Tag: art

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A Bad Night’s Sleep

Some things just don’t seem necessary, you know? Like bringing sand to the beach. Or rocks to the mountains. Or World Series hopes to a Rockies game.

Nonetheless, a pair of Swiss brothers have decided that what the world really needs is a bad’s night sleep.

Billed as a “zero star suite,” the brothers – yes, of course, they’re artists – are renting out a double bed on a platform with a couple of bedside tables, lamps and no doors, walls or ceiling whatsoever. According to Reuters, “The intention is to make guests think about the problems in the world … and inspire them to act differently.”

The cost: just under $340. That’s with room service, mind you.

So, let me just ask the audience … anyone who needs help thinking about all the troubles in the world, or even just in your corner of it, please raise your hand.

Anyone? Anyone?

Yeah, I kind of thought so.

These days, it’s absurdly easy to dwell on the troubles of the world, not least because we seem to have bought the Whitman Sampler selection. Whatever your faction, philosophy or belief, there’s enough out there to keep anyone up at night. Climate change and court rulings. The economy and gas prices. Ukraine and … well, you get the idea.

And of course, none of us come to these problems with a blank slate. Even in the best of times, we’re all dealing with struggles of our own: family, health or a dozen more besides. If anything, we have too many alarms blaring on the deck. Most are in the “do not ignore” category but each of us only comes with one body and mind to attend to it all. (Well, unless you bought the Doctor Who Time Traveler Accessory Kit, in which case I want to speak with you right after this column.)

It’s easy to get overwhelmed. And depressed. And, well, sleepless.

What’s a person to do?

Something.

No, that’s not a word I left in the column while trying to think of a more profound phrase. It’s what we do. In the end, it’s all we can do.

Something. 
Our piece of the problem. In our place. At our time. However small it may seem.

Some of you may remember that I collect quotes the way some people collect action figures or classic cars. And for a long time, a 120-year-old quote from Edward Everett Hale has had a prominent place in my collection:

“I am only one, but I am one.

I cannot do everything, but I can do something.

The something I ought to do, I can do.

And by the grace of God, I will.”  

Every effort by an individual looks small. But none of them is meaningless. And enough “smalls” put together over time just may add up to something pretty big.

That’s not an excuse to sit back and trust that everything will work out. I’m peddling hope here, not optimism. What’s the difference? Hope commits. It rolls up its sleeves. As another writer put it, by acknowledging that problems can be solved, hope assumes an obligation to get up and do something.

It doesn’t guarantee “easy.” Heck, it doesn’t guarantee anything. But hope calls you to do what you can, where you can.  

Overwhelming? Sure. But not futile.

I’ll indulge in one last quote, from a science fiction author named Leo Frankowski. In one of his books, a modern Polish time traveler explains to a medieval lord that while his people don’t live to fight, they do fight for keeps:

“We fight long wars, and we win,” he says. “Once we fought for a hundred thirty years, when the very name of our country was erased from the map. And we won.”

That’s hope. That’s commitment.

That’s us.

And hopefully, it’s something that helps you sleep a little better at night.

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Here Comes the Judge

“Can you do me a favor?”

My ears pricked up. These six words may be the most dangerous in the English language. Typically, they precede one of the following:

  1. A request to help somebody move (doubled in likelihood if you own a pickup truck)
  2. Yardwork or cleaning that will take more than four hours to complete
  3. Locating something that has been lost beyond the ken of man, angels or the Webb telescope

This one proved to be a rare exception, a request from a Kansas friend and former co-worker. Not a short task but certainly a delightful one.   

Namely, she wanted me to help judge a high-school journalism contest.

Like a lot of creative professions, journalism has its share of competitions. You can always tell when awards time has come around because editors and reporters start digging through the archives like never before, trying to find that one perfect feature that appeared on page C9 of the Sunday edition. If the contest requires a hard copy sample, you can count on adding several layers of dust from digging through a year’s worth of barely-touched newsprint.

You squint at the categories, you fill out the forms, you send it all off … wondering the whole time what will suit the fancy of those mysterious, unseen, usually out-of-state judges.

