April 26th, 2011: The Passion Painting is Finished!

Finally! It is finished! I feel like Michelangelo must have after finishing the Sistine Chapel! (well, maybe not exactly like that.... I bet I would have squealed a lot more than he did.) I started this over 6 months ago( I won't tell you exactly when I started it... too embarrassing), and for various reasons, this has been a very hard painting to finish. I have had some health issues the past 10 months or so, and this painting has been on the back of my mind for most of it- tormenting me, giving me an outlet, and providing yet another reason to push on and keep going. Well, I have been much better the past 2 months or so, and I have been able to FINALLY get this painting into the last stages. I finished and signed it on Good Friday night. Good Friday is very special to me (may even be my favorite day), and I at least was very moved that I could finally finish it that day, after carrying this painting around in my head for so long during so much. God IS good! So good. I hope you like my painting!

I've had one non-Catholic (maybe non-Christian) say that this painting disturbs them- I took that as a compliment. I felt like saying, "yeah it's disturbing, now what are you gonna do about it? I want to see you being baptized next Easter." Anyway, I have a rather long quote for the day, but it's absolutely lovely! It's a poem by St. John of the Cross. I have listened to John Michael Talbot sing this since I was very little, and it was in my thoughts this past Lent:

A lone young shepherd lived in pain

withdrawn from pleasure and contentment,

his thoughts fixed on a shepherd-girl,

his heart an open wound with love.

He weeps, but not from the wound of love,

there is no pain in such affliction,

even though the heart is pierced;

he weeps in knowing he’s been forgotten.

That one thought: his shining one

has forgotten him, is such great pain

that he bows to brutal handling in a foreign land,

his heart an open wound with love.

The shepherd says: I pity the one

who draws herself back from my love,

and does not seek the joy of my presence,

though my heart is an open wound with love for her.

After a long time he climbed a tree,

and spread his shining arms,

and hung by them, and died,

his heart an open wound with love.

-St. John of the Cross