Thoreau and Me

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

Henry David Thoreau

I first encountered Henry David Thoreau’s Walden at the end of my senior year of college. When I say encounter, I meant that I read it for the first time, though I had heard much about it from others, preemptively determining it contained the musings of a crazy transcendentalist who went to live in a cabin in the woods just to make a point.

I expected to write him off as a tree-hugging hippie of a previous generation, picturing him as a scruffy-bearded man with a dirty face, no shoes, and wild eyes. He would attempt to talk to animals, of course, and would during the course of the winter go so crazy that he might even think they answered back with curious prophesies and pronouncements against society. He would then write these annunciations in his notebook, get them published as a novelty, and become the saint of my own generation of tree-huggers. So I thought.

I was already fed up with the hippies around me. I heard enough assertions of the perfection of nature, enough of calls to be one with the world, enough with global warming. While college students at Colorado State University were writing vows on their graduation sashes promising to fix human damages in nature, I wrote papers about the dangers of alternative fuels and the benefits of controlled hunting. The news, full of predictions of doom in the form of burning rainforests, extinct species, and the dissipating ozone, weighed on my soul. Yes, the world is going to hell, I thought. So why does everyone keep talking about it as if they are surprised? Crazy would be to think that nature really is perfect, to think that we can fix it through rash action, and to say that one only needs to go into the woods by themselves and build a cabin by a pond to fix things.

But instead of crazy musings, in Walden I found a surprising wholeness of mind, of purpose, and of art. It was, in an odd way, beautiful. Thoreau included annoyingly small and seemingly inconsequential details, like the changing temperature of his beloved pond over the course of the spring. He told me how he made his house, down to the last shingle, and of what material, and with what tools. But he did so with the grace and firm tangibility of poetry. I unexpectedly lost myself in his cadences and imagery, listening to the song of his words in my head as I watched along with him Walden changing through the seasons.

I found instead of a crazy hippie a nonetheless strange man who sat by a pond for two years and watched. Watched ice form and melt. Watched birds and furry creatures come and go. Watched trees grow and seasons change the colors month by month. He listened, too. To the boom of the ice on the pond as it thawed in spring. To the songs of the birds. To the different voices of the wind in the trees and in his chimney.

Hippies wish to melt themselves into nature, to become no different from the trees and the ground and the animals, to lose their individual consciousness in the greater consciousness of the whole of nature. Hippies hate their humanness and pray to be anything else. Thoreau, on the other hand, placed himself within nature in order to be a part of it, but not to lose himself. Rather, he saw his project as a finding of something about life, an escape from slavery into true humanity. In his own words: “I went to the woods to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (85). Here was not a hippie seeking to meld himself with nature. Here was a man carefully observing nature to learn what it might teach him about his own life.

And, to my surprise, I found I could not dismiss him because I saw him in myself.

My Walden has always been the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Every summer, my father would take our family on camping and backpacking expeditions, exploring the depths of river valleys and the heights of twelve thousand-foot peaks. I took my first backpacking trip to Twin Lakes when I was eight years old. Of that memory I have retained only the colors: emerald moss framing the crystal flow of a glacier melt trickle. Shining black mica flakes like flashing animal eyes among the white sand on the trail. Dead, rusted pine needles. The deep blue of a sky very narrowly separating us from space.

Since that first trip, I have dedicated myself to learning my mountains. I know the names of the animals and plants, and dangerous and friendly, poisonous and edible. I know the dangers of the weather and the things I must bring with me into the wilderness in order to survive. I know the names of each peak and the shape of their crags by heart.

But more than just learning about the mountains, I have lived them. As Thoreau says about students of anything, “they should not play life, or study it merely…but earnestly live it” (47). Like Thoreau, I have stayed and watched and listened. I have heard the roars of waterfalls reverberating from granite cliffs like the vibratos of opera basses. I have listened to the illusive lark bunting call for a mate from the dwarf junipers on windswept tundra. I have watched the bud of a columbine open and tracked the hoof prints of a deer to the hiding place of her fawns. I have heard the song of the wind in the lodge pole pines, I have smelled the cinnamon on the bark of the fir, I have tasted the sour sweetness of tiny grouse berries.

Thoreau knew Walden, and in knowing Walden, he knew himself. He did not write about nature. He wrote about place, planting himself beside a pond and becoming an intentional part of that landscape, allowing it to impress his imagination and feed him with its silences and sounds, its breathings in and out. In this place, Thoreau learned less about nature than about human existence. He saw living in his place not as a return to perfection or even goodness, but as a return to the simplicity desperately needed by the human soul.

I also have embedded myself in a place, a place where my imagination has been planted, where, as Barbara Kingsolver describes it, my stories come from. And like Thoreau, I have learned from that place several things about what it means to live.

In terms of my agreement with him, it seems that both he and I acquired a greater appreciation for the simple things of life, namely food, clothing, and shelter, from knowing the wild. When you must work for it, food becomes something you notice you are eating instead of a three-times-a-day habit of consumption. You eat when you are hungry, and you realize that eating anything requires a process of finding and cooking, sometimes even catching and cleaning. You know your food intimately, down to its very innards.

Clothing also takes on completely different associations. In civilization, the clothes you wear have more to do with how you wish to appear than with their more practical functions of temperature regulation and protection from the elements. In the wild, clothing fulfills these practical functions first and foremost. One wears the oldest and most comfortable articles one can find, these clothes being the best for climbing and hiking and chopping and cleaning and staying warm without worries about stains or rips. Clothes lose their associations with fashion and become important only in their care for the people that are in them. After all, Thoreau reminds us, “it is only the serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it [clothing], which restrain laughter and consecrate the costume of any people” (23). One becomes much more concerned with character than a sense of style. I say with Thoreau: “…if my jacket and trousers, my hat and my shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not?” (20) When one worships God on the mountaintop, a little mud on jeans or a sweatshirt that has never really fit right no longer matter at all.

