Still Life
I look for Him.
My day is already shouting at me, and I am its whipping boy, jumping up in subservience to kiss its feet. I don’t know how to slow down. My heart beats fast, I “jimmie-leg” my legs, vibrating them up and down. I slept eleven hours last night, four weekends of company plus school weighing in. I haven’t even had my first cup of coffee. But it’s later than I thought. I ignored the alarm this morning because I could.
Laundry’s wet in the laundry machine! My mind screams.
Meet Justin to get coffee before meeting with Becka!
Becka! Are you ready for your meeting with Becka?! You don’t want to look like a fool!
Have to leave by noon!
Drink a healthy smoothie for breakfast!
Hair’s a mess! Need to blow-dry bangs!
Spend time with me, comes the whisper.
The porch outside invites me, with its shade and screen and bougainvillea. It’s quiet there, green and lush, and cool enough, for a little while longer.
E-mail! Check your e-mail!
I open the lid, log in,and read:
| Genesis 2:17 … but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”Click here for related Bible Study |
And then see:
It is a still life: Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit. c. 1599.
As a writer, and let’s be honest, as a human being, I’m wired for connections like this. The jimmie legs bounce up and down in anticipation.
I answer an e-mail from a grad school friend and am reminded that I need to order some books.
Order the books! Check your grade on your Carib Lit paper!
The porch beckons, and my eyes wander back onto Carvaggio’s Basket of Fruit and the verse from Genesis. God’s is the voice speaking to his beloved Adam and Eve, warning them for their protection. He does not want them to fall, for the earth to fall, for the children of Adam and Eve to fall and suffer. But he must know they will.
Caravaggio, I find, was an Italian painter known for his startling realism. He painted things as they were, not as they symbolized. He was fascinated, wikipedia says, with the nuances between light and darkness.
I long to be like Caravaggio, I think, although he was killed at an early age in a brawl. I long for his focus, a days-long intention on a basket of fruit, a world where a basket of fruit was worthy of that attention.
A modern consequence of the Fall, as I see it, is monkey brain. There are voices all around, from the beginning of the day, calling me away from minutes of quiet intention on my bougainvillea-ed porch where I can focus and hear his voice.
Yet, He speaks to us where we are. I flipped the lid of my computer to find God’s voice speaking to his first children and Caravaggio’s still life.
This morning I will drink my smoothie on the porch.
