Lynn Underwood

Art, science, and personal experiences all help us better understand who we are and how we can flourish

Category: compassionate love

“Giving of the self for the good of the other” is the description of Compassionate Love I and others have used. This kind of other- centered love was at the heart of a science research program I initiated in the 1990’s. It has resulted in many research projects and publications. “The Flow of Love”is an important part of life for us, love in, and love out.

  • Stitched with compassion and wire

    art by lynn

    “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small deeds of ordinary folk that keeps the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.” – JRR Tolkien

    The little things. 

    In the midst of the many really bad things happening in our world now, it feels easy for me to just give up, toss in the towel. What good can I do?  

    The drawing above is of a nut person, given to me as a gift. It was carefully created by my friend Jane from bits and pieces of nature. It is hanging on my kitchen wall. She sends these out at Christmas as gifts. Each of us has ways of being in the world, and actions that are ones that only we can do. I do not make nut people and carefully package and send them out.  I am not called to run for political office. I can admire those who make a difference in ways that I do not. But we all, through all the small things we do in life, by standing in our own shoes and listening for what is next for us, can help to ‘hold evil in check’ as Tolkien wrote.

    I can ask a friend how she is doing. I can bake something nice for family. I can smile at the cashier at the grocery store and ask them how their day is going. I can paint a picture and share it. I can really listen. I can send a few cards via snail mail. I can mend a hole in someone’s sweater. I am trying to discover how on earth I am going to get my latest book project out into the world to reach those who would find it helpful in their lives. I am daunted by the task, but is there one step I can take towards that this week? Each one of us has something we can do today that can make a difference for good in the world.

    “In our imperfect world

    we are meant to repair

    and stitch together

    what beauty there is,

    stitch it with compassion and wire….”1

    1. From the poem ‘“Holding the Light” by Stuart Kestenbaum ↩︎

  • The peaceful beauty of snow

    art by lynn

    The snowfall here this morning is so quiet and beautiful. For those celebrating all the holidays of December and even those just not celebrating at all, I send out good wishes for peace, joy, and comfort in this season.  Around us and beyond are disasters and people behaving badly. But also, there are so many good people standing up for kindness, caring and compassion. Let’s all be beacons of hope in the midst of all of this. Shining strong and bright. Knowing that even the little acts of kindness that you and I do echo out into the world.

  • Oozing out and sinking in

    When I want to absorb a quotation or some kind of message, I sometimes make a piece of art from it, playing with the lettering in creative ways. This one is a reminder to me when I become impatient with myself. “Patience is the smile of the soul”. As I made this drawing of these words, they worked their way into me, and then I stuck it up in a room with tape on the wall, and I run into it as I move about in my home. 

    I feel the impact of something written out by someone else in calligraphy or artistic lettering more strongly when the presentation is creative. I appreciate the art of Corita Kent and her playful approach to words. This one is part of a series of alphabet letters from 1968.

    Digging through old handwritten letters from friends and family that I have saved reminds me how the handwriting of someone can carry something more than emails and texts. I connect more with the person writing, even if it is just a brief note, or a signed card. I handwrite some letters still these days dominated by email and text instant-ness. No spellcheck or correcting mistakes, but that’s ok, I keep telling myself. Machine-created art or text cannot provide the human-to-human connection as well as hand-lettering does. Various empirical studies have shown that how a viewer evaluates an artwork depends on her/his knowledge of its creator or the process of creation. The same applies to our handwritten letters to and from another person.

    Each morning, I write in my journal. I use fountain pens with various coloured inks and nib sizes. I enjoy the feel of the pen on the paper, and the shape of letters, even if much of what I am writing about is mundane. I write the date and day at the beginning, somehow commemorating it. 

    I am no great calligrapher. My work would never have made it into the Book of Kells. and there is nothing perfect about my handwriting. I rarely re-read my journals, but there is a satisfaction in writing things down on paper.  

    I often write out poems or quotes I want to remember, like this one by Bernard of Clairvaux.  It was good for me to do, mistakes and all.

    Research has shown that when we write something long-hand, pen or pencil on paper, it is good for us. It helps things sink in, in a way beyond typing into a phone or computer. I still take notes on paper when listening to a talk, or even sometimes when hearing words from a friend on the phone.

