Philbrook, and Art, as Windows on Life and History

I went with the dog to Woodward Park late this afternoon, and afterward went to visit Phibrook Museum of Art.

I was thinking about how I've been feeling almost a hunger and need to go visit the Museum ... pretty much once weekly for a long time ... since you departed, Momma.

Honestly it's not the "art" in the Museum that really seems to grip me. It's the amazing windows onto life and history that these works give me. And it just plain won't work to look at "pictures" in books or on the web. These works aren't exactly famous and aren't exactly first-rate from an "artistic" standpoint. Philbrook is wonderful, but this is a small museum serving a relatively small metropolitan area (Tulsa).

But the museum buildings and grounds are truly delightful, exquisite, and provide a wonderful setting for artwork that for characters like me serve as Windows into History, Windows into Life.

Partly the appeal to me too is that my eyes are just so far gone that I can't read very well ... or not compared to what I did at one time. I used to read, for example, on my "darker days", one of those amazing volumes in Ludwing Pastor's Lives of the Popes. Guaranteed, for me, to bring my upset feverish imagination back to earth with some kind of perspective. Whew. I think of my problems, and then read what the Church was grappling with at almost any time in history, and get these wonderful glimpses ... Windows ... into the lives of men and women who have gone before me in the Life of the Church ... and hey, it's very hard to feel sorry for myself after reading what the Popes have been through and Capranica and Bellarmine and Sixtus and so many others ... and am reminded of what I need to be reminded so often: to be Grateful for those who have gone before, and to be Grateful that I'm even allowed to walk my short distance in my own little place here on earth. For here we have no lasting place. But while here ... there are gifts everywhere, and everywhen, if I'll just open my eyes to see them.

But like I say, I can't really read as well as I did, so I can go to Philbrook ... and it's almost like walking into another world ... many other worlds ... or rather into other lives from the past in this amazing world that God had in His Grace and Mercy given us. Glimpses of people and places and times gone past. And more importantly, glimpses of these all-too-brief slices of life and the things of this life that others have thought important, and precious, to them, as they walked their brief ways in this world.

Philbrook has some delightful works in its permanent collections ... especially a whole range of "sacred art" from Italy of (say) the 13th - 17th centuries; and these wonderful more contemporary paintings from France - Courbet and Corot and more. The temporary exhibits have included a wonderful collection of prints of 19th centure Rome that has been on view since you departed, I think, Momma. And more recently some wonderful Modernist work ... Duby and Kandinsky and Picasso and so many more. And, opening last weekend, a collection of works on loan from the Uffizi in Florence / Firenze. These are just spectacular or moving or heart-wrenching or overwhelming, as the case may be ... pastoral scenes, landscape scenes, wonderful paintings of Florence and Tuscany and the Gulf of Naples and (of all things) Kronigsburg Castle in Denmark. All these things may or may not be conveyed in "great art" ... that's something I sure wouldn't know about ... but they are conveyed in ways that speak to my heart very deeply, and cry out with voices from deep in the History of Humanity that I can, if I wish, remember that little old Charles Delacroix is deeply, deeply privileged even to be allowed to walk for a few days longer the face of the earth on which have dwelt such men and women of such courage and fortitude that they did what they did, as best they could, I have no doubt, before being called from this vale of tears.

And God knows this truly is a vale of tears ... God Himself wept tears of sorrow, He knows these tears better than anyone, truly. No question about that. But in the meantime ... granted the tears ... there is so much to be deeply, deeply grateful for in this life, isn't there.

Maybe that's partly what God is trying to teach me from Momma's passing. Here we have no lasting place; here we have what we have, and then must pass on; here and now we are called to do what we are called to do; and that's that.

And everything ... everything! ... has value, has meaning, has worth in this world because it is vested with worth by You O Lord.

So what is there to do but bow my head in Gratitude. And do what I'm called to do. Before passing on from this old world.

Oh my.

Well ... thank you Lord then.

And thank you so much dear Momma

Thank you Lord for my Momma

Please please please dear Lord ... take good care of my good Momma.

I love you Momma

I love you Lord

Charles Delacroix
4th Sunday in Easter