Ever since we walked, naked and without shame in the garden, we have known that spirituality is vitally inherent to the totality of our bodily existence, and yet, because of the pain and division we brought upon ourselves when we fell from that amazing place, we belong to a culture which so often is striving to entirely dislocate itself from the 'weight', the honor and the ramifications of that over-arching reality. We see it so often in the escapism we crave to entertain us, which lowers not only our expectations, but our engagement with the life around us - it seeks to rule us in a vacuum of the carnal, whilst any reference to the spiritual is confined to a detached, esoteric existence, either beyond the norm or beyond death - certainly beyond the here and now.
Christianity, whilst acknowledging (and resolving) our core malady does not allow us to wallow in such dull fantasy. At the heart of this message is an emphatic affirmation that God had not only made, but reconciled the world of flesh and bone to Himself by becoming part of that very pained order, and by the means of both life and death, in His own flesh, redeemed our broken earth, our alienated lives, that we may once more see His life in the fabric and weave of all creation - to become those who share in the marvel which truly underpins all that is.
It's a view which breaks the drug-like dependancy of our world upon beliefs and ideas which seek to make us far less than we were fashioned to be - creatures who deem their 'enlightenment' is defined by looking upon the universe and our experience of it as inherently brief and meaningless.
Any artist who finds worth in their work knows that what counts here is a direct, profound and immediate sense of connection with their subject, and that is what brings to the fore the defining of that work, even if the theme or meaning of the piece is dark - we are seeking to reflect a relationship to reality which inspires us to create and to convey a meaning or a hope within that. As a fellow artists noted recently, "The nudes in the Sistine Chapel express the spiritual power that resides in the flesh. The idea is transcendence. Michaelangelo's iconic image of God giving Adam his life, heart and soul, implies an integrity of our diverse elements that includes human eroticism....(contemporary) fundamentalist branches of various belief systems have tried to deny a connection between body and soul and shamed it" (Carla Johnson).Life is essentially about our coming back to what has been lost - the bare and unashamed communion with God and each other that defined our status and nature in the temple of Eden, and that is, no doubt why art and life which invites us to move in that direction is so often neglected or ridiculed in our culture - it means an encounter with ourselves, with our reality that is brutally honest, because a return to true life, true innocence, requires nothing less.
We can fill our world with all manner of rational and spiritual pretense - we've become masters at manufacturing those fig-leaves - but, thankfully, enough of the 'original image' yet remains to tell us we cannot really hide, not in a way that silences what our own reflection echos to us each day - we were made with a glory that reflects the splendor of the one who formed us, to express that marvel to the whole of creation... that is what lies behind our mandate to go out and engage with life.
Since my entry last month, I've had the joy of working once again with Auerilie (pictured in this latest set) - a new model who began working earlier this year. It was a joy to create together, and I hope that more projects will be forthcoming.
