Looking

Today I am using Rev Alan Stewart’s art, pastel reflections based on Maya Angelou’s phrase: ‘Every storm runs out of rain’

Professor Jennifer Roberts, an art historian, suggests that her students always ought, when visiting an art gallery, to choose a work and study it by looking at it for hours. (I’d always wondered why they have those fold up chairs!).   

Our tendency is often to take a few seconds or possibly a minute or two at an exhibition that we’ve paid for, before making a judgement on a painting or installation and moving on. After that glance, it is liked or disliked much as people are friended or unfriended on the internet. The students that I taught English Literature to were always brilliant at coming up with a like or dislike rating or even the amount of stats, like a rated product, but like all of us, found it more difficult to really think through how it had moved them and what it was really about.

Is it the time that we are reluctant to use, have we become too used to making quick judgements? If we want to hear something then we need to be silent, give it time. When we first look, say at a piece of art, then it’s tempting to put it into a category - Medieval, Renaissance, Impressionist, Abstract or Figurative, but by labelling it, it is silenced and put into a closed box particularly as it may be that by labelling it we also dismiss it; For example, I find myself not liking baroque architecture but liking baroque music!

It seems to me that this categorising is something we all do, religious or not. It is all too easy for a non-believer to put an idea or thought into a “religion” bin, as likewise for believers to ignore secular thinking, and creative art, and place it in the “atheism” skip. We can all miss out.

Looking, attentiveness, is giving time and while we are in social isolation we may find ourselves with more time than expected. We can spend more time looking, listening, allowing ourselves to re-focus and, in doing so, grow. And Prayer – a stillness to concentrate on what really matters - is attentiveness to the things of God.

Lord,

The world pulls at me,

And tempts my mind with

concerns and worries,

Free me from distracting negativity.

May your kingdom come to me,

Bringing your order and your peace.

Help me be still in your presence.

Let me be attentive and aware;

Let me look upon people and your world

with deeper understanding.

Help me to see what is needed and not necessarily what I want.

Keep me looking and listening Lord,

Giving me the eyes, ears and heart of Christ

and may your loving will guide me always.