I heard yesterday by email that the daughter of a friend from our distant and more innocent high school years had been murdered by her ex-boyfriend in her apartment in NYC this past weekend.
There are, of course, no words to describe such a tragedy, nor can I imagine the mental and emotional demands on L. and his family at this time.
I can merely recall another death in the family when the younger brother of a dear friend from Amherst was murdered more than a decade ago w/ his girlfriend in their car by her violent and and confused ex-husband, who then killed himself in his own utter remorse and loss.
Such crimes of passion are at the core of our human fraility and loneliness. They happen every day (today a mother drove three of children w/ her into the Hudson river...), but, thank g-d, usually not to us or people we know.
We merely read in the news or watch on TV the pain and agony of others who, thankfully, are more than six degrees of seperation from us in this world...
But we still see the anguish in the parents' faces, the wailing of the women, the bitterness of the men and the fear in the eyes of the children. We see these every day in our modern world of instant communication and gratification.
The eternal struggle to come to terms with tragedy, suffering and loss...
Thus, after another trip to Italia, I wonder why, again, I am so taken w/ the Quattrocento painters with their endless portrayls of Jesus and his suffering, why I am drawn into these magnificent churches with their chapels and in situ religious art and meditations, why I feel like an apostate ready to bend on my knees in such peaceful places of exceptional devotion and creative Renaissance brilliance...
For it is not the Passion of Christ or the resurrection that attracts me. Not the theological framework that St. Paul established for Jesus as the Son of G-d, not the aspiration for my own meager soul on the fearful Judgement Day.
Not these.
No, not any of these...
What awes and impresses me, particularly post-Giotto, when the artist began to be liberated from the rigid constraints of Byzantine formality is how these paintings gain space, atmosphere, nature, shape, personality, dimension and color...
And their humanity.
Stand before a Bellini or Titian or Veronese canvas observing the individuals, some of whom even stare back plaintively at you. See the pureness of their identities and their roles in life. The Marys are no longer a distant diety or remote halo'd figurine. Jesus is not so much Christ as the son of a woman who must lose her son as a young man, full of his idealism, his love for humanity and, possibly, his radical beliefs. A woman who cradles her dead son in her arms, forlorn and abandoned.
We see how Mary holds the baby Jesus, his tender infant feet gently crossed as a foreshadowing of his inevitable early death on the Cross, his fingers cradled around his mother's hand, Mary's maternal facial pain wounded with the intuitive knowledge of her son's early death. There are saints on both sides of the Madonna and Child representing worldly knowledge of the eventual passing of all life offering the possibility of finding Wisdom or Faith or Gnosis by which the soul may rise slightly above the unquenchable sufferings and pains of this myopic world.
For me, Christianity was simply the European mystical, ecclesiastical vehicle for expressing these innate, ineluctable and inevitable truths. Other religions, Judiasm, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, all have their own vehicles, methaphors and veils to express these timeless truths.
It's simply thorugh painting, frescoes and sculpture, no civilization expressed such these subtleties more exquisitely visual than those remarkable, creative, civilizing centuries from the 14th through 16th -- especially in Italy.
This sacred art belongs in churches or temples simply because those spaces have been designed to ponder our fraility, lost innocence, pains and helplessness. There we can find some solace that we don't find in other structures made by man.
They are the equivalent of the peace we find in a garden, close to nature, forgetful of our selves and our sufferings...
For, alas, sometimes, the unseen and unpredictable wheel of misfortune lands too close to our lives or of those we love and care for...
Although I haven't seen L. since 1973 in someone's DeWitt, NY suburban backyard, he remains a dear childhood friend in my heart and from our youthful experiences.
When I digitalized my boxes of 1970s slides a year ago, an image popped up of L. with his inimitable enigmatic grin (and Jerry Shapiro, our most tragic high school friend's suicide...), so that image is still quite fresh in my mind.
Yet, at such a moment, I can only send L. my lasting friendship across the years and my prayers for the lasting beauty and spirit of his lost daughter.
As we know, the world can be very, very cruel; sometimes so random and unprotective...
But I have no doubt that the joy and love that L. gave his daughter while she was with him in this elusive, frail, vulnerable and yet ever-human world will live forever in his thoughts and in that empryean of affection that ennobles our world.
