dear
dad,
I have a little shelf in my office that gives honor in some tiny way to
members of my family. On it is a small woodcut that Mom made, a self-portrait
of Lochlan, a sepia photo of my grandmother Mutti in a thoughtful pose,
and a few other trinkets, including a bulldog. Many years ago I found a
small antique ceramic bulldog and bought it because the stubborn face it
made reminded me of you. I held on to it for years, and finally got rid
of it because I thought it wasn’t a nice way to remember my father.
Soon after that another bulldog almost exactly like the first came across
my path, and as though giving in to an insistent argument, I bought it and
kept it. |
| 
|
I was
curious to hear that you’ve taken up a new subject for your paintings,
appropriately modest after your recent years of homages to great and consequential
figures such as Rembrandt, Bartok and Einstein. You’re suddenly
in love with bulldogs, researching them online, drawing them, painting
them and imagining yourself being interviewed by them.
I can see why you
would love bulldogs. They possess the sort of beauty that you admire –
not the easy, widely agreed upon beauty of young brides or chrysanthemums,
but the awkward beauty of an absurd map of wrinkles, a foolish underbite
and lopsided eyes. They have big hearts and impossibly enormous smiles.
Their build gives them a solid grip on the ground, making them sturdy
and dependable. If you tug at them and they don’t want to budge,
they won’t budge. |
| Your
new interest doesn’t surprise me, since for years you have been
my personal bulldog. This is just one of many examples of how connected
our thoughts are, how deeply linked we are. I don’t understand the
importance of the bulldog, but I’m willing to utilize it to help
me begin speaking to you. Perhaps the bulldog will play a role in the
unfolding story, or perhaps it is just a sentry at the door – we’ll
see.
A little over a year
ago I was embraced by the power of the Messiah. I will never be the same
again. I have given myself over to an extraordinary process of transformation,
and am so grateful to have been drawn to the bosom of God through Messiah,
and to have been given the gift of timeless communion with the Lord. All
I want anymore is to be what God wants me to be.
You may be surprised
at how deeply you are woven into what I am experiencing. You've shaped
my thinking, teaching me to be a risk taker, to challenge assumptions,
think for myself and find my own way. I have often felt that I learned
to love God from watching you make art, which you would surely agree is
ironic considering that to my knowledge you haven’t cultivated a
relationship with God. I won’t presume what your position is with
the Almighty, since He may be working within you in ways that I will never
know or understand, and that even you may not understand. I don’t
need to know about that. |
| 
|
I do need to speak
of God’s presence in my life. I need to shout it, sing it, paint
it, and I am just beginning to discover how to let divine glory shine
through my art. Magnifying God in my own unique way is what I live for.
It is the only thing that remains after all the other stuff is gone –
the kids starting their own life; the belongings that just take up space
and don’t give much back; the movies that are less and less satisfying;
the relationships that we can’t hold on to. At the end of the day,
or the end of the life, all I have is the promise that I am and will always
be a member of an eternal body. |