    Do you write things out with pencil or pen? Have critical ‘handwriting’ teachers from your childhood spoiled the joy of handwriting for you? If so, can you reclaim the joy of writing, of making beautiful letters, or even rough ones? Do you think handwriting a note to someone might sometimes be better than an email or text even if it is imperfect and takes longer to arrive by mail? If you cannot find a stamp, you can always take a photo of it and text it to them.

    Are there any quotes you want to stick up on your wall or put on your table, not in typeface, but in your own hand? 

  • What can I do now?

    We so often think we need special talents and tools to do something good. But just using what is in front of us, stretching out to express what is in our hearts in the moment, can lead to small good things.

    While talking on the phone with my daughter recently, I picked up a ballpoint pen, and a sheet of printer paper. In front of me was a vase of ranunculus flowers given to me as a gift.

    It is not yet spring here, but the flowers on the table were a taste of spring. All my feelings came together: listening with care and concern to the words of my daughter, feeling the love from the person who gave me the flowers, appreciating the unusual beauty of these flowers, feeling the urge to express some of this, not only in my words of response to her but beyond that.  The perfect expression was not there – the perfect tools, the perfect talent, the perfect response to love flowing in me.  But I could say and do something.

    In these especially chaotic times, there are limits to what we can do. Each moment is an opportunity to do something: love in ways we can, express what we have within us, act in ways that contribute something good, acknowledge the good in others. I need to remind myself of that, and keep doodling – in my actions and words as well as in my drawings- using what talents and tools I have in front of me and not waiting for the perfect opportunity.

     

  • so many things

    sketch of studio

    So many things. Accepting my limitations, while still having the oomph and the courage to do what is most important in my life, here, now. Not easy. How about you? A magnet on my fridge reads: “I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes many days attack me all at once.” This summer was so full: Preparing for my lectures at the Chautauqua Institute in New York ( ‘What’s love got to do with it?’ lecture in the week entitled: ‘Ethics and meaning making beyond faith’), and travel to visit family in Colorado and Michigan. I did get a very rough draft of my current book finished, the culmination of 35 years of work, but now I need to dive back in, and figure next steps. And making art has been important in my life, so I want to make more space for that. Loving people is important as always, and taking care of my health cannot be sneezed at. I am feeling pretty pooped.  We all struggle with setting priorities in life, and stuff seems to keep coming at us. How do you set priorities when there does not seem to be enough energy and time?

     

  • being human

    I heard Coleman Barks read this poem of his in a small group years ago, and it has continued to stir my heart. When we think of other-centered love, it is inextricably tied to the wonder of the human being, and our complex relationships with each other.

    Higdon Cove

    Give it the next fellow.

    Not the ten dollars, the help.  No mistaking

    What he meant or saw the afternoon as,

    A fine chance.  The 1965 tractor started up,

    Though one of its brakes kept sticking, amusing him.

    I’d gotten as far as I could, trying to find a new walk,

    To the gate bar across the road and backed back and onto

    Soft shoulder, slid helplessly into the ditch, hopeless

    To maneuver out of.  Walked to the nearest house.

    He came to the door still chewing his lunch,

    Then towards the barn, making a polite apology.

    You’re heading for that tractor, aren’t you?

    If it won’t start, we’ll get a horse.

    The man who wants no credit, or even to shake hands,

    Too busy with what needs doing, holds his arms

    Close in and sidles by me in the barn

    Like I’m a ticklish passage, me holding out my money.

    Give it to the next fellow.

    There is a huge holly tree next to where I glided to a stop,

    A solid thigh-trunk white-splotched

    And stretching deep under the ditchwater.

    Beauty, but not such as this man is,

    beyond any tree.

     

    Coleman Barks, Winter Sky: New and Selected Poems, 1968-2008

    2008 University of Georgia Press

  • fuel for love

    What art fuels your ability to love? Fans the flames of love in you? In a lecture at the Chautauqua Institute in New York on compassionate love, I shared some arts resources that do that for me. One of them was the film, 13 Conversations About One Thing, which reminds me how the little kindnesses we do in our days can make a big difference, both to other people, and how we stretch our capacities to love and be loved. Someone from the audience mentioned that the TV series Ted Lasso did that for them. Most of us become burned out at times. What films and TV programs fuel your capacity to love and be loved?

