Hands Full of Glory
Painted in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho August, 2011
During 2011-12 my wife and I lived in an apartment nestled into a rocky hillside just below Bethlehem, Israel. One cannot live in that particular area without contemplating the relevance of it’s being the one town in the world where God Most High chose for His one and only Son to be born. It is a profound experience to live among the fields where the shepherds tended their sheep the night the sky burst open and a choir of angels sang:
“Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth—Peace to men on whom His favor rests!"
Walking through the olive groves in our neighborhood, I knew that the Holy Spirit was inviting me to consider some artistic contemplation of that ancient and very familiar story. The birth of Christ is perhaps one of the most illustrated events in history. I wondered if there was anything more to be said in a painting than had already been said. I spent a long time just quietly reflecting on the story before finally setting out to represent what I felt the Holy Spirit was bringing to my attention.
As I was contemplating the nativity with Him, I had the opportunity to view much of the beautiful artwork of some of the orthodox Christian churches in Israel and Egypt. The renditions of this transcendent moment left me with distinct impressions that caught my eye: in much of the art I was seeing, the infant Jesus was most often painted to look like a very composed, miniature adult, rather than like a truly helpless human baby; further, Mary, Joseph, and the baby each were made to look quite stoic-- almost devoid of human emotion. The overall effect was that the “Holy Family” looked to me to be somewhat detached from one another and even more detached from the truly human side of what it was like for a young couple to give birth to this special child in a very primitive setting while on a road trip to a crowded and unfamiliar town.
While I am certain there is much more than I am aware of, I appreciated and understood some of what was being said in these pieces of high religious art—mot significantly that Jesus was, in fact, superhuman, even as an infant. How can one hope to convey the concept that in the form of this human baby there existed God in all His fullness?! The portrayal of Him as a miniature adult, even while a newborn, must have been a nod to this aspect of His miraculous, majestic, royal, Divine, (etc.) composition.
In a similar fashion, I understood that the “Holy Family” was in many ways a supernatural family and that their supernatural responsibilities overcast their otherwise natural existence. Still, the overall impression to me was that their experience was somewhat disconnected from any experience you or I might ever know. This caught my attention as I mulled these aspects over with the Holy Spirit, for isn’t the point of the whole incarnation simply this: that Jesus—fully God in every sense of the word-- came to earth and submitted to the incredibly humbling experience of allowing Himself to really become one of us—fully man in every sense of the word-- in order to take on His God/Man shoulders the weight of our lives, our stresses, our sorrows, and especially our broken relationship with His father, and restore it through His substitutionary death, as a real human, start to finish?
If this painting does anything, allow it to draw you into contemplating this miraculous event of Christ’s birth as being a very human experience, in spite of it’s overshadowing supernatural elements.
In attempting to say something in this piece that I had not already observed in the many other nativity paintings I have seen, I was also drawn to contemplate the experience of Joseph. In my painting, he obviously has a central place.
First of all, I am inviting a consideration of the crucial role Joseph must have played as perhaps the sole (human) support structure for Mary and the infant. It is likely that for some time, Joseph was the only family that Mary leaned on; as God had so clearly spoken to them both, having chosen each of them for the parts they were to play, I imagine Mary threw her weight into their relationship. It is also likely that her unwed (yet holy) pregnancy cast her out of her own family and society and thrust her into the vulnerable position of having to place all her emotional connectivity needs (at this otherwise generationally precious, celebratory period of the birthing of her first child) into the arms of Joseph. I have therefore placed Mary, exhausted after the birthing, but happy-- trustingly, lovingly leaning on Joseph’s strong carpenter’s frame, leaving the worries to him of what lay ahead of them.
Joseph is deliberately painted in a more alert stance; note that the top of his head out of the picture. This is in reference to the idea of his not being called into this role because he was the best administrative guy available. Perhaps the best of his parenting skills was that he was a listener, open to and dependent on the leadership of God over every detail of the lives of the family, ready to obey at a moments’ notice, even if an angel was sent to tell them to get up and leave for another country in the middle of the night. The topless head and his upward, inquiring gaze both point to his utter dependence on God above (Father) to direct Joseph’s care of God below (Jesus).
