One of the current challenges I’m dealing with is to ‘be still’. To let myself be where I’m at, even if that means I have anger or crappy emotions I don’t want to deal with. Last night I read an article that put words to that struggle. It was a piece in Weavings about the Grunwald altarpiece. The altarpiece was commissioned by a hospital for victims of St. Antony’s Fire. St. Antony’s Fire was the Middle Ages term for a bacterial infection featuring “intestines eaten up by the force of St. Antony’s Fire, with ravaged limbs, blackened like charcoal”. The author meditated on pain and how we respond to it.“…hope is not the same thing as optimism or positive thinking…Is hope possible apart from an honest reckoning with one’s own deepest vulnerability?... These are not places most of us would choose to enter, at least not willingly. There is a natural and understandable desire to protect ourselves, to find places to dwell that are not so vulnerable, so painful. But this is not always either possible or advisable. The willingness to stay put, to refrain from fleeing, often marks the first gesture of openness toward facing what we would rather not face—our own incompleteness and brokenness, even our despair”
“To face this darkness, our own as well as the darkness that afflicts others and that hovers continuously over our world, is perhaps our greatest challenge. It may well be the only path toward redemption.”“[In the altarpiece] is a haunting image of redemptive love—much of whose power comes from its refusal to evade or look away from the harsh realities of suffering and loss.”
The temptation of St. Antony. In the bottom left is a person suffering with St. Antony's Fire.
5 comments:
This reminds me quite a bit of just where I was at previous to going on the healing retreat...I successfully avoided that pain until the months leading up to that retreat, when I found I could not/was not willing to avoid it any longer. But the thing I found through walking that out, then being met by the Lord in that place (while on retreat) was that facing it and allowing it to hurt brought the healing I was looking for all along. I try to remember that, and how wonderful it was to move past that pain, when other painful things come up that I feel like avoiding.
Yeah, but what I've just found out is that I'm pissed at God. Same stuff Jrex went through. I've avoided that pit for years but I'm being called to jump in it. I hear what you're saying, but its hard not to be afraid when I haven't seen that abyss fully navigated yet...
Hmm...I hear what you are saying.... I was scared to death previous to going on that retreat. It always comes back to whether you really trust God, no matter how much YOU can see right now (similar to our phone conversation recently). I think of Isaiah 43, the first few verses. I'm praying for you (both).
Hi OTR,
On a different tack, the Grunwald Altarpiece you have posted has a unique feature to it that I thought I might share, if by chance, you had not noticed. I remember hearing this lectured on:
As you mentioned, the altarpiece was made for victims of St. Anthony's Fire, many of whom were amputees. Did you notice where the seam in the painting is- where it opens to a triptych? The seam is centered in such a way as to remove the right arm of Christ. Coincidence? Doubtful. I think it's a beautiful and profound way of communicating Christ's love for and identification with those who suffered so horribly from that affliction.
JO
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