Thomas : St John 20 v 19 - 31

I wonder what Rembrandt had in mind when he drew this self-portrait !

Its just what I would imagine Thomas would have looked like when his friends tell him they have seen the Risen Christ... “Thomas...Thomas...you’ll never guess what happened while you were away...”  “Yes... the doors were still locked... but suddenly Jesus was here among us....”

Rembrandt : Self-Portrait

                                         “What !... No... but,...but... that’s not possible ! “
Just imagine... how would YOU have felt if you had been Thomas ?

his waiting must have seemed never-ending, if John’s Gospel is correct and he had to wait all week from Jesus’ first appearance to his disciples until he appeared at last to him...
Debie Thomas writes so clearly about this in an essay “Unless I see” on this website link:
www.journeywithjesus.net

according to John 20v 25 Thomas was very definite about the proof he needed...but when he finally recognised the Risen Christ, perhaps that was enough ?

Easter Day: Poetry & Painting : Emmaus

The Servant Girl at Emmaus

(A Painting by Velázquez)

She listens, listens, holding

her breath. Surely that voice

is his—the one

who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,

as no one ever had looked?

Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?

Surely those hands were his,

taking the platter of bread from hers just now?

Hands he'd laid on the dying and made them well?

Surely that face—?

The man they'd crucified for sedition and blasphemy.

The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.

The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?

Those who had brought this stranger home to their table

don't recognize yet with whom they sit.

But she in the kitchen, absently touching

           the wine jug she's to take in,

a young Black servant intently listening,

swings round and sees

the light around him

and is sure. 

Denise Levertov (1923–1997)

For Levertov's poetry, see Paul A. Lacey and Anne Dewey (editors), with an Introduction by Eavan Boland,The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov (New York: New Directions, 2013), 1063pp.

Mary of Magdala...over the years...

I've just read an article about an artist who has been going into her studio each year on Good Friday to work on something from the passion of Christ...and once an idea forms, she will begin..."the subject chooses you; you don't choose the subject. You have to remain vulnerable to what happens to you in life... You're not in control...its something other." Maggie Hambling, quoted in "Good Friday - looking east", an article by Malcolm Doney :

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/3-april/features/features/good-friday-looking-east

For me it is not so much Good Friday as Easter Day..
.I rarely have the luxury of being able to go into my studio on Easter Day itself...but around this time of year I am drawn towards John 20...the empty tomb and Mary of Magdala... 
and over the years a series has emerged...

One year, being struck by how disturbing and frightening it was to discover that the tomb was empty ... in the darkness before dawn...

  I looked more closely at Mary of Magdala and her fear that Jesus' tomb had been desecrated, 

and that this blinded her to everything except trying to find the body and bring it back for decent burial... 

I painted her distraught and weeping outside the tomb

Later on, I was struck by her courage in daring to look back inside the tomb again;

though still with the refrain going around and around in her mind: "they have taken him away, and I don't know where they have put him" 

 Another year I imagined her turning around, coming back up out of the tomb and being blinded by the brilliant light of dawn after becoming accustomed to the darkness...
.hearing someone she supposed to be the gardener...
 and here I found myself trying to convey the Risen Christ waiting with deep concern for Mary, asking why she was weeping, and waiting for the right moment to cut through her panic by simply calling her by name: "Mary"... so that she could finally recognize his voice... and in John's Gospel she immediately recognised him, saying: "Rabbouni"...

It was some months before I dared try this painting...
but eventually I knew it was being mysteriously "given" to me...

all these paintings have had that same quality...of needing to wait... sometimes to try making rough sketches to enable them to emerge from somewhere deep within...until eventually there comes a glimmer of "ah...yes... thats how I must begin..." and then, step by step...layer by layer... they have been painted...sometimes needing to wait for several days before further inspiration came...always being vulnerable, and having to "let go".

Of course this isn't the end of the story... and I am still being drawn to paint, trying to convey Mary Magdalen running to tell the disciples... and of their response...

                                                                                              and then that is only the beginning !