Most congruent with my own views and least hippie-ish of all, I found, was Thoreau’s understanding of shelter. He knew his human place within nature. When I camp, no matter how much good will I have towards nature, I must bring a tent to keep out the cold and the wind and the rain. In the same way, Thoreau did not strip off all his clothes and wander into the woods, expecting to be accepted and to survive on the grace of “Mother Earth.” Instead, he worked to build his home, even cutting down trees (gasp!) in order to do so. He recognized his finitude, not as something that disconnected him from nature, but as a fact that connected him to the similar finitude of other living things.

This understanding serves as the pinnacle of my agreement with Thoreau: his recognition that nature, just like human society, is not a utopia, but that beauty can still be found by living in the present moment of a place. One should enjoy life and beauty where they find them, not looking for perfection, but rather living intentionally in the moment. Thoreau knows that nature is not perfect, that he is finite, that if he runs out of food or gets too cold he will die. He knows that he must also kill other finite organisms in order to live. In other words, he knew as well as I that the world is going to hell. And, contrary to what the hippies might want to believe, he didn’t seem too worried about it. In fact, he rather enjoyed it, because it gave him something to think about.

This is because his musings did not focus on man’s destruction of the earth, but rather on man’s destruction of himself. Though he cared about Walden Pond, he did not live there in order to write a book about it and make the local people appreciate its beauties. Yes, in the process he did live in a way that was kind to the nature around him; his natural setting was vital to his lifestyle and therefore his philosophy. But his point did not center upon nature. It rotated around himself, not the entire world. It focused on simplicity, a word that should not be considered synonymous with conservation. It also focused on the present, not the future. He did not proclaim himself as a squatter in order to keep bulldozers from destroying the forest. He went to Walden to live his life in a way that he felt was the best way for people, namely himself, in freedom. To live deliberately.

And yet this is the point where I must disagree with Thoreau: his view of what it means to live free and deliberately.

I have an argument against him only because his lifestyle has so tempted me. Whenever someone asks me about a particularly stressful or busy day, I simply say that it is a llama farm day. If they are a member of my family or a close friend, they know this means that I am strongly considering quitting everything I am doing, buying land somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and ranching alpacas and llamas for their wool. I came up with this idea after seeing an infomercial where a happy older lady was standing with her cute, clean, fluffy alpaca and smiling. “I’ve never regretted owning alpacas,” she said through her perfect dentures. “They’re the best decision I ever made.” On the tough days, and even on the not-so-tough days, I want to be that lady, not because llama ranching sounds like the best job ever, but because it sounds so…free. Away from the city, peaceful, and without worries about bosses and coworkers and deadlines. Keeping my llamas happy would be my biggest concern.

Thoreau’s Walden reminds me somewhat of that infomercial. I see Thoreau standing in the woods, a big smile on his face, with the background of the pond behind him. “I’ve never regretted moving to this pond,” he says. “It’s the best decision I’ve ever made.” And it’s tempting, for a moment. I want to leave my responsibilities behind, just go to the woods to live deliberately. I want to live in the freedom of very few material possessions, hardly any obligations, and all the time in the world. I would love to simply observe one place in nature day after day after day. But I cannot listen to this sell.

Thoreau’s freedom is not true freedom because it is a running away from, not a running toward. Though he would like to make it seem as if he is creating for himself a better life, that he really knows what he is looking for at Walden Pond, I see him escaping, rather, a life he does not like. I hear him rail against those who laughed at him for his shabby clothes. I see him shake his fist at the landlords who hassled him for the monthly rent. I listen to him addressing over and over again those who did not think he could live at Walden Pond without going crazy. This is not freedom. This is enslavement to bitterness towards the customs of a culture.

Given, some of his criticisms of that culture are valid. In fact, I think that most of them are worth consideration. We should not consider clothes to be more important than character. People should live more simply and cheaply than they currently believe they can. Most men do “labor under a mistake,” forgetting that they will soon be “ploughed into the soil for compost” (3). But railing against such things does not prove freedom. It simply proclaims a personal philosophy that seeks to point out the problems. Thoreau’s time at Walden simply gave him the opportunity to think about and write out those personal philosophies, not to prove them.

This argument against Thoreau has been made before, but I’m going to make it again: one cannot seek to reform society unless they are a part of that society. Thoreau’s arguments fall flat because he has isolated himself. His infomercial does not sell.

But my argument goes beyond this. I will not fall into the same trap as Thoreau and simply argue against him without looking toward what I am preferring as a solution. Instead, I must consider how I can continue to see his criticisms as valid even while choosing to not mimic his reaction.

Living against these issues Thoreau raises does not mean one must pull away from society altogether. In fact, it means just the opposite. It means living life in society with a different perspective, a different focus, a different direction than everyone else. It is a remembrance that we will be compost. It is a living frugally and giving the extra to those who need it. It is a close observation, a quietness of soul, a paying attention. It is, in fact, a living deliberately.

This type of living deliberately is more challenging than the sort that builds a cabin in the woods and escapes society. It requires that we integrate our deliberateness into our daily business, our every choice, our interaction with others. We must combat the forces of society that tell us we must keep striving for more, whatever that “more” may look like, for no apparent reason. We have to think deeply and pay close attention to the world around us for glimpses for those things that are truly important.

Perhaps Thoreau himself knew that his time at Walden was not the answer, but only the space for the development of his ideas. His best explanation for leaving Walden after only two years of residence is vague at best: “Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one” (302). In other words, Thoreau admits that Walden constituted the fulfillment of an internal desire, the pursuit of a dream, a short experiment in living. Those two years at Walden Pond were only a period, a space in his life, not the entirety of his life, and he knew it.

