When He first touched the brush to my canvas,
He pursed His lips in a smile
Tickling me with vivid greens
playful yellows, baby skin pinks,
lily whites and river blues.
He scribbled my name
"Water Lily Pond"
and I knew who I was,
a love note to the Painter of my painter.
Then they brought me here.
This gallery
so much colder than His backyard.
Some stop to look and smile.
A mother and daughter even paused to marvel,
silently taking me in inch by inch.
I could feel the sunset again.
Many walk by, not noticing.
Some saunter and sniff a smug indifference.
One boy stared at his phone while his Mother asked
"When's lunch?"
I wish I could show them what the Master meant.
He wants them to imagine.
To fill in the blanks with their eyes and minds.
He left room for them in the painting.
To smell the lilies.
To hear the water flowing.
To feel the sunset on their faces,
the wind that swirled around His brushes that day.
He's not photographer. He's a painter.
He's not a dictator. He wants them
to discover.
Then came the critics.
Loud and multiplying. Echoing off these stark walls.
"What a mess. I'm not impressed."
"Who needs impressions when you could have clarity?"
"Too bold. It should be more subtle."
"Too subtle. It should be more bold."
"Too loud. Too soft. Too childish."
"I don't get it."
Their voices trying to peel the paint.
Squinting, wincing, rolling eyes.
I heard them, and it hurt.
But it doesn't take me off this wall.
It doesn't take that satisfied sigh away
when He put up His brushes for the day,
grinning to utter one word,
"Beautiful!"
"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting — a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Psalm 139:13
Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother’s womb. I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration—what a creation! You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, The days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day.
"I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don't hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am."
