I am no writer. I mean -- I am a painter. I mean, its what I went to school for. Who would think I would ever be crafting words, if you will, simply to share this story that God has given me to tell you. A story. It's not even mine -- I'm just a player in it. I write papers. Art History papers. Here's one -- The Obscurity of Michelangelo: Self Portraiture and it's Paternal Source. Yeah, a fun read, isn't it?
You see, in my former self, I would refer to Michelangelo as my main man, the Humanist of Humanists, the only one of his day that lived and breathed the Neoplatonic fuel that was the Renaissance. The very heart of my study --my identity-- was wrapped up in him. I even lived one block from his house on Via Ghibelina, and would only live in the Santa Croce neighborhood of Florence (because it simply is the best part of town and) he's buried there. Period. But you see, that is yet another example of the delicacy of God's hand and how gently He is woven into life. It's how He works.
Michelangelo was what? A painter too right? It's what you think of. I guarantee you think Sistine before David. But oh contraire, my darlings. He never thought him self a painter but rather a sculptor,quite literally because painting was viewed as the lesser artform. This is a humorous drawing on the side of one of his thousands of poems (which flows much better in the old Italian) that reads:
I've already grown a goiter at this drudgery --
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| Self Caricature of painting the Sistine |
or else it may be in some other country--
which sticks my stomach by force beneath my chin.
With my beard toward heaven, I feel my memory box
atop my hump; I'm getting a harpy's breast;
and the brush that is always above my face,
by dribbling down, makes it an ornate pavement.
My loins have entered my belly, and I make
my ass into a counterweight;
without my eyes, my feet move aimlessly.
In front of me my hide is stretching out
and, to wrinkle up behind, it forms a knot,
and I am bent like a Syrian bow.
Saslow, James. The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.
I was born with a crayon. Watching my daughter at a mere eight years old, it's amazing ,because she has the itch too. However, the first time I recall my passion for Michelangelo, and the Renaissance specifically, I was in the 9th grade, on my way to spend an hour with Frau Landers in my German class and looked into the glass windows of the library. What were those kids doing? They were in Humanities, and were painting on sheets of butcher paper, taped underneath the tables, to get a better idea of what Michelangelo went through.
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| Libyan Sibyl |
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| My bedroom wall, now my moms office. |
This is the Sibyl that foretold the "coming of the day when that which is hidden shall be revealed." I just learned that.
Thus began my love of Renaissance art. Prior to my senior year of high school, I had never taken an Advanced Placement class. In the twelfth grade I took AP Studio, AP Art History, and AP European History. I was in love, and my path was set, straight for Italy. I know like I know now that was a God thing. Never taken an advanced level course, and so I take three and perfectly comfortable in all of them? That's God.
God gave me my love of Michelangelo. God put it in my heart to see the similarities between us: both of us lost a parent at six years old, both of us spent a lifetime struggling to find the other parent in other people. Michelangelo was born in the city that gave birth to the Renaissance, the very city I came to live in, and spent the happiest years of my life.
Listen -- the Renaissance-- do you know what it means? Literally it means Rebirth. How sweet He came before me, and gave me a passion for this Rebirth, as to lovingly temper the term "Born Again." This was a phrase I wanted nothing to do with. To be this would make me judgmental, self righteous, and mean. Born Again! Over and over I heard it, and none of those people were kind it seemed, or genuine in the least.
Because He foreknew me, and how much hurt would come in the misuse of such a simple term that would turn me off -- just look at how the Lord brings me healing and beauty when I finally came to terms with being redeemed. I don't see these scars, I see not only the Renaissance as a whole, but look at that ceiling! This is the literal icon of the Renaissance itself and it's painted by my favorite artist of all time. I can even say and be it without flinching, because the deep love I have for the Renaissance, the creation of man, pales in comparison to what I now know.
One of the people in my past who hurt me the most told me time and time again you can study the bible your whole life --academicize it even --and you will never understand it. They were right. I see now. I have my new goggles, and I also see beauty, healing, forgiveness in it, and although I am not yet completely free, I am on my way, and it is through Christ, and Christ alone.
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| Genesis, Old Testament Prophets, Pagan Sibyls who Prophesied the coming of Christ, and His ancestors |
The central theme of the ceiling is the book of Genesis. From the Separation of Light and Darkness, pictured here on the far right, to the Drunkenness of Noah on the Left. Look just above the first story in Genesis.
One piece of a very large puzzle just fit into place. She was painted on my bedroom wall during a very uncomfortable, very dark time of my life. And that is a Godwink. I love Godwinks.
You know, Michelangelo hated this project. Hated it. He was working fora tyrant, for one, Julius II the Warrior Pope, was not joy to work with by any stretch. His cane was used for more than walking. He was way up high, freezing on the scaffolds in the winter. He even fell from those scaffolds once, which left him seriously injured. Jeez, just imagine those stairs everyday at least twice a day. He was so tired and depressed even, his students report such a lack of hygene due to self negation that at one point his shoes had been on so long, when the shoes were removed, so was skin. Skin. Yet, in what was probably for him a grueling four years, he created this masterpiece -- the crown jewel of the High Renaissance -- on a flat ceiling.
It's six hundred years later and still the Sistine ceiling moves all who see it -- Christian or not.
There are so many truths here. Apply this to your life. What is your Sistine? What about your boss or your coworkers? What is your scaffold, your false sense of security? Friends, people, trinkets and toys? Your PhD, religion, the Universe or the moon?
As for me, I am reconciling my former self to the new creation I am. I refuse, after seeing all of these sweet details fit so perfectly together to feel shame or guilt or fear of these gifts I'm coming to learn He's given me, just because others abused the Word, leaving me to think believing their words made people ugly, spiteful and cruel.If you are reading this and that sentence means something to you, I hope you can hear me when I say that following Christ is nothing, nothing at all like that. Nothing. Trust me -- the wounds I have are so deep I cannot see their depths. It is because of a love, a love I never asked for, I have forgiven and will forgive what I have not yet come to understand of my past.
See, with God the unimaginable is possible. I am totally different, doing things I would have never imagined. I am professing Christ. I spoke to six or seven hundred women in three days on a stage, perfectly comfortable. It seems this is a season for preparedness and learning, readying myself for a call to ministry.
I am a painter, not a writer. An academic, not a story teller. To know that in Christ I can all of a sudden have a hand that writes, and almost a thousand people, apparently, in ten countries, who have read, shared, got mad or curious, and even refreshed, is just simply amazing.
That is a Godthing.
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