Gwen Meharg: Artist Blog

Jubilee and I planned to ride this morning, but the horses were out and it was already hot and steamy.  We decided to try again at sunset.

So, what did we do?  We played with the barn cats.

We have two house cats.  We love our cats and their independent spirits.  Some days they love us back.

Fuzzy, our Russian blue master of the house was born on Ruth’s 21^st birthday at my cousin’s water well shop in Jacksboro.

(http://erwindrilling.com/?gclid=Cj0KEQjwr7S-BRD96_uw9JK8uNABEiQAujbffIKxSja1jtxQ0iObvNs4IEqSex0DwH5s7De9tMFNibAaAuGX8P8HAQ)

Fuzzy’s momma was feral and only came in for food and to deliver kittens.  She did not tolerate being touched.

Oh, the difference a generation can make.

The new trainer, Liz, brought three cats with her when she came to the barn.  (Liz is a college history instructor at Weatherford College.)  They balance on the precipice between house cat and barn cat.

Shadow is a slighter duplicate of our Fuzzy with a gentler temperament and a quick purr.  Her kitten is a spritely calico pounces on anything that moves.  Crystal has bold black and white markings on her long lean body and Crystal is the most conflicted of the three.  She knows she is a barn cat so tries to be standoffish, but she sorta likes being loved on.  Conflicted.

The other two barn cats are tabby cats.  Lobo, who has been around for years, got fat when he transitioned from feral cat to barn cat.  Lobo doesn’t tolerate, Lobo LOVES the occasional belly rub and indulges us with a deep rumbly purr.  Always on his terms.  Lobo has his dignity to consider.

Notch the smaller tabby has a beautiful golden brown belly.  Notch arrived feral along with a half dozen of his closest friends.  Nah, they were not friends.  They came from an organization that rescues feral cats, notches their ears, then matches them up with rural locations to be mousers.   Notch is the only one who stayed.

Notch is also conflicted.  Notch is transitioning to barn cat.  Today Notch allowed me to scoop him up into my lap.  He could have avoided me, but he deemed to tolerate me if I was willing to put out the effort and commitment towards catching him.

We sat together, Notch in my lap, his sharp claws ever so gently embedded in my knees, waiting for Jubilee.  He never totally relaxed but when I lifted his paws he did not protest and he retracted them making us both more comfortable.  Reconciled to some expert ear rubbing and he almost purred.  Notch hesitated before jumping down and scampering off when I stopped rubbing his ears.

Mostly feral, Notch is moving towards barn cat.

Notch got me to thinking about various people in my life.
Hmmmmm?

Which ones are house cats?
Which ones are barn cats?
Which ones are feral?
Who is moving towards?
Who is moving away?

I don’t have any answers.
Cherie arrived with Sonny Grace so Jubilee and I indulged ourselves in some baby time.  Sonny Grace is definitely a moving towards kind of gal and she isn’t six months old yet.  Jubilee and I were so happy!

House cat.
Barn cat.
Feral cat.
People.

They ALL scratch.

Be careful.

 

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Everybody has heard the term “scapegoat” but most of us aren’t exactly sure what it means.  My understanding is that the term refers to shifting blame.   I looked it up this morning.  Here is what dictionary.com has to say: Scapegoat: A person or group that is made to bear blame for others. According to the Old Testament, on the Day of Atonement, a priest would confess all the sins of the Israelites over the head of a goat and then drive it into the wilderness, symbolically bearing their sins away.

Okay, so I knew exactly what it meant.  I thought I would gain some deep insight by looking up the definition.  Nope.  Same insight.

MAAAA.

That is the bleat of a goat as opposed to the baaaaaaa of a sheep.
(My granddaddy Simpson had goats and sheep.  Goat tails go up and sheep tails go down.  Just saying.)

 

Symbolically we think sheep when we think of God.  Lamb of God.  Good shepherd.  Lost sheep.  Lion and lamb.  Etc.

Sheep good.
Goats baaaad.

“Maaaaa,” says the still small voice in the wilderness.
The still small voice in the wilderness says, “maaa?”

WHAT?
Heresy!

Heresy is another word I looked up this morning.   Google defines heresy as is a noun : a belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine.
An opinion profoundly at odds with what is generally accepted.
Synonyms:  dissension, dissent, nonconformity, heterodoxy, unorthodoxy, apostasy, blasphemy, free thinking.

FREE THINKING!

That is revealing.  Americans pride themselves in being free thinkers. (Watching this election cycle play out, delude might be a more accurate word choice than pride!)   Free thinking is a form of heresy!  Oh, I what fun I would have had in my high school Sunday school class if I had only known!

Back to the scapegoat theme.  A group of people for whom I care deeply has split into two factions.  Both believe they heard/are hearing from God.  What they are hearing is in direct opposition to the other.  There are no innocent parties, well, God, but the rest of us are complicit.

Accrediting/blaming one’s actions on God makes God the scapegoat.

It makes God look bad.  Really bad.
In the process God is exiled to the wilderness.  Maaaaa!

What am I saying?

I am confessing charismatic tendencies.  I am one of those people who hears from God.  One of those people who have credited/blamed God for my actions.  Prophetic is the term some use.  Remember the old hymn,   He Walks With Me in the Garden?  Hymns often carried with them a different dogma than the sermons I grew up with in my Southern Baptist churches.  Prophets, those who heard from God, were dead people from bible stories.  All the answers are in the bible.  No hearing from God for today.  The bible was worshiped.  (And yes, bible worship is a form of idolatry.)  And yet, we sang powerful, charismatic songs.   Some of us heard the hymns more clearly than we heard the sermons.

