Lynn Underwood

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

Tag: beauty of creation

  • The beauty of creation

    One of the 16 questions in my daily spiritual experience scale is: ‘Recently, have you been spiritually touched by the beauty of creation?’ ‘When does it happen for you?’ It can reflect our feelings of awe when in the natural world – when we encounter animals and mountains, trees and flowers and how we respond to these. But it also can happen when we encounter the artistic creations of others. These beautiful creations of musicians, visual artists and poetic words. The book on the set of questions has examples of how different people have responded to this question that might provoke an awareness of this in your life.

    I love drawing animals and flowers. I never tire of the feelings of connection to the wider world and the transcendent that I have when drawing or painting these.           

    Are you ever spiritually touched by the beauty of creation? Are there ways to find circumstances that stir that in you today? The natural world, music, visual art? It can be so uplifting in the midst of other life circumstances that pull us down.

  • 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.

  • I love weeds

    art by lynn

    I collected these on my afternoon walk. I couldn’t resist picking them and drawing them. There is beauty all around us. With the terrible and distressing events happening in our world, the beautiful weeds still bloom. I know I need a reminder to look for them and celebrate their beauty in the midst of everything.

  • 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.

     

  • Repairing damage

    When we have experienced emotional or physical or relationship damage in the past, it can continue to feel frustrating at best and irreparably harmful at worst.  I so often look at the broken places as problems, limitations, and inadequacies. Or I try to ignore them. But the kintsugi approach actually highlights the beauty in repairs.

    The Japanese word kintsugi describes the ancient art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. Kintsugi takes a broken piece of pottery, and uses precious and beautiful lacquer to highlight all those places where the breakage happened. The end result is something that many would say is even more beautiful than the pristine original.

    Kintsuge treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise. Reflecting on this is helpful for me. The kinds of damage we can experience can include things like emotional abuse, physical illness or injuries, treatments for cancer, relationship break-ups, or forced relocation.

    I have had a laundry basket for decades. The lid has slowly been breaking apart at the edges.  I decided to repair it using raffia pieces that came in some packaging.  I tied the raffia pieces to the edge places where it was breaking to hold them together.  This is a drawing of the result. Someone commented on this drawing, and said that it looks like the raffia pieces are dancing.  I can look at this basket lid, and reflect on the same for my life.  I can react to the injuries, and make beauty, and creatively respond.  Fully acknowledging the injuries, the hurts, the damage, but also reveling in the dance of my responses.

     

  • 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

  • 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