It is for all these reasons that I praise Thoreau and assert he is not a crazy hippie even while I don’t pick up my life and move to the woods. Perhaps someday I will fulfill my dream of owning land and ranching livestock in the mountains. But in the meantime, I do not neglect Thoreau’s idea of living deliberately even as I finish college and get a nine-to-five. Instead, I remember our agreements about the beauties of nature and the benefits of living within that beauty, our mutual acknowledgment of finiteness and the reality of death. I seek Thoreau’s perspective of humility, acknowledging that the more I know, the more in danger I am of knowing nothing useful. After all, Thoreau says, “how can he remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his knowledge?” (4) I will continue to spend time in my mountains, being reminded that “a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors” (35). And, above all, I will attempt “to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line” (14). In other words, Thoreau and I, in disagreement and agreement, will be living life together. Deliberately.

All quotations from:

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004. First ed. 1854.

Between the Gym and the Sanctuary: Learning to Serve the Homeless Wholeheartedly

“This is a great church,” Jim tells me. “I know a lot of people are really appreciative for what they’re doing here.”

In the two months that I have been attending Sunday morning services with the homeless at Parkview Community Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, this appreciation has been an often-heard comment from Jim and other homeless community members served by Manna Ministries.

For Jim, Manna means being able to call Parkview his church family. “It gives a lot of us a place to call a home church,” he says.

While the rest of the larger church body attends the service in the typical, non-denominational sanctuary next door, homeless attendees are given the option of staying in the gym to watch the sermon on a television screen. Lunch is later served in the same room. An early morning Bible study is also offered in a classroom upstairs before the first service.

The gym-turned-sanctuary seemed to be a good idea for encouraging the homeless community to attend a church where they did not have to face the scrutiny of non-homeless members, a situation that might discourage attendance. It gives those served by the ministry a chance to sit back, relax, and avoid judgment for one afternoon. But I had to ask myself: why would we have to separate people from the greater church body in order to keep them from feeling judged for being homeless? I knew the answer from looking at myself. Despite my heartfelt desire to serve the people of Manna, I had come into the ministry with negative assumptions about the lives of the homeless, including assumptions of character, that remained unchallenged until I actually sat down and talked with them. As a part of the church my whole life, I know that the beliefs about homelessness held by other members of the church are likely to be similarly misinformed, leading to a desire to serve while still remaining separate from those being served.

The response of the church to homelessness in the form of ministry would not lead one to conclude that Christians hold negative misconceptions about the homeless. Though no formal statistics exist concerning the number of churches that support homeless ministries or have begun homeless assistance programs, the name of Christianity has commonly been associated with help for the poor in many forms. As an example, Parkview is not the only church seeking to help Manna attendees. Many of the homeless of DuPage County find shelter in different churches and other volunteered facilities every weeknight, facilitated by the PADS organization, or Public Action to Deliver Shelter. According to Manna members, church locations always outnumber secular community buildings when it comes to volunteered facilities.

Though its response to the problem of homelessness might be exemplary, the evangelical church is a part of a society that misunderstands homelessness, a fact more than likely to affect perceptions of the homeless even within ministry. According to a 2007 Fannie Mae General Population and Cities Survey concerning perceptions of homelessness, eight in ten, or 85%, of adults believe that alcohol and drugs are the primary cause of homelessness in the United States (4). In comparison, the statistic for the amount of addictive substance users among the homeless population is 38%, a percentage that includes those who began to drink or do drugs after they became homeless (“Who is Homeless?” par. 13). In another ironic twist, the reasons listed by the wider public for their own possible homelessness come down to medical expenses, job loss, housing prices, or the death or divorce of a spouse (Fannie Mae 6). In other words, if they were to become homeless, it would not be their fault, though they believe that the majority of those who are homeless are in a bad situation primarily because of their own intemperance.

Similar misunderstandings surround the increasing prevalence of homelessness. While 58% of American adults believe that homelessness has increased over the last ten years in the nation as a whole, 49% asserted that the number of those affected by homelessness in their own community has remained static (Fannie Mae 3). In actuality, estimated reports show that homelessness has been increasing exponentially in the majority of U.S. states over the last twenty years (“How Many People” par 13-16). According to similar reports, ignorance concerning homelessness close to home increases with income: “Adults reporting household incomes of $75,000 or more are less likely than their counterparts less affluent to say the that the number of homeless people in their community is increasing (20% vs. 36%)” (Fannie Mae 3). With DuPage County’s long-standing reputation for being one of the richest counties in Illinois, the majority of Parkview members fall into this income bracket and, likely, the same opinions.

Misconceptions such as these have the power to increase the reluctance of church members in interacting on a personal level with people who have become homeless. Assumptions about alcohol and drug use can cause fear that people served by the ministry are either violent or incoherent, only interested in the next bottle or high, not a good conversation. Those from high-income neighborhoods may be unwilling to acknowledge the presence of real and physical needs of individuals and families right on their doorstep, a realization that would challenge one’s beliefs concerning a growing problem in every part of the country. In short, if the Christian church can be included in an opinion survey of the wider culture, then the heart behind homeless ministry might not match up with the hardworking hands, a truth that will eventually have a negative effect on the results that the hands produce.

As has occurred in my own experience, these misconceptions about homelessness seem to be most effectively alleviated by establishing relationships in spite of misunderstandings with those who are homeless. Dr. Michael McDuffee, a professor at Moody Bible Institute and the director of Manna Ministries, has also experienced a change of perception concerning the homeless since beginning to work at Parkview. He is considered to be not just a ministry worker, but also a friend to many Manna members, an acceptance resulting from his hard work and close care to get to know and pray with attendees. “Taking part in Manna is teaching me that every relation I have with every person who is in between in life…should evoke in me the charge to see the person, to see the full person, not a hassle, not an opportunity, not a problem, not an issue, but a complete person,” says McDuffee.

