art – Ruth Goring

Help is on the way

I have always loved Psalm 121 (text below). It’s one of the Psalms of Ascent, which pilgrims to Jerusalem would sing as they walked toward the celebration of one of the three annual feasts. The opening phrase—“I lift up my eyes to the hills”—is so simple and evocative. It reminds us of those moments of quiet awe when we’re out in creation and can rest our eyes on distant hills or mountains.

I lift up my eyes to the hills—
    from where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.

[Our Creator] will not let your foot be moved;
    the One who keeps you will not slumber.
The One who keeps Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day
    nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all evil;
    the Lord will keep your life.
The Lord will keep
    your going out and your coming in
    from this time on and forevermore.
Psalm 121 (NRSVUE)

However, recently I’ve gotten a different vibe from this psalm. Creating an illustration to be included in The Peace Table Bible storybook brought this to the fore. Of course before beginning my image, I read the psalm again and meditated on its narrative. Why is the psalmist (or singer) lifting their eyes? It doesn’t seem to be for refreshment or awe. The speaker/singer needs help. And it’s not that a rescuing army is about to sweep over the crest of the hills! It’s God who will be the source of help.

“The Lord is your shade at your right hand,” promises the psalmist, so that “the sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.” This song is about a trek through a desert landscape where sunlight can be harsh and unrelenting, where night brings other dangers.

So I decided not to sentimentalize Psalm 121 in my illustration. I chose metal vintage-watch pieces for the sun, moon, and stars. On the left the figure—singer of this psalm—is panting with the effort of climbing under the sun’s glare. On the right the pilgrim has made it over the hill but must sleep in the open air in darkness, vulnerable to human raiders or wild animals. God’s help is needed for every step along the way.

More recently I’ve been crafting a picture book that tackles climate change and plastic pollution, and seeks to enchant readers with a vision of the beautiful communities of humans and other animals, plants and air and mountains, that can emerge when we take up the work of restoration and healing. This is a pilgrimage we’re invited into today: the journey of changing our lives to lessen climate change and keep Earth inhabitable. Let’s find songs that remind us of God’s loving attentiveness and help all along the way. Let’s find rhythms of joy and mutual care.

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The winner, & notes on a favorite spread

Carol Gordon Ekster, a fellow writer of children’s books, was among those who shared my Picturing God book-birthday post on social media, & having drawn her name from those who did so, I’m about to send her a copy of the book. Hurray! Check out her website by clicking on her name above; she has some delightful picture books specifically for bedtime, which for most kids is the best time for reading with parents or other caregivers. At the foot of the page are links to a blog & to her other social media pages. Carol is definitely a kidlit writer worth watching. Warm thanks to you, Carol!

Now I want to give you some background on one of the images from Picturing God.

SM_images_PicturingGod_3

The art here is directly from Picturing God; the text is also a direct quote, but the designer made the letters larger for use online. It’s the right-hand page of the “God as clothing” spread, which wasn’t in the original plan for the book.

After reading my first or second draft, my editor turned out to be better at counting than I am (no great surprise there): she told me that my plan came to just 38 pages, not 40 as my contract stated. How exciting! I could further develop one of the God-metaphors I was already using, or I could add another.

I quickly decided on the latter, & Google led me to an excerpt from the splendid book Wearing God by Lauren Winner. I hadn’t thought of using the “put on Christ” encouragement from the New Testament, but it’s perfect for young children, for whom self-dressing involves numerous developmental milestones. Each mastery–pulling a shirt over one’s head, poking a button through the hole, getting shoes on the right feet, tying shoestrings–helps little ones to feel capable. So this would be another way they could picture God in everyday activities.

This was the spread where I figured out that good old corrugated cardboard would work fine for illustrating children closer up (those at some distance are done with ceramic pieces). The border at the foot of the page is also cardboard–the inner corrugations, painted gold by a good friend who is a splendid collagist. To make the boy’s hair (not shown here) I wrapped black twine lengths around a couple of metal mosaic tools, soaked them in runny flour paste, & let them dry. Curly hair! And the girl’s hair is special to me; it’s part of the fringe from a scarf I received as a gift, woven by a Wayúu woman from the Bahía Portete community in northeastern Colombia. I think of these people & their remarkable story every time I look at this page. (It’s a very sad story, but in more recent years they have returned & are working hard to create a new viable community in their native territory.)

