Jesus is present in every positive small moment of life
Writer Martin Shaw says: “In every experience of beauty we are being prepared for eternity.”
These words were in my mind when I attended an art launch at St Michael and all Angels Church in Inverness.
Stations of the Resurrection is an exhibition of paintings which the local artists, many of them members of the Art Society of Inverness, have kindly donated to the church.
Many Christians will be familiar with the 14 ‘Stations of the Cross’ – incidents from Jesus’ final hours.
The Stations of the Resurrection (or Via Lucis, ‘the Way of Light’) focus on 14 appearances of the risen-from-death Jesus to his followers in the weeks following Easter.
They culminate in his return to heaven, and in Pentecost when the wind-and-fire Spirit of Jesus came powerfully upon his followers, changing them forever, changing history.
Father Iain Macritchie spoke about the extent of darkness in the world. The blank canvas at Station 6 – the painting destroyed in the artist’s studio by vandals - was a small (but painful) example of this pervasive darkness.
But we should rejoice, Iain said, in every candle lit in defiance.
These Via Lucis paintings – bursting with colour and creativity – are acts of joyful defiance, particularly significant in their focus on the great flame from which all our feeble candles are lit – the risen Jesus, the Light which darkness will never overcome.
At a Holy Week service, Father Iain quoted words from a poet who, losing a dear friend, had written “Let us not look for you only in memory. You would want us to find you in presence.” The poet’s friend was somehow present to him in the things she had loved.
But his words are truer still of Jesus. For he invites us not only to remember him, but to encounter him – in bread and wine certainly, but also in acts of kindness, in nature, in all the small priceless sacraments of everyday life.
As we imagine ourselves into these sacramental paintings, Jesus comes to us, and is to us what he was to the followers he met after his resurrection. Still, he brings hope, joy, forgiveness and restoration; wisdom, good news to share, his presence, that wind-and-fire Spirit.
Each Wednesday until June 4 at 6pm in St Michael’s there will be a guided reflection on the paintings, using meditative text drawn together by Dianne Pallett. The church will also be open each Thursday in May 2-5.30pm for viewing the exhibition, which is curated by Sue Marshall.
We may find ourselves awakened through the paintings to things in us which words alone can’t reach. If, in seeing beauty, we are conscious of a longing, a yearning for connection, is it the call of eternity of which Martin Shaw speaks?
