Thank you, Rhonda, for your restraint, for withholding a perpetual religious testimonial. As it is, Spiritual Reflections would better reflect this community if it included Buddhist, Jewish, Islamic, Native American and the numerous Freethinkers who live here.
The Good Friday Cross Walk demonstrates our love of symbols, rituals, parades, and pageantry. It reminds me of a pilgrimage to Mecca, Mardi Gras, Dragon Boats…. We social beings who gather for ceremony and celebration.
Sometimes symbols are misunderstood or unappreciated. In a Catholic hospital a patient pleaded with me, “How do you expect me to feel better when the first thing I see when I open my eyes is someone being tortured?”
The crucifix hanging there could just as well have been a slave being lynched, a funeral pyre, water board or worse. It was as strange as a crown of thorns worn as a hat, a noose or electric cable worn as a necklace. The crucifix did not give the expected solace. Depressing? Threatening? He asked that I remove it. I did.
Strange that we pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth. The striped/starred symbol can remind an American soldier of our beloved, free country or of being raped by a superior officer.
When my husband died, a thoughtful Korean colleague presented a lovely basket of white impatiens to our family and explained that the color white is the symbol for mourning and death. Something to remember when you attend the next wedding!
While Cook County kids were hunting symbolic Easter eggs (Teutonic goddess of spring) in the snow banks of Grand Marais, my grandkids were enjoying the same ritual in Australia where it is autumn! A symbol appreciated no matter the season!
Both art and religion rely on human creativity and imagination. As Dennis Schutte looks to the joy of portrait painting as a hobby, I expect he will view and carefully study sitting figures. I am eager to see his “portrait of God as the real person He is.”
How would you paint the invisible, “the Emperor’s Clothes,” the real clothes? Where would religion be without an imagination?
Geri Jensen
Grand Marais
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