I myself am like a little kid, only learning, watching how the big kids do it & trying to copy them, when it comes to putting on Christ.

By my editor!

Today I want to share someone else’s writing. My editor for both Adriana’s Angels & Picturing God has blogged about our process with the Picturing God art, which departed from the usual because this art is so concrete & textured. And what she says about how reading/contemplating the book affects her, & how her two-&-a-half-year-old toddler has responded to it, makes me cry: this is how I myself often felt as I was cutting, nipping, stitching, arranging, gluing. As if it was all drawing me into the beautiful mysteries of God. Here, read her lovely words.

SM_images_PicturingGod_1

Endorsements! Portrait!

Picturing God has received a couple of beautiful endorsements thus far, from fellow writers for children & families. I am honored by their kind words!

“Colorful, richly textured, and wildly creative, Picturing God is a delight. Ruth Goring’s visual and literary exploration of many names and metaphors for God will open readers’ minds and hearts to that Word who is love. I love this book!”

—Jennifer Grant, award-winning author of Maybe God Is Like That Too and Maybe I Can Love My Neighbor Too

“We need more books that help children envision God in ways that go beyond an old white man with a beard. Picturing God provides beautifully illustrated and poetic images that are straight out of scripture. I smiled along with every page.”

—Traci Smith, author of Faithful Families and Prayers for Faithful Families

RuthGoring 2018 portrait

Last year my friend Katherine Vincent Lamb painted this portrait of me. I don’t know yet whether it will appear in the book–there’s an “about the author” blurb on the back page–but I love it, so I’m sharing it with you.

To be honest, there is a certain terror involved in releasing one’s art & writing into the world. Endorsements are gifts, calming me & saying, We are with you–your words & art are worthwhile. And what can I even say about an artist’s desire to paint me?

Cover Reveal: Picturing God!

Tiles, fabric, handmade paper, metal pieces . . . to inspire children to contemplate God’s tenderness and power.

picturing-god-final-cover

My new book will be released September 24, 2019, by Beaming Books. Picturing God is a milestone for me: the first book for which I’ve made the art as well as the text!

Of course there’s no way to create a faithful and complete visual representation of God. We have the stern “no graven image” commandment to protect us from that illusion. But the Bible is full of symbols and metaphors to help us picture and experience God in the depths of ourselves, via our imagination connected to our senses.

In my late twenties, a time of great pain and struggle, I began learning to access these biblical symbols in contemplative prayer and open myself to the healing they can bring—and I’m still learning. God as my Rock. God as an eagle sheltering her chicks under her wings. Jesus as my Shepherd. The Spirit as God’s cleansing breath, filling my lungs. Scriptures and prayers based on these symbols have drawn me into intimacy with God, into awe and wonder at the Love that holds me.

We human beings live by symbols. Strong, beautiful symbols stir us and change us.

Picturing God uses mosaic and collage—tiles, fabric, handmade paper, glass, metal pieces, twine, embroidery floss, paint, and other media—to inspire children and parents to contemplate God’s tenderness and power. Living Water, Bread of Life, Light of the World, Good Shepherd, Father and Mother: these and other biblically rooted metaphors are explored through art and poetic text. The book’s final page is a list of scriptures for each metaphor, so that families can look up and perhaps even memorize some of the related verses.

Making this book has been the most joyful work of my life! Every time I gathered materials and started laying them out on a canvas or square of plywood, I was drawn into a meditative awareness of God’s presence. I hope paging through the book will serve readers in a similar way. This winter I’m making final tweaks to the interior art—and eagerly looking forward to sharing the book far and wide in September!

You of all people

Like most writers, I hate rejections–those polite “doesn’t meet our needs at this time” emails. Another one of them came yesterday. I have cultivated a thick skin, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care.

Then there are the prizes, which always seem to be won by someone else–usually somebody younger, which is objectively not surprising since I’m in my sixties. They have an edge of genius I lack. I’m mediocre.

Or sometimes: They have a spouse or partner whose income & presence allow them much more time to write & revise & learn than I have, being single.