Now it was my turn to be on the other end. A virtual stack of 30 opinion pieces awaited my scoring and comments.

Easy? No. In many ways, it reminded me of being a director at auditions, where half a dozen great choices present themselves but only one can get the part. That’s always agony.

But at the other end, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend my time. I mean, I had a chance to share what I know, with teens eager to learn the craft and improve. That’s exciting.

After all, good teaching moments always benefit both sides. And that’s not always easy to come by in writing.

It’s an odd craft. Some arts give you the chance to constantly bump up against others: acting, music, dancing. You work with others, you see what they do, and (in the best cases) you each come away the better for it.

Writing, by its nature, is a little more solitary. Both the creating and the learning tend to come when you’re reading and writing on your own. And unless you’re deliberately pushing yourself, a lot of it tends to fall into the comfort zone: we read what we like to read, and we see and learn the same things.

So having to evaluate a beginner in the craft forces you to think. You consider topics and approaches that aren’t your own, you see basic things that you haven’t thought of for ages. And in making yourself notice and call out details – whether to praise or correct – you reinforce that in your own mind too.

That’s valuable. And it goes beyond writing.

Whatever we do, whatever we’re proud of, we’re never so good that we can’t learn more, and a student can be the best teacher of all. We can always lift up someone else by sharing what we’ve gained … and often, find ourselves rising at the same time, buoyed by reflection, enthusiasm and the freshness of something new.

We teach someone to build. And in the process, we gain new materials of our own. Everyone wins.

So as the world opens up a little more (I hope), take the opportunity. Share something you love, whether it’s fishing or guitar or fixing the sink. Watch a rookie and remember what it was like to be there yourself.

I suspect you’ll enjoy it.

It may even do both of you a favor.

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Points of Light

It’s Birthday Month at Chez Rochat. And that usually means something special ahead.

First, a point of clarification. We don’t actually celebrate the entire month. That tends to be September, the golden month that seems to have kick-started half of my wife’s family, including Heather, her sister, her late grandfather, one of our nieces and possibly her fairy godmother for all I know. (If anyone’s seen that fairy, by the way, would you mind having her give us a call? I’m pretty sure she’s holding our lottery tickets.)

No, Birthday Month belongs to Missy, the developmentally disabled aunt we care for who’s been the star of many a column here. She’s an October lady, but the date we celebrate tends to jump all over the map. Still, she knows that when we hit this time of year, special things happen.

There’s been the Year of the Pink Bowling Ball, which Missy unwrapped and joyously lifted to the sunlight, both of them glowing like the climax of a fantasy novel.

There was the Bieber Birthday, when Missy’s temporary obsession with a certain Canadian pop star was rewarded with a cardboard stand-up at the party.

And of course, there was the Day of the Dancing, when a certain milestone birthday (never mind which one) turned into a musical marathon. Missy spent 98% of it on the dance floor, while the rest of us just tried to keep up with her.

Some years have been quiet, others have received NASA-level planning. But there’s always something to remember.

This year, it might just be the Lite Brite.

For those who haven’t met that old classic, Lite Brite is a children’s light board with colored pegs for creating pictures and designs. Missy got a set this year from her brother Jeff and his wife Meg, who know her far too well.

You see, as I mentioned a couple of columns ago, Missy likes temporary art. And few things are more temporary than a Lite Brite paper template. You fit the paper onto the screen. You punch each peg into its spot on the paper, like “B” for blue. And once you punch through, that spot is gone. The result is a beautiful design and a thoroughly perforated former set of instructions.

From all this, you get two basic results.

First, you learn to appreciate each point of light as you create it. You might not be able to do it the same way twice.

Second, unless you’re really good about stocking up on refills, you’re eventually going to have make your own designs.

Simple lessons. But lasting ones. Especially these days.

If we’ve learned anything in these last couple of years, it’s that change can come quickly. Old ways of doing things get transformed, old assumptions overturned. It’s been a time of uncertainty as we look to see what comes next, and that’s never a comfortable place to be.

In times like these, we become aware of how fragile our moments are. It becomes more important than ever to see them, notice them, appreciate them while they’re there.

