The year closes, and the only work of art I’ve bought is a painting of a skull
“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,’” John 11:25
I stopped on the stairs, startled by the painting. Below me in a glass case of student art was a skull. It looked out of place—the other paintings were bright and impressionistic, the usual things you’d expect at a community college. But not this one. It possessed an eerie stillness.
I was headed to my lower-level classroom to teach. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I approached the case with curiosity. Who would paint like this? I’d seen realistic paintings of skulls in European museums and the Metropolitan in New York. They were in large still lifes from the late Renaissance period. Known as Vanitas paintings, they used symbols like hourglasses and spoiled fruit to remind the viewer of the vanity of life. Death is inevitable, and, as Ecclesiastes puts it, time and chance happen to us all.
I tracked down the artist, a young woman headed to Virginia Tech to study art after graduation. To my delight, she agreed to sell it. When we met, I asked her what her teacher thought? “He didn’t really like it. He wants me to paint more loosely.” A quiet-spoken woman, her words were as restrained as her brushstrokes.
I needed something like this to mark 2016. In May, a family member’s marriage collapsed. No one saw it coming, and I grieved in that terrible way only death can cause, with ripping disbelief, denial of reality, and instant replays of the last time we were together. I grieved over betrayal, hardness of heart, and lack of grace. The ensuing months about killed me, and that wasn’t the only tragedy. Weeks earlier my daughter was in a terrible accident. Hit by a car, she had 20 fractures and breaks down the right side of her body. We hadn’t talked in six years—she had cut herself off from family. But I couldn’t accept those conditions now. I drove to the hospital in another city, a heartbroken mother. She read me the riot act.
During those early weeks of her hospitalization, I went to church for prayer. Jesus said he is the resurrection, and he teaches us to pray that his kingdom will come on earth. It seemed like the right time to ask for a resurrection, the kind that changes hearts and brings life out of death.
But it wasn’t meant to be. After more attempts to repair the damaged relationship, it was clear it couldn’t be fixed. I stopped reaching out and took down her pictures in my home. It was too painful to live with the longing for reconciliation. After six long years, I had to let go. I hoped she would see things differently one day, but I accepted it wouldn’t happen in my lifetime. My hope to be with her died.
I often mark deaths with something symbolic to remind me of the person I lost; for example, a cameo when my father died and wind chimes when my mother-in-law died. But this time, there was no beauty or music to carry me into the next phase of life. Buying the skull would rightly mark this season of death. It would be a silent witness that my journey to God’s kingdom would continue through the graveyard.
I hung the painting in my study, and then a strange thing happened. My daughter reached out and invited me to her home. I drove the three long hours to her city, praying for God’s peace and guidance. I was anxious and fearful.
We met and talked for about an hour. Slowly but surely, as the heat of summer descended, the chill between us thawed. She invited me to do things. She took me to The Nutcracker last weekend. As incredible as it sounds to my ears, I look ahead to 2017 with hope. So many, many years of tears, anguish, prayers, self-examination, remorse, and sorrow are dying. God, in his mercy, is bringing life.
God has a way of hiding clues. The Old Testament is full of clues about the Messiah, but they were hard to see beforehand. Jesus provided clues about what it meant to follow him, in the form of parables, but usually his disciples didn’t understand what he was talking about. I think the skull painting is a clue, one that God literally put in front of me. First, the title is “Arcana,” a Renaissance word that means secrets, such as the unseen connection between the spiritual and physical worlds. I see an allusion to the unseen connections between our prayers in this physical world and their connections to the unseen world. We pray, and God answers.
There is also a second clue in the painting. If you look at it closely, you’ll notice a subtle cord wrapping the skull and tied above the forehead. I asked the artist what it means, and she said it represents the thread of life. Resting near the knot is a beautiful moth. A nocturnal creature, the moth’s natural environment is darkness. Yet a sure way to find a moth is to turn on a lamp in a dark room. Although moths live in the dark, they are drawn to the light. Aren’t we similar? Living in the darkness of this world, we recognize the light of our Lord and draw near.
When I saw the painting in May, I saw the black background and the skull. But now I see the thread connecting the cavity of death—a skull tomb—to the wings of life.