     

  • poetry and music weblinks

    Here are some web-links to poetry and music from the Spiritual Connection book that I gathered up to post. I hope some of them can help to provide fuel for you in these days.

    Here is a sampling of the first few on the webpage link:

    10   Had I Not Been Awake by Seamus Heaney

    34   Postscript by Seamus Heaney

    38   Dust by Dorianne Laux

    48   Even in the Quietest Moments Supertramp

    49   There Is Some Kiss We Want, Rumi

    134  3055 by Olafur Arnald

    ….

  • the spiritual practice of drawing portraits

    drawing by lynn

    When I draw or paint someone, I find myself exploring the heart of the person, and becoming sympathetic to their fears, their desires, their concerns.  We can never fully understand what another person is feeling or their circumstances or history, but we can stretch into that in our portraits.  We are limited by our skills. But we can still move in love toward the person, and see the fundamental value of another human being, when we draw them. For me, this is a spiritual practice.

  • art and love

    Drawing of the artist Felix Scheinberger by Lynn

    “There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

    -Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother.

  • St Kevin and the Blackbird

     

    This poem is one of my favorite descriptions of compassionate love. I did this drawing in response to it. This poem continues to speak to me today, to those moments when I find myself in situations where I think I just do not have anything more in me to give. Where do you get the strength to love when you seem to have nothing left in the tank?

     

     

     

     

    “St Kevin and the Blackbird”, by Seamus Heaney,

    from The Spirit Level (Faber and Faber, 1996) (c) Seamus Heaney 1996
    And then there was
    St Kevin and the blackbird.
    The saint is kneeling,
    arms stretched out,
    inside his cell, but the cell is narrow, soOne turned-up palm is out the window, stiff As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands and Lays in it and settles down to nest.

    Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
    Into the network of eternal life,

    Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
    Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

    *

    And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow, Imagine being Kevin. Which is he? Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

    From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms? Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
    Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

    Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head? Alone and mirrored clear in Love’s deep river,
    ‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,

    A prayer his body makes entirely
    For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
    And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.

  • moon language

    “With That Moon Language” by Hafiz, a 14th-century poet from Iran

    drawing by lynn

    Admit something:
    Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”
    Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.
    Still, though, think about this: this great pull in us to connect.
    Why not become the one who lives with a moon in each eye,
    that is always saying,
    with that sweet moon language,
    what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?

  • tenderness

    Drawing can help us uncover distress in someone, and touch them tenderly. 

    drawing by lynn

     

  • Can drawing fuel my love?


    I had the wonderful opportunity to be in the LA area this past academic year on a research fellowship. During the many meetings and conferences, when I was not speaking myself, I tried to capture something of the essence of people by drawing them—a perfect drawing was not the goal.  Drawing people has continued to enable me to better engage with the topics.

    Even more importantly for me, drawing people has continued to be a spiritual practice, stretching beyond the surface of the person and embracing them.  Can drawing people stretch our love towards them? For me, the answer is yes.

     

  • Portraits

    I have been part of a group of scholars these past few months, discussing suffering from the perspectives of literature, philosophy, theology and psychology. During our weekly conversations I have found that drawing people in the group, as always, helps me to focus. Although ideas are so often the center of academic discussions, it is the human beings that speak to me. Each person has a depth of being, a fullness of life, that I want to capture somehow. Doing this brings me to appreciate them more.

  • Why beauty?

    art by lynn

    But are these beautiful because we think them so, or because they are beautiful in the mind of nature or the mind of God, beautiful by intention inborn in a world beloved?

     

    Beauty is the crisis of our knowing, the signature of love indwelling in all created things, called from nothing by love, recognized and answered by love in the human heart, not reducible by any analysis to any fact.

     

    –Wendell Berry, A Small Porch, Counterpoint Press, 2016

  • parting the curtain

    My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other’s presence, each other’s wonder, each other’s human plight.

