002 Hard Thinking
Light and growing life, beauty and blossoming, live within the darker structures of this brain. It’s how I paint or write.
To discover a poem or picture, I must drop out of any world-trained educated judgments, forget all analytical, driven, goal oriented, correctively critical thinking and drop into a place of spirit. To find a good poem or picture, I must forget safe conventionality and venture from the known into the unknown. I start from what concretely is and search for what isn’t. It’s an exciting, freeing, yet trustful place of rest upon the edge of a realm where real-time sequences, causes, effects, comparisons and respectabilities melt away or bend into new shapes. When peace comes, I stop painting. If I’m not peaceful, I keep painting. I painted over this tree many times on many different days until it felt finished.
While painting the preverbal and subconscious, I don’t always know what a painting means—if anything. Sometimes, not always, understanding comes later. This picture might be a darkened mind setting itself on the Holy Spirit and being transformed and renewed as God’s thoughts begin to shine upon the branches.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. Isaiah 55:8 ESV
For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. Romans 8:6 ESV
Or, it might be a bouquet of life and beauty, of creativity and revelation, growing in the light that penetrates the darkness.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness can never extinguish it. John 1:5 ESV
Surely it is a visual reminder that God calls us
. . . to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, Ephesians 4: 23
