Paints and Brushes [rachel]

I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life –Walden, Henry David Thoreau

I glanced down at the plate, cutting around the bone at the center of my slice of ham, enjoying the brown sugar sweetness of the meat. Thoreau’s appetite for marrow has always perplexed me. How could anyone relish the taste of that gooey pinkish matter in the middle of the bone when they could choose, instead, the more succulent meat surrounding it? My mother, however, assures me that even as late as the 1950s and ‘60s, marrow was a much coveted part of the meal. Wikipedia, that ever reliable source of random information, concurs, adding that while marrow might have fallen out of fashion in most of American culture, it’s still quite popular in Vietnam, India, Mexico, and Alaska. It’s apparently packed with protein.

On the particular occasion during which I contemplated the marrow staring up from my plate, I was dining at the home of my friends the Boyers, and I was not expected to eat this would-be delicacy. In fact, Naomi had prepared a simple and taste-full meal of salad, potatoes, and ham—the presence of marrow was merely incidental. But I took a moment to appreciate its meaning; this was a visual picture of the metaphor I’d so often mulled over in my mind: Thoreau’s ideal, the very center, the very core of life.

“I’m working on decorating but the border on the walls is making it hard. I thought maybe if I had a new piece of art for the space above this table . . . I think I’ve seen something that would work. Would you be willing to paint a larger version of your tree for us?“ Naomi has impeccable taste. I’m convinced she can take any room and transform it into a space marked by style, simplicity, and class. This is one of the primary reasons I was taken aback by her request. I’d only started painting this past autumn, and the tree to which she referred was the only thing to date that looked like anything of substance. Her request gave new meaning to the experience of having painted it—the project had begun and would apparently continue as a community endeavor.

Before I moved into the second floor theatre apartments that house the intentional community I call home, I had visited the apartment for a once-a-month art night. Kris, whose personality is as vibrant as her color palate, hosted the gathering sharing paints, brushes, canvases, chocolate chip cookies, and good conversation with a small group of friends. The chaos of the art cart both intimidated and excited me. I beheld the beauty of it and the art that resulted but was continually reminded by my own efforts that I was either far too much of a realist without talent or simply too bound by rules and fears to make anything but a poor imitation of the artwork around me. Even with these limitations, Kris’s art nights whetted my appetite for paints and brushes of my own.

Once I moved in I watched as Julie, another housemate, touched canvas after canvas creating pictures: delicate pink and white flowers on a vivid blue background, hands reaching out to touch Jesus’ robe, a stirringly dark mixture of colors bursting into the flame of a phoenix. Something in Julie’s heart was conveying itself through the brush and color onto those once blank surfaces. The more I watched her paint, the more I was drawn to the potential of that experience, wanting to break through the boundaries that felt so suffocating. Somehow painting symbolized both the strictures enclosing my heart and the freedom and fullness to which God was introducing me as He taught me trust and love.

Soon enough, I purchased my own set of inexpensive paints at Walmart and often settled myself on the living room floor with all the necessaries fanned in a half circle in front of me: a roll of paper towels, the paints, a plate, a glass of water, a sketch pad, and some borrowed brushes. Painting became a sort of hobby; the trouble was it remained a sort of tease, both introducing me to a measure of creative freedom and reminding me that I really didn’t know how to experience any form of release from the boxes in which I’d been living. All of my brush strokes had to look exactly like something real and because I simply don’t have the talent of drawing, all I created were unrecognizable splotches of color.

With Christmas came both the half-way mark of my life in the community and our holiday gift exchange. By this time, I’d come to love and trust my housemates, symptomatic of a deeper love and trust building between God and me. I watched as D. Jay enjoyed his Dark Knight DVD, Kristen her paisley scarf, Vanessa her keepsake box, Marci her movies and peanut M ‘n Ms. Eagerly unwrapping my cylindrical gift, I gazed on my new set of acrylics, brushes, and canvases. Julie had seen me flirting with brush and color in the months prior. Her gift and the awareness and love it signaled added new vigor to my painting enterprises.

Around the same time, Jay, the pastor of our church, offered the congregation an “out of class” assignment. We’d been studying Genesis 1-3 for some time, and Jay proposed we each create an art project that reflected what we’d learned about the fall and redemption of man. This suggestion aroused a mixture of curiosity and dread—now I had a theme and purpose for a painting , but I was sure the brush would fail to produce anything of substance as it had for the previous five months.

On one particular afternoon, I sat in the living room contemplating a wall Kris had painted before she moved out of the apartment earlier that year. I often gazed at it, my eyes hungry for the vibrancy, brilliance, and depth of the colorful swirls that chaotically dip and turn, collide and blend. The wall was, to those of us in the apartment (six at the time), a visual picture of the mixture of chaos and order in which we lived. On this specific occasion I had been alone, contemplating the Genesis art project, when instead of simply swirls and dips and dives, I started to see the leaves of a tree, giant bright almost Dr. Seuss-style leaves. And then it occurred to me, there are certain notable trees in the Garden of Eden, one of which embodies a paradox not unlike the chaotic order of this wall: The Tree of Life, forbidden but enticingly beautiful. I set to work, a dinner plate covered with pools of quality paint, and two hours later I was surprised to find a fully defined, quirky, colorful tree.

On my birthday, just over a month after Christmas, my friend and mentor Olivia supplied me with the final piece to complete my painting needs. While I’d become committed to the hobby, I kept the supplies haphazardly on the floor of my closet. The plastic container in which the brushes came was starting to crack and the cardboard box that held the paint was irreparably ripped. I’m normally hopelessly unorganized. As she’s done in so much of the spiritual and emotional journey of this year, Olivia offered structure, organization, and perspective: she bought me an art bin along with a tool for more effectively mixing color. Now the chaos of creativity is paired with a sort of refreshingly ordered method.

“I’d love to paint a tree for you,” I replied, smiling at the thought. Naomi was speaking along with the other voices of community. All this time, while I was painting on canvas, God has been painting my heart, and so much of the transformation has come through the people that surround me. He is the master artist splashing colors of His creativity in and through the lives of His children, drawing them, drawing me into the open air of love and trust, color and shape, paint and brush.

As I glanced back down at my plate, it occurred to me that I am indeed living deep and sucking all the marrow of life. And it tastes quite good.