A Woman on the Run Finds a Divine Light

Last week I grabbed my keys at the last minute and dashed to the Frist Center for the opening talk on two new exhibits, "A Divine Light" and "Woman on the Run" I felt like a woman on the run as I hurriedly left home wearing a t-shirt and pair of tights with a significant hole front and center in one leg.

I later read that Tracey Snelling's installation, Woman on the Run, suggests "a keen sensitivity to the tensions hidden in narratives of ordinary life." Within minutes of walking into the Frist auditorium, I definitely felt a keen sensitivity to a very present tension created by the fact that I had worn my ordinary yard work and walking clothes to the opening talk specifically for museum members. Now I'm a Frist member but if I had realized this was a member event I would have delayed the tension related to the fear of attracting critiquing glances. I would have not shown up.

After the talk, I ventured upstairs in the short time I had, not expecting to linger over Northern Renaissance paintings from Bob Jones University but curious as to the title "A Divine Light." Truth be told, this woman on the run must confess, I've never been drawn to religious art and thought a sampling of the works might suffice.

Surprisingly I found myself drawn to a glass case at the exhibits entrance. The sensation of feeling pulled toward art wasn't new, but it was surprising since the objects of my attraction were binders, brushes and colorants.

Yes, I found myself unable to take my eyes off an egg, flax seed, feathers, walnuts, minerals, bones, roots and a glass vessel of oil. These gifts of nature were samples of ingredients crushed, stirred and alchemically turned into paints hundreds of years ago.

These objects of earth found in my kitchen and yard cast a spell on me. There I stood intending to rush through the exhibit and I couldn't walk away from an egg. To ease the awkwardness of feeling unable to move, I asked nearby patron's questions and kept standing, paying attention internally to this unexpected experience and sensation.

I felt such awe in relation to nature and the process of teamwork involved hundreds of years ago as each artist had multiple assistants to help make paint and produce a work. These simple supplies were the source for these master paintings that I later discovered do exude light.

Nature as source. How beautiful that gifts of nature feed our bodies and our souls.

Then my mind made a strange but perfect turn. Standing before these simple objects, I came upon what I consider two missing aspects in the environmental debate. I've often thought it curious that people get locked into polarized positions debating whether global warming is or isn't occurring and what role if any we humans play.

Standing in the Frist, I viscerally felt one facet of the role we're built to play, a vital activity in which we're here to engage the experience of reverence and awe as to the divine light in everything and our relatedness with Nature. Imagine the shift in our world if like the artist's teams of old, we momentarily stopped our debating and agreed about one thing as participants for Team Earth. Imagine if regardless of zip codes, status and dress, we all started feeling appreciation for Earth.

I had a musical commitment to keep, but I parted the Frist thinking we're here to be grateful, to realize the energetic binder tucked in our bodies, hearts and minds, the vibration of appreciation for living on this abundant Earth.

How often I forget to hold in awe Earth's capacity to freely give with no demand for return. Nature divinely mothers us in the masterful painting that is life on Earth.

An hour later the "narrative of my ordinary life" found me listening to Tim Grimm & The Hay Wagon Gypsies at East Nashville's Family Wash. The hook in the final song I heard that evening was the perfect book end to how my evening began. A young woman playing mandolin sang: "We are holy."

I sat there in holey tights knowing we are holy. We are master paintings brought to life by light, by the energy in the very foods of which the holy works at the Frist were made. We are holy works in the masterful painting that is life on Earth.

Awe, yes. I can imagine that!

-Dawn Kirk, The Good News Muse, 16 September 2011
dawn@imaginetheshift.com

* The Frist Center is open 7 days a week. Hours vary. Click Frist Center for info and hours. Both exhibits above are on display until early February. Opening also Oct. 7th is "To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum" and Maria Magdelena Campos-Pons: Journeys. In the entrance gallery presently, Connecting Cultures: Children's Stories from Across the World, 200 participants from ten of Nashville's cultural organizations created artwork telling their cultural stories.