It can be estimated that fewer than five Parkview members, including Dr. McDuffee, interact regularly on a personal level with Manna attendees. If the majority of the church not interacting with Manna members holds such biases against the homeless as the rest of society, why do they actively support homeless ministry within their church? James J. Graham poses a theory containing harsh criticism towards the church in his book, The Enemies of Poor. He asserts that the “distribution of food, clothing, or shelter under religious auspices” can only spring from two sources: (1) the “selfish” motivations of either gathering converts or bettering one’s own position in heaven or (2) simply to ease a guilty conscience without doing anything to disturb the status quo of social problems (139). His third criticism strikes directly at the heart of ministry: “The charitable impulse of the institutional Church is so legalistic, so compartmentalized, that it is easily satisfied by the donations to the poor box or, vicariously, by the full-time endeavors of others. It need not, and does not, permeate the lives of those who call themselves Christians” (139). In Graham’s argument, the church serves the homeless from a motivation of self-benefit and a sense of self-righteousness without an understanding of those they serve, a perspective that allows them to separate themselves from those they serve.

Dr. McDuffee has been a member and volunteer at Parkview Community Church for a number of years and asserts that Graham’s criticisms have no foundation in his congregation. “Parkview, as a community of believers, seekers and outsiders hanging around, has a corporate perception of the homeless. That is both important and rare,” he says. “The people of Parkview see the homeless. They are generous and compassionate. This is to be commended. We should give God thanks for this gift that He has given us as a community, made up of believers and unbelievers alike.” In McDuffee’s opinion, the body of the church that is not homeless does not separate itself, in perspective or in action, from the homeless that attend the church through Manna Ministries. The gym solution represents the inclusiveness of Parkview in their welcoming of the non-believing homeless community to have somewhere to go on a Sunday without feeling obligated to listen to the sermon. The main sanctuary does not exclude the homeless. Rather, many of those served by Manna sit in the front row and even participate in the worship band.

Still, McDuffee admits that the church, as a human institution, always needs to keep an eye on the heart. “Without doubt, a strain running through the perception nurtures a sense of self-affirmation,” he says. “We are doing something good and therefore we can feel good about ourselves. This is human nature.”

McDuffee is confident that this potential for self-righteousness, as long as it is recognized and kept under careful consideration, is not likely to undermine the good purposes of Manna Ministries. The success of any Christian endeavor, he says, depends on the mercy of God individually and corporately in the end, no matter how perfect the motivations of those who serve. The faultiness of the servants, then, does not need to be a condemnation of either the church or its ministries.

For McDuffee and Parkview Community Church, this is the bottom line: knowing they will make mistakes along the way, they continue to press onward in serving the best that they can. Still, for Parkview and the church as a whole, Graham’s criticisms should remain in mind. Those who serve without accurate self-knowledge or knowledge of those they serve run the risk of causing the recipients of their service, instead of being encouraged and humanized, to feel dehumanized by the resulting separation, materially and spiritually, from their “saviors.” Being made to feel as if they are of less worth than those who assist them will not help those who have become homeless. Rather, those who have become homeless will only find their feet again by receiving caring assistance while being treated as equals, in all ways, by those who serve them.

Breaking the deadly cycle of misconception is the necessary first step for a renewed outlook on ministry to the homeless. The fear caused by misconceptions influences those who are not homeless to separate themselves, which does nothing to undermine the misconceptions. Those wishing to serve people who have become homeless must take the first step by approaching the homeless first as humans, then as those disadvantaged by various circumstances. The best vision for breaking this cycle will be, not when Manna comes into the sanctuary, but when the rest of the congregations starts attending church in the gym, showing their efforts to facilitate community and personal relationship. Parkview Community Church is on its way.

Works Cited

Graham, James J. The Enemies of the Poor. New York: Random House, 1970. Print. 132-175.

“How Many People Experience Homelessness?” National Coalition for the Homeless. National

Coalition for the Homeless, July 2009. Web. 20 January 2010. http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/How_Many.html

McDuffee, Michael. Personal interview. 21 Jan. 2010.

“Survey Highlights.” Homelessness in America: Americans’ Perceptions, Attitudes, and

Knowledge. Fannie Mae General Population and Cities Survey. Gallup, Inc., November 2007. Web. 20 January 2010. http://www.fanniemae.com/media/pdf/GP_Citiesfinal.pdf

“Who is Homeless?” National Coalition for the Homeless. National Coalition for the Homeless,

July 2009. Web. 20 January 2010. http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/who.html

Meaning in Moment: Gaston La Touche’s Pardon In Brittany

To a freshman college student in a beginners’ art history class, the Art Institute of Chicago seemed to represent an intellectual, artistic, and cultural achievement beyond my small understanding. My conception of real artists and their art included a language that I could not understand, spoken while sporting berets and consistently paint-stained clothing. Something in such conversations would usually be said about feeling, and color, and line, and many other things that were meant to say that the piece communicated something meaningful. That something meaningful was the one thing I couldn’t seem to grasp in class. To me, viewing art as a layperson meant simply appreciating prettiness, the fact that I couldn’t have painted it, and the historical significance, while allowing the meaning to remain the secret of the artist. Visual art, after all, was something that no one really understood anyway.

Comfortable in this understanding, Pardon in Brittany by Gaston La Touche blindsided me completely.

They had hidden it on a half wall flanking the doorway through which I had entered. I had scanned the room already, filling my eyes with the bright, mottled flecks of Monets and other Impressionists. I liked them all; I had seen most on postcards and my grandmother’s art-print purses, and so I was not left breathless, though I was impressed. Overwhelmed by the light of Monet, I turned toward the door to leave and was stunned to a stop by Pardon in Brittany.

Perhaps it was so striking because of its contrast to the inundation of daylight my eyes had just absorbed from the others. In any case, the twilight scene struck me with its somber emotions. Along with its depiction of sunset instead of daylight, it differed from everything else I had yet seen in its purposeful lack of scenery. The foreground consisted entirely of an indistinct mass of people, crowded together, their faces illuminated by the dim light of sunset and the occasional brightness of a candle. Many of the faces looked excited and the indistinct figures appeared to be having conversations, but the color and light were blurred, obscuring the details of their expressions, personalities, and individual identities. Their emotions contrasted with the stoic serenity of a woman on horseback in their midst, holding a child in front of her as she sat silhouetted against the pale pink sky, looking out into the unseen space beyond the crowd. Like a ghost, the figure of a man who looked to be a priest stood beside her horse in a white robe. The darkness of the plain, Puritan-like garb of the crowd contrasted with this lone priest, the dim though still distinct light of the sky above their heads, and the shadowy white mass of the women’s hats.

