Finding Allness

I am fascinated.

Looking at Picasso’s Guernica at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, I'm totally captivated by the overwhelming epic collage of shapes and planes. It is tempo, mass and stress, a rhythmic contradiction of forms and volumes on a massive twelve by twenty-six foot scale.

A palette of gray, black, and white colors push and pull against a background of broken hard-edged, jagged geometric structures. 

A wailing woman clutching a baby in her arms is jumbled together with that of a horse whinnying in agony. A skull-like head of a bull is formed by the angle of its front leg.

Contrapuntal images abound. Out of a broken sword, a flower grows. A blazing light shines overhead. A woman sticks her arm through a window. In her hand, she holds a lighted lamp. A person is engulfed in flames. Part of his body forms a light-emitting crack in the wall. Beside him is a dove.

Whereas the norm is to opt for a fantasy of simple clarified existence, Picasso dissects the whole into fragments, imbuing each with a contour that is tense with a beauty normally unseen. An array of perspectives is laid out on a flat plane: some chaotically-oriented, several fused in unexpected ways. A single frontal face is simultaneously shown with its lateral view. Eyes and noses and mouths are interconnected. One face becomes All Faces.

His is a perspective that invites the eye to discover that the complex abundance of life is exactly what is.

Oneness resides in Simultaneity.

Allness consolidates the Multiplicity.

Finding N.E.M.O.

Finding N.E.M.O. (New and Efficient Means Of) 

Surviving a Family

This is to respectfully acknowledge my indebtedness to humorist Erma Bombeck whose style has been the inspiration for this piece. Certain phrases and description of “Mother’s Eyes” have liberally been borrowed from Ms. Bombeck.

The nation has been in full Lenten mode since the month before. Now it is April, El Mes Sagrado (The Holy Month). School is also out. When these two phenomena collide, it’s bound to be a Holy Mess in our household. The incongruence makes it seem as if fate is waging a cruel war, and we are all in the middle of it.

Por Dios! becomes Mummie’s hourly mantra. Heretofore, she has endearingly boasted to friends and foes alike about her Seven Blessings, but now mournfully recites a litany of sorrows from the Seven Crosses she bears.

Such Blessings (or Crosses, as the case may be) come in different sizes and temperaments.

I’m the only girl in her pesky Magnificent Seven brood. I’m 12. Mum steadies herself on the stove each time I announce my plan to marry the youth minister. I boastfully tell my friends that I was conceived when Mum drank the blood of a rooster and spat three times at the full moon.

Ten and Eight-Year-Old Brothers like to compete crossing their eyes despite threats that they are going to freeze that way. They’re the ones who are always told, Not too close to the TV or you’ll go blind!

Six-Year-Old Brother is convinced that the hospital gave him by mistake. Four-Year-Old Brother likes playing with Dadee’s bottle of black India ink and thinks it’s edible, so he looks like he’s being raised by werewolves. When these two bicker, they make Cain and Abel sound like the Jonas brothers.

Two-Year-Old Toddler Brother belongs to the Tribe of Little People everywhere who can walk under the dining table. He is the only one in the house who can take the cap off the child-safe Cortal bottle.

Three-Month Old Youngest Brother cries around the clock. When he finally falls asleep, Mum gets up at night and holds a mirror under his nostril to make sure he is still breathing.

Meal­time takes on all the excitement of a missile at blast off. Leave some rice for Voltaire! Mum snarls. Voltaire is one of our six dogs. Yes, six.

12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 3… we recite at roll call. 

Who are you? Mum interrupts, barking at the Unknown Three-Year Old. She smartly notes that this year's even-age sequence is skewed. Where’s Two-Year-Old? 

We don’t budge. We’re used to Two-Year-Old going AWOL at mealtimes. The accepted rumor among us siblings is that he trades places with the Three-Year-Old Neighbor (he’s the 3 at roll call, if you’re paying attention).

