his landscape paintings. In the 1880's however, he took these figures out of a generic and distant realm and individuated and magnified them in a series of portraits, but of a different kind. These paintings weren't paid for and owned by the people who sat for them, rather, Pissarro used them as a kind of art-tool to make a socio-political statement of the value and dignity of each human person. Who ever heard of a washerwoman having her portrait done? Only aristocrats, top-of-the-ladder clergy and monied people could arrange for that!

This is Marie Adeline Larcheveque, a much trusted neighbor and mother of four, who was fifty-six when Pissarro asked her to sit for this portrait. He clearly had a deep sympathetic regard for her as he has shown her, not leaning over a scrub bucket, but sitting quietly in the light of an open door at the start or end of her workday.

How unlike our television commercial sense of female beauty, which is eternally young, unlined, thin, glamorous, made up and styled. Pissarro presents Marie Adeline as middle-aged and of rural not "regal" beauty.

On Good Friday, there is the Crucifix and this Pissarro painting, I might recall the words of Jesus in St. John's Gospel: "I shall not call you servants any longer, for a servant does not share his master's confidence. No, I call you friends, now, because I have told you everything that I have heard from the Father." 15:15

Intercessions ~ Easter Sunday

At Easter,/ we pray for Pope Francis/ and Christians around the world,/ asking for strength/ and a renewal of faith and joy./ We ask for an increase of love/ where hearts have grown callous./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for the Jewish people who celebrate Passover./ For the conversion of those who carry the stain of anti-semitism/ or any hatred for others./ We pray to the Lord.

Greeting Jesus today in the fullness of his Easter life,/ we pray for our fragile planet,/ often abused by human greed and ignorance./ For our own conversion to the things of life and mercy./ We pray to the Lord.

At Easter,/ we pray for the raising up of the great Medieval Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris/ which burned this week./ We ask blessings for the many people who worked generously and long to put out the flames./ We pray to the Lord.

For those Christians who are unable to celebrate Easter publicly today,/ whose presence is threatened with punishment,/ menace or even death./ For Christians whose observance of Easter has become superficial or secularized./ We pray to the Lord.

We remember the sick,/ those in hospitals/ or who are pained/ or away from home./ For anyone living in depression,/ trouble,/ loneliness or deep loss./ We pray for the world's children./ We pray to the Lord.

For those who have died since last Easter,/ and for the consolation of mourners./ We pray to the Lord.

Jeanne Pissarro, Called Cocotte, Reading ~ 1899

Camille and Julie Pissarro had eight children. One child died at birth; Minette died at age nine. Here is a painting of Jeanne, their eldest surviving daughter. She had the nickname, Cocotte, which translates, my sweetie.

Jeanne lived with her parents in the Paris apartment until about five years after her father's death. Here we see her seated in a room that's kind of Bohemian. There is an oriental carpet on a wide-planked wooden floor. The couch and chair are upholstered with brightly colored fabrics. The wall is decorated with some of her father's paintings. Perhaps they are un-framed works in progress.

Cocotte sits reading a book, perhaps taking a break from her housework. She wears a light pink, ruffled apron over her black skirt and printed blouse. Signac, a painter friend reported that while visiting the Paris apartment, he felt Camille's work to be dull and monotonous.  This brilliant painting belies that report. Maybe we should be more careful about the information we carry.

We can see clearly that at this time in his life, Pissarro has given up Pointillism, but his technique or method seems to be ever new. There are no dots in this painting, but the brushstrokes continue to be short.

Reading his many extant letters we see that Camille's children were his pride and joy. He often wrote asking about their health or encouraging them to be readers and independent thinkers. These days we hear of helicopter parents - who "hover" over their children even into college years and beyond. Their children never really come into their own. But Pissarro seems to have been more a patient guide to life, one author writes, rather than an overbearing restrainer.

Whether the figure in the painting is a tiny, faceless peasant walking on a path, or a farm couple in a garden, or an up close portrait of an individual, or here, his daughter reading on a couch in a room filled with light, Pissarro has introduced people into his landscapes. People and relationships matter. It seems to be an important message Pissarro leaves with us.

