Getting in Touch with My Inner Salieri

A friend and student of mine, who is herself a cloistered Carmelite sister kindly shared with me some of her thoughts on St. Therese (and the rough sketch of a pattern for her icon.)  I based the pattern I drew on her own completed icon of St.Therese, which she has graciously given me permission to shamelessly copy.  Besides saying that the drawing bore a passible resemblence to the actual Carmelite habit, and the gentle but firm suggestion that I lose the flowers in the background, she also shared some great insights into Therese herself.  

She sharted that she thinks the key ot understanding St. Therese is that she is the Mozart of the spiritual life - simple, direct, profound, but in the end, elusive.  And she noted that while Therese has grown on her, that as the oldest in her family, she found Therese, who was the youngest in the Martin family, less than sympathetic.  But she also wrote that as she has matured in the spiritual life, St.Therese has directed her to what is most essential, which is to rely, unreservedly, on the love and mercy of God.  

So thanks, Sister, for opening the door of my heart (if only just a bit more) to this elusive genius of the spiritual life.  

Why I Always Use Red Bole

It turns out that burnished water gilding, that is applying gold leaf to a bole ground and then polishing it with an agate (or a dog's tooth) burnisher until it shines, is actually easier than you'd think it would be.  The secret is to apply a thin coat of gilder's clay mixed with size to the gesso, sand and polish it, and apply the gold leaf.  Piece of cake --  sort of -- as long as everything goes exactly right.  But if the clay/glue ratio is off, or its too dry or too humid, or there is unusual solar flare activity, forget about it going as planned.

But lately I've been able to manage to get pretty good results gilding and burnishing haloes.  Not bad for 35 years of effort!  Pretty OK.   Not perfect-the gilding is NEVER perfect, there's inevitably a flaw, a fault, a thin spot or a pinhole if you look carefully enough, which why bole is usually red. (The red makes the faults disappear.)

Seems to me an apt, if homely metaphor for grace .  The color is wrong, of course -  it is our sins that are like scarlet, not grace, but isn't it grace that covers over our faults, failings and sins and makes them disappear?

Sharpening The Tools

Its been over a month since I last posted a message. For a variety of reasons it was difficult during the month of October to find the recollection necessary to write.
But yesterday afternoon while I was sharpening my woodcut tools, I thought about the way in which the tools of the spiritual life, get dull and need to be honed and sharpened. Some of the carving tools I was sharpening only needed to be honed to cut properly. Others were dull from long years of use, which required sharpening them with a whetstone. But there were a few that were (I'm ashamed to admit) so neglected and rusty that I needed to grind out the damaged sections of the blade and put an entirely new edge on the tool.

So I'm inspecting the condition of what St.Benedict speaks of as the "tools of the spiritual life." In the Latin of the Holy Rule, he employs the word used for iron tools -- shovels, hoes, chisels and knives. Which require constant care to keep them sharp and clean of rust. I think in the spiritual life, keeping the tools clean and begins and ends with the daily practice of charity. That is, I think, the purpose of the spiritual life, to become more and more an instrument of the charity of God, who is Love.
But at the end of the day, just as a tools needs to be cleaned, sharpened and put away, in readiness for the next day's work, there is the need, the necessity, really, for recollection. Without recollection, without solitude, silence, reflection and prayer, at least for me, the tools of the spiritual life get dull and rusty. It is easy for me to somehow see recollection as something to engage in when I have the leisure time for it, when in fact, it is a daily discipline that I neglect at my own peril.

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