    -Eudora Welty, author

  • good conversation

    “16 questions” by lynn

    What makes for a good interview? I think Dr. Rachael Kohn has it nailed. I had the privilege of being interviewed by her on the Australian public radio ABC show The Spirit of Things, which aired on March 26. She is an exemplar of how we can help good conversations to happen in our daily lives. We can ask questions that bring out the other person, and sometimes stretch them in an accepting context. We can take time to listen to the answers, rather than thinking about what we are going to say next. We can find out about the other person, and engage with them, not use them as a vehicle to press our point of view. When in the course of research, I  interviewed people about the practices that were important for compassionate love, ‘really listening to the other person,’ was one of those practices.

    Rachael engages in conversation with a perfectly lovely voice, and that helps this too. She sets the person at ease through her respectful and honest attitude. She gently asks probing and sometimes hard questions, which enable interpersonal connection and understanding to happen. Of course, a conversation that is designed to be broadcast, and happens between continents, can never be like one over coffee or at home, and because it was an interview I didn’t get to ask her questions, but nevertheless, this same kind of asking and listening can happen in our own living rooms or when we are in a variety of social situations.

    The show, which includes a poem and quotes from the Spiritual Connection in Daily Life book, is now up on the ABC website, where it can be played or downloaded http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/spiritofthings/are-you-spiritually-connected/8376242  Her balanced approach provides a model for us all for how to make a space for truly good conversation.

  • Capturing the essence

    I love drawing faces. It feel so good when I actually feel like I have touched the essence of the person and it also actually kind of looks like them. There is something about the way we see a person that can help us to capture the essence. Ubi amor ibi oculus, where there is love, there is sight.

    drawing of eric by lynn
    drawing of eric by lynn

  • reverence

    “To draw a tree, to pay such close attention to every aspect of a tree, is an act of reverence not only toward the tree, but also to our human connection to it. It gives us almost visionary moments of connectedness.” Alan Lee

    sketch of dove by lynn
    sketch of dove by lynn

    For me, spiritual connection with God (or the divine or holy as expressed in other words), is part of why making art gives me such joy. I keep doing art for a variety of reasons, but one of them is definitely, for me personally, this spiritual connection that I see more clearly in the process – to the world, to God, and to the holy immanent in the world itself.

    My friend loves looking at disintegrating buildings, and in paying close attention to those, something resonates deep within him. It is not just the obviously beautiful that can bring this sense of connection to us, but often things that do not look so great on the surface. When we look at other people with reverence and respect a sense of spiritual connection can be especially present. All of us are a mixed bag of the obviously lovely, and things that do not look that great. How miraculous that we can have reverence for one another nevertheless.

     

  • means to a means

    Well Water

    https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/well-waterwatercompressedlynnunderwood

    Well Water, by Randall Jarrell, Vintage Contemporary Poetry, pg 65-66, Discovered in the notebooks of Gertrude Beversluis)

    Immanuel Kant, not my favorite philosopher, was adamant that we should treat people as “ends in themselves”, not only as means to an end.  Some people try to manipulate us, flatter us, and basically see us as means to their ends, ways to get what they want to happen. This is demeaning for us, even if we don’t consciously realize what’s going on.

    We even do this to ourselves in our daily lives. And this is what this poem reminds me of. I so often slip into putting myself on the “squirrel-wheel”, pushing the wheel, getting only rusty water.  When I treat myself as only a means to an end I demean myself.  Instead I want to see daily life like the author does at the end of the poem, and gulp from the clear fresh water of the dailiness of life as I do tasks, relaxing with pleasure into the flow of life.

  • seeing better

    Ubi amor ibi oculus

    A new dimension of seeing is opened up by love alone. And this means contemplation is visual perception prompted by loving acceptance.

    –Josef Pieper, Three Talks in a Sculptor’s Studio

    art by lynn
    art by lynn

  • valentine days

    photo of my daughter by lynn 2015
    photo by lynn 2015

    I received an email from a counselor/researcher in Kenya last week. He was researching what makes for flourishing marriages. And it reminded me of a study in the Science of Compassionate Love book that reported predictors of good marriages many years on. When people began their relationships with both a global adoration of the other, and an accurate picture of their flaws, they had a better chance of the relationship still being strong and good years later. Being loved by someone who knows our flaws, our weaknesses, and still thinks we are wonderful, ‘the bee’s knees,’  is so great. I think it has a divine source, a source that is ‘more than’. Some of us do not experience this kind of love in romantic relationships, but taste it in other human relationships and/or our relationship with God. To receive this kind of love requires vulnerability on our part.