In his Letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul gives us good advice as to what we ought to bring to our relationships:

"Let there be no more bitter resentment or anger, no more shouting or slander, and let there be no bad feeling of any kind among you. Be kind to each other, be compassionate. Be as ready to forgive others as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you." Ephesians 4: 31,32

The Boulevard Montmartre At Night ~ 1897

Here is Pissarro's depiction of the same Boulevard Montmartre at night, seen from his hotel window. He painted while sitting indoors as his infected eyes were painfully light sensitive and because he felt safer there after having been verbally accosted one evening by a group of anti-semitic bullies. Why do so many Christian countries carry the ugly stain of anti-semitism, even till today?

I took my first teaching job in January 1974, at Holy Name of Jesus School at 96th and Broadway in what was then the beginning of Harlem. I had a class of 33 wonderfully alive second graders. Lucky me!

One day we unrolled on the classroom floor a long roll of heavy, brown wrapping paper and printed out the entire Canticle of the Three Children which is found in Catholic Bibles in the Book of Daniel 3:23ff...

Sun and moon, showers of rain and fall of dew, wind, fire and heat, winter and summer, flakes of snow, chill and cold, ice and sleet, storm clouds and thunderbolts, mountains and hills, growing things, springs of water, seas and streams whales and fishes, birds of the air, beasts of the wild, flocks and herds, men and women...all glorify the Lord.

The seven-year-olds sat on the floor working in little groups illustrating this picturesque Song of Creation - everything glorifying God.  Most translations invite the sun and moon and stars of the sky to praise God, but the translation I had simply said, "lights of the night, glorify the Lord."

How delightful to see a city child's interpretation - instead of stars and night planets, which would have been invisible, blocked out by the bright city lights, they made a busy avenue of bright street lights on poles, cars and buses with headlights, taxi cabs with illuminated roof lights. 

Jesus said, "Blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear."  Matthew 13:16

            

Boulevard Montmartre, Spring Morning ~ 1897

In 1897 the art dealer, Durand-Ruel persuaded Camille Pissarro to execute a series of Paris views portraying the main boulevards. Pissarro move to the Grand Hotel de Russie where, from a top floor window, he completed marvelous paintings of the Boulevard Montmartre. Here we see the painting titled: Boulevard Montmarte, Spring Morning. But there are many others: Boulevard, Mardi Gras; Boulevard, Afternoon Sun; Boulevard, Spring Rain; Boulevard, Spring; Boulevard, Sunset; Boulevard, Sunlight and Mist; Boulevard, On Winter Morning; Boulevard, Afternoon in the Rain; Boulevard, Morning Gray Weather. 

At the start of Holy Week, along with the Passion Account of Jesus' last days on this earth, may we hear nothing else:

"In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world.

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud...I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of tell people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed...But his cannot be seen, only believed and 'understood' by a peculiar gift." Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Morning Sunlight on the Snow ~ 1895

Here again is a painting Pissaro created while looking out the window of his studio (a converted barn) at Eragny, France. Pissarro loved painting winter landscapes. Here his fascination is with the effect of the winter sun on snow. One museum web page describes the snow colors as pearly pink and ice blue. 

While looking out the window. How how do I see things? Does the Gospel of Jesus Christ enable me to see people and life differently? Or do I see as everyone else: like the people in a sitcom, a TV commercial or game show? Or like some people in government and Church who clearly have something else going on inside them, but without a spiritual/human ground.

Sales having fallen off, Camille Pissarro was again struggling financially in the late 1800's. We might wonder if his money problems helped him to identify with the struggles of the peasant class.

"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other," Mother Teresa of Calcutta said. But Pissarro doesn't forget: again, he includes a human presence. A peasant woman wearing heavy shoes and head scarf, has her back to us as she walks towards the wooded lot. Her arms are taut with the weight of the buckets. She walks in a ray of blue light. "Every human person is endowed with a dignity that must never be lessened, impaired or destroyed but must instead be respected and safeguarded, if peace is really to be built upon," Pope John Paul II said at the United Nations General Assembly in October of 1979. 

Do we really understand these words? Or do we understand them and yet reject them? 

