Signs of the time

 In the introduction to the mass this morning we here presentation of child Jesus in the temple. In the temple there are Simeon and Anna who have an insight that they are about to encounter someone special. And when they do meet him the RECOGNISE him. 

It is interesting to know it that neither of them had a photo of him or description of his parents or the type of entry he would make in order to identify the child. Yet they did recognise him. 

I guess this is what reading the 'signs of the times' means. To be able to recognise God in the regular, routine events of life. To be able to identify him in the hundred and one things that we do everyday of our life. One can read this presentation as a once in a lifetime event or have the wisdom to understand it as a daily occurrence.

Like Rabindranath Tagore says in his poem, "He comes, he comes, he ever comes."

The heart of the Andes

 There is painting of the American artist Frederic Edwin Church, titled 'The Heart of the Andes' that I had set as my laptop desktop background image for a couple of years now. 

Initially I thought the painting was 'The Church in the Andes'... I had mixed up the name of the artist and the art piece itself. Today while reading something more about the same painting I learnt that it was a tribute to the philosopher naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. So basically it is a piece of art depicting nature. The title given to the painting also is this justified - nature being the most prestigious element of South America. 

Nonetheless, I found asking myself, what is the cross doing in that painting? More specifically, what is the cross doing in the HEART of the Andes? One could brush aside this question attributing the cross in the painting to the artist's colonial and Catholic affiliation. Perhaps there is an element of truth there. But why is it there at all? That too in that size. The cross isn't central. Neither large nor immediately evident. It is part of the whole natural landscape. But it is there!

I interpret it as God being part of one's heart. Not overriding or displacing everything else, but an integral element. Greater still is the artist's depiction of the people in the painting: near the cross. Not bathing, not working in the field, not elsewhere. 

In a way the painting is, for me, a microcosmic depiction of the human being: the human as one tiny part of nature and reality; and at the same time a macrocosmic aspect: God at the heart of all reality.