Grace to you
The picture above was the cover picture for the Optimists Edition of Time Magazine earlier this year. The Artist is our own Nelson Makano from Limpopo Province. His particular style, often using a young cousin as his model, is to draw and paint South African children with a new sense of brightness and depth.
The editor of the Optimist Edition, Ava Du Vermay, explained that art can be used for optimism and hope. “Prioritizing hope, whenever possible, is a brave and bold thing to do.” She believes that art embraces all our feelings and imaginings and that despite our socio-political disjuncture, we need each other, and to engage in a shared, fearless way. She believes Art can do this in all its manifestations. Makano’s cover portrait was the fitting representation. He has drawn international recognition. He commented on his passion, saying, “Later in life we sometimes forget there is beauty in being human, but children are just discovering that. I look at someone, and the moment I’ve seen them can feel so beautiful. I want to capture that moment on canvas.”
Yes we do forget that there is so much beauty in being human. A child’s eyes and ears, absorbing everything sponge-like, seeks to process information with a liberating innocence. The artist is depicting the hope in a young child’s eyes, and reminding us of the joy that we should all feel for children, these gifted promises of God. Makano titled the picture, “Visions of a limitless future.”
The plight of vulnerable children is a barometer for society highlighting the failures of institutional and other responses to make a real difference for upholding the personhood and humanity of children. As people journeying in faith, do we have a message of hope for our children, for other vulnerable daughters and sons of God? Can we be bold in hope? Not just sharing the bright side, but more. Much more. Deeper. Can we dare to try to comprehend the grace of God in Jesus, bringing Hope to a broken world?
Jesus, (Luke 18:15ff), reprimands the disciples when they shoo the children away. Children brought by their parents for a blessing! The disciples saw the children as a nuisance. Eugene Peterson’s, The Message uses these words for the reprimand “let these children alone. Don’t get between them and me. These children are at the very centre of life in the kingdom.” The children, the poor, the sick, the foreigner, the other. All these vulnerable humans are often shooed away figuratively and literally. Life, however, in all its daily complexity, confronts us also with loved ones who may be vulnerable in time and place. And we may actually engage in a disengaging way. We disengage with good intentions, with well-meaning platitudes, with impatience and disdain, with fear and anxiety with anger and rejection, with paternalism and self-righteousness, with pain and suffering. In those moments, pregnant with hope, do we come between Christ and the other?
And what of us when we are vulnerable?
Du Vermay also quotes Howard Thurman “Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.” Do we have a faith message of hope? A message, a presence, lived moments that are boldly professing hope in Christ. A way to engage, and a way to be engaged, to release the beauty in being human.
I share this contemplative insight from Nan Merrill’s book: Lumen Christi … Holy Wisdom:
Arise! Become a rebel for the Spirit!
Let not worldly wars and woes
paralyze your aspiration
to unite in the birth of a new dawn.
Discouragement and despair burden
the heart:
dark thoughts often lead to
deadly deeds.
Dive deeply into the Cosmic Ocean of Love!
Here harmony, beauty, peace, truth,
and inspiration reign:
needed for the healing and repair
of this wondrous world.
Become a beneficial rebel in the service
of Love and Light!
Look within the Silence:
Divine Hints will set you on the pathway
to new Life offering guidance,
comfort, and strength
for the journey.
Gilbert