Next month marks the 80th anniversary of the German oceanliner, St. Louis, carrying over 900 refugee-seeking German Jews, being turned away from Cuba and the United States. Three months earlier a bill died in Congress that propoesed to take in 20,000 Jewish children fleeing Hitler's new Germany. "There isn't a crisis of faith, but a crisis of love," the priest said of our time. But maybe that's true of all times.

Poplars, Eragny ~ 1895

Pissarro lived n Eragny, a small village of Northern France, from 1884 until his death in 1903.  This painting, titled Poplars, Eragny, was likely worked while he looked from his window; an eye infection prevented him from outdoor work. 

Populus is a genus of 25 to 35 different deciduous tree species, native to the Northern Hemisphere. Poplars can grow anywhere from 40 to 165 feet high. Pissarro placing a human figure at the base of the central poplar in his painting, gives us some idea of how tall these wonderful trees can grow. But perhaps their most amazing feature is their vast root systems which makes them symbolic of grounding, resiliency, strength and faith.

Pissarro's painting of Poplars shows the tallest trees in the background with shorter young trees up front. There's some light-charged meadow between the trees and ourselves, the viewers. The leaves of a Poplar (we're most familiar with the species aspen) are circular or heart-shaped, suspended on the ends of thin stems. In a breeze the leaves flap, which results in the tree seeming to glitter or twinkle. A lovely  soft clacking sound adds another dimension.

Our planet is losing its trees at an alarming rate to timber harvesting, agriculture, drug crop farming, roads to mining and drilling fields, highway expansion, pipelines and power line construction and wildfire. Today, the earth contains half the trees it once did while millions upon millions of trees continue to be lost every year. Even the nation's cities continue to lose trees where they are much needed for the creation of shade and the cleaning of air, not to mention their soul-impact. 

How can anyone not care? Maybe plant a tree, or take care of a tree that's stressed.

Woman With A Basket On A Country Road ~ H. Claude Pissarro

This work, done in pastel crayon on paper, was created by H. Claude Pissarro, the grandson of Camille Pissaro, the son of Emile, Camille's youngest son. It's pretty clear that Claude was very much taken by his grandfather's Impressionist ideas and style.

It's all here, isn't it: the delight in being outdoors, the fascination with weather and light. The gnarly trees seem to dance. The sky has thin cloud cover. We can feel, even hear, the many-colored grasses swaying in a stiff breeze. A peasant woman, carrying a basket over her left arm, is walking along the path. We don't see the start of the winding path, nor its end.

Not a few priests reflect unfavorably on their seminary years. They claim the place was too isolated or too monastic. I wouldn't share that complaint. My seminary, a huge building that could hold more than two hundred men, sat on several hundred acres. All throughout the property there were paths winding through fields and woodland. One wide path led down to wetlands and a bay. I was happiest in these places more than anywhere else. Pile on the snow, I'd make a path through. Indeed, I remember one winter day being stopped by the beauty of some dried grasses, golden yellow, against new snow.

Something happens to us (or for us) when we walk a winding path, grounded, without concrete or asphalt getting in between. Thoughts seem to come up right out of the ground to head and heart. A news item this week indicated that children who have these kinds of exploratory experiences are less likely to suffer emotional illness.

Sorry to say, but many people today have no en-plein-air exposure. The only thing winding under and around them is the mass of winding electric cords connecting computer, television and phones to chargers, speakers and printers. We're the poorer for it. 

Intercessions ~ Palm Sunday

Germany ~ 1505 ~ Palm Sunday Sculpture

We pray for Pope Francis,/ as he leads the Church in prayer this Holy Week from Rome./ For the safety of pilgrims who will travel to Jerusalem these last days of Lent./ We pray to the Lord.

Racism is our nation's original sin./ We pray for the three African American, Baptist congregations/ whose historic churches were burned recently. / For their consolation and endurance./ For those who conceal and protect hateful hearts./ We pray to the Lord.

For the President of the United States,/ our Congress/ and people in leadership around the world./ May they know the truth of God's justice and mercy./ May they possess servant-hearts./ We pray to the Lord.

