Artists Anne-Marie Ruggeri and Philippe Janin

A NEW LEARNING
Anne-Marie Ruggeri and Philippe Janin are a gifted and accomplished artistic husband and wife who own a studio/gallery in the town of Bonnieux in the foothills of Mount Luberon in Provence. During a day trip Christine and I spotted the gallery and stopped in Bonnieux. I was very impressed by the oils that Philippe paints and the pastels by Anne-Marie. Extraordinary work and priced to reflect their success. Pastel is a medium I simply cannot understand. Never tried it and am amazed at its beauty. We purchased some gorgeous cards as mementos. The first picture is by Philippe and shows Bonnieux with its church prominently in the picture. These communities always had a church central to its community and life. How things change. They are largely empty or sparsely attended now.

You see some of their work here but I believe this is an old site. There are more of Janin’s recent works here

I noticed that so many French artists produce postcards and posters and prints and many of them also have printed books of their art. It is clever marketing as it provides pieces at prices suitable to a range of buyers. This pair has several books.




Ruggeri has even had some of her art incorporated into fashion, and this site shows a scarf imprinted with her work. Tap the photo to enlarge it for a better view.

It was inspiring to look at their work but also to process what is required by marketing to become an established artist.

ART AND ARTHRITIS

A NEW LEARNING
I always wanted to spend these years of my life in more concentrated painting opps. I didn't anticipate the possibility of crippling hands. A few years ago, my hands began to feel the affects of arthritis and now it is affecting my art.

I don’t have much to whine about I realize but… I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself. John Milton lost his sight and feared it would impair his poetic production. He expressed it this way in a poem entitled “On His Blindness.”

When I consider how my light is spent
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide

I am not so convinced that my art is my one talent that is critical to my pleasuring God but it saddens me to consider worst case scenarios, living a long time without such an outlet. I fully understand that my obedience to Him is the priority.

Arthritis ('arth' meaning joint, 'itis' denotes inflammation). I get a kick out of some people's pronunication of the word as 'Arthur-ritis'.

Arthritis actually consists of more than 100 different conditions, from mild forms of tendinitis and bursitis to crippling systemic forms like rheumatoid arthritis. There are pain syndromes like fibromyalgia and arthritis-related disorders, such as systemic lupus erythematosus, that involve every part of the body. There are forms of the disease, such as gout, that almost nobody connects with arthritis, and there are other conditions - like osteoarthritis, the 'wear and tear' arthritis which I have.

My thumb joints constantly ache. Garden and household tasks involve pain which I choose to disregard. Now it's also affecting my drawing and painting.

I don’t want to be regularly ingesting ibuprofens. I bought a fresh attempt at relief? It’s Voltaren. Voltaren is an nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (ointment). Voltaren reduces hormones that cause inflammation and pain. I am not pleased with all the side effects described on the fact sheet.

Milton resolved his issues this way.

Doth God exact day-labour, light denied,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.

I need to get a grip. (tsk,tsk)

http://www.arthritis.ca is a helpful site with tabs for types of arthritis, tips for living well and much more.
http://www.drugs.com/voltaren.html Provides a description of the ointment called Voltaren.
Both scenes above were taken of me painting in France.

We Enjoyed French Food

A NEW LEARNING
Christine and I enjoyed the foods of France. We ate out only occasionally of course, opting to make most of our meals in the facilities of the gites (cottages, apartments, suites that we rented for a week or days at a time). Even our home cooked meals used the foods and beverages shopped daily at the epicerie, boucherie, boulangerie and cave.

During one lunch hour in Le Buisson, a town in the Dordogne region, we had a memorable dining experience in a garden setting of 'Auberge l'Espérance,'a small family operated restaurant. The husband was the chef and his wife the amiable waitress. I snapped photographs of each course of the simple lunch because it was presented so attractively.

E & E recently spent five weeks in Australia and New Zealand and spent $bazillion dollars and came home to share some of the foods they had enjoyed. Christine and I went to France to prove that we could spend $bazillion too and we did. (One moment please. I will be back. I have to go outside to water my money tree.)



