On Hope: The Waiting Game and Van Gogh

This time in my life is marked by a season of tremendous uncertainty. Working hard, applying, interviewing, singing, writing purpose statements, rehearsing, submitting resumes, applying some more. And then. The worst of all: the dreaded Wait.

This weekend, as I watched Knoxville Opera’s production of L’elisir d’amore, I wanted to cry as the beauty of the evening washed over me: the visceral voices, the stunning music, the passion and humor.

But mostly I wanted to cry because it made me ache.  Ache to be on stage too. Ache to sing so elegantly. Ache for beauty that words won’t describe.  Ache to be a part of something so transcendent.

Truth is: I may never get that in this life.

Isn’t this the risk that all of us artists take?

Surrounded by other creatives who are searching and working and aching, I keep returning to the same passage in a letter Van Gogh wrote to his friend.

A word about Van Gogh: he was emotionally unstable, he was difficult to be around, his work was never appreciated in his lifetime, he could not maintain a steady job, he could not support himself, he committed suicide, and he loved Jesus.  He trusted what Jesus offers to us.

And He painted with hope.

“Christ alone… has affirmed, as a principal certainty, eternal life, the infinity of time, the nothingness of death, the necessity and the raison d’etre of serenity and devotion.  He lived serenely, as a greater artist than all other artists, despising marble and clay as well as color, working in living flesh. That is to say, this matchless artist… loudly proclaimed that he made … living men, immortals….

“For look here: the earth has been thought to be flat.  It was true, so it still is today, for instance between Paris and Asnieres.  Which, however, does not prevent science from proving that the earth is principally round.  Which no one contradicts nowadays.

“But notwithstanding this they persist nowadays in believing that life is flat and runs from birth to death.  However, life too is probably round, and very superior in expanse and capacity to the hemisphere we know at present. …

“However this may be, the fact is that we are painters in real life, and that the important thing is to breathe as hard as ever we can breathe.”

For all of his neuroses and instabilities (or perhaps because of them), Van Gogh understood that life isn’t flat, but round.  And if life is round, then so is our creative vision.

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12