Gleaning the Meaning

I am sitting in an austere classroom, devoid of pictures, color and warmth in a cold, red brick school house at the top of a narrow cobblestone street. There is a high, black iron fence around it with a recess yard in the back, paved over--no greenery, inside or or out. The children can, however, look to the the blue sky and clouds above and feel the breeze as they pay tag unitl the a bell rings out, calling the children in from recess into the dark halls. 

     Then up they go up the creaky wooden steps into rooms where stern nuns stands at the front of the classroom to continue the lessons, which often turn into the topic of sin or and admonishment to or humiliation of one or another of the students or the class as a whole. 

     Yet, there is one shining lesson which rays out—I suppose my first memory of being transported in an instant away from the ordinary. A small book was given out with cream-colored, newsprint pages filled with poetry and reproductions of paintings in sepia tones. This must have been a rare event; maybe happening only that once. Even though the book itself was plain, without color, I remember taking it into my hands with reverence and anticipation. Looking through that book was nourishment for a hungry soul, strength for a growing child, fresh air in the close room, light and warmth in the midst of the cold. Such are the gifts of beauty.

     In this book were paintings and poems: Van Gogh's painting a man with hand over he face, which I somehow recognized as a gesture of sorrow. There was The Gleaners by Millet figures bent over scythes working in a field with was softness in the strength of the workers’ bodies, purpose in their efforts, and a beauty in curvature of those lines. 

These images and the poems awakened something in me. One of the poems was lovely, and I had the first stanza by heart the moment I read it.

     Hope is a thing with feathers
     That perches in the soul
     And sings the tune without the words
     And never stops at all. (Emily Dickinson)

These images and words were speaking to me from a place I could enter and through them transporting away fdeadening to the spirit environment--inside and out . 

     I found then, and since then, that the arts are rain and sun surrounding and penetrating the shell that threatens to form around the seed of soul…a seed that is meant to sprout, leaf, bud and bloom. It seems that so much in life would have the shell harden and become impenetrable. That potential blossoming, however, becomes more probable and possible through natural beauty and through the arts and literature, which are expressions of  of what we see, experience, intuit, remember, anticipate, aspire to, and all that can be felt imagined and dreamed--filling the world with all forms and color, with movement, light, music introducing us to gleaning the meaning of human experience, collectively and individually.