Last night Christine replicated our Buisson meal for our good friends E & E. It was E’s birthday. He’s old. Let me describe the meal. First we sat outside for a special Muscat drink and some Duck preserve we brought back from France, Bree cheese, an olive oil with truffle and baguette slices. Then, we came in and sat at the dining room table with candle light and Christine served us salads consisting of finely sliced avocado and grapefruit on a bed of lettuce with drizzled olive oil and vinaigrette. Leisurely, we enjoyed conversation and food and after some time, the main course, Confit du Canard. We were amazed this week to find a butcher who actually had these frozen duck legs packaged with a liberal clop of duck fat. The roast duck with its crispy skin was served with slender carrots and diced potatoes baked with the duck. And then dessert, an apple tart, finally sliced apple laid open upon a pan of pastry, baked and then with a heated apricot jam and apricot brandy mixture drizzled over it. (The dessert shown here was not the apple tart but the plate Christine and I had in France).

I toasted Christine because she did an amazing job.

A Father’s Day Tribute - HE IS A LEGACY. HE DIDN’T JUST LEAVE ONE.

A NEW LEARNING
Here I am sixty-six years of age and I am remembering my father. I’m glad. He was memorable. Such an ordinary man but unforgettable. He is forgotten to the company for which he worked for forty-five years. He is not thought about within the church he attended for sixty years. I call him to mind often. That makes sense. As time passes, I do things that resemble him sometimes. At ninety-three years of age he was gone one evening last May. I miss his face. I miss him. I am delighted to say that.

A small man at five feet six inches in height, my father had three sons each of whom exceeded his stature. Yet as small boys, we saw him as a big man. How pleasurable it is now to recall that even in our adult years he was large in our hearts. He served in the Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. He and Mom operated a post war coffee shop and a gas service station in a Prairie town. Then believing that opportunity existed in the east, Dad and Mom began again in Ontario and Dad took a factory job. Some years after he retired from his demanding physical work in a furnace manufacturing factory he answered this question. “Why did you keep working so hard at that place?” “I did it for my boys, “he said. Life’s purpose and responsibility was not more complex than that for Dad. Three boys grew up, gained and education and made him proud. We gave him daughters in law whom he loved and six grandchildren and they provided him with nine great grandchildren.

He loved our mother with all his heart for the sixty-five years they were together before he lost her to illness. He encouraged and assisted her entrepreneurial career. He was a man of faith and he was content. He was satisfied with the simple pleasures that a small income afforded to him. He never fulfilled two dreams, a trip to Hawaii and fishing in Alaska. Dad always loved ice cream. When I was six years of age Dad and I walked to an ice cream store. We were no sooner around the block finishing our cones when he said to me, “That tastes like more doesn’t it?” We turned around to acquire two more cones. I was ten years old when Dad operated a commercial crane 130 feet off the ground. He spotted me outside the company fence to which I had peddled my bike to watch him. He looked around and then motioned for me to come through the hole in the fence and I scampered up the long ladder into the cabin of the crane to sit with him until closing time. We remember him jingling coins in his pocket. He whistled familiar songs and we knew the world was good. He could yodel but few people were privileged to hear it.

He inspired my brothers and I to be dedicated Dads and we have sought to model faithful fathering to our sons who are now young dads themselves. They are doing it, perhaps better than we did. Thank you Dad. You live on.

(printed in The Cloverdale Reporter June 19, 2009, http://www.bclocalnews.com/opinion/48292882.html)

I LIKE MY STUFF

A NEW LEARNING
During the two months that I was in France I had an unnecessary but nagging sense of being cut off, isolated. Whereas Christine was delighted to be away from home and household chores, I was antsy toward the end of the time – wanting to return to my place and my things.

Part of the reason for my angst was my pre-trip decision not to take along my laptop. It’s a heavy Dell, and tourist info incessantly warned us about theft. I didn’t carry a cell phone either. It is interesting to me how the absence of these communicative devices affected me. (Sure there were internet cafés and pay phones).

In a Paris Boulangerie (Bakery/Café) one morning we met an Aussie couple our ages who wore back and front packs and had a tiny laptop and cell phone and were away for three months. They were more well adjusted to being away than I was.

