Friday, June 7, 2013

Composed of Mystery

Girl in Front of Mirror
Pablo Picasso, 1881 - 1973


"There is nothing in nature that does not reflect the Trinity:
each of us is an icon of the Trinity."

The Rev. Peter J. Bunder

I keep thinking about the juxtaposition of these two paintings in the Trinity Sunday Bulletin a couple of weeks ago at the Chapel of the Good Shepherd ~ The Episcopal Campus Ministry at Purdue.

Two nearly contemporary artists treat the same subject matter -- a girl before a mirror, absorbed in her reflection. Yet each, in his own distinctive style, captures a different aspect of reflective contemplation. Rockwell's girlish subject daydreams apprehensively of the not - so - distant future while Picasso's visionary subject strives to embrace the fragmented mystery of life at the present moment.

Girl at Mirror
Norman Rockwell, 1894 - 1978


We are composed of mystery:
"The mystery beyond us, the mystery among us,
and the mystery within us are all the same mystery."

from Listening to Your Life
by Frederick Buechner (b 1926)

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