As Jesus enters Jerusalem/ to begin the sacred work of his suffering and death,/ may we welcome and accept his invitation/ to allow for God to rule our decisions,/ our politics,/ our families/ and our work./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for the sick,/ the wounded and the damaged,/ the imprisoned and the refugee./ We ask blessings for the many who work to help others in their suffering and need./ We pray to the Lord.

In the early Spring,/ as our hemisphere turns green,/ may we grow in humility,/ self-knowledge, / and a deepened respect and care for our increasingly vulnerable planet./ We pray to the Lord.

Flowering Plum Tree, Eragny ~ 1894

The Impressionist artist, Alfred Sisley said, "Every picture shows a spot with which the artist has fallen in love."  Perhaps nothing so demonstrates that love-in-the-moment as the Pissarro's fascination with light. This view of the blooming plum tree glitters with light. Look at the sky. Look at the ground which is kaleidoscope-like. Look at the plum tree itself. Even the bucket-carrying woman is half in light and half in shadow.

The novelist author and poet, Mae Sarton, wrote in her journal, Plant Dreaming Deep (1968) of her coming upon a Plum Tree in Japan and then again in her backyard - with a bright Oriole as an added surprise.

"Two years ago, the dwarf plum trees by at the kitchen door flowered for the first time. Is there a more haunting presence than plum? It is sweet, but not too sweet, a little spiced, sweetness with a shade of bitterness in it. I remember getting out of the train at Enka-Kuji, a Zen monastery not far from Tokyo, on a chill March day, and being taken by surprise. What was that incense? It was plum blossom.

Now it was here, right at my door. I could look out on two clouds of white, supported on black irregular twigs, and alive with bees. The next morning the oriole came to shine his orange flame among all those white petals. I could hardly believe it. I had heard the oriole more than once, but I had not actually seen one since that first day when I came to look at the house and he had appeared on the maple like an angel. Yet, it was true. The oriole had come back to celebrate the first flowering of the plum and perhaps also to celebrate much else that had seemed wild dream and has come true in the last six years."

Have you ever had a "wild dream" life-moment that you carry with you all your life like this? A "come true" moment or experience that wonderfully remains?

Peasant Women Planting Poles Into The Ground ~ 1891

Pissarro painted this work during the few years he experimented with Pointillism - a rather scientific method of placing spots of pure color next to each other side by side to create light or shadow. Our eyes mix the color dots instead of the artist mixing colors on a palette. If we were to look closely we'd see what looks like a digital photograph. Talk about being ahead of your time!

This is a Springtime scene in which women are pushing wooden poles into the ground to support peas. Completed rows of poles can be seen between and behind the workers. We can feel the movement of their work - even the dresses, the air, the ground and the leaves of the tree seem charged. Look closely and we can see the orange skirt is made of orange, dark blue, yellow and white dots. The blue skirt is purple and white dots. The red dress is made of deep blue, purple, red and yellow dots. This side-by-side placement of paint dots gives the painting an intensity and brightness that isn't possible with mixed colors.

But Pissarro grew tired of this labor intensive technique and soon abandoned it, returning to his quicker (in one sitting) outdoor method - though for the rest of his life, he did retain some pointillism elements.

While these women are workers, they also seem to be dancers. We don't see it much today, except perhaps in country dancing, but circles form the basis of traditional dances. A priest moving around a free standing altar with a thurible - that's a kind of dance. I lived in a mountain monastery for two weeks some years ago, and on Sundays, there was an offertory procession with the bread and wine carried around the chapel. The monks stood in a circle around the outside of the space, and as the procession progressed, with candles and incense, each monk took a step forward, reaching out to touch the covered bread and wine, then stepping backward to his place. All of this while a memorized litany or psalm was chanted in Aramaic (the language of Jesus). A wonderful liturgical dance.

Pissarro has done a remarkable thing here. He seems to have borrowed the idea of silk-gowned women dancing in great crystal ballrooms and handed it over to rural women who combine leisure and work in a garden dance. Does Pissarro expect the women are consciously dancing? No. He sees it himself, watching how they move while they go about their work. And as we have seen in other places, that work has value and dignity.