I have a feeling that I am too attached to things, specially when I follow the ongoing travel news of Tim and Cindie Travis, a young couple who made the decision to travel via bicycle for the next twenty years minimum. All they have is what they can carry. http://downtheroad.org/

Since 2002 when they left their Arizona, USA home they have been on the road with no plans to stop. They saved their money, terminated their jobs, sold their possessions and set off to travel the world. Every 18 months they take a break. Their web site contains their ongoing travel blog, short videos and photo journal. They update their web site regularly, on location. And, smart thinking – they write and publish books about their travels (audio books and PDF download books as well).

Here is a list of sites of their saga:
Home Site
Previous letters
Blog RSS
Video PodCast Feed
Cindie's Daily Road Journal on Twitter
Leave Your Comments

Back to me. We have so much stuff. Well, I have. We have lived in the same house for almost twenty years. I confess to packratitis. We are seriously talking about the timing for our house sale and acquiring a smaller living space. I can take perhaps, 30% of my stuff. Whoa is me. I am undone. I will be a man without stuff.

THE REAL THING – RELATIONSHIP, NOT PERFORMANCE

A NEW LEARNING
The novel by William Paul Young called ‘The Shack’ is old news now but I am dusting the cover again because since it was self published in 2007 it has sold a bazillion copies, been translated into thirty languages, is available on the iPhone and as an audio book and has ridden the New York Times Best Seller List’s number one spot for about one year. It’s presently in the number two spot.

But what I want you to hear today is an interview with the author. CBC has a savvy journalist/interviewer in George Stromboulopoulous. His nightly show is an engaging 60 minutes because he is well informed, brings well crafted questions, is sharp witted and his show invites guests worth interviewing. In May 2009 George interviewed William P. Young. It is a superb exchange.

When you listen to these few minutes of the video clipped interview, listen for the reasons Young wrote the story which is subtitled, “where tragedy confronts eternity.” Hear how it was born out of his personal pain and the transforming realization of God’s unshakable love. Listen for reasons he chose to describe the Trinity with characters that have incensed some conservative Christian leaders and pastors. He is not teaching theology but employing an imaginative metaphor to inform readers about God so he chose to portray God the Father as an African American woman named Papa, Jesus Christ as a Mideastern carpenter and the Holy Spirit as an Asian woman named Sarayu. It’s not heresy. It’s fiction.

First and foremost for my purpose today I want you to hear Young’s description of the struggle that many people have within religious communities of the world, to be preoccupied with performance rather than a real relationship with the living God who loves us. And if you are one of those people who have felt trapped and censured by the expectations of religious people, know this. There is life and freedom and healing, and joy in knowing the love of God through a personal relationship of trust exclusively in Jesus Christ whose Holy Spirit will transform your life. There is more to say but I will get preachy.

Hit the bold underlined sentence to get to the interview link.)

AWARENESS TO THE WORLD

A NEW LEARNING
While living in France for the past two months we watched far less television than we customarily do. If an apartment had a television it was located in the bedroom. Why would it be in the family room or living area? That is where social and meal times happen. That is where reading and conversation take place. Television would predictably interfere with that.

In North America a high def screen is the first furniture article one sees upon entering the living space.

When we did watch TV it was often to listen to learn language on the predominantly French list of networks but there were German, Swedish and other language stations as well. We watched the French Open with French language commentators and laughed when a player made a great get or served an ace because the commentator’s expression was “ohh la la!” We were fortunate to find three English language networks broadcasting throughout the UK, Europe and the Asian community, BBC World News, CNN World News, and World News. (You can tap these highlights to go to the online network sites)

What we noticed over the course of time was that we became more informed about the current affairs of world countries than we do at home. We were in tune with international news. When is the last time you heard Cricket scores? American and Canadian networks focus news stories on national features and reports. We concluded that North Americans are largely unaware and indifferent to international events except as it impacts the home front. We are domestically preoccupied that even the word ‘international’ is used euphemistically in North America to refer to an entity within our two countries, the United States and Canada. An example is the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers), which has its international office in Washington, DC with local offices throughout the Unites States and Canada. We found ourselves grateful for a wider exposure to the issues and triumphs in the wider world. Pakistan, Israel, Afghanistan, Kenya, South Africa all seemed closer, geographically of course, but principally in terms of our consciousness.

