Hubble Ultra Deep Space

Many paint because it is their one resort to communicate with hope of eloquence, visual communication.  Van Gogh...went from trying to imitate his father's life as a minister...finding he did not have the eloquence of speech...worked thru his many personal rejections in life, to find he had a voice when it came to paint.  His faith yet compelled him, though he was a complex restless spirit, tormented with illness and ideas.  

A couple excellent books not widely known nor read are on my shelves which I highly recommend, 

"Van Gogh and God- A Creative Spiritual Quest" by Cliff Edwards

and....

"At Eternity's Gate" by Kathleen Powers Erickson

As a public school teacher...and as a university student, I was never exposed to a possible spiritual investigation and understanding of this complex artist because the stand of secularism would require nothing but a secular expose.  I would argue one doesn't truly get Van Gogh without such.

At any rate...those that know me well, well enough know that a spiritual initiative drives my need to paint which over the years has taken me through the journey of painting to attain reputation, painting to attain gain...to where more today, I paint to live...to celebrate living.  To maintain a childlike heart of inquiry and awe with the world and beyond, a heart that then resolves to nurture a particular thankfulness.

I am grateful of course for sales, grateful to have enjoyed the privilege of association with many of my peers, to even encourage and help foster growth, but these days I am cautious with the power that celebrity status has to cloud one's better sense of themselves.  I won't go further here at this time to address that...but now brings me to this which I hope will be found reflective, a muse...an encouragement for some that follow my blog.

Some I'm sure can relate to that sense if you paint on location...that while in command of your medium, and the moment to create your world on canvas...you are touching the hem of beauty, a sense of something bigger...higher.  Its a moment to celebrate, yet to be aware and humble.

Its like I can sense God at times whispering that my life long path without my knowing it has been a purposed journey...a training, but not as an ends...but a preparation for a beginning.  Like He is smiling, over my shoulder aware of my cultivated childlike exploration with paint...saying, "You think this is something, WAIT til you see what I have in store!"

So...I am speaking to hearts and imaginations this Sunday morning, before I head out to the national forests shortly today.  And doing so by ending with this short video on the Hubble Ultra Deep Space project, where on two different occasions the telescope was allowed to orbit earth focused on specific apparent dark nothingness for ten and eleven days...just to see what might be seen, if anything...

If this doesn't make you feel small...I don't hardly know what will.  If it doesn't make you smile when like me you find yourself entertained just to paint a patch of dried reeds in a wetland shore eeking out beauty from the mundane, to imagine what sites must exist out there in all those billions of galaxies...

In the seventy short plus years time we average living on this planet, between the news, marketing, education, paying bills, it is so easy to fall into thinking this world is everything...but, what if it is not?  What if our exit from this world...is really but an entrance to the next, and what if our painting and creative exploits here turn out to be training...?

I believe this video was produced in wide format...so won't all fit in the space of this blog.  Just click on the video near the bottom right and bring it up to view on YouTube to see in full.  You don't want to miss this!!!