The View From My Window, Eragny ~ 1886-1888

It took Pissarro two years to complete this painting, largely because he was experimenting with a a new time consuming technique called Pointillism - the image created with thousands of little dots and dabs of paint. The experiment seems to have been short-lived, and that's just fine. When we were in high school we performed science experiments. W.S. Merwin said, "Every garden is an experiment." Bakers and cooks experiment in the kitchen. On the other hand, experimenting with street drugs can be serious and dangerous.

Pissarro is looking out the window from the house his family rented in Eragny in 1884. Reading the numerous letters he wrote to his son, Lucien, we learn that Pissarro struggled with money problems, and often destitution, for much of his career. At this time he is selling his paintings for very low prices. Perhaps the family moved often, always looking for a more affordable place, and he painted the views from his windows of wherever he was living, because foreign travel would have been prohibitively expensive. 

This painting is divided into, by my count, at least five or six horizontal planes. There is the tree right up front and center. Then there are the orderly vegetable beds and the wall with bushes opposite the courtyard with the woman feeding the chickens. The orange, clay tiled roof divides these two spaces. There is another plane of orchard trees, then another dividing line with a pasture of grazing cows. Then another row of flowering fruit trees beyond which is forest. Beyond that is the plane of the muted, colored sky. How wonderful!

I want to continually go deeper and beyond my understanding of what it means to live by faith, what it means to be a really alive and evolved human person, what it means to be spiritually awake and perceiving, what it means to love God and others. 

Notice too that Pissarro has juxtaposed what are called warm and cool colors that evoke different emotions in the viewer. The red/brown and orange of the house eliciting feelings of warmth and comfort, while the cooler receding colors, blue/green/gray/violet, might evoke or invite an interior, pensive, even melancholic feeling.

Study of a Rural Peasant Farmer ~ 1882

The French title of this work is: Etude de Paysanne en plein air.  The word etude interested me as I thought only of a musical exercise. But here is the dictionary definition of etude in art. 

A drawing or sketch done in preparation for a finished piece. Studies are often used to understand the problems involved in rendering subjects and to plan the elements to be used in finished works, such as light, color, form, perspective, composition.

In other words, this is not Pissarro's finished product - he's just setting things up. Why? Because there's a lot going on in this scene and he needs to plan or prepare well: how the woman holds the shovel, how she's using her foot for leverage, the background plants, what time of day is it, the four horizontal layers of ground against her vertical stance. And who is that way off in the distance watching: is it an admire-r, a family member, the boss? If it's the boss, he might not be too happy that the young lady seems to be lost in her own thoughts.

It's said that the real work of gardening, or the principal concern of the gardener, is not the plants, but the soil. If you've got good soil,  you've got your plants off to a good start. To be sure, insects, light, precipitation, pests, all play a part in whether the garden is a success or not - but improving one's soil is the real deal. It's called laying the ground.

Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, said: "The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inner significance."

So what might the inner significance be for us here? Perhaps it is the digging into, or the working of our own inner ground with self-reflection, so to open the closed heart.

A Young Woman Washing Dishes ~ 1882

These years at Pontoise, Pissaro has shifted away from landscapes to the depiction of peasants. Here a young woman is washing plates in a bucket on a little makeshift table outside the kitchen door. She is not a drudge; not in tattered clothing or a uniform suggesting she is employed by a rich person. She is not dirty or bent over in oppressive misery. She stands in a lovely setting -  a path with little hedges, flowering vines and a fruit tree. It's a sunny day with some mottled shadows behind her. She wears a simple white cap, dress and apron. Pissaro seems to be saying, "Everyone's work has value."

There is no tension in this painting - no class struggle (rich against poor), no color, national or religious tension. This may well be the lady's home, and she has taken her everyday task outdoors to enjoy the sunshine and warmth of spring. There is a sense of leisure-d peace to the painting.

Recently canonized, Oscar Romero, the martyred archbishop of El Salvador said (and he understood tension): "I do not want to be anti-anybody, against anyone. I simply want to be the builder of a great affirmation: the affirmation of God, who loves us and who wants to save us."

That pretty much sums up the Christian life.

