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We leave for home in twenty days. Let’s see if I can post one thing per day I’ll miss about San Miguel.
Today: its walls.
I’m getting those preaching chops back–guest-preached this morning at the Community Church of San Miguel, an interdenominational and quite liberal Christian church that was one year old this past Valentine’s Day. It’s been many years since I preached from the lectionary, and I enjoyed it. As with an art exercise or academic assignment, sometimes having to work within set constraints can be paradoxically freeing and inspiring.
Last night I was looking over all my drawings from the Tuesday life-drawing session and Joy said, “You know what I like best about these? How much you’re loving drawing them.” I couldn’t agree more. I did not set out to love drawing during this sabbatical; it didn’t occur to me that that was possible, people who draw for pleasure always seeming like another species. I just wanted to tackle my fear of it and, I hoped, reduce that fear. Now I go off to these sessions with excited anticipation, and the two hours fly by. I do feel some trepidation when I face the blank sheet of paper and the real live inexpressibly beautiful model, but it’s minor. Amazing.
I keep thinking of a repeated theme from a book my sister used to have (probably still does), Letters to Horseface by F. N. Monjo, which comprises fictional letters from the boy Mozart to his sister. He keeps encountering this and that musician and saying “The clarinet is such a beautiful instrument–I have to write a concerto for it” and likewise about violin, flute, etc. But in the last such remark, IIRC, he decides the human voice is the most beautiful of all. That’s how I feel about drawing people. Cats, trees, stone walls, the light falling on a rooftop, are all beautiful beyond words (and certainly beyond my capacity to draw them), but nothing inspires me like “the human form divine.”
Current project: collages/drawings to illustrate Emily Dickinson poems. I’ve been thinking about this one in particular–meditating on it as in lectio divina, trying out drawings, seeing what emerges.
The Soul should always stand ajar
That if the Heaven inquire
He will not be obliged to wait
Or shy of troubling HerDepart, before the Host have slid
The Bolt unto the Door —
To search for the accomplished Guest,
Her Visitor, no more —(No. 1055)
By the way, ministers and other users of online quotations pages, be wary. Looking for the text of this poem, I found many incidents of the paraphrase “The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience” passed off as something Dickinson herself said. Typically of her, the poem is subtle and complex, and typically of internet quotable quotes, the misquote isn’t. Of course, internet quotations pages are 99% copies of other internet quotations pages. If you can’t completely trust your ear to know when something sounds like 1860 and when 2010, when it sounds like something Nelson Mandela would say in his inaugural address and when it’s more like Marianne Williamson (and who among us has an infallible ear?), it’s best to confirm the quote with Bartlett’s or some other resource that actually identifies its sources.
More or less done. I might tinker with it; I’ve been thinking of adding a border, maybe of the same plastic that makes up the skin, but I need to stare at it for a few more days.
I’m happy with it. Tomorrow morning is my dedicated art time and I’m not sure what the project will be–maybe just drawing.
For a sabbatical blog, this one has been pretty thin in the “what I’ve been up to” category. So here, for the record, is what I’ve been doing vis-a-vis sabbatical goals.
Drawing etc. I report on fairly often. I was tempted by a ceramics class–actually, less a class than access to materials, studio space and kiln time, which were what I wanted–but the difficulty of getting the work home, and the delight I’ve taken in just working on 2D stuff, convinced me to skip it. Right now I’m working on collages, which Munchkin likes so much that I can easily do them while she’s home as well as while she’s in school (I give her paper and cut-out people and she makes her own c’lage, as she calls it, beside me). Two weeks ago I went to the local weekly, no-instruction, life-drawing session because drawing from a model was my favorite part of drawing class and I really miss it. I’ve gone twice now and hope to go every Tuesday that remains, which is only three more (not including the last week, when Joy will have returned to SF and evening excursions without the munchkin will be tough). I’ve already looked up similar sessions in SF and bookmarked the schedule so I can continue there.
A habit of art: A goal for my sabbatical, besides “make art,” was to get in a habit of making art that I’ll continue when I’m back in the busy life of full-time work for me, full-time work for Joy, full-time school for Munchkin, commuting . . . I got excellent advice from my dear colleague Chris, who is recently retired and still working hard at projects imposed by no one but himself, so he knows what he’s talking about. He recommended that starting during the sabbatical, I have a set time every week that is inviolable art time, and when sabbatical ends and all the other art time falls away, I will just continue, Mondays 9-11 a.m., without fail. Because of my Spanish class (see below) I haven’t started a weekly habit ’til this week, but I’ll try to keep it up for this last month.
No more morning internet: I realized that art time opens up if I break another habit. I tend to wake up and turn on the computer. Usually I have some excuse, like checking for a reply to an e-mail or tracking what I ate for breakfast (either of which, of course, could easily wait), and end up frittering away time on Facebook and Wikipedia and other idle pursuits. So I have two computer-related resolutions: (1) on Mondays, which are my day off and my sacred time home alone, have only a very specific, limited online time, if that (maybe 1/2 hour during lunch), and (2) not to turn on the computer at all on work days until I go into work. Morning tends to be an energetic and productive time for me, since I wake up before anyone else in the family, and I could do art then, or, if the Muse is still asleep, at least scrub the toilet instead of meandering in the internet wasteland. I’m trying to establish the new habit before leaving San Miguel, and doing about 50/50 on it. Um, today I’ve been on the computer all morning without even touching my almost-done collage. As soon as I finish this blog post, though, it’ s art time. 😉
Spanish: I came here with the intention not to study much Spanish. I thought intensive classes were the only way to go and if I did those, I wouldn’t have any art time. But I do want to learn Spanish–I started classes at community college two years ago because I want us both be able to speak to the munchkin in two languages, while she’s young and can learn two easily–and the opportunities of being in Mexico proved irresistible, especially after we found an excellent Spanish school that offers one-month classes, 3 hours a day. That sounded reasonably compatible with my art goals. I took Level 3 in April (3 hours plus an hour’s conversation) and was so thrilled by how much I learned that I decided to do Level 4 too, 3 hours only, in June ( May was our time for travel–a week in Mexico City, a few days in Michoacan). I could have done Level 5 in my remaining month, but even at only three hours a day, it does definitely eat up the only totally free art time I have. Enough. I did very well and got a good foundation in place, and I have ways to continue when I’m home. One thing I should do is blog in Spanish sometimes, so stay tuned / be warned!
Technically, my sabbatical ended June 10. The rest of my time is my annual vacation and study leave, which look pretty much the same as sabbatical. I have some study leave goals that I kept separate from sabbatical, so I’m pursuing them now: reading Theodore Parker in preparation for a sermon in August, the 200th anniversary of his birth; perusing some small group ministry topics in preparation for our new groups to be launched this fall (if congregational plans didn’t change in my absence); reading a couple of books on leadership and preaching, if the books will arrive. I’m even guest-preaching at a new interdenominational church (ten minute sermon–gotta love these Christians, whose communion service and many readings leave little time for ministerial musings), and, sad to report, giving support to a new friend by participating in the memorial service for a member of the UU Fellowship, Carol Veal, rest her soul.
Sermons in Stones 
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