My Favorite Good Friday Painting, and a Reading from Sister Wendy for the Weary Kind
Hello Loved Ones,
I woke up this morning feeling rather sad. Yesterday I was sad too. I was sad when I showed up for my appointment with my Spiritual Director. I didn’t really know why. But that’s why Spiritual Direction is so good. They’re there to expand and exhale those boundary lines that we’ve so tightly wound around our souls and inhale life and space and rest.
That’s when I realized I was tired. Like, really tired. I’m usually not one to admit that. And for the first time in Spiritual Direction, I took a nap. She invited me to receive hospitality and care and rest in the presence of The One Who Loves Me. My body and mind still felt weary, even my heart. Because I knew that today was the day they were gonna kill Him. The One I love. It’s hard to put into words our intimacy with Christ, you know? Really, John Donne does it best.
After having breakfast this morning with a dear friend, I started humming the song, The Weary Kind, by Ryan Bingham. In the recesses of my memory, I’d heard it in the movie Crazy Heart and it rose up within me like a butterfly.
“Pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try”
Maybe John Donne and Ryan Bingham were onto something. We’ve got crazy hearts, and we’re so thirsty for the I’d Die For You Love that we’d let God batter our hearts. To accept that kind of love is to let yourself get pretty dang beat up.
I've been coming to this painting for a few years now on Good Friday, by Craigie Aitchison, painted in 2008 shortly before his death. People say it's too much emotional manipulation to believe all this, to meditate on this. I certainly don't deny much harm & abuse has been done in name of the Man on that cross. What I am wondering is how much emotional whiplash are we willing to admit is within us? Us humans are all over the place emotionally speaking. Just yesterday, I went from a pretty great mood to complete rage in a matter of ten minutes. And no one was doing it to me.
I love this painting for its starkness. It's reality, if you will, beneath our emotions. All those over-the-top Easter re-enactments as a kid never reached me. But this does. Take me to church every Sunday to hear stories of the atonement and resurrection because that's bone deep. That cuts straight to the woman who's husband of thirty years just left her, (and to the guy on the run), to the teacher who lost yet another student to suicide or gang violence, to the one who's in rehab, to all of us going week after week to some form of therapy, to the parents with another miscarriage and the ones with empty wombs and empty homes. We can argue all we want about politics and policies, but under the skin of all that lies the Son of God blazing with sacrificial love.
A note from Sister Wendy Beckett1
“In art, there are few crucifixions that stress the inner truth of Jesus’ death: that Christ accepted with enormous happiness that he had accomplished all that his Father willed.
Shortly before his death, Craigie Aitchison painted this extraordinary crucifixion. The world has been reduced to absolutes, in which only nature is innocent. The earth has become desert, and yet Jesus draws new life, the the scarlet of a poppy. The very presence of the cross has created a strip of living green against which we can make out Aitchison’s beloved Bedlington dog. but above the land soars Christ on the cross, a luminous body blazing with the fire of love. His features are consumed in the intensity of his passionate sacrifice. Over his head hovers the skeletal outline of the Holy Spirit. There are stars in the sky catching fire from the fire of Jesus, and we see the great curve of the rainbow, a sign of God’s covenant with humankind. Aitchison is showing us not what the crucifixion looked like, but what it truly meant.”
This is a luminous mystery. My heart is crazy and battered, and now it’s on fire, along with the stars in the sky and the curve of the rainbow.
I’m weary, and I’m alive.
The Art of Lent, A Painting a Day from Ash Wednesday to Easter