I felt that until I had seen it, I had not understood art.

It took many more visits to the Institute to explain what change had occurred, exactly. All I knew is that in my trips to the Institute afterwards, I found traces of Pardon in Brittany in every painting to which I was drawn. A touch of light, the turn of a face, a sense of mystery communicated through a contrast of dark and light. The best way to sum it up, perhaps, would be to use a cliché and say that I had encountered a piece of art, that I had really seen art, for the first time when I met the painting and that I was looking for that experience again in other pieces. Pardon in Brittany had drawn me into itself while remaining nothing more than a two-dimensional work of art on a wall, and it had accomplished this without me knowing what it “meant.” Now anything could happen.

More astonishing in my change was my own continuing reaction, or lack of reaction, to the story of the painting. On every visit I would sit with the painting, stare at it, let myself be absorbed into the moment and the light and the never-ending pink sunset. Only on occasion would a question come into my head concerning the story of the work: Who was Gaston La Touche? Why did he paint this? Who is the woman on the horse? Why is the crowd gathered and where are they going? When these questions would appear, they seemed to ruin something about the painting, and so I never sought the answers.

The plaque beside it read only “Gaston La Touche, French, 1854-1913, Pardon in Brittany, 1896, oil on canvas.” The lack of background left me to imagine grand tales about the story of the painting. The crowd could be leaving a hanging that had taken place at sundown, and the woman on the horse with her child was the widow of the man who had been hanged. Or, she was the one being led to her death, holding her child for the last time before being burned at the stake for some unknown heresy. In all these imaginings, however, the painting never once had to become anything more than a painting for me. I did not imagine its story in a longing to know the real truth behind the captured moment. It was flat and soundless and always would be. It gave my imagination a window to look through.

After all, the mystery of the work itself was one of the things about the painting that continued to fascinate me. The only piece by Gaston La Touche in the Institute, it stood alone without the context of the overall style or the more famous works of the artist. In other words, it was free to be itself without comparison or being lumped into a bigger group. The curators moved it constantly, so that during each visit I might find it in a new and unexpected place, surprised by its effects yet again. It was itself, one captured moment, both the same and never the same at second glance.

In my previous understanding of art, all I would have wanted was the story behind the painting, either of the painter’s relationship to the subject or the story surrounding the subject. The only paintings I would examine for long were the pieces with plaques detailing all there was to know about the painter and the work. I felt that the plaques handed me the meaning of the painting otherwise known only by the artist, the secret that could be imparted to the ignorant viewer only through detailed explanation. If it could not give me the meaning, the information on the plaques could at least give me some helpful information about the history of the work or fame of the painter so I would not have to feel like a total failure whenever I could not even appreciate the aesthetics of the piece.

Strangely, and guiltily, I felt I knew the “secret” of Pardon in Brittany without knowing the background or context of its creation. We had a connection, this painting and I. Still, I did not want to assume that my artistically ignorant mind could possibly grasp all that the painting meant without really “knowing” anything about it. So I conducted research.

Gaston La Touche was a rich Frenchman who taught himself to paint from the age of ten and was never formally trained, though he did find a mentor in the prestigious Manet. He was most famous for his paintings that looked most Impressionistic: sunlit scenes of well-dressed men and women, gardens and flowers and fountains, lots of bright color. Well-known in his time, his fame has been absorbed by the work of artists like Monet and few others beyond groups of avid art collectors recognize his name (Brindley).

The painting, though different in its tone than the rest of his work, gets grouped along with his other post-Impressionistic, bright and sunshiny pieces. It is insignificant within his collection of work, as he has become insignificant within a collection of Impressionistic and post-Impressionistic French artists.

A “pardon” in Brittany, Brittany being a region in the northwest of France, is a festival or solemn parade celebrating the life of a saint. Participants pay a visit to the grave of the saint, afterwards attending a mass for said saint. The white hats worn by the women in the painting were in style among the women of Brittany in the time period that the painting was created (“Brittany”).

In other words, my painter is not famous, radical, or otherwise scandalous. My painting is not distinct even among the rest of its own painter’s work. The scene depicted is one of absolute, unexciting normality. No hanging. No burning. No intrigue.

I still love this painting. I love it more because the context does not matter. I love it because it is itself, nothing more and nothing less than a captured moment of beauty. Like the plaque helpfully explains: oil on canvas. In being a simply beautiful painting, it has given me a window into my soul.

At some point in time before I saw Pardon in Brittany I had come to think of life experiences as I had come to think of individual paintings: because I could not know the meaning that only the Artist knew, then the best I could do would be to try to glean as much information as I could about the history, the Artist’s identity, and the broader situation of the moment I had been given. If a certain experience seemed difficult to handle, I would simply try to skip over it quickly, pushing forward to times when I might have a detailed plaque to help guide me in a little understanding. But this view of time, as any wise person could have told me, does not satisfy. Nor is it living. There is no connection, no encounter with moments, whether beautiful or disagreeable, when we only seek to mine information from life.

A wise person could also have told me that I could not expect to only appreciate each moment fully if I knew the detailed drama, the wider story, behind the subject. I had been disregarding my own small experiences of beauty and change as insignificant because they were simply human, simply moments, not grand. Flat, like paintings. I could not see the rest of the story, and so I disregarded its pieces.

Pardon in Brittany showed me that there is a way to be present in moments without complete understanding. While there exists a larger context, a history, and a situation to the painting, these might not be things that are always readily available or even necessary. Rather, the meaning of this painting resides precisely in the fact that it is a painting, a rendering of beauty and feeling, a moment captured with simple oil and canvas. It is itself and it is beautiful and this is what matters most. I would like to say the same of each second, each minute, each hour, each day, each year that is given to me by God: it is itself and it is beautiful and this is what matters most.

