Meditating with Monet

One of the benefits of home education is that I get to revisit old subjects. The past few weeks I have been looking again at Monet and other Impressionist painters with my daughter. Impressionism as a whole art movement, but Monet and Mary Cassatt particularly, have inspired me to ponder the relationship between creativity and spirituality.


Here is what I glean from Monet's life and creative practice. It tells me a lot about the spiritual life. I would love to hear what you think and if you want to hear more about this topic.


1. Practice outside. This has two meanings really. One, Monet was a non-conformist. He never really liked school, avoided formal art training, and was not interested in the accepted tradition that focused on the artists of the past. Monet stood on the outside of society and culture. A real artist, a real mystic.


This aspect of Monet intrigues me. What sort of implications does this have for the spiritual life? It makes me think of my own training. The training that teaches one to search for the answers in books, in elders, and in the tradition. But, I wonder what would happen if I set aside the books and the institution? What would surface? What if I left my spiritual life, its training and practice, in the hands of experience? Experience matters, right? But how much do we really value experience? How much do we really practice a spirituality based on experience? This question makes me want to take a pause from not only the institution but also the books. Books tell me so much about the world, the shared journey, and about God, but perhaps it is time to really dig in and experience what I am reading about. Put someone else's words away for a while.


Two, practice outside is literally a call to nature. Monet's studio was outside in the natural world. He loved painting nature and he loved being outside. He was exposed to snow, rain, wind, the incoming tide, and light while trying to capture a moment, a color, a reflection of light, a feeling, an impression. Being outside forced him to work with nature. He relied on the elements--fire, air, water, earth--to help him paint his experience.


2. Work with nature. Monet was a master of working with light. He watched the sun, the seasons, and the time of day in order to capture light in a certain way. He used water for its reflection of life and light. What would the spiritual life look like if we worked with nature? What if we worked with the light? What if we worked with water? Nature and her elements seem like an obvious subject to invoke. Nature is the purest way to touch the Divine.


"Use nature. Be nature. Follow nature," writes Jack in the beloved children's Magic Tree House series. This simple chant I hear echoing in Monet's paintings. Use nature. Be nature. Follow nature. What does this simple chant mean for the spiritual journey? Look outside. Be outside. Experience outside.


3. Experience matters. Monet clearly values experience. In this way, I link him with the aspect of mysticism that values experience more than the institution and the intellect. The mystic knows that it is in the experience, through intuition, through introspection, that the knowledge of God surfaces. I am not dismissing the importance of the intellect and the institution in our lives, they have a place, but I am interested in contemplating how we might find a more healthy balance. How might we all find and experience the Divine in the daily living? And how would our experience, our impressions of the Divine contribute to the shared spiritual journey?


4. Include the mundane. Monet and Renoir argued over Monet's inclusion of the mundane in his paintings. It was not the tradition to paint everyday life as well as unpleasant objects such as chimneys billowing smoke. But Monet painted the cityscape. He painted the mundane. And he painted slices of modern life.


I am not sure what this says about the spiritual life other than the sacred is found in the mundane. My experience of living in one of the most overpopulated and polluted cities taught me how one can actually experience the Divine in a smelly city, in stopped traffic, and in the smoky fog that rises from the Nile. It is hard to put words to what it is like to find the Divine in this way. It is more of an experience that is indescribable, but I am sure most of us have had moments in our lives when we've connected to the Holy in a surprising and unexpected setting.


5. Depth over breadth. In the later part of his life, Monet went for depth. He painted water lilies for 20 years! My favorite series of paintings is the haystack series in which he visits the same field season after season, capturing the light, the experience, the change, the impression. He was after depth not breadth. I don't know about you, but I would much rather know a lot about one thing than know a little about many things. Monet knew water lilies. It makes me question about the depth in my own life. What do I know? Or what do I long to know deeply? The spiritual implications for this question are great. Journey for depth not breadth.

My grandmother, the impressionist

My grandmother was not a painter but she loved images. Everyday images. Outdoor scenes.

Meeting me at the car door, arm and arm she walked me through her world. Past bordering lamb's ears, past the fenced patch that looked more like a jungle than a place for cultivating vegetables, past her large willow tree that hugged her yard, past her strawberry patch that never had strawberries, to her favorite place, her compost heap. I don't really know if it was her favorite place, but it was always the place we headed for and always the place we stood and shared a few words like "I see eggshells, I see a cantolope rind, lots of grass cuttings." This is how I knew my grandmother, through her compost heap.

It is strange to know someone through a heap. But really, if you think about it, we really know people from all the leftovers, all the scraps in one's life, all the silent work they do to create and build and sustain life. We know others by all that has come before and all that is, but it is a silent sort of knowing. It takes years to unpack, years to fully grow into a deep knowing.

My grandmother died 24 years ago and because I still dream (literally at night) of that compost heap, I am slowly getting to know her. The heap's impression stands in my mind like no other outdoor childhood object. As a child, I prefered her willow tree. The place where I sought refuge in its big arms and cozy lap. But as an adult, I dream of walking one more time to my grandmother's beloved compost heap. And in my dreams it is still there, touchable, smelly, in the humid sun, full of broken eggs and cut hair, turning into something rich and nourishing.

My grandmother's heap looked like one of Monet's haystacks, open and vulnerable to rain, snow, wind, and sun, and to the slow additions of my grandmother's hands and arms. Changing with time and light, it was always becoming something better.

I wish you could see it.

Certainly we are all mystics

Certainly we are all mystics and we don't even know it.

On Monet's 80th birthday when a photographer came to take photos of him, he told him to return in the spring, take photos of his flowers in the garden because "they look more like me than I do." Certainly, Monet was a mystic. Certainly, we all are mystics like Monet, we just don't know it or can't quite believe it.

What an amazing thought, really. What in my life looks more like me than I do? I can come up with a list of things in my life that I love, things I surround myself with, my touchstones: peppermint plants, homemade strawberry jam, my medium point pen, the smell of baking bread, stones smoothed by the sea, Matisse's The Dance, the smell of my child's hair, my partner's smile, the full moon, frothy milk, Arabic script, the strings of a guitar, and my empty bowl. Do these look more like me than I do?

Most of these touchstones, I hold in my home, that internal space that I take off my shoes to enter, to stand. How many of us think of our homes as holy ground? How many of us honor the internal world of our lives as something deeply holy? Even though Monet's garden existed in the external world, he knew that everything internal becomes external, so his garden then was more him because it made visible his internal world, his true self. His flowers were one with his creative spirit. This we can understand. Monet was at one with his garden because his garden made visible his soul, his real self. We experience this oneness when we stand in front of one of his paintings. His paintings, his soul, his flowers, they are all one.

My home, like Monet's garden, holds the essence of me, I think. It is that internal space that gives voice and color and pattern to the internal space of my soul, but I seem to be looking for something more. I want an object to speak of the real me like Monet's lilies. Something external that I can point to and understand who I am. How human, really, to need a physical symbol, a material reminder that points to one's soul.

But really, all of this is about a way of being in this world. Monet's way of being was full of light, the external light giving space for the inner light to shine. All things are connected. The universal is the individual. The individual, the universal. When the external becomes the internal, and the internal is revealed by the external, that is the dance of mysticism.

Certainly, we all know this feeling of innerconnectedness. They may just be fleeting moments or silent revelations about who we really are and what we really value in this world. Anyone who has ever stopped in front of a painting, picked up a stone on a beach, walked in the woods and caught the beauty of the light through the trees, smiled at the laughter of a child, or has walked with a friend, anyone who has ever loved or been loved certainly is a mystic.