    In my Perspectives: Art, Science, and Spirituality class, one assignment is to select a piece of art — film, poetry, visual art, fiction — that represents compassionate love. One young man brought this one in. When he read it to the class, this poem gave most of us a taste of a kind of love that is truly nourishing. It transcends the romantic, helping us to inhabit eternal love.

    Gate C22 by Ellen Bass

    https://www.missourireview.com/ellen-bass-gate-c-22/

     

     

  • Animated film: ‘Mother’

    from "Mother" animation https://vimeo.com/126077901
    from “Mother” https://vimeo.com/126077901

    I have been a fan of animated films all my life. This recent student film is a gem. It articulates themes of the flow of love, compassionate love, in ways that words so often fail to do. It is not too sweet, and is nested in the complexity of life.

    Here is a link to it on vimeo.

  • our bodies, ourselves

    Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.” —James Joyce, Dubliners

    We so often forget our bodies, ignore them, and even treat them badly. Bodies are literally wonderful, even when they are not behaving in ways that we like. Even in sickness, or when causing us grief. One of the reasons I love the Christmas season so much, is its reminder to me that the spiritual and physical aspects of our lives are linked. The Christmas story of the divine entering into the messiness of the human condition reminds me that the divine is also involved in my messy condition. The story does not describe some pristine scene, with everyone in their best clothes, pretending that challenging feelings are not there. It is a story where a pregnant woman arrives in a strange place, there is no room in the inn, and she ends up in a stable with dirt and animals and has her baby there. Having a baby is very physical – not clean and tidy. And the first visitors are the local shepherds, probably with some sheep. The whole scene connects with physical bodies and situations and messy emotions. There was lots of worry and pain and puzzlement, as well as joy and amazement.

    During the Christmas season I sing with my body, eat good things with my body, hug and am hugged with my body, worship with my body. I suffer when things are not going so well – with people or physically. I find myself suffering on behalf of others less fortunate than I am. I feel the pain of this in my body. And the Christmas story keeps bringing me back to the reality of the divine in my physical being. Reminding me that if I leave my body out of the equation, I am not truly living life.

    You will be entering this holiday season in your body—there is not much chance of doing without it! Can you think of how your whole being engages with the various aspects of the holiday season? In relationships, with food, with consuming, in giving, with music. Pay attention to signals that your body sends: of grief, distress, need – but also of joy, affection and delight. Don’t let your body just go on autopilot, but welcome it into the mix. Enter into the complexity of the holiday season with your whole being and see where that takes you.

    drawing by Rembrandt
    drawing by Rembrandt

  • welcoming

    rentcolor3LynnUnderwood
    from Scaffolding: Selected Poems, by Jane Cooper, Tilbury House, 1993

    Our relationships with others challenge our sense of ourselves, and our perception of the spaces we live in. How do we listen? How do we make space for each other? How do we envision the places we live in together?

  • art and love

    …To see in contemplation, is not limited only to the tangible surface of reality; it certainly perceives more than mere appearances. Art flowing from contemplation does not so much attempt to copy reality as rather to capture the archetypes of all that is. Such art does not want to depict what everybody already sees but to make visible what not everybody sees….

    To this end we have to consider a certain aspect of the term “contemplation”…. The ancient expression of the mystics applies here: ubi amor, ibi oculus — the eyes see better when guided by love; a new dimension of ‘seeing’ is opened up by love alone! And this means contemplation is visual perception prompted by loving acceptance…affectionate affirmation.”

