My Encounter With Our Lady of Guadalupe: “Somewhere I have never travelled” by e. e. cummings
Previous: I. My New Age Background
But I saw no book by Lobsang Rampa, Sitchin, Licauco, or Casteneda. I saw something else: a picture of a lovely lady on a book’s front cover. I did not hear angels telling me, “Tolle lege,” or “Take and read,” as what happened to St. Augustine; but I took the book anyway. The book is entitled, “A Handbook on Guadalupe” by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate (1997).
At first glance, I instinctively know that the picture of the Lady could not be a painting. I am a pastel painter but not a professional. I do not use brush. I use crayon pastels like crayons, but I mix them using baby oil and cotton. I see blue shadows cast by the yellow sun. I see green and yellow in the human skin. I intersect parallel lines at vanishing points. I scale pictures using boxes and triangles. I sense symmetry. I see beauty. Yet a true artist I am not, for I do not know human anatomy. I do not know the names of the muscles and how they are attached to the bones. I do not know the golden ratios that describe the human form. I am only a copyist and in this I am content. But if I see a masterpiece, I know it truly is.
The picture is not a painting. How can anyone draw such loveliness that even the words of e. e. cummings fail:
- somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
- your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose
- or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
- nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
- (i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
Call it love at first sight. I bought the book.
Next:
III. Book Review: Handbook on Guadalupe
IV. Biblical Iconography of Our Lady of Guadalupe
V. Rediscovery of My Catholic Faith
[...] November, I started writing my Monk’s Hobbit blog. One of my entries was on how Our Lady of Guadalupe converted me from the New Age Movement, how She taught me to read the Bible, and how She became my Mother after my mother died. My friend [...]
My friend enters the convent of the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate in Novaliches, Quezon City « Monk’s Hobbit
October 5, 2009 at 9:48 am
Beautiful post. Thank you.
Frida
December 12, 2010 at 2:10 pm