When I asked a friend of mine recently about her reaction to abstract images she responded, "If it doesn't speak to me I pass it by."  I like the honesty of her response. I also wonder how much you might miss if you "pass by" too much of life too quickly.

  John O'Donohue says that "There is a sublime coherence at the heart of beauty, an order which has a lyrical simplicity." Inside this "sublime coherence" there remains mystery.

   I looked at a recent self-portrait and asked myself what was abstract and what seemed real. In this image, the two conepts sit beside each other in an odd mix of simplicity and mystery. 

   If art fails to challenge it does not matter. But, you must give it a chance. Picasso went so far as to claim that if art was not dangerous, it was not art. 

   That is how I see Radical Loving Care. If love is not dangerous, is it love?

   Caring for the sick and wounded is risky. The more you open to another's agony the more you have the chance to heal – and to feel the pain yourself.

   Of course, you can choose to "pass by." That "passing by" can happen even if you are with the patient since you can always limit your encounter to a transaction instead of something sacred.

   O'Donohue sends another gift your way: "God is that beautiful danger wherein the earth no longer needs to behave, where the levels are no longer separate." 

   We want order. We pursue what we believe is real. 

   Difficult as it may be for some, the truth lies in sublime abstraction.

 -Erie Chapman 

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Postscript : In a weekend post, Liz Wessel offered a quote from Helen Keller about her shattering experience "listening" on the radio to a performance of Beethoven's Ninth by simply touching the speaker. What the deaf woman heard from the deaf composer and how she described it is so powerful that I offer a partial reprint of that quote below, placed here because I know many hurried readers prefer brevity in the body of these posts. 

   In these paragraphs lies Ms. Keller's eloquence about "sublime coherence" living inside one of art's most abstract forms: Music.

…I lightly touched the sensitive diaphragm. What was my amazement to discover that I could feel not only the vibration, but also the impassioned rhythm, the throb and the urge of the music! The intertwined and intermingling vibrations from different instruments enchanted me. I could actually distinguish the cornets, the roil of the drums, deep-toned violas and violins singing in exquisite unison. How the lovely speech of the violins flowed and plowed over the deepest tones of the other instruments! When the human voices leaped up thrilling from the surge of harmony, I recognized them instantly as voices more ecstatic, upcurving swift and flame-like, until my heart almost stood still. The women’s voices seemed an embodiment of all the angelic voices rushing in a harmonious flood of beautiful and inspiring sound. The great chorus throbbed against my fingers with poignant pause and flow. Then all the instruments and voices together burst forth – an ocean of heavenly vibration – and died away like winds when the atom is spent, ending in a delicate shower of sweet notes.

Of course this was not “hearing,” but I do know that the tones and harmonies conveyed to me moods of great beauty and majesty. I also sense, or thought I did, the tender sounds of nature that sing into my hand-swaying reeds and winds and the murmur of streams. I have never been so enraptured before by a multitude of tone-vibrations.

As I listened, with darkness and melody, shadow and sound filling all the room, I could not help remembering that the great composer who poured forth such a flood of sweetness into the world was deaf like myself. I marveled at the power of his quenchless spirit by which out of his pain he wrought such joy for others – and there I sat, feeling with my hand the magnificent symphony which broke like a sea upon the silent shores of his soul and mine.” (emphasis added)

 The Auricle, Vol. II, No. 6, March 1924. American Foundation for the Blind, Helen Keller Archives.