The painting does have a larger context, as do our moments and our lives. We have one Artist that crafts all; He is painting the grand picture of history. But sometimes I wonder if we concentrate too much on this bigger story at the expense of missing the beauty of the individual experiences that make up the greater canvas. Even more troubling, I wonder if constant striving for our own definition of understanding might cause us to miss those moments in which we encounter not only life, but also God Himself.

We cannot always know the meaning of individual experiences, but this is not because the Artist is holding out on us or because we are too ignorant to discern it, but because this is not the point. The point is to encounter Meaning, to live in it, to experience the fullness of its beauty as it is. We are meant to be surprised when we turn the corner and see it hanging before our eyes. We should be expecting it to show up in a different place than expected every time we search for it. We should begin to see glimpses of it in other moments, calling us to pay attention. We should feel free to admire the beauty of a vision we can see but not fully grasp, allowing our imaginations to flow freely with all the possibilities it might offer. In short, we should unshackle ourselves from our insecurities, impatience, and pride and simply stand in awe and silence in the presence of a thing of beauty and light.

The last time I saw my painting it was hanging in a room with other work contributed by the same donor. Its side room was only a few steps away from the gallery with all the famous Monets, meaning that very few visitors stopped briefly to look at it as they travelled between that large Monet gallery and another, similarly artist-themed room. They had hung it against a wall painted mauve, effectually bleeding all the dim rosy hue from the sunset above the heads of the crowd and the lone female rider. Still, the mystery was there, and I felt the same thrill of what I can only label as appreciation. Love. Love might be a better word. Or even better: life. It was life.

Works Cited

Brindley, Roy and Selina Baring Maclennan. Gaston La Touche. Web. 3 Feb. 2010.

http://www.gastonlatouche.com/biography.htm

Brittany. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 2 Feb. 2010. Web. 3 Feb. 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany

Love Bites

Dracula looms ominously over his next intended victim, his mouth and eyes twisted into a feral, lustful snarl as his long-nailed fingers prepare to grasp his prey. The hands resemble the claws of a carnivorous bird, curled hooks of death. The picture is sinister, terrifying. A picture of evil. A thing of nightmares.

Actor Bela Lugosi captured his role so well in the 1931 film version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that the movie has been officially recorded as one of the most culturally influential films of the century. Right from the start, the film captivated the imagination of viewers, and not in a rosy-colored way. Some audience members were so terrified that they fainted in their seats. Through the curiosity of subsequent movie-goers who wanted to see if they themselves would faint, Dracula became the first in a long line of very popular horror films to change classifications of movie drama forever.

The fascination with vampires inspired by the film has persisted into the twenty-first century. From books to movies to television shows, the mythology of vampires has come to dominate popular culture. With one significant difference: these new vampires are not horrifying creatures, but teen idols.

Dracula was a horror film. In other words, it was meant to be scary. It was meant to terrify and stun and cause nightmares for those who watched it. It kept them on the ends of their seats, screaming to the intended victims to wake up before the horrible vampire bit them and stole away their life. Now, the audience of young teens (and, in some cases, even older women) screams at the vampire on the screen to bite his love interest so that they can “be together forever.” Disturbing? I should think so.

Vampirism has always been associated with sex. Even in the 1931 film, Dracula was really only interested in biting beautiful women, coming in through their windows at night to suck their blood while they lay in bed. He lived in his castle with three beautiful, young female vampires who were completely devoted to him and, subtly implied, served as his mistresses (thinking Hugh Heffner, anyone?). One would be misinformed to think that vampirism has only recently become sensualized. But the tones of past and current understandings of the connections are much, much different.

In the 1931 film, the beautiful heroine Mina describes a horrible dream that she thinks she has had, a dream that the audience knows was actually Dracula’s first visit to her bedroom to drink some of her blood. She tells her worried fiancé about an ugly face with red eyes that came out of a thick mist and terrifyingly rested its cold lips on her neck. In the morning, she woke up weak. Drained of all life, as she tells it. Let us contrast this to a wildly popular recent book and movie series about vampires. In a scene from the first of these movies, the heroine wakes up to find a boy she knows, a vampire, in her bedroom. She is alarmed at first, but he is just so damn handsome, and eventually we see her relax and decide she feels warm and fuzzy inside when she has him to watch over her. He tells her that he just loves to watch her sleep and so he’s come over uninvited to do just that. She loves it, and so does the audience. Throughout the rest of the books/movies, this same heroine continually begs the vampire to bite her so that she can be just like him.

Now we must not overreact. Pop culture has found strange and twisted ways to represent romantic relationships before. But shouldn’t we be at least slightly worried about this particular turn of events? I look at Bela Lugosi as Dracula, face a hungry snarl and hands like white claws, bringing death, not to mention slavery to all his whims, to the bedroom of an innocent girl. This is, in a sexual interpretation, rape. I do not find this in the least bit romantic. Sexual, yes. Provocative, maybe. But healthy? Not at all. Watching Dracula, one feels afraid because they should. Life-sucking has never been good. Maybe that’s a fact we need to remember.

The Real (Overgeneralized) Colorado

When I look through the living room windows of my parents’ home, I can see the first ridges of the foothills leading into the Rocky Mountains only a few miles away. On this winter morning, with the birds singing in the prairie grasses beyond our fence, Table Mountain is brown and dead with a crown of white snow along the cliffs at the plateau’s head. At sunset, I know, this same rock face will turn a deep purple-blue, the color that has been famously recorded in the song “America the Beautiful” as “purple mountains majesty.”

