A Picture of God

I’ve been teaching an art class.

Art was one of those things I set aside when I was younger; I’d thought about going to school to be an art teacher, but my mother didn’t like the idea. Now I teach elementary schoolers art lessons at the church outreach after school twice a week.  Each week, I show them some pictures from a real movement in art history, and then I get out the supplies and have them make their own creations.

The first week, I taught about the Medieval bestiary. I explained that the book had both real and imaginary creatures in it, in order to teach the reader about the attributes of God.

“This is a unicorn,” I said. “In the middle ages, they believed that the unicorn could never be caught by a hunter, but if a young woman sat down in the middle of the woods by herself, the unicorn would come to lie down in her lap– just as Jesus came into the world without the help of any man, but only through the Virgin Mary. And this is a gryphon. Just like Jesus is both God and human, the gryphon is both lion and eagle. That’s how the bestiary taught lessons about God.”

“Is that gryphon… EATING someone?” asked a little girl in the front row.

The gryphon on the illuminated page was, indeed, in the act of eating an unsuspecting pedestrian. I was at a loss to explain what this had to do with God to an elementary schooler.

“I guess he is,” I said, after an awkward pause, and moved on to making collages of imaginary animals.

Back in the neighborhood, Jimmy was still hard at work on my car. The entire motor had to be taken out, after loosening the rusty bolts, and then the new one had to be purchased and removed from the junkyard car.

Jimmy’s boy brought me to see my car, bereft of an engine, with the front grille taken off and the wiring harness flopped out the front like a dead kraken– an image right out of a bestiary, though I don’t know what lesson it was supposed to teach. We posed for some silly photos, and then we went for a walk.

We’ve been going for walks up and down the alleys in the neighborhood, so I can teach Jimmy’s boy the names of all the wildflowers. Asters and ragweed, wild peas and vetch, bindweed and morning glory, crowd out of the backyards of LaBelle and choke the alleyways. Jimmy’s boy wants to know what all the plants are called, and whether they are poisonous. Just the other day, we found a patch of lemon balm, spreading out over the bricks of the alley. I showed Jimmy’s boy how wonderful they smelled and explained that we could make them into tea. I picked a great big bunch with some blue and white asters.

The other name for asters is ‘Michaelmas daisies,’ so I’m going to put this bouquet next to Saint Michael in my icon corner.”

“What’s an icon corner?” asked Jimmy’s boy, a Protestant.

“You know, that space where I have my holy paintings.”

“Your pictures of God?”

“Something like that.”

Last night we went to get more lemon balm. As we went around the corner, we saw a car with a large sticker of La Guadalupana stuck to the back.

“Those people love God!” said Jimmy’s boy.

“Well, I guess so.”

“You should get a picture of God like that, for YOUR car.”

I started to correct him, but stopped. If the Virgin Mary is really what we say she is, the Mirror of Justice, then she is a picture of God. Jimmy’s boy was right.  “Maybe I’ll get a bumper sticker like that one.”

“You should pay somebody to etch pictures of God in the paint all over your car!” Jimmy’s boy said, captivated by his new idea. “So that everywhere you went, people would say ‘that person loves God!'”

“I don’t think that’s the best way to show you love God,” I began, but we’d already gotten to the lemon balm by then. We spent the next few minutes harvesting in a cloud of citrus and mint.

Rising up around us were the cinder block garages and the trees, still a little bit green. Up above the trees was a patch of sky, blue going yellow as the sun began to set. Above the sky was the God Who swallowed me and brought me to Steubenville twenty years ago.

I’ve felt so trapped here.

This place has hurt so much, and I’m finally learning to be happy.

I’ve tried and tried and tried to find God by being a strict and scrupulous Catholic, in a city where being a scrupulous Catholic sometimes seems like a competitive sport. I’ve lost my faith and am still finding it. But I’ve had so many glimpses of God lately: in nature, and in children, and in animals.  I’m beginning to find God everywhere I look.

I took my lemon balm home, to replace the wilted bouquet in my icon corner. I got on the phone and ordered a bumper sticker to put on my car, to please Jimmy’s boy.

I sat down to write to you what I’ve been doing lately, and what my life has been. This is the life of one human being, made in the image of God like everybody else, in a traumatized part of the country where I’ve begun to be happy at last.

The human life is also a picture of God.