Heritage

It’s easy to take for granted the fact that we have a Raphael painting , especially a Madonna and child, right here in Pasadena - under our noses. Raphael, along with the other giants, epitomized the high Renaissance era. This is an earlier painting of his - he practically was a baby when he painted this. You can tell how meticulously he studied the masters and how he harmoniously achieved perfect balance of color, form, metaphor, and meaning. It is said that he used to stand in front of Leonardo ‘s paintings for hours in complete astonishment.

It has been half a millenia and now we stand in front of his pieces in complete astonishment. We don’t have to be aspiring art students to appreciate this art. As humans, it is our duty, for lack of a better word, to absorb this and be absorbed by it. The subject matter, the meaning and metaphor it conveys spills beyond the rigid door of the parochial church and its organized religion. It’s the awakening of Christ within us that is of paramount importance and our awareness of our selfless mothers’ guiding gaze, her protective embrace knowing well that this world she has brought us in is not a kind and fluffy place. The terrain is rough and unforgiving, yet she “sacrifices” this family unit for the greater good of humanity. This pertains to us all! I must teach my child this. I know that there are many other cultures and spiritual traditions to be appreciated beyond our western focused humanities, and I do study them thoroughly and reap from them most appreciatively, but this is my heritage, I am Christian, my parents’ and grandparents’ heritage and I am deeply gratified to have it. Through understanding who we are via the lens of our families and our history, what we have done or haven’t not done, we come to embrace and appreciate every other culture on this canvas of life. All of us are merely a balancing and counterbalancing phenomena in the mind of a greater, a divine if I may reality that we can’t see, touch, nor understand, but without which nothing is seen, touched, or understood. Good artists reveal to us our inseparability with that reality. Perhaps artists are the true God’s vicars on earth. Who knows. Amen