And if we want to perpetuate them, we’re going to have to find the patterns ourselves.  Working point by point, not always sure if the image we’re making will be beauty or chaos.

But each step is another point of light in the darkness. Hopeful in itself, helpful in what it may become. And that’s a gift to cherish.

Maybe even one as marvelous as a pink bowling ball.

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All the Cut-Up Ladies

If life had treated Missy differently, she would have been a first-rate chainsaw ice artist.

Pure speculation, of course. In the real world, Missy’s developmental disabilities and cerebral palsy don’t make her the best match for outsized power tools. (A fact that my wife Heather and I are grateful for during occasional temper tantrums, I might add.) Nonetheless, the potential is clear.

To start with, Missy likes to play it loud. She doesn’t like being surprised by noise, mind you, but if she’s got her hand on the volume … well, as the song goes, it’s time to “Take it to the Limit One More Time.”

Second, Missy does love to create. With crayons and markers. With paint. And most especially these days with collage, where she’ll draft Heather into cutting out ladies from magazines, and then grab a glue stick and some construction paper and POUND POUND POUND everything into place.

Third, and most important, Missy doesn’t see her art as forever.

Oh, Heather and I have saved a lot of it and even hung some of it up; that’s what good guardians do, and there’s a lot of good memories bound up in every piece. But it’s not unusual to see Missy taking one of her works apart again. She’ll start removing stickers, ripping off foamies, or – especially after she’s been working for a while – simply jamming together ladies in a glued-up indistinguishable pile that owes more to stress release than creative impulse.

At the end of a typical art blizzard, the kitchen table will have vanished beneath an onslaught of  construction paper, glue, and cut-out photographs. Within which may be three or four actual art pieces.

And that’s OK.

In fact, it’s wonderful.

Because at the end of the day, art isn’t about having something for the ages or even for the scrapbook. It’s about the joy it brings you in the moment, however temporary and fragile that moment may be.

We forget that. Easily.

Oh, a lot of us used to know it. Ask a little kid to draw, or dance, or pretend to be something, and they’ll typically tear into it with gusto. Ask a co-worker to do it, and what are you likely to hear nine times out of 10?

“Oh, I can’t draw.”

“You don’t want to see me dance.”

“Trust me, I’m no actor.”

We know what expertise looks like, or think we do, thanks to Hollywood and the internet. And so, if we’re not good at something right away, a lot of us stop. Why bother?

That’s sad. Partly because – unless you’re a born genius like Mozart – you have to pass through a lot of “not-good” and “less-good” to reach the level of “good.” But even that overlooks a more important fact: “good” isn’t the object.

Joy is.

My piano playing will never be mistaken for Scott Joplin or Elton John. But it gives me pleasure and it even entertains my friends from time to time. That’s enough.

I know people who create pictures that will never see a museum. Or write poetry that will never climb the bestseller list. It won’t make them immortal. But it does make them happy. It brings out a necessary piece of them.

And if no one else ever sees it, they’ve still had that moment.

Seeing those moments, living them, appreciating them – that is a true art. No matter how the moment is spent.

And if you happen to spend those moments with a chainsaw, know that Missy is with you in spirit. And with an awful lot of glue sticks.

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Talk to the Hand Turkey

OK, who else remembers hand turkeys?

I suppose there are sillier questions to start a morning with, like “Which is louder, red or 13?” or “Can the Broncos build a real offensive line?” But then, hand turkeys were kind of a silly thing. If you have a kindergartner, you almost certainly know the drill : trace your hand with a pencil or marker, add a face on one end and boom! Instant turkey.

It still makes me laugh because it’s so easy. You see, in a world filled with brilliant holiday crafters, my skills more or less peaked in grade school. Wrapping paper and I have a notoriously uneasy relationship. My attempts to depict hearts or shamrocks usually look like someone let the air out of them. And the less said about my cooking abilities for any holiday (or at any other time), the better.

But when it comes to hand turkeys, we’re all on a level. If you can draw a steady line, you’re good. Maybe even if you can’t.

It’s a simple, weird ability for a simple, weird holiday.