The point I am trying to make is that while the bible was and is very important to my life, God is not limited to a bestselling book.

 

God is represented in the bible,
but God is experienced through the body.

God is experienced in the heart, in the mind, in the soul, in a cool breeze, and in acts of kindness and mercy.  God is experienced through the arts.  (We watched “Warm Bodies” Saturday night and that movie preaches!)

When we are at our best God is experienced through humanity.  The job of the church is to be Jesus with skin on.  We, the church, regularly miss that mark.

God is not a genie trapped in a bible-shaped lamp waiting to be rubbed when we want a wish granted. (Here comes the rub.)

People, good people and bad people, credit (blame) God for their choices and actions.

Human beings have used scripture to control and manipulate ever since there was scripture.  (Slavery and misogyny come quickly to mind.)  As easy as it is to manipulate the written word, the prophetic word, the word heard through the heart is oh so much easier to manipulate. The personality and reputation of the speaker determines the potential benefit or damage.

What happens to one’s faith when you find out the sheep is a goat, but not just a goat, but a scapegoat?
How do you trust God when those who claim to speak for God are not acting godly?  How do you pray when the experts are so obviously wrong?

How do you believe when a good word comes from a flawed mouthpiece?
If they are wrong, how can I trust myself to hear God?

No easy answers! My art has a prophetic edge. I believe in the mystery of redemption.  As screwed up as life can be, I have hope.  I have hope that there is something more than what I see.  I have hope that the ugliness will be redeemed.  I have hope that the confusion, the mistrust, the manipulation, the disappointment and the hurt is for a season.  I have hope that God, the overseer of seasons, has a plan and that we are all part of that plan.

The voice I accredit to God tells me a lot of things.

“You don’t know what you don’t know.”  (“That was fun to hear,” she said sarcastically.)

“Stand firm.”     “Be free.”     “Duh!”     “Hope.”

Do you see that there is a LOT of wiggle room here?  Room for interpreting how this is going to play out in my life and through my art. Room to be complicit. Room to set captives free.

How do you have faith in God when people beat you with the word of God?
I don’t know. I have no answer for you.

I only know what I do. I cry. I spew. I stay up late. I go outside. I walk. I get still. I read. I journal. I paint. I take a nap. It depends!

I tell myself that while I am flabbergasted, God is not surprised. God knew and God knows and God is okay with my befuddlement.

I don’t know what I don’t know, but God knows.

It is not a particularly satisfying conclusion.

I paint hope. I also LOSE hope on a regular basis.  Somehow it seems to come back around.  Hope doesn’t hold a grudge when neglected and neither does God.

For those who are estranged from hope, I will hope for you in this season.  Maybe in the next season you will hold hope for me.

 

 

Can you hear my dog barking?   Try.  I think you will be able to hear him all the way through the internet wires/waves/whatever the internet is.

Poor Wesley is going to have a sore throat before the day is done.  What is stressing our chill selves?

BEES!!!!

This morning I learned that bees developed to use hollow trees as homes for their hives.   As the number of hollow trees decreases and the number of hollow EVES increases the bees, opportunistic in the most sensible sense, have been moving into our hollow spaces.

Being on the edge of a wooded area a couple miles from a reservoir, living in a home with lots of cracks, nooks and crannies in the mortar between the bricks, the bees have found our home as cozy as we have.

We lived in peace for 16 years, the bees and us, but this year they started objecting to Peter mowing
the lawn.   He has been stung twice mowing and I was stung once just walking in the front door.   All of us have sprinted from the car to the front door with bees in hot pursuit.

At the Magnolia Street Festival a few Sundays back we met Ryan and George of “Honey Bee Relocation Services:  Bee-friendly Hive Removals”  214 577 9562 Ryangiesecke@gmail.com www.honeybeerelocationservices.com .  These guys are great.  They do public education/speaking as well as bee removal.  They began as hobbyist and  the need was so great they started the business.  They remind me of my guyss, articulate, passionate, and focused.   There will be lots of eve replacement to do when they are done, but it is quite possible that I won’t be waking up to buzzing every morning when the sun rises!

Hooray for Ryan and George!  Horray for bee relocation!  Hooray for not being chased by bees at my front door any longer!

1. Watching from a distance I was stung twice today. I guess I was not distant enough.   I have a cure for bee stings.  We learned it living in Poland.   Forrest was eating a burger and a bee landed on it and stung his mouth.  We were walking through the Bulgarian outdoor market when it happened.  A vendor saw it happen and grabbed an onion and a knife and cut a big wedge from the onion.  He showed us to hold it against the sting and it worked!It worked today, too. 

 

PPS.  The honey combs just keep coming!   George is carving them down to fit into the  rectangle honey comb holders.  Darla would know what they are called.   Some are very dark.  Some are picture-book bright yellow.  I wish we could be outside watching but they are very angry bees.   I am sure they thought they were grandfathered into the house before we got here.
I am inside and my adrenaline is on high!  Getting lots of painting done, and blogging is like talking to a friend so I can do this.   IT IS SO EXCITING!

PPS.  I am soothing my bee stung self by having cookies and green tea for lunch.  I am feeling much better.

Featured Artist Gwen Meharg