More specifically “Where does an artist get their inspiration to paint?”
It is long after Christmas, and the 8th Sunday after Easter just past, but my Christmas Infant is still on the living room dresser. He’s in the middle of my Easter story display, complete with an apple, a tree, a Blessing Cup, grapes, a Crucifix made from a block of coal, Mary in the depiction of our Lady of Fatima, and two cherubs, one holding a sheaf of wheat, and the other a book and a crown. The empty wooden cross finds legs each time the grand daughters are here.
But my thoughts are again on something else when I look at this pictorial story. Where? On the shepherds and their encounter with the tiny Holy Infant. What happened to those shepherds after that encounter? Life goes on? No thought for that holy night afterward? Or did the Child’s story get told and retold beside many a campfire, spread and retold by others, perhaps? I think so. How gentle a preparation for God’s Chosen People! I remember the song sung in Godspell “Prepare ye, the way of the Lord…..” and it’s sung as a whisper in this thought of mine. The ground prepared, the seed gently, quietly, planted for John the Baptist to pour light upon to burst forth the proclamation of Him!
How long have I wondered about the shepherds? Recalling the old chipped Nativity set we had in my childhood, a long long time.And every time since when I repair and restore a set.
And totally, seemingly, unrelated to those thoughts, there is a man at church whose face is so tender and peaceful while he prays during Mass. I see him in profile because our church has pews set up in a T shape with the altar at the joint of the T and he sits in the arm by the chapel. I think often of him. I even asked a few people who he was, but nobody else even seems to notice him. It felt like I knew him though. And one Christmas realization dawned. He knelt in front of the Nativity set, and I knew.
And so that day, on an instant whim, I approached and asked him if he’d pose for a painting of mine.
He smiled with curiosity and said “Yes!” before my laying out my thoughts. I was struck by his humbleness, and unquestioning willingness, while his eyes twinkled. It was seeing deep into a soul full of innocence and trust.
About the painting. I’d imagined a very young shepherd man who had helped the Family the night of Jesus’ birth when he’d shared his bread with them. This church man’s face would be for that shepherd who was again encountering the Child Jesus while on the Holy Family’s way back from Egypt. And now the church man kneels before the Child Jesus Who is breaking His bread to share with the shepherd.
The sentence “They recognized Him in the breaking of the bread…” has always had a special tug on my heart. I think of it every time I see the priest break the Bread. This Bread has been called timeless simply because It Is, on Jesus’s word “This is my Body…”
Something being timeless has no pin-point beginning too. And so as bread had significance in Scripture B.C. as food for the journey, bread during Jesus’ life’s journey back to the Father called forward to the time when Jesus made Himself the Bread for our journey to Heaven.
The Child, a shepherd, a man at church, and bread. A painting. What’ll inspire me next? I have canvas waiting….