Yeah, I said it – Thanksgiving’s kind of weird. Nice, but weird. Think about it for a second.

It’s a time for stepping aside in quiet contemplation – whose celebrants then complain because it doesn’t draw the attention that more public holidays like Christmas or Halloween do.

It’s a moment for being grateful for what we have, right before four weeks of being told that we don’t have enough.

It’s a time when really odd traditions have the power to stick. Like being passionately devoted to cranberry sauce shaped like a can. Or listening to (and loving) 18 minutes of Arlo Guthrie. Or paying attention to the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions in any shape or form.

Most of all, it’s a time to reach out and reach in. Reaching out to a community, especially those often forgotten. Reaching in to those we care about most.

Which means that once again our kindergarten teachers were right. A hand really is the symbol of the season.

And it’s why this Thanksgiving may be especially hard.

This year, we’ve added one more oddity to the list – to reach out by staying back. To show how much we care by keeping our distance.

That’s not easy.

For a lot of us, Thanksgiving is about drawing people close together (even if some of them are then banished to the kids’ table). Even in a normal year, when someone can’t be there – whether for one feast or for a lifetime – it leaves a hole. This year, the holes may well feel like a Swiss cheese. It’s hard to be thankful for what you have when everything inside you is saying there should be more.

But then, gratitude is easy when everything is in abundance. It’s the harder times that test us. Are we truly thankful – or just comfortable?

Is that hand there to provide others with what they need – or just to take what we think we deserve?

Can we show love, and caring, and thought for others even when it’s difficult? Even if it means making a quiet holiday a little quieter?

I think we can. And I think we do it just like the kindergarten teacher showed us.

Make things simple, not complicated.

Hold your hand still.

Draw the line carefully and firmly.

And then put the best face on it that you can.

This isn’t forever. It can be better and it will. But we need patience for now to bring the joy that will come.

This year, it’s all in our hands.

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One in a Gillion

One In a Gillion

 

Inspiration hit as soon as Gil saw the old flood photographs. Caught in the moment, he hurried to the piano and struck up his latest composition:

Going on a flood trip,

We grabbed a surfboard,

Surfed all the buildings …

Not bad for 7 years old, right?

It’s been a while since Mister Gil visited this space. That’s because it’s been a while since Mister Gil visited Colorado. My young nephew is a denizen of Washington State these days, which makes random drop-bys about as common as a Seattle Mariners World Series win. But recently, lightning struck – his parents were back in town for a reunion, which meant Gil would be staying the night with us.

Which meant, in turn, that I would be discovering Gil’s many, many talents.

Such as improvisational piano.

And kitchen dancing. (“Uptown Funk” remains a favorite.)

And ciphers of many sorts.

And spur-of-the-moment jokes and puns. (Well, he is my nephew.)

And card games. (I’ve grown rather fond of “Garbage.”)

And … well, anything else he puts his mind to, really. It doesn’t matter if he’s done it before. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t even matter if he’s heard of it before. If it can be managed by an 7-year-old’s hands, feet, or imagination, Gil will give it a try.

I’d call it a fearlessness, except Gil doesn’t know there’s anything to be brave about. It’s just all stuff to try. In that, he’s wiser than a lot of adults, including his uncle.

Down in the kitchen, I have recipes that I want to learn to make one day.

In our guest room is a guitar that I keep meaning to get back to.

Of course, there are the beginner’s drawing tools in my desk drawer. Not to mention the novel that I really will get going on one of these days – promise.

It’s easy to plead time, or exhaustion, or any of a dozen other reasons. Sometimes they’re even legitimate. But for many of us, I think the gap between a Mister Gil and grown-ups like Uncle Scott comes down to two simpler things – habit and focus.

Habit is the behavioral version of Newton’s First Law: we tend to keep doing what we’re used to doing. At 7, Gil is used to doing … well, everything. But the rest of us have comfortable skills, useful routines, boundaries. Talents at rest tend to remain at rest.

And that, in turn, is largely a product of focus.