    -Josef Pieper, Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation, Ignatius Press 1990. pg 74

    painting by lynn
    painting by lynn

  • love remains

    What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross”

    wrote the modernist poet Ezra Pound in Canto 81.

    drawing by lynn
                                                                                     drawing by lynn

    Limited descriptions in the media and by others about the way the world is structured frustrate me. Pinning dead butterflies to a wall, scientists and those describing science so often remove the vibrancy from concepts and the rich tapestry of life. Science is very useful – informing our understanding of the world in practical ways that can make life so much better. I spent years doing cancer research and public health work, and the result, even of my work, was that some lives were saved, through earlier detection. But to frame everything up in scientific terms, to give reductionism and determinism the high ground, is a mistake. Science can inform our understanding of love – illuminating some of the situations and circumstances that might promote love – and in other ways such as helping us understand some of the psychological and biological impediments. But in the end, there is something about self-giving love centered on the good of another, that is just amazing, and cannot be reduced to equations, and mechanical and chemical flux. A transcendent element of a full life.

  • miracle

    Miracle

    Not the one who takes up his bed and walks
    But the ones who have known him all along
    And carry him in –

    Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplocked
    in their backs, the stretcher handles
    slippery with sweat. And no let-up

    Until he’s strapped on tight, made tiltable
    and raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing.
    Be mindful of them as they stand and wait

    for the burn of the paid-out ropes to cool,
    their slight lightheadedness and incredulity
    to pass, those ones who had known him all along.

    By Seamus Heaney from Human Chain (Faber and Faber, London 2010)

  • birthday

    art by lynn
    art by lynn

  • representing reality

    art by lynn
    art by lynn

    I have been reading a great book by the artist Ben Shahn, written in the 50’s entitled The Shape of Content. I find myself these days wondering why I do art, and what I am trying to do with it.  What is its purpose? Shahn was a wonderful graphic artist and his words inspire me.  When I was helping to find cover art for a book on the science of compassionate love, I offered this piece. The visual image on the cover was important. To pin compassionate love to the board like a butterfly was impossible. Visual art can stretch our thinking. It was a necessary complement to the scientific and analytic content of the book. I think somehow art can make a difference – that is one of the reasons I still do it.

  • good friends

    Good friends have been such a blessing in my life. The notion of friendship mines the deep content of mutuality that stretches beyond tit-for-tat and natural affections, and duties. I have been reading a book by Aelred of Rievaulx, a Cistercian monk of 12th century Britain. He puts this so well:

    “…[F]riendship among the just is born of a similarity in life, morals, and pursuits, that is, it is a mutual conformity in matters human and divine united with benevolence and charity.”

    And later he goes on in more detail: “…[F]riendship bears fruit in this life and the next. It manifests all the virtues by its own charms; it assails vices by its own virtue; it tempers adversity and moderates prosperity.”  And he describes how important it is to have someone “to rejoice with him in adversity…to unburden his mind if any annoyance crosses his path, or with whom to share some unusually sublime or illuminating inspiration.”

    He continues: “What happiness, what security, what joy, to have someone to whom you dare to speak on terms of equality as to another self; one to whom you need to have no fear to confess your failings; one to whom you can unblushingly make known what progress you have made in the spiritual life; one to whom you can entrust all the secrets of your heart and before whom you can place all your plans! What therefore is more pleasant than so to unite to oneself the spirit of another and the two to form one, that no boasting is thereafter to be feared, no suspicion to be dreaded, no correction of one by the other to cause pain, no praise on the part of the one to bring a charge of adulation from the other.  ‘A friend,’ says the Wise Man, ‘is the medicine of life.’ For medicine is not more powerful or more efficacious for our wounds in all our temporal needs than the possession of a friend who meets every misfortune joyfully…. who carries his own injuries even more lightly than that of his friend….’[F]riends,’ says Tullius, ‘though absent are present, though poor are rich, though weak are strong, and – what seems stranger still- though dead are alive.’

    from Spiritual Friendship, by Aelred of Rievaulx (translated by Mary Eugenia Laker) Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, MI 1974, pp. 61,73-75.