There are also “self-rejection” moments when my struggle to make a poem find its path seems to be failing. Should I just give this up? Maybe I’ve reached the limits of my capacity.

Most of the time I manage to keep my eyes on the actual prize: making this poem or story better, trying a new subject or style, uncovering & strengthening the inherent rhythm of a piece.

But sometimes I really need encouragement from someone else. From June 2011 until her death in November 2015, Helen Degen Cohen was a poetry mentor to me, though we didn’t name the relationship in those terms.

Helen

Helen was brilliant & restless & insomniac & loving. She was a cofounder of the splendid RHINO Poetry annual, & she did win a number of distinguished prizes, residencies, & grants. She invited another poet, Susanna Lang, & me to form a critique group with her.

And one day, when I was beset by those doubts about the value of my work, Helen responded, “You of all people should not worry about that.”

Really? Of all people?

That in itself was a prize. Helen knew my work, understood what I was trying to do, & found it important.

So rejections come, but I keep writing. Our stories & poems & art can be part of something bigger than fame & recognition. And I want to be one of those “you of all people” encouragers who notice others’ work, affirm it, name what’s important in it. We really do need each other.

Thus far there’s one posthumous collection of Helen’s work, My Life on Film, and more are in the works. We’re going to have a big launch party for My Life on Film Sunday September 23, 3-5 p.m., at Facets Cinematheque–put it on your calendar if you’re in the Chicago area!

Helen cosmos flowers Helen adored gardening. This is one of her own photos.

To my loneliness

My spiritual director asked what colors I would use to paint you.

Indigo, brightening in places to cobalt. The deep poignant blue of a summer sky at twilight, what I used to call Maxfield Parrish blue.

Variegated with rich greens for life and fruitfulness. And pricked with reds and oranges, sharp but beautiful cuts.

Mostly I live in solitude, not loneliness. But the painful moments of aloneness come, and they no longer frighten me. You have become a kind of friend.

You are a hollow place inside me, and I meet God in that very emptiness. You are sorrow and loss, you are longing, hunger.

Without you, what art would I make, and who would I be?

I do not forget you

A year ago, a group of artists & I created a 34×34″ mosaic/collage as a kind of physical prayer for the city & people of Eastern Aleppo, Syria.

Aleppo

For years I had been agonizing over the news emerging from Syria’s war–which as far as I could tell was mostly a war of the regime against some of its people, the ones who wanted to see change in their country. Taking a mosaic workshop (my second–it’s a medium that fascinates me) inspired me to launch this project. Jason Brown laid out a sketch, based on an online photo that haunted me.

Aleppo war.jpg

It’s a tragic image of a city laid waste, but we didn’t want to communicate only despair. So as we began to fill out the sketch with tiles and broken ceramic pieces & fabric, we regularly included small bright objects: a beaded ring, earrings, a small red heart, unexpected bits of color. For some these symbolized precious lost things, but for me they stood for the spirited people of Aleppo & those who took great risks to help others: the doctors in underground hospitals, the White Helmets who hurried out to rescue those buried under rubble after a bombing raid.

I had learned a lot from Dr. Zaher Sahloul, a Chicago-based doctor who made multiple trips to Aleppo with the Syrian American Medical Society. So we decided to use the mosaic to raise funds for SAMS, along with the Syrian Community Network, founded by Suzanne Akhras Sahloul, which serves Syrian refugees in the Chicago area. A good friend offered his beautiful home for a gathering in March 2017; there we contemplated the mosaic, the Sahlouls talked to us about Syria, & we collected donations.

By then Eastern Aleppo had been evacuated for a few months: as the regime took over that sector, those wishing to leave had been bused to Idlib. There are other besieged & blockaded communities in Syria today, places where food, clean water & medical supplies are scarce. As I write, the Syrian regime’s army is advancing into Idlib Governate.

Our mosaic is called Aleppo Is My Breath Prayer, because sometimes the only prayer I could muster was “Aleppo, Aleppo,” whispered on rising & falling breath. In the Christian mystical tradition, a breath prayer is a word or phrase that you repeat quietly in the ordinary rhythm of inhalation and exhalation. Our work is an expression of our prayers for peace, justice, and restoration in the beautiful country of Syria. The piece hangs in the sanctuary of Living Water Community Church, to remind us to keep praying. A photo of it also appears on the back cover of the just-published anthology Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (Glass Lyre Press).