Have you ever asked a very young child what they want to be when they grow up? Odds are you’ve heard something like “I want to be a firefighter … and a doctor … and a princess … and a tree.” And somewhere along the line, we encourage them to pick something, to find what they’re good at, to concentrate on that so their skill will grow and expand.

By itself, that’s not a bad thing. Every skill needs concentration and discipline if it’s to develop, and no one has time to master absolutely everything. But too often, a corollary comes with it. If a skill doesn’t come easy, or if it’s one we’ve not tried, we learn to draw sharp borders.

“Oh, I can’t do that.”

“I’m no good at that.”

“That’s not my thing.”

No one has to like everything, of course. But like a child in front of an unfamiliar dinner, we’re often too unsure of what we’re seeing to risk a new taste.

It’s OK to try.

It’s OK to learn something you won’t master.

It’s OK to dabble, to play, even to discover you’re not good at something … and that you enjoy it anyway.

That, too, is a joy.

By the time this sees print, Gil will be back in Washington. But I think he’s left a little bit of that fearless discovery behind. All I know is, I’m going to have to dust off that guitar pretty soon.

After all, “Flood Surfing” won’t play itself.

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A Mountain of Choices

I came home from work one day to find I had no kitchen table.

In its place loomed a minor mountain range of paper and glitter glue and washable paint, covering every inch of the wooden surface and possibly a few nearby air molecules to boot. I smiled and shook my head, reading the signs as surely as a billboard.

Missy the Artist had been at work again.

Regular readers of this column will remember our developmentally disabled ward Missy, whose creative impulse can seem somewhat akin to placing pepperoni on a takeout pizza: namely, that if some is good, more is better, placed with as much vigor and energy as possible. But her approach to, say, collage or painting, is actually a bit more subtle than that.

First comes Step One: The Early Deliberation. At this stage, Missy has surveyed the canvas – er, pardon, the sheet of paper – and decided exactly where each element needs to go. If assistance is needed, she will then indicate this sport to my wife Heather with great determination, so that glue may be placed at the proper location, followed by the proper piece of cut-up magazine. Failure to match this precision will be met with a disgusted “Noooo, here!”

“Here?”

“Nooooo! HERE!”

This continues through the first couple of dozen gallery creations. Then, at Missy’s discretion, an unseen line will be crossed and we will enter Step Two: What The Hell.

At this point, precision and planning take a back seat to enthusiasm. The object becomes to create as much art as possible, as though it were going to be made illegal in the next 15 minutes. It’s entirely possible that a stray hand on the table may find itself painted blue and purple, wrapped in glitter tape, and adorned with cutouts from Glamour magazine.

“Lookit! Look!”

The funny thing is, the method seems familiar.

It’s the approach of a sports team as the season gets late, when carefully-applied draft schemes and lineup theories give way to simply surviving the final few games.

It’s the approach of a cast and director when trouble arises on Opening Night, and a solution has to be improvised in real time.

And it’s the approach of so many of us with our Issues of the Moment, whether personal or political. The world is busy, life keeps happening, and at some point, the ideal solution gives way to the pragmatism of getting something done, even if it’s not perfect.

And that’s OK.

There’s an old saying that “the perfect is the enemy of the good” – in other words, that insisting on the absolutely perfect can keep you from seeing something that’s perfect enough. Call it paralysis by analysis, or writer’s block, or gridlock, the end result is the same: frustration that only really lifts when we can take a breath and simply try something. Because not only is “something” better than nothing, it’s often pretty good on its own terms.

When I perform art triage on Mount Missy, sure, some items are too chaotic and tangled to be displayed or stored. But an awful lot survives. Some of it even thrives on a wall or a refrigerator door. And whether its origin was deliberate or frantic, all of it is there to be considered – and some of it, from every stage of creation, is pretty darned fun.

So go ahead. Push on. Make the choice that works. Let the mountain range rise.

And when you’re done, start soaking up some paper towels to clean the table.

Seriously. That glitter glue is stubborn stuff.

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With Everything On It

“Go, ahead, honey,” Heather told Missy. “Show him your card.”