Despite the romance of this scene, I can’t help but laugh to myself thinking about how tourists have come to think of my Colorado home thanks to advertising brochures. I often see posters and pamphlets encouraging travelers to visit “The Mile High City” of Denver whenever I fly out of one of Chicago’s airports on my way home from college on breaks. More often than not, they depict either a skier on the slopes or the city itself which, compared to Chicago, looks tiny even in pictures. On rare occasion, I’ve seen a brochure with a front cover of two hikers on a beginners’ level trail somewhere in Rocky Mountain National Forest. Every pamphlet is filled with advertisements for fancy restaurants selling buffalo meat, bars where you can sniff oxygen while you drink, furriers promising protection from the mountain chill, and luxury car dealerships that will loan you a Porsche to handle curves on the mountain passes.

Any Colorado native knows that if a local were to design those brochures, none of these things would be included. Jeeps or Subarus, not Porsches, are the vehicles of choice and have their own designations of owner status in lift heights and bike racks. If you’re going to go to a real Colorado bar, they will be playing honky-tonk, not jazz. Mexican, not buffalo burgers, would be the featured food of choice. No self-respecting, nature-loving native would ever wear a fur coat. And the front cover would be anything more rugged and dangerous than the national park, where you have to pay twenty dollars just to get a day pass and then walk in single file with all the other tourists along the “hiking trails” that should be labeled “nature walking paths for senior citizens.”

Now, before I continue allowing the reader to think that these opinions are coming from some rugged, military-trained, scruffy-bearded mountain man who eats nothing but raw meat and granola, let me put a disclaimer on the person behind my over-generalized statements. I am a twenty-one year old female college student, meaning that I’ve spent nine months each year for the last three years at sea level in a suburb outside Chicago. In other words, I look like any other city girl; my mountain-hardened lungs and muscles have gone flabby and my skin is the same pale shade as those blind fish that live in caves and never see the sun.

Though I’ve always lived in Colorado, my parents didn’t raise me in some one-horse mining town where the main source of income is moonshine and the mayor still pans for gold.[1] My childhood home was in Thornton, a northern suburb of Denver on the deserty eastern plains, where I could see the colors of the sunrise on the summit of Long’s Peak while looking out the window of the bus on my way to school. When I was about to start high school my family moved to Arvada, a southwestern suburb that sits right at the feet of the mountains and lets its residents look out over the city from their higher elevation. For those out-of-staters who need skiing references: Thornton is three hours from the main slopes, while Arvada is only one and a half.[2]

So I am not a scruffy-bearded mountain man, but I do love Colorado. My family has always undertaken mild adventures in hiking, biking, camping, fishing, and backpacking, and though only a few of these expeditions have been very extreme, and only then by accident, I still feel that it’s about time that someone tried to capture the true heart of Colorado’s culture, which at its heart is an outdoor, not fur-coat-wearing, culture.[3] In other words, I feel called to dismantle the myths of the travel brochures so that anyone who reads this can appreciate my state for its true beauty when they visit.

Of course, if I were to do this in detail, I would need to write an entire book. There would need to be a chapter on four-wheeling, on camping, on the food and the cars and the bars and the notable absence of local fur coat wearers. Maybe someday I will write such a book, though I doubt that the people in charge of making those brochures would be very happy. Lucky for me, I found a beautiful microcosm of said “Colorado culture,” particularly its interesting characters, when I went with my family to the Colorado RV and Outdoor Show at the Denver Coliseum over spring break this year. It will provide a sufficiently brief and hilarious insight into what Colorado is really like outside of the travel brochures.

To begin, the reader must understand that this RV show did not take place in the country or even in a small mountain town where community members live in their RVs. Instead, Colorado residents from all over the state came to the capital of Denver to the largest events center of the city, The Coliseum, to shop for fifth-wheels and pop-ups and hitch-pulls and C-classes and motor homes.[4] This Coliseum complex, so magnificently named, also hosts the National Western Stock Show in January, the biggest event to come to Denver every year.[5] All you need to know about the setting of the Coliseum complex is that it stretches over a number of city blocks and includes several huge indoor arenas with dirt flooring and very uncomfortable stadium seating. For the RV show, the dirt was packed smooth and covered over with outdoor carpet, though this didn’t hide the smell of horse pee that has soaked into the dirt through successive stock shows and rodeos. In contrast to this sour odor, the concrete floor underneath the seats, though clean, smells sweetly of spilled beer.

The most notable cultural rendering that the RV show provides is the fact that the RV show itself even exists. Not only does it exist, but it is extremely popular. Despite the fact that each adult had to pay ten dollars for entry, the entire multi-arena complex was packed with people coming in and out of home-sized trailers. These trailers also cost as much as some homes, ranging between ten and fifty thousand dollars per recreational item, plus tax. Point to be observed: people in Colorado are willing to pay the big bucks to shop for and own a new item in which they can pretend they are at home even when they are not.[6]

In an unfortunately accurate generalization, the RV show also provided some cultural interest in that it doubled as a Colorado fashion show, especially in menswear. Baseball caps, particularly those that are camo patterned, have been in vogue for as long as I can remember. A close second in popularity is the graphic print tee featuring the name and a cartoon picture of a particular vacation spot. For example, I observed one entire family sporting faded tees from Daytona Beach, which I think is in Florida, though the cartoon palm trees in the pictures were very unspecific.

One fashion statement that trumps all the others is the beer belly. I didn’t mention this first because I’m not necessarily sure that this is just a Colorado-specific phenomenon, but the protruding, low-slouching gut does seem to be considered attractive among natives. It certainly seems that no one is embarrassed by the belly, which is highlighted as the center of attention when owners tuck faded tees into jeans with a belt, as is the norm. The younger men who sported such pouches often had a skinny, microwave-tanned woman on their arm who held their man’s backup clear plastic cup of beer for whenever he finished the one that was already in his hand.[7]

This reminds me to mention also the women’s fashion exhibited at the show. Besides the radioactive tans, breast implants are in vogue, perkily and proudly displayed with the help of tight tank tops and no bras. Both men and women love Wranglers that cut off circulation to the crotch, worn with cowboy or hiking boots. Women take as much pride in the shininess of their footwear as the men do in the muddiness of theirs.

