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STILL LIFE
By Mary Ann Archer, Spiritual Director
Above the sofa in my
music/meditation room is a very large framed poster called “Hybrid
Lilies.” It’s from Lincoln Center and has at the top, in large print, the
words: METROPOLITAN OPERA, 1990-1991 SEASON. What is arresting about this
poster are the lilies – large, glorious lilies of every hue, spilling over from
several glass vases, the water in those vases reflecting not only the colors of the
flowers but of the painting’s room as well.
As I sat on that sofa
one morning trying to meditate on the Bible story of ‘doubting Thomas’ I thought
of my life when I purchased that print. It was a time of both blooming and dying
– blooming musically in the middle of my tenure at the MET, and dying as I miscarried
(at 5 months pregnant) with a little girl we named Lily. (My therapist said it was
no accident I bought “Hybrid Lilies” just at that point in my life.)
I continued to try to
meditate on the story where Thomas at first could not believe but then saw and believed in
the resurrected Lord. I wondered if there could be a ‘resurrection’ of my
flute-playing – new, unseen opportunities to bloom as a performer here in
Virginia. In meditation I seemed to hear Jesus ask me “What does that poster
make you think of, Mary Ann?” Immediately the word ‘life’ came to
mind, followed just as immediately by ‘still life’, and ‘death’ as I
thought how the painting depicted flowers, glorious and blooming, but also cut and dying
in vases. Suddenly I thought, “How could I have seen life in that poster when
it actually depicts death?”
Like Thomas, I (and
perhaps you, also) sometimes wonder, even at Easter time, if life – our joys, hopes,
dreams, health – can actually be renewed. Perhaps we all wonder at times if we
can find hope for re-flowering in a new place, or hope for health in the face of chronic
illness, or hope for new energy for a seemingly dead personal project, or hope for new joy
in the face of lost loved ones. Perhaps we wonder if there will ever be peace
between nations, respect between religions, tolerance between Christian denominations, or
justice for persecuted peoples.
At times like these
when we can’t actually see the new life yet, we can hang on to ‘snapshots’
of hope in stories like Thomas’ from the Bible, or stories which friends and family
members tell us of times of light in darkness, and our own past experiences when we have
felt touched by God’s help and grace. All these types of stories - our own,
those we have heard from others, and stories in scripture - can function as snapshots
(‘still-life paintings’) of God’s promise not only of eternal life but of
re-blooming in our earthly lives. And even when dark times seem to stay upon us
God’s strength and presence can re-bloom in our hearts.
In my meditation the
word ‘still’ suddenly meant to me not the ‘still’ of
‘stillborn’ but the ‘still’ which means ‘yet present’.
‘Still’ came to mean Jesus saying to each to one of us, “Dear one, there is
still life ahead for you.” Reading Thomas’s story, looking at a painting
of lilies (an Easter flower!), listening to a friend’s experience of grace, or
remembering our own spiritual touchstones can become for us signposts saying:
“Rejoice! (or at least hang on!)
There is ‘still life’ ahead
in this world and the next!”
Alleluia.
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