Eagerly, Missy reached out and handed me her latest creation. The sheet of computer paper that it had once been could barely be seen. From corner to corner and edge to edge of the page stretched a sea of foam stickers – no, a wave of them, piled high and crammed tight.

Valentine’s Day had already come and gone, so Missy had grabbed for the package of Easter “foamies” instead and applied it generously. Squadrons of rabbits squeezed for room among armies of eggs and forests of grass. Somewhere beneath, a magazine page had been glued to the page, its image all but invisible beneath the huddled masses.

It was the finest example of Everything Art that I had ever seen.

Our disabled ward Missy, who is my age physically but often much younger in spirit, likes to express herself in a number of media. She’ll paint like it’s going out of style and slice up pictures for her collages until no magazine in the house is safe. But the quintessential Missy artistic style may be “Everything Art”: cram the page with everything you can reach that will stick to it, until the picture you’re creating has nearly become a sculpture.

Everything Art is somewhat tricky to display. Because many of the pieces are stuck to other pieces rather than to the page, hanging it on the wall means some of it may begin to slide and fall. Lying it on a flat surface has a better survival rate, but even so, Everything Art has an ephemeral nature akin to ice sculpture or painting with light – the beauty you see today is not guaranteed to last, so study it well while you have it.

Fragile. Unusual. Undeniably drawing the eye. And most of all, enthusiastic with absolutely nothing held back.

Oh, yes. This couldn’t be more Missy if it tried.

As regular readers may remember, Missy tends to approach life without filters. A bite of a delicious dessert may raise a cheer that echoes across a restaurant. Music exists to be turned up to 11, or even 15. Her smile lights a room as easily as her temper can shake it, and new discoveries produce a lot of excited conversations afterward –with or without words.

Yes, she can be quiet, even stealthy when she has mischief in mind. But even then, she’s fully engaged, just in a different way. She wears herself openly and she gives what she has to everything she does, whether it’s dancing with hands high in the air or waiting at her favorite bay window for someone’s return.

It’s life as Everything Art.

Most of us have learned to hold back a bit. Sometimes to keep from exhausting ourselves too soon. Sometimes out of concern what others might say. There are many good reasons and many less-good ones, some arising from forethought, some from fear or remembered pain.

But every day, Missy reminds me how good it can be to release the restraints. Not to hurt or overwhelm someone else, but just to honestly engage with the world, in joy and wonder and curiosity.

To let down the barriers and see what’s beyond the wall.

To live.

Sure, there’s a place for care and caution. But living under guard can be tiring. As the old words go, there’s a time for every purpose under heaven – and that includes a time to let go and dive in.

Because sometimes, life is too short not to grab all the foamies.

 

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The Halloween Brush-Off

“So do you guys roast the seeds afterward?” the checkout clerk asked as I paid for our three pumpkins.

“Huh?” It took me a minute. “Oh. No, not really. You see, we don’t carve these up. We …” The confession felt odd for a moment, like admitting to a secret fanship of Justin Bieber. “We paint them.”

The clerk blinked.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that before.” She smiled. “I like that.”

Whew.

No, that’s not a misprint. For three or four Halloweens now, we’ve celebrated as though Linus had discovered Jackson Pollock. Our disabled ward Missy is the artist-in-chief, smearing blues and browns and whites across the natural orange canvas until the mighty holiday symbol looks … well, distinctly out of its gourd.

My wife Heather and I love the results, with all the usual oohs and ahs and pictures to Facebook. What’s harder to explain is how we started doing this in the first place. It really comes down to two things: a weak stomach and a Halloween hesitancy.

The stomach is mine. As a kid, my family used to carve pumpkins – nothing elaborate, just the fun of the usual gap-toothed grin. And then, one Halloween, I had a stomach bug.

Just for the record: when you’re already presenting previous meals to the porcelain altar, the smell of fresh pumpkin guts is less than enticing. Well, that’s not quite true. It certainly enticed me to do one thing.

“Blaaaaargggh!”

I have never been able to smell a pumpkin’s insides since without starting to revisit that moment.

The hesitancy is – or rather, was – Missy’s. When we first moved in to take care of her, she loved holidays with two significant exceptions. She hated the sudden explosions of the Fourth of July (and still does). And she didn’t care for Halloween.