Now, if you’ve heard the statement that Colorado is the healthiest state in the nation, you’re probably questioning my generalizations. As well you should be. I said that the RV show was a microcosm of Colorado culture, but I meant this in terms of both representation and contrast, though the direction of both is the same. Allow me to explain. The RV show, in its existence and its attendees, says something very important about the state: every Colorado native, even beer belly men who look like they don’t leave their couches, tries to have some sort of connection with the beautiful nature they see every morning as they drive to work. Some, like those attending the RV show, like to keep nature at a distance while still being in it, and so they buy trailers and campers with showers and ovens and televisions and microwaves and refrigerators where they can keep their Coors. Others also want to enjoy nature, but do so in a way that has become more associated with Colorado than the method represented by the beer-bellies.

I will call this group the granolas, as my family has so kindly nicknamed them. Though both the beer-bellies and this new group desire to enjoy the beautiful outdoors of their state, each takes extremes in different directions. For the beer-bellies, the outdoors is all about kicking back and relaxing, which means making a five-course breakfast in the morning, fishing or four-wheeling in the afternoon, and then coming back to another hot meal and watching the game on television while reclining in a king size bed, just like or better than the one at home. The granolas, on the other hand, opt for two-man tents, cold freeze-dried meals marked “organic,” and entire days spent just finding things necessary for survival, like clean water and firewood and maybe even a humanely killed squirrel cooked over a safe fire. Beer-bellies stay in RV parks and drive to their places of further camping entertainment, usually staying only for the weekend. Granolas walk into their campsite with everything on their backs and stay for a week in one spot or at different spots along one barely-visible trail, never showering for the entire time, which doesn’t matter much because their goal is to see no one but the person they hiked in with for the duration.

So while the RV show represents one extreme of Colorado outdoor culture, I must admit that they do not represent it in its entirety. Colorado is a very fit state and deserves its healthy reputation, though the granolas see their fitness more as a requirement necessary for the survival of the fittest than a way to lower their cholesterol. While some other states might have people who join a gym to feel healthy, this portion of Coloradoans sign up to run marathons because they want to make sure they can make it through their next backpacking trip.[8]

The majority of Coloradoans are those of us who fall somewhere in the middle of these two groups. We have a pop-up camper, which keeps us off the ground and gives us a stove and a sink, but is still open to the pine-scented breezes and animal sounds of a night in the mountains. We go backpacking, but never for more than a few days at a time, and we allow ourselves a sponge bath on the third day before we re-enter civilization. This is me and my family. My dad tucks his t-shirts into his jeans, but he doesn’t drink beer. My best friend is a granola, and though I agree to hike with her, I usually choose the trail and pack some of my own food, which always includes non-organic Cheetos and crackers with peanut butter to supplement her organic sugar-snap peas and carrots.

So we can go to the RV show and shop for a C-class for my parents to drive to visit me and my brother in our respective states of residence. We can also hike into the wilderness for a few days and pretend that we’re fearless pioneer explorers who just happen to have brought along a jar of Jiff. This is Colorado: quirky on both hick and extremist ends of the outdoorsy spectrum, we love our state and all its beauties, and immerse ourselves in it in whatever way we think best, eating squirrel or drinking Coors. Either way, fur coats are never included.

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[1] Though these towns do still exist in the mountains, making money on methamphetamines, the modern moonshine.

[2] Speaking of skiing, I suppose I must answer the question that everyone asks when they hear I am from Colorado: yes, I do ski. No, I do not have a season pass. I am lucky if I get to go even once a year. Full-day tickets are at least sixty dollars for everyone, including locals. Those “locals” you see working the lifts? They work all summer at local bagel and coffee shops in order to pay for a season pass at their own place of winter employment. Most of them are from European countries. They live in broken-down cabins and trailer homes in the back woods where you can’t see them when you’re on vacation in the ritzy resorts. They’re what we call “ski bums.”

[3] This assessment was asserted, without prompting, by two Colorado natives who asked me what I was writing about (this essay) while waiting for a plane back to Chicago.

[4] For those unfamiliar with RVs, a fifth-wheel trailer hooks into the bed of a truck instead of to the hitch. It gets its name from the fact that it has an extra set of wheels like a semi trailer. A pop-up is a hitch trailer that one can crank up into what looks like a tent on wheels. Hitch-pulls are almost as big as fifth-wheels, but they hook to the hitch. A C-class is a small motor home with a truck front. Everyone knows what a motor home looks like.

[5] Writing about the cultural and just plain interesting details of the stock show would require an entire book, which I’m sure has already been written, much less a separate chapter in the book I have already pretentiously claimed I might write.

[6] And the bigger trailers and fifth-wheels really are a home away from home. In one that we explored, a spiral staircase led up to the master bedroom. This bedroom was separated from a second bedroom by a full living room, complete with fake fireplace, flat screen TV, and full-sized couch and kitchen table. The square footage was twice as much as an average studio apartment in Chicago. All of the people we saw actually buying an RV at the show were negotiating financing. We saw no one who actually had the money to pay for their new toy.

[7] This beer is almost always Coors, which is made with “Rocky Mountain spring water” and is brewed in the town of Golden, only a few miles from my house. I can catch whiffs of the rotting bread smell from my backyard on hot summer evenings. As a side note within the side note: my favorite experience of the show was watching a young father with a baby in a carrier on his chest balance a full cup of beer in each hand as he navigated the crowd.

[8] This is rather ironic, since the number one cause of death in Colorado wildernesses is lightning strike, which has nothing to do with fitness, just knowledge. This means that if fitness is required for survival, the hiker is pushing themselves too hard. Though fitness is necessary to hike long distances in the high altitude, you have a good chance of surviving even if you are morbidly obese if you simply know the rules of the wilderness: don’t hike on the bare tops of high mountains late on summer afternoons. Oh, and don’t feed the bears, if you ever see one, not because they’ll attack you, but because then you won’t have any food to eat. Contrary to popular tourist assumptions, starvation after you get lost and the bears steal your food is much more likely to kill you than the bear itself.