The viewer will note that Joseph is unclothed. This rose from remembering the feelings that flooded me when my wife and I drove home from the hospital 35 years ago with our own tiny, innocent, helpless and dependent newborn son. I remember at the time feeling completely inadequate to be given responsibility for such a gift. It felt almost irresponsible of God (and the hospital staff!) to have sent us home with this little, perfect infant. The dovetail of my feelings of wonder, mystery, uncertainty and my own unpreparedness and incompetence, all rushed together in such a wave that it left me feeling exposed and vulnerable. I had just taken my first real job; it was in a new state where we only knew one couple, and I had moved us there just in time for the birth to take place. We had not yet put together enough money for a decent place and so had converted this friends’ garage into pretty crude temporary living quarters; so our immaculate newborn came home to live for a while with us in a garage. Parenting-- at many stages but perhaps most poignantly at the onset—had a way of forcing me to look up to God and say, with unadorned and desperate honesty: “HELP ME GOD! WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? THIS TASK REQUIRES MORE OF ME THAN I KNOW HOW TO PRODUCE RIGHT NOW. PLEASE DON’T LET ME FAIL, NOT NOW, NOT WITH THIS PRICELESS WOMAN AND THIS SPOTLESS INFANT IN MY CARE.”
I found along the way that it was not my being ready for parenting that led God to entrust a child to my arms: it was His being ready, and His desire to walk me through the interactive, developmental experience of our working together to bring about on earth a desire that had its start in heaven.
The memory of these emotions became the backdrop for my consideration of Joseph’s perhaps complex feelings and my attempts to portray them in paint. If I was overwhelmed by the experience of bringing up an infant, I can only imagine the weight of emotion that must have poured over Joseph when, in an improvised nursery hastily set up in an animal shelter in a foreign town, he first held the tiny, helpless Divine Innocence in his strong, blue-collar hands.
All of these musings point to the consideration that the context of the incarnation was deeply human through and through. I feel it is something you and I should be able to relate to. And in a manner similar to the way that God dropped the most immaculately conceived Idea into the rough, saw-dusty arms of an upcountry carpenter and then steadily directed Joseph through his part in the unfolding celestial story, I feel God is still inviting us to trust Him and walk with Him step by step, day by day, as He directs us in the particular, and sometimes awkward, developments of whatever calling He entrusts us with.
“Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth—Peace to men on whom His favor rests!"
Walking through the olive groves in our neighborhood, I knew that the Holy Spirit was inviting me to consider some artistic contemplation of that ancient and very familiar story. The birth of Christ is perhaps one of the most illustrated events in history. I wondered if there was anything more to be said in a painting than had already been said. I spent a long time just quietly reflecting on the story before finally setting out to represent what I felt the Holy Spirit was bringing to my attention.
As I was contemplating the nativity with Him, I had the opportunity to view much of the beautiful artwork of some of the orthodox Christian churches in Israel and Egypt. The renditions of this transcendent moment left me with distinct impressions that caught my eye: in much of the art I was seeing, the infant Jesus was most often painted to look like a very composed, miniature adult, rather than like a truly helpless human baby; further, Mary, Joseph, and the baby each were made to look quite stoic-- almost devoid of human emotion. The overall effect was that the “Holy Family” looked to me to be somewhat detached from one another and even more detached from the truly human side of what it was like for a young couple to give birth to this special child in a very primitive setting while on a road trip to a crowded and unfamiliar town.
While I am certain there is much more than I am aware of, I appreciated and understood some of what was being said in these pieces of high religious art—mot significantly that Jesus was, in fact, superhuman, even as an infant. How can one hope to convey the concept that in the form of this human baby there existed God in all His fullness?! The portrayal of Him as a miniature adult, even while a newborn, must have been a nod to this aspect of His miraculous, majestic, royal, Divine, (etc.) composition.
In a similar fashion, I understood that the “Holy Family” was in many ways a supernatural family and that their supernatural responsibilities overcast their otherwise natural existence. Still, the overall impression to me was that their experience was somewhat disconnected from any experience you or I might ever know. This caught my attention as I mulled these aspects over with the Holy Spirit, for isn’t the point of the whole incarnation simply this: that Jesus—fully God in every sense of the word-- came to earth and submitted to the incredibly humbling experience of allowing Himself to really become one of us—fully man in every sense of the word-- in order to take on His God/Man shoulders the weight of our lives, our stresses, our sorrows, and especially our broken relationship with His father, and restore it through His substitutionary death, as a real human, start to finish?