  • Art that changes

    How do we view visual art, and what happens to us when we view certain works in a contemplative way? Sometimes art with religious themes can transport even those who do not agree with the faith tradition of the artist. Pelagia Horgan wrote about the art of Fra Angelico and others.  She refers to a photograph in the article, a photo of the inside of a monastic cell in Florence. Fra Angelico did frescos on the walls of this monastery, and the photo is of the inside of one of the monastic cells, of its walls, its window, and the fresco. Horgan in her article grapples with the apparent incongruity of being touched by religious art when she does not hold a set of cognitive beliefs that are the same as the beliefs of that particular religion. She writes:

    Samaritaan by VanGogh
    Samaritaan by Vincent Van Gogh

    “It struck me that this is what faith is – not a set of propositions you hold to be true, or a set of rules you follow, but an atmosphere you live in, that changes your experience of the world, your sense of what and how things are.” http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/how-should-secular-people-approach-sacred-art/

    This is an enriching view, it seems to me. Not that beliefs have no value, but I spend a lot of time in the borderlands of those who assert set beliefs and those who disagree with them.  Certain art can step beyond those boundaries if we let it, changing our experience of the world, our sense of what and how things are…

     

  • compassionate love

    drawing by lynn
    drawing by lynn

    St Kevin and the Blackbird, by Seamus Heaney is part of Chapter 6, “The Flow of Love”, in my Spiritual Connection in Daily Life book.  I wrote:

     I think about love for my daughters and how it feels. I wonder about how it influences their obvious care for others. Where did it come from? What keeps it going?

    An Irish legend about St. Kevin forms the basis of a poem by Seamus Heaney. The poem describes St. Kevin kneeling in his monastic cell, praying with arms outstretched, one out the window through the bars of the cell. A bird settles in his outstretched hand and makes a nest there. Because of his compassionate love, Kevin just stays in that position until the eggs hatch. It must have been very hard, and he would have become very tired and wanted to stop. Not even reflecting on the logistics, where did he find the energy to continue holding the nest while the eggs hatched? Heaney in his poem touches on the eternal and rooted wellspring of love in the midst of difficulties, and how care for the bird allows that wellspring to flow through Kevin.

    Are you holding any birds that have begun to nest? Do you ever find yourself stuck in the midst of commitment and care, in distress yet still desiring to love? Do you find yourself overextended in some way or another? And then what do you do? How do you sustain this love and care? How does that feel? ….”

    This drawing of mine was inspired by the wonderful poem. Here is a link to Heaney reading it with his soft Northern Irish accent. http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/st-kevin-and-blackbird

  • marvel

    What is a spiritual experience after all?  Sometimes we can have a sense of what it ought to be and that can get in the way. I find that the poem, Veni Creator, by Czeslaw Milosz, a Lithuanian-Polish poet, from the book, Collected Poems, 1931-1987, speaks to me.

  • anniversary

    drawing by lynn
    drawing by lynn

    Wedding by Alice Oswald

    From time to time our love is like a sail
    and when the sail begins to alternate
    from tack to tack, it’s like a swallowtail
    and when the swallow flies it’s like a coat;
    and if the coat is yours, it has a tear
    like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins
    to draw the wind, it’s like a trumpeter
    and when the trumpet blows, it blows like millions . . .
    and this, my love, when millions come and go
    beyond the need of us, is like a trick;
    and when the trick begins, it’s like a toe
    tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck;
    and when the luck begins, it’s like a wedding,
    which is like love, which is like everything.

    This poem, Wedding, by Alice Oswald, is from The Thing in the Gap-stone Style (Oxford University Press)

  • value

    judgeseyesphtolynnunderwood
    art by lynn

    I had the privilege last week of presenting/facilitating a day-long workshop for professional caregivers on the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale and the ideas in the Spiritual Connection book in Michigan. It provided a space for them to reflect and share, and nourish their own lives.  These many men and women are working in areas such as hospice, addiction services, ministry, counseling, nursing, prisons, hospital administration, hospital chaplaincy, and long-term care. I came away so appreciative of these individuals, and thinking how glad I am that they do this much needed work. The value of what they do far exceeds the remuneration they receive. I thought of the poem, Higdon Cove, from the book Gourd Song by Coleman Barks, about a man who helps the author get his car out of a ditch with his tractor, and quietly refuses any praise or payment, especially the final few lines…

    There is a huge holly tree next to where I glided to a stop,

    A solid thigh-trunk white-splotched

    And stretching deep under the ditchwater.