Now picture Sunday, the holiest of days, as we walk one block to church – yes, walk! (everybody does it). It is like leading a caravan of wild pygmies in search of an oasis in the desert.

Church service has been ideal for Mum to shine and show off her expertise on the most effective means of communication known to men, The Mother’s Eye. It really varies with the situation and its gravity.

The Look of Death is unflinching and unyielding until the repartee, I’m telling! stops.

The more-commonplace Deadpan Glare is used when one of the siblings starts to crawl under the pews.

The Desperate Squint, a most-interesting study in pantomime, is performed when an enterprising brother tries to get change from the offering plate.

Finally, there’s the Martyr’s Countenance in which Mum will just sit and start knotting her dress sash into a rosary. We’re not Catholic.

You may wonder where Dadee is in all this. Well, he has been busy getting congregational approval to enroll boys in the army just as soon as they get potty-trained. He has also been campaigning to send the youth pastor ASAP on a permanent mission trip assignment to Borneo.

In truth, I do not know of any survival tips that may have worked. I suppose that we’ll just grow out of it, and Mum’s post-natal depression which started seven months before I was born will finally taper off when we go to college.

Amidst all the clamor, however, I’ll contend what a small marvel of a time it is. I have loved it then and, in retrospect, love it even more now.

El desorden tambien tiene su encanto.

Disorder also holds its charm.

Finding D.O.R.Y.

Finding Easter hope

On this Day Of

jubilation,

Risen Yeshua reigns.

Finding Jesus

 The soul should always stand ajar

That if the Heavens inquire

He will not be obliged to wait.

- Emily Dickinson

It was an inspired idea for Maundy Thursday. A living tableau of Da Vinci’s Last Supper.

The script contained soliloquies for the apostles as they might have expressed themselves immediately after hearing the Master say, One of you will betray me, whereupon each man had cried out, Lord, is it I? 

However, we thought it easier if the lines were to be simply read by a narrator. So, no memorization required. No acting either. Just a stanced posture, frozen for the duration of the narration. Bartholomew, James, and Andrew formed a group of three - all were surprised. Judas, Peter, and John were similarly grouped. Then Jesus. Two more groups of three disciples each completed the picture.

For the most part, casting the disciples had been easy. Church members were cooperative, several of them volunteering for roles. I thought of Paul, but Andrew is fine, Ken said with a genial, expectant smile.

Arvin said matter-of-factly, Sure, I can be John the Beloved.

Peter, that’s me! Dick burst out.

I had a few concerns: what about Judas? That would have to be handled delicately, for who would like to be Judas? Duane – of course, it would be he who would come to the rescue. Don’t sweat it. I’d do Judas! he squealed.

So, Jesus. For a couple of weeks now, I had been in search of my Jesus. I was in a beleaguered frame of mind that Sunday when an anxious committee member yelled the question from across the church quadrangle, Have you found Jesus yet?

My response was quick. No, I haven’t!

The words reverberated onto the complicated reflection of the church’s stained glass windows. The accidental clarity of my declaration instilled silence.

Complete silence. The kind one would hear when a baby was asleep, or when a spider wove a web. Silence. The words lay in the space between aghast parishioners, out there with no way to get them back, like a letter dropped into the mail chute.

The import of what I said suddenly bobbed up into my consciousness. I just verbalized a fear buried deeply within me - that I hadn't found Jesus, despite my handy assertion to the contrary. Then it dawned on me: I was pursuing a futile search, whereas it was I who had to be found.

Poised on a donkey, riding into Jerusalem, He already saw and found me. I only needed to say, Here I am! - and spread a coat on the ground in front of Him.

I only needed to join the throng waving palm branches and shouting:

Hosanna!

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord - the King of Israel!

As a postscript to my non-metaphoric search, I did find my Jesus – a soulful, bearded young man who attended second service. His father had pestered me thereafter, If my son is Jesus, does that mean that I am God?

Holy Mary, pray for me, a sinner. Help me find God!