I do not forget you, Syria.

***

Aleppo Is My Breath Prayer, 2017

Artists: Ruth Goring, Jason Brown, Emily Klein, Ainsley Fleetwood, Katherine Lamb, Rebecca Larsen, Olga Mest, Jamie Daniel, Emily Bynum
Mounting: Ronald Frantz

Materials: ceramics (both tiles and broken dishes), abalone tile, rocks from Lake Michigan, bones, gold, old jewelry, cotton fabric, shells, clear glass, smalti and other glass tiles, copper, other metals, alcohol-based paint, acrylic paint, adhesives, permanent marker, and grout on composition board

home & no home

My friend Jason Brown puts out an occasional gathering of writing & art, Home::Keep. The second installment, RE::DIS//MIS, was launched December 16. I am so grateful to be honored with a folio page for some of my Colombia poems & photos! Jason’s theme is home–our experience of it, our lack of it, our longing for it. Because about 7 million Colombians have been internally displaced by violence, the loss of home comes up again & again in my writing.

Folio :: Excavation // R Goring

Just one of the photos in the folio: my friend gazes at a galleon, replica of those on which her ancestors were forced to make the Middle Passage.

Desire in contested spaces

The reason we are not able to see God is the faintness of our desire.—Meister Eckhart

I’ve been thinking about desire—the different kinds of desire, what happens when we lack desire or mistrust it. I think desire is a great gift. Without it we are creatively blocked. Wanting and not (yet) having: that’s a tremendous force that lies behind all our risk-taking.

* * *

When I accompanied the Cacarica community in NW Colombia for six weeks in 2003, the army and paramilitary forces that had been harassing them chose not to make an appearance. We all remained on our guard, but there was time and space just to live—to cook, wash clothes, fish in the river, get to know one another.

Lillis for blog
It turned into a sort of artist’s retreat for me. Each day I spent at least an hour writing, recording interesting experiences and what I was learning of the community’s history. Further, I had brought along my chalk pastels and a couple of pads of drawing paper, and I let people know that I wanted to draw portraits of them. After I sought out the first couple of subjects and they saw I was serious, community members—especially children and teenage girls—flocked to the guesthouse porch every day saying, “Dibújame,” draw me. Some days I did as many as four portraits.

Jadir for blog
I had also brought a set of Prismacolor pencils and some card stock, and I used these to draw some of the plants native to that area of Chocó—one of the most biodiverse regions of the Western Hemisphere. On days when I was tense, I learned that focusing my consciousness on rendering the minute variegations of color and light on the surface of a leaf could bring me into a profound and healing silence. (Sorry, I’ll have to share one or two of those images later/elsewhere!)

Simultaneously I was giving the community protective presence and growing as an artist, feeding my hunger to capture the sheen of sunlight on dark skin or on a guinea leaf (a local name, pronounced with a hard g: gi-NEH-ah).

When I went to Jiguamiandó afterward, there was no opportunity to so much as open up my box of pencils. Paramilitaries were nearby and entering the Puerto Lleras settlement every day. We focused on survival; we listened to the community leaders’ anxious arguments about what to do; we gulped down our food and tried desperately to make satellite phone contact with a human rights office in Bogotá. It was decided that we would all evacuate.

girl with pots for blog
I didn’t draw (though some yellow plantain blooms begged to be interpreted), and I took time to scribble only a few words in my journal. I did roam Puerto Lleras with my camera, taking photos so the people would have some visual record of the thatch-roofed homes they were being forced to abandon. And on the last morning, between the paras’ unwelcome incursions, I sat with a circle of children and we taught each other favorite songs.
Puerto Lleras for blog

* * *
Sometimes—often—our deep desires conflict with each other because of circumstance. If we want well and love well, we can figure out what gift is to be given now, what must be left for another time, what can be sacrificed. We honor our deepest wants, make something holy by giving it up for love, and hope for God’s restoration, satisfying our needs in a parched land.