This woman is a worship leader at our church. She sings on stage but when not singing she sits on side row with her family. Today her son was intensely interested in a stretchy rope that he brought with him and spent a while sitting in front of her playing with it. She did a great job parenting him, using a nice combination of letting him do his thing with reminders to behave and pay attention. She didn’t enforce, just reminded.
Natalie in Church
I found myself in church sitting next to Natalie and her family from my community group. I usually don’t sit right next to people and if I do I certainly don’t usually draw them. But I know Natalie and I know that her whole family are church doodlers so I felt comfortable drawing her. When I painted the drawing later I didn’t remember the exact color scheme except she was in light clothes and there was pink here and there. So, that is what i imagined and I chose the colors.
Eight Angry Saints
When I am sitting in church, cafe and waiting room and have finished a drawing I often will not start a new one from observation. I will just start making something up and draw that. I will often just start with a long line and then let that tell me where to go. The woman’s hair in the front was the first long line. I did that one then just started repeating the shape of the face and the hair, adding in variations just to see what expressions and looks I could come up with. I added halos and all of a sudden they were saints.
Scene in a Museum
Sometimes I see someone’s face and something stands out that I am attracted to. In this case I just happened to glimpse a woman with a very distinct nose. I wasn’t able to see much more of her so instead of trying to draw her from life I just started with the curve of her nose as I remembered it and made up most the rest. I also remembered her hair style and incorporated an stylized version of that as well. When I draw from memory and with no exact reference I will often turn the person into a museum piece of some sort. In this case she became a sculptural bust. But she was on the right side face left and that left a big blank space on the right. So I thought it would be fun to draw her looking at a painting of the rest of herself.
Preacherman
We had a guest preacher a few weeks back. He was a snappy dresser so I started to draw him. However, I didn’t really like his message, it was too preachy, formulaic and simplistic for my taste.
Mindscapes
This woman was in front of me at church. Once I finished drawing her profile I lost interest in drawing the rest of the church scene so I started making up a story about her using images instead of words. What she thought, what she said, what she actually was living and how different they were.
I was scanning a sketchbook from 2020 recently and noticed a pattern in a number of drawings. There were a number of nudes with arms raised in joy, ranging from the simplest of stick figures to full nudes in a domestic setting. I thought they all looked happy so I am gathering them together and showing them to you.
Part of the reason for showing them is because I saw the pattern. But another is that happy nudes are a rarity. Most of the time when a nude is presented in art, they are meant to be seen as serious or sensual or sexual or erotic or romantic or beautiful. Not many are created to be seen as happy. But happy is just as legitimate an emotion for someone who is nude as any other emotion or feeling.
Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced
The Hemorrhage
When I was 17 I found my mother almost unconscious on the landing of our staircase at home. I recognized she was drunk. I brought her upstairs so she could go to her bedroom and lay down. She had her hand covering her forehead and as I left her at the top of the stairs she turned to me and dropped her hand. She had the most massive angry purple bump on her head I had ever seen. I knew immediately I had to get her to the hospital, which I did. She had had a massive brain hemorrhage with results very similar to a stroke. She spent 6 months away from home, first in the ICU, then a general ward of the hospital and then in a convalescent hospital. She came home with a slightly palsied right side of her body, a limp and some slurred speech.
The Addiction
I knew why this had happened. It was because she was an alcoholic. But during the entire 6 months recovery that was never mentioned or dealt with by her or my father. As a matter of fact, when she returned home she started drinking again. I was absolutely livid that my father was allowing alcohol in the house when he knew this was what almost killed her. I said so to his face a number of times. I also told it to my mom. I told her that absolutely, completely, without a single doubt in my mind, that if she kept on drinking she would kill herself. My older sister Nancy also knew and said the same. Even my younger sister, Jackie, who was only 9, knew it.
The Decision
But my mom didn’t believe she had a problem and my father didn’t want to face that she did. The consequences were too great to their way of life. But finally my father changed his mind and realized there was no alternative but that she go to an in-patient rehabilitation hospital and get sober. We all went together to drop her off. She was as angry as I had ever seen her (and I had seen her plenty angry). She thought we all hated her and she hated all of us. We all cried as we left. It was horrible and more.
