Good Friday with The Man in Black

Two songs from the Man In Black, plus Psalm 88. The first song has been a favorite of mine for the last several years and never fails to make my eyes moisten. I thought of it today while praying Psalm 88 earlier today in the Liturgy of the Hours.

Psalm 88 is a lament in which the psalmist prays for rescue from the alienation of approaching death. Three times the psalmist issues a call to God and complains of the death that separates one from God. The tone is persistently grim. In both the psalm and the song above, a man is taking stock of his life and is not happy with what he’s made of the gift he was given. He has hurt people…himself…and God.

Lord my God, I call for help by day;
I cry at night before you.
Let my prayer come into your presence.
O turn your ear to my cry.

For my soul is filled with evils;
my life is on the brink of the grave.
I am reckoned as one in the tomb:
I have reached the end of my strength,

like one alone among the dead;
like the slain lying in their graves;
like those you remember no more,
cut off, as they are, from your hand.

Christ of St. John of the Cross, by Salvador Dali (1951)

You have laid me in the depths of the tomb,
in places that are dark, in the depths.
Your anger weighs down upon me:
I am drowned beneath your waves.

You have taken away my friends
and made me hateful in their sight.
Imprisoned, I cannot escape;
my eyes are sunken with grief.

I call to you, Lord, all the day long;
to you I stretch out my hands.
Will you work wonders for the dead?
Will the shades stand and praise you?

Will your love be told in the grave
or your faithfulness among the dead?
Will your wonders be known in the dark
or your justice in the land of oblivion?

As for me, Lord, I call to you for help:
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
Lord, why do you reject me?
Why do you hide your face?

Wretched, close to death from my youth,
I have borne your trials; I am numb.
Your fury has swept down upon me;
your terrors have utterly destroyed me.

They surround me all the day like a flood,
they assail me all together.
Friend and neighbor you have taken away:
my one companion is darkness.

The second Cash song is one I’ve sung myself many, many times. I’d not heard this version before today, and seeing the video transported me back to my grandmother’s living room in South Dakota where this and similar songs were always heard during Sunday visits (she was a devout Lutheran). She had 8-track recordings of The Statler Brothers, and hearing them sing backup on this song made that memory more vivid on this Good Friday.

I realize this is all pretty grim and dark. Today is, after all, the blackest day in history for a follower of Christ. But Sunday is coming…

***

For more information about Dali’s painting, visit here.

Reflections on canvas

In 1992 I was managing a retail music store in Omaha’s Oak View Mall. Next door to our retail space was an upscale store that catered to men’s interests, the name of which is lost to my memory. A large portion of their store was dedicated to prints of paintings. Some framed, some were not. It was here that I first encountered the paintings of Terry Redlin, now a favorite of mine. To this day I do not own anything by Redlin because I honestly cannot choose a favorite. I have a prime space reserved for one, too, but am as yet still not sure which to finally purchase and hang from my wall. This one is a favorite. But so is this one. And this one. Heck, just go to this page or to this one and do some browsing on your own. I bet you find a favorite or two.

Redlin and I are both South Dakota boys and I spent the early years of my childhood growing up not far from where he did in Watertown, SD. Kinkaid received the moniker the “painter of light”, but for my money he can’t touch Redlin’s ability to paint a sun on canvas that requires the viewer to wear sunglasses.

As much as I enjoyed perusing Redlin’s work I’ll never forget the day I encountered a print simply called “Reflections.” It was not matted, framed and hung on the wall like the others. It was sitting in the bins that you would flip through when looking at prints. I remember standing over the bin, looking down, and idly flipping through many scenes and styles when I came across this painting for the first time. Time stopped and I slowly took in the entire scene. And then I did something completely unexpected. I started to cry.

Lee Teter’s painting captured something so visceral within and caught me by such surprise that I could do nothing but stare in silence, standing upright, with tears running down my face. My break coming to an end and being due back in my store, I dried my eyes with my tie, made note of the name of the painting and the artist, and left the store.

Every day I would go back to that store and look at that painting. The 30” x 23”print was priced at $30, too expensive for me in those early days, but I knew that I would own it one day. Despite my fear of it being sold before I could purchase it I told everyone about it and even walked them over to look at it. And then one day it was gone. Sold.

I put the print out of my mind as preparations for my entrance into the Catholic church followed six weeks later by my wedding kept me occupied. I still would look for it. But it was never back in stock on the sales floor. It was gone.

Or so I thought.

A few days before our wedding my soon-to-be-bride and I exchanged our gifts to each other. And there it was. She had bought me my painting.

She gave it to me again, seven months later on my birthday. This time it was beautifully matted and framed. It has hung upon the walls of our various homes ever since.

Today it hangs above a large, soft chair at the foot of our stairs, situated by two large bookcases. While I may be found reading in this chair, as often as not I can be found staring into this painting much as I did nineteen years ago. It is still capable of making my cheeks damp on occasion. I’ve caught my oldest son doing the same thing.

To learn more about the artist and how this painting came to be, visit here.

Out of respect for Mr. Teter and the organization that now owns the copyright to his painting, the Vietnam Veterans of America, I have chosen not to cut and paste its image onto this page. But you can click here to view it for yourself. In fact I insist.

Until I finally did some research this evening on Mr. Teter I knew next to nothing about the man who had created my favorite painting. He has retired quietly, to Wyoming, and this summer I may find myself in my car driving west in the hopes that I may shake his hand.

Lee says, “There are two worlds; a real one made by God as a gift to those He loves, and a world of lies and deception made by men. I find wonder in the one and I hide from the other. I don’t know any other way to keep my heart intact.” For an artist who “paints by feel” keeping his own heart is an important thing. In the end the story of the painting is the story of the artist. Quietly, unobtrusively they make their way through the world.

Finally, Mr. Teter’s own thoughts about his painting are wonderfully expressed here.

I love Redlin’s paintings because they reflect the beauty of God’s creation. I love Teter’s painting because it does the same.

©2011 Jeff A Walker. All Rights Reserved.