Earlier this week, I posted a meditation that mentioned an El Greco sky. That got one of our members, Alberta, remembering a trip to Spain while she was in high school where she got to visit the Museo de El Greco in Toledo. She recalled seeing his paintings of Christ and the Twelve Apostles, which she recalled as magnificent, even though they were somewhat unfinished.
This is true of other works of art. Painter Leonardo da Vinci’s Adoration of the Magi isn’t finished. Charles Dicken’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood isn’t finished, neither were symphonies by Beethoven, Mahler, and Schubert. The Basilica de la Sagrada Familia, in Barcelona, Spain, designed by Antonio Gaudi, construction started in 1882, and is not yet completed.
My husband Rod (pictured above in front of the Sagrada Familia), tells me that the poet William Blake said, “the poem is never done, the writer just stops working on it.” That is true of every sermon I’ve written. And Robert Browning, when asked about the meaning of “My Last Dutchess” said, “When I wrote it, God and I knew, and now, only God knows.”
So I have to wonder why we think we should have everything together, to be done, to be finished when we cross some arbitrary threshold, like confirmation class, or graduation, or a wedding, or retirement. Alberta reflected, “God is not done with us yet, either.” I find that incredibly comforting and freeing. We are people in process, growing, not fixed, throughout the whole of our lives. And that is just the beginning for people of faith. That is the promise of Easter. Let’s keep growing, stretching, learning, growing as Gods’ people, together.
Half-baked, and that’s just fine. ~ Anne
Wayfinding 