These holiday weeks have been a wonderful time of reflection. And now I have come across a beautiful way to represent that calm. The green tea leaves were a Christmas gift, from my Chinese friend whose knowledge of medicines and papermaking astounds me. The tea leaves form the caring texture beneath my mirrored forehead skin; and thus I ruminate in these days of stillness. Praise God for blessings: for Jocelyn, for tea, and for filtered sunlight traversing coated optics.

Take a walk
to clear your head
of all the tinsel.

Leave behind
the mittens
that you lose.

Ponder anew
the grace of God
in sending us His Christ.

Relax.
Reflect.
Rejoice.

Discover
slow-paced
productivity,

And definitely
do something
useful with your hands
(yup, that’s a nifty trick
to help you overcome
those listless, aimless,
mind-soul-and-body-wrenching
home-for-the-holidays
blues).

Take for granted,
Take a breath of fresh sub-zero air,
Take stock, take care, rejoice.

Rejoice, the Lord is King! Your Lord and King adore.
Rejoice, give thanks and sing and triumph evermore.
Lift up your heart, lift up your voice, again I say rejoice, rejoice!

The Fifty Stems series is process art, in which the Ontario October becomes more than merely scattered, fallen detritus on the forest floor. These leaf stems have been arranged, photographed, and colourized, thus undergoing a transformation from the organic to the conceptual. Whereas I have elsewhere communicated the sublime in terms of sensory overload, with reference to C.S. Lewis’ characterization of heaven as a neverending spiral, or as irredescent colours in un-fallen worlds, here there is also an element of ‘zen’ present. It doesn’t have the same effect as a Rothko colour field, but it leans in that direction. It seems to me that a tension exists between kinds of spirituality: this minimalist aesthetic jives with eastern ideology, whereas my layered, laboured, works are more in line with the complexity of the Christian narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and glory. This general tension is specifically manifest in various conceptions of God. We don’t have the capacity to understand God as he is, so we describe Him in negative terms. He is immutable, incomprehensible, immortal, and so on. It leaves you with an image that abounds with negative space: very zen indeed. But when we think of our Saviour as Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father Prince of Peace… then we begin to stand in awe of the things we cannot depict. Still, I enjoy these calm, serene, and almost formal moments with leaves and colours. They may not be explicity Christian. But they do speak to me, almost as if I myself was once a dead leaf on the ground, waiting only to be picked up by God and used as his handiwork.