I have to believe so....
There are, of course, no words to describe such a tragedy, nor can I imagine the mental and emotional demands on L. and his family at this time.
I can merely recall another death in the family when the younger brother of a dear friend from Amherst was murdered more than a decade ago w/ his girlfriend in their car by her violent and and confused ex-husband, who then killed himself in his own utter remorse and loss.
Such crimes of passion are at the core of our human fraility and loneliness. They happen every day (today a mother drove three of children w/ her into the Hudson river...), but, thank g-d, usually not to us or people we know.
We merely read in the news or watch on TV the pain and agony of others who, thankfully, are more than six degrees of seperation from us in this world...
But we still see the anguish in the parents' faces, the wailing of the women, the bitterness of the men and the fear in the eyes of the children. We see these every day in our modern world of instant communication and gratification.
The eternal struggle to come to terms with tragedy, suffering and loss...
Thus, after another trip to Italia, I wonder why, again, I am so taken w/ the Quattrocento painters with their endless portrayls of Jesus and his suffering, why I am drawn into these magnificent churches with their chapels and in situ religious art and meditations, why I feel like an apostate ready to bend on my knees in such peaceful places of exceptional devotion and creative Renaissance brilliance...
For it is not the Passion of Christ or the resurrection that attracts me. Not the theological framework that St. Paul established for Jesus as the Son of G-d, not the aspiration for my own meager soul on the fearful Judgement Day.
Not these.
No, not any of these...
What awes and impresses me, particularly post-Giotto, when the artist began to be liberated from the rigid constraints of Byzantine formality is how these paintings gain space, atmosphere, nature, shape, personality, dimension and color...
And their humanity.
Stand before a Bellini or Titian or Veronese canvas observing the individuals, some of whom even stare back plaintively at you. See the pureness of their identities and their roles in life. The Marys are no longer a distant diety or remote halo'd figurine. Jesus is not so much Christ as the son of a woman who must lose her son as a young man, full of his idealism, his love for humanity and, possibly, his radical beliefs. A woman who cradles her dead son in her arms, forlorn and abandoned.
We see how Mary holds the baby Jesus, his tender infant feet gently crossed as a foreshadowing of his inevitable early death on the Cross, his fingers cradled around his mother's hand, Mary's maternal facial pain wounded with the intuitive knowledge of her son's early death. There are saints on both sides of the Madonna and Child representing worldly knowledge of the eventual passing of all life offering the possibility of finding Wisdom or Faith or Gnosis by which the soul may rise slightly above the unquenchable sufferings and pains of this myopic world.
For me, Christianity was simply the European mystical, ecclesiastical vehicle for expressing these innate, ineluctable and inevitable truths. Other religions, Judiasm, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, all have their own vehicles, methaphors and veils to express these timeless truths.
It's simply thorugh painting, frescoes and sculpture, no civilization expressed such these subtleties more exquisitely visual than those remarkable, creative, civilizing centuries from the 14th through 16th -- especially in Italy.
This sacred art belongs in churches or temples simply because those spaces have been designed to ponder our fraility, lost innocence, pains and helplessness. There we can find some solace that we don't find in other structures made by man.
They are the equivalent of the peace we find in a garden, close to nature, forgetful of our selves and our sufferings...
For, alas, sometimes, the unseen and unpredictable wheel of misfortune lands too close to our lives or of those we love and care for...
Although I haven't seen L. since 1973 in someone's DeWitt, NY suburban backyard, he remains a dear childhood friend in my heart and from our youthful experiences.
When I digitalized my boxes of 1970s slides a year ago, an image popped up of L. with his inimitable enigmatic grin (and Jerry Shapiro, our most tragic high school friend's suicide...), so that image is still quite fresh in my mind.
Yet, at such a moment, I can only send L. my lasting friendship across the years and my prayers for the lasting beauty and spirit of his lost daughter.
As we know, the world can be very, very cruel; sometimes so random and unprotective...
But I have no doubt that the joy and love that L. gave his daughter while she was with him in this elusive, frail, vulnerable and yet ever-human world will live forever in his thoughts and in that empryean of affection that ennobles our world.
I have to believe so....
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