Peasant Woman With A Goat ~ 1881

I hope this happy painting brings you joy. Does this goat belong to the lady who wears a blue hooded cloak? She's smiling -  has she just found her goat that perhaps got out of its pen and wandered up into the wooded hills. The village is below and seen (just for a second) along the left margin of the painting. There is a fence behind the trees at the top of the rise. We might wonder if she's been searching for the animal, because she has some branches in her left hand, as if to lure the goat home.

Some years ago while on retreat in a monastery of nuns, I discovered a small herd of goats milling around on the dirt road I walked each morning. They had evidently gotten out through a hole in the fence. Not wanting to bother the sisters with so mundane a problem, I returned to my hermitage to fetch a box of Cheerios which I knew would do the trick. I simply opened the box, held out a handful and "everyone" came along (like first-graders on a field trip) back through the fence-opening to their pasture, where they were  again safe and sound. 

When we are children, animals are a source of fascination. Paul Claudel wrote: "Intelligence is nothing without delight." Some people retain their sense of wonder and delight all their lives. Others at some point make animals the enemy, to be abused or even killed. Major opinion: For the life of me, I can't understand killing great animals called, trophies. I find it to be rather appalling really. Pressing animals to extinction is for me, a kind of blasphemy (a God insult), as God, in great imagination and pleasure, created the animals even before creating us.

But here is a woman of gentle-kindness enjoying the company of a goat. Pissarro seems to have enjoyed animals, frequently including them in his scenes: a pony, herds of cows, flocks of sheep and goats, a gaggle of geese, a rafter of white turkeys.

Intercessions ~ Fifth Sunday in Lent

The return of birds each spring is a sign of hope restored./ We pray not to become embittered cynics,/ lost in negativity and ungrateful grumbling./ May we keep our sights set on Easter,/ and the wonder of Christ's bright rising./ We pray to the Lord.

For the President of the United States,/ our Congress and world leaders./ May they realize the only real power/ is the Rule of God's Kingdom./ May they be instruments of God's generosity,/ justice and mercy./ We pray to the Lord.

Pope Francis/ reflecting on the nations which lead the global arms trade/ speaks of:/ "The economic system that orbits around money,/ the industry of death,/ the greed that harms us all."/ May we be brave and creative in finding new ways to build a genuinely peaceful world./ We pray to the Lord.

For the people around us at Mass today,/ may they and their families be of good health,/ good faith,/ good will,/ and good cheer./ We pray to the Lord.

In this season of thawing and warming,/ we pray for those we do not love rightly,/ or do not love at all./ For those who live un-befriended/ and in loneliness./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for the sick entrusted to our prayer./ For those who live in chronic pain or weakness./ For the healing of any who are emotionally or spiritually unwell./ And as the light increases these days,/ we pray for those who live in inner darkness./ We pray to the Lord.

The Watering Can ~ Georges Seurat ~ 1883

Georges Seurat (1891-1859) was a contemporary of Camille Pissarro. He died young, perhaps of pneumonia or meningitis. I've included one of his paintings here, The Watering Can (1883), not because we're finished with Pissarro (by no means), but simply because the oil on wood image is so wonderful and timely, as Spring is trying to get underway, and as we have entered the second half of Lent - The Church's Springtime.

This is a metal watering can, some time before plastic ones became available. The gardener has placed the can on the edge of a curved shelf. It's a little hard to tell if there is a wall there containing a raised bed or if the curved part is more like a curb. There is a rather high wall to the rear of the garden. 

The bright colored plants in the garden are likely lettuce which grows well in the early spring before the days grow hot. Maybe those are pole beans in the upper right hand corner. There are trees on the far side of the wall.

So, what's the watering can doing? It's simply sitting and waiting.  While we can spend a lot of time sitting and waiting (in traffic; in doctor's offices, on the phone) we don't always do it well because we have another "million things to do." But that's all the watering can is doing. It's waiting for the gardener to return, to pick it up, to fill it up perhaps and take it off to some part of the garden where the hose won't reach. Or maybe the gardener just enjoys watering plants by hand. 

"You visit the earth and water it," Psalm 65:9 says. Watering plants slowly, by hand, allows the gardener to watch the soil absorb the water, imagining the plant's gratitude. Using a watering can be a contemplative practice. It can help to slow down people who are wearied from zooming around.

