The painting displayed above the altar in the side Chapel is one of a series of images by local artist Alf Löhr which we are using to cover our new Parish Eucharist Service Books. This image is used in Ordinary Time, the season whose liturgical colour is green. This colour reminds us that it is in the ordinary time of the church year that we grow in faith and begin to show forth the fruits of the spirit.
The gospel story of Mary and Martha [Luke 10.38-end] reminds us that prayer is simply about sitting at Jesus’ feet. It’s about looking and listening and attending to what is beyond the immediate, reflecting on what words and images might draw us beyond ourselves and our preoccupations into the reality of the invisible God.
Contemporary culture is peculiarly Martha-like. Most people I know are absurdly busy and have taken deep into themselves the self-deception that our own achievements are what really count in life. So perhaps the gift of contemporary art, particularly paintings such as this, might be in slowing us down and helping us to recover something of Mary’s role of patient attending.
Take some time over the next few weeks. Sit in front of it and allow its size and depth of colour to draw you in. The artist said to me that his best paintings are those where he himself is able to relinquish control. The canvas becomes simply a space where what will be revealed is revealed. I can’t think, therefore, of a better aid to prayer – not an idol that restricts our understanding of God, but an icon that creates a space for us to relinquish control, to attend to what lies beyond the image and to allow what will be revealed in us to be revealed.
Black Rose by Alf Lohr
Jim Walters