Tuesday 25 October 2011

Gratitude...memorial to Paris...

Just Before Dawn


























The artist comes...
Hair breadths advance of dawnings light...
Laid back saunter...goatee then...
Long held desire...finally born...
Seines left bank...awash...gilded mornings light...
Misty drizzle worked the night shift...
Fades and heads for bed...
Cobalt, yellow just arrived...punching in...right on time...
Reflecting pools...splashing feet...
Steam swirls up...
Gossamer ballerinas off cobblestone...
Breezes waft...scent of fresh croissant...
Baked and warmed to honey bronze...butter drips...
Cafetière à piston...forces drive...pressing down...toward French roast...
Caffeine dark with fresh release...
Grounded whiffs from Latin climes...
Mornings bliss...again arrives...
I stop...inhale, turn, then sniff...
City of arts...
Market stirs...
Purveyors amble near, from far...
Leather classics bound, inlaid...canopied carts...
Floral constellations blaze...
Created brilliance radiates...
Redemptive tear...again it falls...
Intricate, so eloquent...
With great design it calls...
Ignored by most...
Day shouts to day...see wisdom here...and...
Night by night shows knowledge deep...then...
Florals curl and head to sleep...
Young love glides by...
Their hands entwined...
Others rowing on the Seine...
Dripping drops like gilded stones...
Circles of concentric float...
Vanish into currents deep.
Piaf croons low...
Old love she sighs...
Long long since lost...
Stumbling...shuffling sadness comes...
Fiercely grasping warm baguette...
Gauloises haze surrounds beret...
Circling blue in upward draft...
Gently turns and softly says...
Seasons, ‘mon jeune homme’...don’t lightly take...
C’est la vie...but then again...it’s very short...so live them well...
Each and every day...
Today...
Notre Dame...bells ring awake...
Humans day begins to stir...
Chorus wafts cross abstract swells...
Grandest organ growls bonjour...
Sorbonne’s youth, French chic...blow in...
Quickly stand and kisses give...
Café au lait...a cigarette...
Philosophize...then au revoir...
To...live let live...
The artist wanders west then north...
Arc de Triomphe...Champs-Élysées...
Boulevard amour, at times...
Concentric circles instead enshrine...
Blowing mad cacophony...
Passing fast, without a glance...
Architectures high climax...
They race...and miss...just feet away...
Auguste Rodin his...
‘Thinker’ waits...quiet gardens just aside...
Bronze patinas smooth, amaze...
Song of Solomon...carved in white...
The Kiss...it’s deep embrace, in marbles grace, 
Others dear...are worth a year...a month per chance...
Time to give them but a glance...
The Louvre...she calls...
Impressions wait...it’s not too late...
Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Suerat...
Mona, Venus, and Versailles...
Even Eiffel, don’t be shy...
Across the ville toward Montmartre...
To catch a glance of Sacré-Coeur...
And peek as artists paint...
Wet oil moments...fleeting dreams...
Gone so far...gone too fast...
Mais Oui...a lingering lunch of French paté, a Bordeaux dry with warmth of bread...and then...too soon...Ah Paris...I leave you love, yes, once again...
Au revoir...
You stole and guard my painters soul...
And there remains the broken piece...
That left a longing ache too long...
Yet in minds eye...lives on so strong.
In early years, months of days were given to live within her strong French embrace and then through decades long, I’ve circled back to come again, each time my heart rekindled with the spirit of true living free...a dance outside the lines...how rich and blessed I’ve been...
Desires wandering heart He gives...
Again affords...a non stop flow...
Never once to be out done! 
It’s impossible, you know!
I’m thankful, stirred through the rich sauce of nostalgias reminiscence, and yet somewhat thoughtful too...how often in life I’ve buzz sawed my mornings, leaving my mouth caked sawdust and spurned my months with only skin deep encounter.
Depth demands, circling back, hovering above, chewing well, swirling around and over, time after time, whether toward the sensual or spiritual. Art and spiritual disciplines have this common golden thread to know them well.
Time...silence...solitude...reflection...rest...repentance...practice...
repetitiveness and yes, surrender...all requirements of growth toward depth.
If I am to know intimately the one who calls me son, friend, brother and whom I gratefully call Abba, the one who names me new, passionately and personally...the artist above all...(His claim, not mine)...I must go and sit, in the garden, yes, alongside ‘The Thinker,’ not leaving my brain at the door. This, a rational passionate journey in relationship...not pie in the sky, by and by. 
If otherwise, like the man from Damascus, most miserable, deceived and devoid of hope...I might just as well take the ultimate step off the proverbial cliff and leap into cosmic darkness. 
If one seeks with the cup of one’s heart full and splashing over, or dry, cracked as dust, you will find, the call floats out...promise proffered. Then He waits...asking...toasting...slow the pace, ponder, sip, swirl...drink long and deep...come weary one...rest awaits...thirst satiated.
What if?
What if His claims are really true? 
Would it affect my vision of beauty and wonder?
Would I, should I, could I...
Inhale with fuller anticipation...
Taste and chew with greater intensity...
Roll the velvet wine much longer...
View with fuller wonder...
Listen with greater clarity...
Touch with softer tenderness...
Wait with greater patience...
Love with deeper sacrifice?
Worth a wonder and a wander...a look to see...
Sure beats watchin bad TV...
Provides a touch of hope in me!
And now to you, old friend Paris...
Bonsoir...again...my...mon ami!
Soli Deo Gloria
J. Douglas Thompson...SDG
Copyright 2011




A sketch, done forty 
years ago...beings me back!