Using a watering can can be a little way to participate in the divine life the psalmist speaks of - awakening compassion and care for thirsty life. I unravel the hose as far as it will go, and enjoy returning to it again and again to fill the watering can, and then to go off to the distant spots in the garden where I can watch the streams of water imitate heaven's rain. The repeated action is a little antidote to some of the anxieties which afflict us. For real.

The Snack, Child and Young Peasant at Rest ~ 1882

This is a rather remarkable painting. Notice again the grass and how it is created by thousands of little, individual strokes, and how that grass and the little girl's skirt seem to blend in together, so that we're not sure which is which. The girl isn't just harmonized with nature, but she's rooted or utterly grounded in it. 

The young mother forms a horizontal line while the trees on the little ridge above form vertical lines, as if the mother and child are locked into nature. One author, commenting on Pissarro's rural figures says: "They stand in the splendor of another world." We belong in nature. Do we realize this about ourselves? 

Floods of great destructive power are more frequent each year as we pave over the absorbing ground with concrete and asphalt, and the water has no where to go. Here in Pissarro's countryside, the ground is exposed, soft, alive and splendid.

We might appreciate too that unlike his contemporaries, Pissarro (who was fifty-two when he painted this picture) never depicts women in erotic poses. They wear homespun clothes, which while sometimes fitted, are not intended to be provocative. Indeed, it is said that one of the primary aims of 18th and 19th century painters of rural women, was to make them appear erotically available for urban viewers. 

Instead, Pissarro depicts women, especially young women, as "purposeful, strong, self-determined and evidently happy in their settings."  Here a young mother is comfortable and relaxed in the company of a little child who is enjoying her snack. Not a few people in our harried culture are losing these kinds of life-sustaining, life-enriching moments. 

Peasant Gathering Grass ~ 1881

The word "Peasant" appears in numerous Pissaro paintings. But for him, peasant, was never used in a pejorative sense. Unlike his 17th century predecessors and more than a few of his contemporaries, Pissarro didn't paint wanderers and beggar children, peasants in squalor with collapsing house and and junkyard property. The folks Pissarro painted in rural settings were honored workers. Life for the many workers was changing for the better with the Industrial Revolution. Pissarro never painted the remnants of a miserable peasant life, such as fishermen huts and cave dwellers.

Here, Pissarro gives us a peasant woman dressed not in gray, brown and black, but in shades of blue, including the principal color of her dress, which we might well call royal. For a  man who was decidedly not religious, even perhaps anti-clerical,  Pissarro seems to have understood the most foundational piece of Catholic morality: the dignity of every human person. Once we embrace this principle, everything is changed for us.

The 13th century Franciscan pope, Nicholas IV, wrote: "The ultimate test of your greatness is the way you treat every human being."  Who am I to change a pope's words, but I will anyway. I would say, "how you think of every human being". Pissarro thinks highly of human beings, especially those whose work is considered lowly. Not only is the lady's dress royal blue, but the very ground beneath her is energized and sparkling. Pissaro is not a romantic, rather, I'd say he has spiritual vision. The high-end lawyer and the fellow who cleans the public toilets: the same.

Notice too that while the woman collects "grass" (perhaps really the herbs found growing in the grass - the way some Italians still collect dandelion leaves for wine) she might be said to be tumbling or falling over. In the 1980s there was a lively country song with lyrics: "Timber, I'm falling over, falling in love with you." And the trickster might say to us, "You fell for that one, hook, line and sinker." 

But I'm thinking more of that splendid Catholic Prayer we might  pray after receiving Holy Communion - Anima Christi: "Soul of Christ, sanctify me. Body of Christ, save me. Blood of Christ, inebriate me..."

Inebriate is largely understood negatively today. "The police pulled him over because he was inebriated." Drunk. But the broader sense is more simply to fall over, to be knocked off one's feet, to be toppled in awe. That's the sense I get here. This lady, who seems to be falling, reminds me of the soul which has gotten out of its head (where a lot of religious people live) and is falling into the beauty of God, the love of God, the arms of God's mercy and compassion. Have you ever experienced that?