The Blow Up
But I was never more relieved in my entire life. I knew she had to face it and I knew she wasn’t going to at home. And she did face it. She was there for 12 weeks. She plan was no contact for the first month and then only once a week I think. But less than 2 weeks after she went in I was blown up on our boat and almost died. I faced my own trials at that point, recovering from extensive burns. The rest of my family obviously had these serious events they also had to face.
But it was my mother who had to face the darkest of times. Not only was she just beginning her journey of sobriety, she had to deal with that while knowing her son was perhaps dying off in some hospital in Brooklyn, NY and she could do nothing about it. She wasn’t even allowed to call me for over a week. It was all just so harsh and so overwhelming for her.
Letting Go
So what happened? When she finally came home after 12 weeks (I had been home from the hospital for about 2 weeks at that point) she was a changed person. She was sober but it was much more than that. She had faced every possible demon, angel, heartache, abandonment and hatred of herself and others imaginable. And she had come out the other side at peace. How did that happen? She told the story that she was just going through the motions at the hospital, reciting the various 12 steps, the various sayings and truisms of AA, without much enthusiasm or true belief they were helpful. But when she heard I had been hurt that all changed. Then she completely gave up control and believed in all her heart the saying ‘Let go and let God.’
That is when it all made sense to her and she turned the corner. She lived 15 more sober, peaceful years and that healed and redeemed so much for our family.
Facing Your Mountain
I tell this story for two reasons. One, to illustrate the quote that you must face something to change it. There is no way around it. But the other reason is to also illustrate that you cannot orchestrate what that facing will look like. You may think you can see the mountain and all you have to do is climb it. But you don’t know what is just beyond your vision. What valley could heal you, what river could drown you, what bear could eat you alive, what human or divine being could save you. You don’t even know if you will be successful.
But you know for damn sure you will not be successful if you don’t turn your face towards the mountain and start climbing.
Jane Goodall at Riverfield Country Day School, April 2005
When I was in 3rd grade I had to do my first book report. We could also do a report on a long magazine article if we wanted. We got National Geographic every month and I devoured it. When the report was assigned I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to write about the coolest person from the coolest magazine. I wrote about Jane.
I cut the magazine to shreds making my book report. Telling the story of her meeting chimps, giving them names, getting to see their personalities and watching them grow. My favorites were Flint, a young boy like myself and David Greybeard, an old man who seemed to know everything.
Every few years or so there would be another article about her and the chimps. I loved seeing Flint grow up. It was like getting a pen pal letter from far away, with Jane catching me up on how all the family was doing. It was something I looked forward year after year.
Later, I followed her career beyond the forest where she initiated programs to help the world understand not just Chimps but all of the animal kingdom. She worked hard to show us all that animals have feelings, have hurts, have personalities, and are worth caring about and treating kindly.
1960s – 2020s
She also championed taking care of our communal environment, for humans yes, but for all of life. She had a mission and she never faltered in moving forward to see it to fruition.
In 2005 I was able to see her speak at a school in Tulsa. I brought my sketchbook and drew her. I was able to meet her afterwards and show her the drawing. I don’t know what it meant to her but I know what it meant to me. There isn’t a movie star or sports personality alive or dead that I would have rather met (except Muhammad Ali, who I also met).
So for 62 years, since that first article I read, I have had a true hero I always looked up to. She’s gone now but I won’t stop look up to her.
The desire for prestige and honor in front of ones peers.
The drive for power that comes with having money.
The illusory comfort that says nothing bad can happen to me now.
The feeling that wealth equals moral goodness and/or intellectual superiority.
Whatever is behind it, the danger of caring too much about money is you end up caring too little about value. I don’t mean value as in a bargain at the store. I am talking about what is of true value – relationships, creativity, art, love, mercy, compassion, trust, environment, justice, law, peace, knowledge, education and more.
Just remember, what you pay attention to is what you become. We can see the results all around us, for good and bad.