Tuesday 11 October 2011

Life in the Autumn Years

'A PeaceFul Glow'  24" X 48"















Today autumn exhaled its first cool breath infusing kaleidoscopic colour into October’s Ontario! 

Sky’s vast backdrop of clean cobalt soared heavenward while sun leaned hard toward late afternoons departure...
We drove north...quiet in our wandering...
Intersecting mantles flowed, billowing brilliant in yellow’s afternoon whimsy...
Purples gentle touch...dabbed, stroked and scumbled...
Deep rust orange and sumacs red interspersed a thousand greens...
Inspirations palette far beyond mere chance...
Last night frost strode on stage and vibrancy took full spotlight in the single spin of a top on steroids...earths daily revolution.
My thoughts meandered, pondering life’s cruel arc, yet meditating on the awesome surrounding. Recent days have seen my ninety-one year old father begin his slow walk off autumns path toward the snowy climes beyond.
True beauty often comes through life’s deepest painful circumstance! 
Such is the case with trees of the northern boreal, limitless, unrivaled, untraveled. Northeast’s slice of geographic wonder is endowed with abundant hardwoods, which when kissed by ‘old jacks’ first nip, turn on a dime from that wide palette of green to royalty’s richest curtains of velvet red and gold.
Life it seems to me is like that!
One day we are enjoying the sweet warmth of the ‘green life.’ Lying back on carpets of newly cut grass gazing wistfully at skies open canopy...an azure lake a short caress just off one’s side...not a care in the world.
Then…the cold snap! Without warning, a kick in the gut...lungs retch for air...suddenly here!
It may be that at fifty-five or sixty years society portrays us as a gnarled old oak, unsuitable for the supple work of the new IT world. Diabetes or cancer take their toll. Heart attack or mini-stroke assail. We heave, we reel...wide eyed realities wake up call!
These thoughts are far removed from the average ‘30 something’ out to conquer their world, and yet, inexorably here they march, worlds to threaten...ready or not!
What then in response to the cold snap which send our leaves falling and change their hue forever? 
Out of the blue we wake up one day and most of the news anchors are in their thirties, forties or younger!
At times, the fifty-five to sixty plus crowd, the ‘boomers’ of which I am one, head down the path of ‘the way we were’ or ‘the way it was.’ We glance fondly back at our green days and remember smugly of how we tried to set our world ablaze. Retaining our ‘modus operandi’ as the ultimate and only way of approaching life we lean toward denigrating change seen all around us. 
So what does any of this have to do with the brilliance of a sturdy maple in early October?
My reflection is, as change inevitably casts lengthening shadow and brilliant color dims, we still face abundant opportunity!
It’s not January after all...it’s only October!
Too often we allow our leaves to drop off prematurely and we are left with shells of our former selves. Almost skeletal, we wander, bedraggled, seemingly lifeless and gray. 
Life is over...let it sag, physically, socially and spiritually! 
Those with color remaining, we mutter cynically, are just experiencing their second childhood. ‘Get a life,’ sighs the wind whipping off the last remaining leaves of what in past brought hope to many.
So what of October color?
Ultimately frost touches each of our lives. The question is whether during these days of ‘Indian summer’ will we be reflectors of late beauty? 
The autumn of life is not just about our feeble attempts to constantly void-fill self-centered desire. Enjoying life’s fruit from labor is well and good. Too often however, the only reason to get up in the morning is to follow that little dimpled orb around the back nine. Even that is also fine, except when it becomes our raison d’etre for life’s existence. 
Whatever our autumn proclivity, if a believer, it needs to take distinctly second place to the Master’s clarion call for kingdom benefit, all the way to the end. Reflecting the beauty of life from the first green shoots of reborn lives, until our leaves drop off, we have kingdom stuff still to accomplish.
Leaves that once were green...still remain leaves! Their purpose may have changed but they should still cling with noble purpose!
Too often, sitting in groves of unclad twig-like huddles, others are scraped with the sharpness of old age. Pointed gnarled branch-like fingers jab at younger blossoming colleagues, reminding them ‘we’ are the ones who know all about green days. 
My view as I look about this autumn day, is that shape and color constantly explode in riotous diversity. Why l wonder, weren’t all leaves made identical in shape, form and maybe gray in color? Diversity has been presented to us in nature as a grand metaphor to get us to think beyond our little lines of constriction.
With each season we face in this short life, we should reflect the brilliance of his light, creativity and diversity and show to others that no matter what season we find ourselves in, we are called to illuminate, not contaminate.
A mentor hands off a baton, but stays around as coach!
Even after our leaves ultimately drop to the ground, let’s become a soft bed of memories to encourage others that a life lived well for our Father now, rings out generation after generation as new forests appear.
“Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your might to all who are to come.” 
Psalm 71:18 NIV
Soli Deo Gloria
J. Douglas Thompson...SDG
Copyright 2011