We couldn’t quite figure out why, unless it just weirded her out to have so many people walking around in fake faces and strange clothes. (A similar objection could be made to Election Day, come to think of it.) A newfound love of Harry Potter finally reeled her in – this is the second straight year she’s enthusiastically dressed up as the boy wizard for the season – but the hook was first set by the chance to wield a paintbrush.

Missy loves to paint. With abandon. It can be a quiet Saturday or the midst of a flood, on anything handy – sketch pads and computer paper are a favorite, but she’s even decorated plastic bags before if they got in the way. The style is abstract in the extreme, though images sometimes seem to appear: a large “M,” say, or green and blue shapes that looked a little like our old parakeets on a branch.

Pumpkins were a great new medium for her and one that still hasn’t worn off. It’s egg coloring on the grand scale, with no need to hide the results afterward. (Hmmm … is that what the Great Pumpkin does?)

With a few simple strokes, she found her way back into the holiday. And she pulled us with her.

Maybe that’s the secret to more than just Halloween. You have to find your own way of celebrating life, your own approach to times and events that others might observe or ignore. And when you do, it will be what keeps the time fresh to you, however odd it might seem to the neighbors.

And with enough enthusiasm, you might even pull them along with you.

So no, no roasted pumpkin seeds from our endeavors. Just bright color, great energy and a lot of fun.

That’s a neat trick. And quite a treat.

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Seeing the Invisible

The bundled figure on the North Carolina park bench could have been any homeless man, curled up and trying to sleep. Well, except for two things.

First, the figure was made of metal.

Second, it had visible nail prints in its bare feet.

That’s right. The bench was being occupied by Homeless Jesus.

The sculpture, “Jesus the Homeless” by sculptor Timothy Schmalz, was made for St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Davidson, N.C. And it’s caused a bit of a commotion. According to NPR, a number of people have praised it (including the current Pope) while others have condemned it for bringing down the neighborhood, or just for depicting their Saviour as … well, a bum.

Me? Every time I’ve seen the statue surface on Facebook — which it has, many, many times — I’ve smiled. And my own personal faith is only part of the reason.

Oh, if this were a Sunday School class, I’d go into detail about Jesus’s admonition to serve him by serving “the least of these.” And I’d probably add a side order of Paul’s warning that in caring for a stranger, we may entertain angels without knowing it. But since I have a more ecumenical readership here, I’ll go to something a bit more basic.

Put bluntly, it’s an uncomfortable image. And I like that.

It forces us to see the unseeable.

We don’t like doing that. I know I don’t. There’s certain topics we instinctively avoid in conversation, certain sights we often turn away from. The ones that make us feel helpless. Or afraid. Or just strike too close to home.

It’s little kid logic. If we don’t see it, it’s not there.

In school, it’s easier not to notice the bully. Then he won’t beat us up. Right?

As adults, it’s easier not to talk about death. Then we won’t die. Right?

And at almost every stage of life, it’s easier not to notice the hurting, the poor, the afflicted. To look past the people who have nothing left except their presence. Then we don’t have to feel the mix of fear (what will he do?), embarrassment (did she notice me staring?), guilt (did I just think that?) and discomfort that’s bound to arise.

Especially the last. Because that’s the part that says all the disurbing things: “This shouldn’t be. Why is it? Why doesn’t someone do something?”

And then of course, the even less comfortable sequel: “I’m someone.”

If we don’t see it, it’s not there. But what we can’t ignore, we have to address.

That’s a huge prospect. Terrifying, even.

But is it as frightening as a people that would rather have the uncomfortable stay invisible?

I don’t know what the answers are. But I do know they won’t be reached by ignoring the questions. And so, I offer my thanks to St. Alban’s, to Mr. Schmalz and to everyone else involved for forcing the spotlight to where it doesn’t always want to go.

After all, consider the subject. There are stories of Jesus healing, teaching, lifting up, reaching out. I don’t remember any of him carefully looking the other way while walking past a leper.

He looked. He saw.

Shouldn’t we?