Christine and I were grateful to be in touch with the global community.We want to find ways to maintain that sensitivity. i.e. channel 36 BBC WorldNews (seldom watched it before the trip)

I AM DISMAYED TODAY

A NEW LEARNING
Church is God’s idea.
Church is Christ’s body on earth. The term ‘body’ refers to the collective of believing people who represent Christ and his values on this planet since he has ascended to his father’s side.

The inherent weakness of the identity rests in the limitations of the human creature. A believer is not a perfect creation, but a being undergoing a spiritual makeover which began with a spiritual birth – a conversion.

I have seen that weakness once again today. Oh, of course, some days I myself am the primary exhibitor of human weakness. I admit that. Today however, I have seen the Church in its weakness.

Humans who love Jesus but who are out of harmony with one another for frivolous reasons. And that is what makes me ache today. Christ’s body is ailing. It needs help. Not the entire body of Christ, but a cell of it, a local congregation. It’s not easily diagnosable as swine flu but something bad is happening. It’s just that we wallow in consumerism, wanting the church and its leadership and its services to fit our requirements. When it doesn’t we do not get along with everyone within the body. That’s what hurts me today.

I am not even a pastor any longer. More of an onlooker, a supporter, an advocate. Yet I feel the pain again, as once I did when leading a church. And I am saddened for Christ’s sake that his body will not function as he would have it.

It is time to pray. Nothing short of the intervention of God himself can interrupt this sickness.

VISUAL ART & THE CHURCH - RELIGIOUS THEMES

A NEW LEARNING
So many Protestant churches have no place for the arts in their theology of worship and church. We have managed to embrace music art and in fact some churches hire pastors of worship arts in an attempt to utilize more than music. Visual arts are still largely ignored if not disparaged. I have spent my life within a religious culture that avoids iconography and religious art in the context of corporate church life. Ironically we travel the world to marvel at the religious art that has been created by dedicated artists. I spent hours in the Louvre and the Musee D’Orsay examining the work of masters, many of whom painted biblical scenes and many which are classified as icons. I walked through countless ancient and newer cathedrals and churches and viewed exultant stained glass windows and extraordinary paintings and sculptors depicting scenes made memorable in scripture.

In many churches with which I am familiar, depictions of Christ and religious or biblical scenes are not displayed in sanctuaries and primary church traffic areas. I acknowledge that our concern is genuine, even admirable. We have not wanted to violate either of the first two commandments. 1) You shall have no other gods before me. 2) You shall not make for yourself an idol. We do not want to display imagery that might be treated as equivalent to the person of God. However, I have concluded that our tradition has not carefully considered the purpose of icons and imagery within our worship experience. We have dismissed visual art in order to be sure that we are not in contravention of one of God’s commands. Surely God's people can be more thoughtful and biblical and less superstitious.

We should be able to incorporate the value of the arts into worship, treating the image as a stimulus and aid to our contemplation of God with a view to worshipping Him exclusively. God gifted people in ancient times as He does still today. In fact God instructed artisans to use their craft to enhance the worship facilities. Furniture and equipment used for aspects of religious practice and worship were regarded as important and useful rather than compromises to exclusive worship of the one true God. I would love to see more congregations inviting visual artists to contribute to the worship experience with banners, wall hangings, paintings, sculptor. Sermonic explanation can easily clarify for parishioners both the value of artistic expression as one of God's gifts as well as the biblical censure of the worship of images as opposed to exclusive worship of the true God. I think the four portraits of Jesus stimulate appreciation for who the incarnated Christ was while on earth.


Credits: Richard Hook - top painting)(Liz Lemon Swindle - smiling Jesus)(Stephen Sawyer - the Laughing Jesus and Call to Repentance)
Stephen Sawyer website
Richard Hook website
Liz Lemon Swindle website