If this painting does anything, allow it to draw you into contemplating this miraculous event of Christ’s birth as being a very human experience, in spite of it’s overshadowing supernatural elements.
In attempting to say something in this piece that I had not already observed in the many other nativity paintings I have seen, I was also drawn to contemplate the experience of Joseph. In my painting, he obviously has a central place.
First of all, I am inviting a consideration of the crucial role Joseph must have played as perhaps the sole (human) support structure for Mary and the infant. It is likely that for some time, Joseph was the only family that Mary leaned on; as God had so clearly spoken to them both, having chosen each of them for the parts they were to play, I imagine Mary threw her weight into their relationship. It is also likely that her unwed (yet holy) pregnancy cast her out of her own family and society and thrust her into the vulnerable position of having to place all her emotional connectivity needs (at this otherwise generationally precious, celebratory period of the birthing of her first child) into the arms of Joseph. I have therefore placed Mary, exhausted after the birthing, but happy-- trustingly, lovingly leaning on Joseph’s strong carpenter’s frame, leaving the worries to him of what lay ahead of them.
Joseph is deliberately painted in a more alert stance; note that the top of his head out of the picture. This is in reference to the idea of his not being called into this role because he was the best administrative guy available. Perhaps the best of his parenting skills was that he was a listener, open to and dependent on the leadership of God over every detail of the lives of the family, ready to obey at a moments’ notice, even if an angel was sent to tell them to get up and leave for another country in the middle of the night. The topless head and his upward, inquiring gaze both point to his utter dependence on God above (Father) to direct Joseph’s care of God below (Jesus).
The viewer will note that Joseph is unclothed. This rose from remembering the feelings that flooded me when my wife and I drove home from the hospital 35 years ago with our own tiny, innocent, helpless and dependent newborn son. I remember at the time feeling completely inadequate to be given responsibility for such a gift. It felt almost irresponsible of God (and the hospital staff!) to have sent us home with this little, perfect infant. The dovetail of my feelings of wonder, mystery, uncertainty and my own unpreparedness and incompetence, all rushed together in such a wave that it left me feeling exposed and vulnerable. I had just taken my first real job; it was in a new state where we only knew one couple, and I had moved us there just in time for the birth to take place. We had not yet put together enough money for a decent place and so had converted this friends’ garage into pretty crude temporary living quarters; so our immaculate newborn came home to live for a while with us in a garage. Parenting-- at many stages but perhaps most poignantly at the onset—had a way of forcing me to look up to God and say, with unadorned and desperate honesty: “HELP ME GOD! WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? THIS TASK REQUIRES MORE OF ME THAN I KNOW HOW TO PRODUCE RIGHT NOW. PLEASE DON’T LET ME FAIL, NOT NOW, NOT WITH THIS PRICELESS WOMAN AND THIS SPOTLESS INFANT IN MY CARE.”
I found along the way that it was not my being ready for parenting that led God to entrust a child to my arms: it was His being ready, and His desire to walk me through the interactive, developmental experience of our working together to bring about on earth a desire that had its start in heaven.
The memory of these emotions became the backdrop for my consideration of Joseph’s perhaps complex feelings and my attempts to portray them in paint. If I was overwhelmed by the experience of bringing up an infant, I can only imagine the weight of emotion that must have poured over Joseph when, in an improvised nursery hastily set up in an animal shelter in a foreign town, he first held the tiny, helpless Divine Innocence in his strong, blue-collar hands.
All of these musings point to the consideration that the context of the incarnation was deeply human through and through. I feel it is something you and I should be able to relate to. And in a manner similar to the way that God dropped the most immaculately conceived Idea into the rough, saw-dusty arms of an upcountry carpenter and then steadily directed Joseph through his part in the unfolding celestial story, I feel God is still inviting us to trust Him and walk with Him step by step, day by day, as He directs us in the particular, and sometimes awkward, developments of whatever calling He entrusts us with.