    Beauty, but not such as this man is,

    beyond any tree.”

    If any of the many who were there happen to read this blog. Thank you for what you do, but even more, for who you are.

  • resting places

    drawing by lynn
    drawing by lynn

    We find rest in those we love,

    and we provide a resting place in ourselves

    for those who love us.

    -Bernard of Clairvaux

  • messy yet glorious love

    This sculpture is by Jay DeFeo, a beat artist from the 50’s/60’s/70’s, and I am sharing here a photo of it. The original of this work is approximately 11 by 5 feet, three-dimensionally rendered in oil paint with wood fragments and mica. The piece weights nearly 2,000 pounds and took over 8 years to complete, building layer upon layer, and is in the Whitney Museum in NYCity.  http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/JayDeFeodefeo_the-rose_Whitney museum

    When it came time to pick a cover for a book I co-edited for Oxford University Press, I wanted something that would capture the ineffable and spectacular nature of altruistic love – giving of self for the good of the other – in close relationships and with strangers (and even in relationship with ourselves as “the other” that we want to flourish). My editor asked me to find something good. It was in the days before easily accessible art resources on the web, so I went down to the local art institute library and spent a happy afternoon going through art books and thinking about love.  Images were either only about particular kinds of love, or too sentimental, or had other problems. I wanted something that captured the transcendent nature of this other-centered love in many situations.  I finally discovered this piece of art and we ended up using it on the cover. The abstract touched the particular for me in a more universal way, and it has seemed to do so for many others.

    This piece for me expresses much about compassionate love, love that facilitates flourishing, as it happens in the midst of our messy lives. Transcendent beauty shining over and through rough chunks and bits and pieces. If you look at this piece, and allow it to speak to you directly, what does it speak to you, what does it stir in you?  Is there any resonance with the way love is expressed in the midst of your life? My students have had to write a page of reflection of their emotional response to this piece of art, and many found it a useful exercise. You may be surprised what emerges if you just let yourself experience the piece and respond emotionally.

  • Mercy and Music

    cello drawing by lynn
    cello drawing by lynn

    Mercy is a word that unfolds endlessly for me. Mercy touches me in ways that I cannot fully explain. I think some of it is the quality of acceptance in the midst of flaws and problems and mistakes and harms and hurts and difficulties. This mercy is there for all of us.  I recently encountered this piece entitled “Mercy” by Max Richter, composed at the request of the violinist Hilary Hahn.  Music can often speak in ways that words cannot. Tastes in music vary so much, but when students in my classes shared pieces with each other that touched them spiritually, I was impressed by how much communication could happen even if tastes were different. This music brings a restful peace to me, heightening my awareness of the presence of intense and all-embracing mercy.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kk-FJe43Aw

  • Moving towards resting places

    abstrlynnunderwood2011brsrsz
    drawing by lynn

    “A body tends by its weight towards the place proper to it – weight does not necessarily tend towards the lowest place but towards its proper place. Fire tends upwards, stone downwards. By their weight they are moved and seek their proper place…. Things out of their place are in motion: they come to their place and are at rest. My love is my weight: wherever I go, my love is what brings me there.”

    – St Augustine

     

  • The Smile of the Soul

    patience_ lynn underwood 2010In the Yes theme chapter (8) in the Spiritual Connection book, one of the things I reflect on is how we need to receptively allow life to unfold. In many ways, I think of myself as a patient person, but when I carefully look at my attitudes, I see impatience with myself in abundance. I did this piece of calligraphy a while back, a saying by Philippe Obrecht – “Patience is the soul’s smile…”  We can say yes to life as it is, ourselves as we are, as we wait in preparation for what is to come in its own time.  I am getting a strong message of patience right now – loud and clear.  I hope I can listen.

  • invited speaker united methodist association national conference

    Presented “Spiritual Connection: A Resource for Professional Caregiving” as an invited plenary speaker at the 73rd National Conference of the United Methodist Association in Orlando, FL on March 5, 2013.

  • “philosophy talks” interview

    I discussed  “Unconditional Love,” on “Philosophy Talks” Radio Program, Stanford University, December 9, 2012. Available as a podcast on itunes or at http://philosophytalk.org/