That night I began to realize that something was happening to my eyes. I looked at my father and saw lines and planes I'd never seen before. I could feel with my eyes. I could feel my eyes moving across the lines around his eyes and into and over the deep furrows on his forehead. He was thirty-five years old, and there were lines on his face and forehead. I could feel the lines with my eyes and feel, too, the long straight flat bridge of his nose in the clear darkness of his eyes and the strong thick curves of the red eyebrows and the thick red hair of his beard graying a little-I saw this stray gray strands in a tangle of hair below his lips. I could feel lines and points and planes. I could feel texture and color. I saw the Shabbos candles on the table glowing gold and red. I saw my mother small and warm and silken in a lovely Shabbos dress of pale blue and white. I saw my hands white and bony, my fingers long and thin, my face in the mirror above the buffet table with black eyes and wild red hair. I felt myself flooded with the shapes and textures of the world around me. I close my eyes. But I can still see that way inside my head. I was seeing with another pair of eyes that had suddenly come awake. I sat still in my chair and felt frightened.
Asher Lev sees with artist's eyes. I know how that feels. I know what it means to wonder what it would look like when it's drawn. Many people have commented to me about my surprising eye for detail in my drawings and paintings, most recently last week, on observing my last acrylic landscape. I also know what it's like to have one's gift denied. Indeed, it was not so long ago that a teacher was limited thinking dismissed me from her classroom before the first day of school, using the lack of turning space in her classroom as a way to keep less-than-perfect artists out of her advanced class. I was warmly accepted into the theatre class, and luckily, lack of credit has never stopped me from doing much of anything! I've had similar experiences in dance, regarding my imperfections, or that God would allow me to dance if I didn't have my disability. If I really liked to dance so much, I would give up this little part of myself.Like Asher studying, I remember pretending to have and trying to foster in myself 'acceptable' gifts, (speaking in tongues and visions) while silencing and submerging others I actually had greater blessings in (teaching, preaching and compassion). After awhile, like Asher, "I just [didn't] have the strength for it". The secrets and the lies (and the hiding) were making me sick (much like Asher's fever). I had much more to hide than they ever found. But my personal biography is not why I'm writing this journal entry.
I'm very interested in this idea that Asher's talent comes from the other side. What exactly is the other side? What is this concept of the devil? Do we all agree on what it is? How do we know if something is the fruit of the Spirit? How do we know if it is demonic? Are we supposed to know immediately or is it in retrospect? We are supposed to check it with the community, but which community? Who belongs to the community? Can the community ever be wrong? Can we misinterpret God? What about slavery? It was once considered sanctioned by God. Or institutionalization, sterilization, and forced healings. Are left-handed people from the devil? How do we know who is wolf in sheep's clothing? How do we know in the short term is something bears good fruit? How do we know if someone's talent is from the Spirit? How do we know it in ourselves?
I think that Asher's father fears what he does not understand. But there is something right in what he's striving for. He is right to fight against the Devil, he is just confused as to what qualifies as the devil. I do not think he is right, but I have been confused on this point myself, and so I cannot judge. It is shocking that Asher has the will and the forbearance to go against his parents. He is willing to go as far as refusing to go to Vienna, even if it breaks up his parents' marriage. The first time I read this book in high school I did not understand what would bring a person to such a conviction as to do something so emotionally destructive. I think I understand now, but I hope Asher makes (or in this case made) a better choice than I did.
Alicia Nash once said that (Paraphrased from the movie A Beautiful Mind) God must be a painter, because why else would there be so many beautiful colors. I borrowed this quote in my first week in Sys I, because I wanted to remind myself in my statement of faith that God was the Creator who created beautiful things, and therefore must appreciate art and the art that we create as humans.
At the time I felt unproductive, and uncreative. I had sat like a lump for year and a half. Like Asher, I had stifled my gifts. It was time to come out from under the rock (or hospital bed) I had been living under, and go where the Spirit was leading me. I told myself I did not want to go, that there was nothing left in me. Nothing left to say, no more praises. This was not some honorable quest. This was not walking out of the spelling bee, or going to Barbados, or refusing to go to Vienna. I was doubtful, lost, and angry. I was angry at the past events, and therefore angry at God. I thought that if I put away my arts and my writing, that it would be better somehow. I thought that if I stopped talking to God, I wouldn't have to acknowledge the fact that He was somehow tied up in the pain of all this.
But not putting paint on a canvas does not mean you're not an artist; it does not mean you stop seeing the world with artist's eyes. It just means that everything gets stored up in your head, and you feel the need to go to the museum, with its pull to copy paintings. You are still an artist, even if you have to steal supplies, even if you draw in class, even if you absentmindedly draw on a religious text. Even if you try to make yourself into a straight-A student, you are still an artist, and you will do non-artistic things artistically.
Even if you have to draw with a fork and a napkin, or if you draw while you walk.
Even if you paint with the brush in your mouth or on a computer. Even if you use masking fluid and salt. Even if you dance on wheels, or put the pottery wheel on a stool, you are still an artist. Somehow, someway the Spirit will make your art known. It must bear fruit, and the fruit will come out of you even if it has to force its way out. Whether or not anyone else acknowledges it or speaks to it, it is still there. After all, aren't we supposed to worship God in secret, and not boast of our gifts?
I still don't know what to advise Asher about talking to his parents. Especially if I were to do it from a pastoral perspective. After all, I openly worship "that man", the One Chagall calls 'Jesus the Jew', the One they get blamed for murdering. But I know three things: at least in my family, art and religion are not incompatible; my gifts are not from the Other Side; and as fellow artists and seekers of God, I think Asher and I could be friends. ...But maybe not during Easter week...If I want to incite the masses, I'll just stick to holding mock Last Suppers and nailing a wheelchair to a cross!
It is Easter Week, it is Holy Week. Jesus will be crucified with that expression that Asher needs to draw, needs to learn. Jesus will come to the town of Bethany to bless and to eat. Jesus will be resurrected, and at least one girl bearing that name will claim it too. We will all claim 'He is risen". Alleluia! Amen.
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