Chiaroscuro

I can’t remember my professor’s name from Art History 101 in community college. You’d think I would recall. After all, I only finished a handful of semesters, leaving sans degree to tend to my boys: the one I had and the one on the way. I do still have the textbook. It has survived almost 40 years of moving. That book calls the inside of a box home more than a bookcase shelf. An unattractive, massive thing, it’s a function over form philosophy, for sure. It has weighted down all sorts of papers, from pastdue notices to baby shower invitations. It has pressed innumerable roses, taking them from robust reds to paper-thin browns. Even back in its heyday, it was beloved to me. Professor Nice Lady wielded that book like a historical light saber. Down with history means down with art, she would surmise. The part that hit me the hardest was the part where both Prof and book taught me about what lurks in the shadows. She gave it a name. Chiaroscuro.

Back in the earliest days of man, there was art. Whether we were scratching rocks up against cave walls or mixing our spit with charcoal, we were creating. There were painted stories of what we had survived. There were good and bad expressions of what was surely to come. By the 1500s, we had evolved to breaking down minerals into paint and using linen as canvas. Not everyone had access to a vault of lapis Lazuli to crush. What was one to do for artistic expression? Turns out, a lot can be said of the contrast between all the colors that exist in the middle of a solid black and a solid white. With enough variance, images become multi-dimensional. Sketched bodies look like sepia photographs. My interpretation is simple. It isn’t that the thing on the canvas looks like the thing the artist wanted to draw. It’s more that the suggestion, the nuance, the essence – that tricks the mind into seeing a kaleidoscope of details. Here is where the light hits. Here is where the darkness lives. Look at how they mingle. Chiaroscuro.

I do my best thinking when I drive. There are just certain thoughts that can’t crack the surface of house life with dogs barking and grandchildren talking and televisions blaring. So it was last week, as I was headed back home from a Brookshire’s run. I’d been thinking about a couple of friends. One is battling health concerns. One is battling the starting over process, the kind where you wake up and life turned upside down on you. I’ve been in both of those battles. Suddenly, as the light at Pinson and Broad turned green, I wondered if anyone has told either of these friends about the art they are creating right now. All the heartaches are shading the corners. All the closing doors are creating the contrast. All the hope is highlighting where the light will soon hit. Sure, right now, all they can see is that awkward stick figure, the scribble that holds space for the human we are painting. Soon, the experience of life will flesh it out. Soon enough, the sticks will become bones that become limbs that become so real we lose the discernment to know if it’s art or if it’s real. A Velveteen Rabbit of an image. Chiaroscuro.

We talk a lot about suffering at my church. Christ suffered. We will never suffer like He suffered. Suffering is noble. Blah blah blah. Don’t misunderstand. Every piece of that is true and honorable and important. It just wasn’t pinging the old sensors. Recently, the pastor said something that really resonated with me, something that elevated suffering in my feeble sheep brain. He basically said to expect to suffer. Stop worrying about the IF and the WHEN. In so many words, revel in the suffering. Anticipate it with glee. Greet it with gifts and decadent cake and a parade. Manifest suffering, for it provides the black paint for the portrait of our lives. Suffering creates finite details. It makes art pop. Chiaroscuro.

Occasionally, someone will ask me about happiness after losing a child. Mostly, they’re looking for a guarantee I cannot offer them. They want to know when they will be happy again. “How long until you smiled or laughed?” they will ask. “How long until your pillowcase wasn’t stiff with dried tears every morning?” “How long until your eyes looked normal, not red and puffy like a losing prizefighter?” Or they will ask about cancer. “How long until the world wasn’t so scary?” “How long before I can walk without my body making that debilitated comma shape around the breast I lost?” I never had an answer until now. “Look in the shadow,” I tell them. Chiaroscuro.

I once thought rainbows were blasé. Yeah, ok, there are subtle bands of color in the sky. It’s cute – fine. Years of stiff pillowcases & puffy eyes later, I shriek with delight at a rainbow. They bring tears to my eyes. I have always loved the ocean, but these days, it beckons me like a mermaid mesmerizing a crusty old sailor. The smell of rain implores me to roll on the damp earth until I reek of moss and my fingernails look like I replaced my carburetor. None of this would have been possible had it not been for suffering, had it not been for Jesus. That’s my advice. Getcha some good old suffering under your belt. For, without the darkest dark, you’ll never appreciate the lightest light. Chiaroscuro. Amen, Professor Nice Lady. Amen.