The Artist's Statement about the Exhibit:
Abraham Joshua Heschel suggests that to die is no longer to be surprised. So often I am too busy, too pre-occupied with worries, goals, hopes, anxieties—the appointment this afternoon, the deadline I just missed, what to prepare for dinner tonight—that I miss seeing, hearing, feeling, touching, tasting what is all around me. How can I “see” more often? Wonder? Be in awe? Be surprised?
Thomas Merton, the 20th-century Cistercian monk, speaks of “the sacrament of the present moment,” suggesting that the present moment is deeply spiritual, meaningful. The car I’m walking past, the honking horn, the splashing rain, the distorted reflection in a window, the wind blowing in the trees, the smells right now—for the rich contemplative traditions, these are sacraments, holy, sacred. To leave the present moment by way of my beliefs, my thoughts, my expectations, hopes, fears—even my theology—these can precisely be ways of missing the sacred. Merton again: “Try to stop thinking and simply to be . . . totally present to what is reaching you through your senses.” Put another way, Zen koans also nudge me to wonder, to let go of interpretations and expectations, to empty my mind—once again, to be fully present. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Master, suggests that mindfulness means keeping my consciousness alive to the present reality; to perceive without judgment; to redirect my action from achievement to non-achievement.
Amid the pains and stress of the pandemic, my spiritual/contemplative journey the past couple years has been surprising. Lockdown, looking out of windows I have looked out of for 30 years with few places to go—slowly a whole new world began to unfold. I noticed the wind! My expectation was to see bare trees (winter), budding trees (spring), trees full of leaves (summer), and wonderful autumn colors. But such assumptions all too easily obscure the present. One way to stay in the present was to watch the wind “painting” the same scene in a time exposure. This enabled me to let go of expectations since the wind “painted” something quite unanticipated, constantly “painting” branches, buds, leaves, colors in endlessly different ways entirely new to me, often quite stunning! Other ways to stay in the present can happen when I let the rain “paint” what I see through the windshield, or when noticing the endless “urban conversations” happening in the reflections on building facades or all over the surfaces of cars as I walk down a street. Celtic Christianity talks of “thin places,” where the sacred and the ordinary seem to merge at times. To borrow from the Psalmist, “Be still and know....”