The Cows Are Coming Home - SOLD

24" x 36"

Oil on stretched canvas

This painting was a lot of fun to paint.  There is a phrase that I have always heard "when the cows come home".  From what I can find on the internet that means for an indefinite time or a very long time.  Evidently cows are very slow moving and never seem to get in a hurry but live a pretty non hurried life.  I do envy that trait.  For years I worked at jobs that required a lot of organization and running from one project to another.  Now I paint every day and walk and read, meet friends for lunch and even watch a movie in the middle of the day if I want to.  There are still moments where I feel like I have too much to do.  I know, for those of you who still work outside your homes I sound like a spoiled brat.  But today I tried to just live more like a cow.....I took my time.  One of the benefits I reaped today was that my sweet friend sent me a devotional and I stopped what I was doing and took the time to read it.  It was written by Richard Rohr.  I will quote part of it here:

"If you have loved Jesus - perhaps with great passion and protectiveness-do you recognize that any God worthy of the name must transcend creeds and denominations, time and place, nations and ethnicities, and all the vagaries of gender and sexuality, extending to the limits of all we can see suffer and enjoy? All of our human differences are "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3).

You are a child of God, and always will be, even when you don't believe it.

This is why I can see Christ in my dog, the sky, and all creatures, and it's why you, whoever you are, can experience God's unadulterated care for you in your garden or kitchen.  You can find Christ's presence in your beloved partner or friend, an ordinary beetle, a fish in the deepest sea that no human will ever observe, and even in those who do not like you and those who are not like you.

This is the illuminating light that enlightens all things, making it possible for us to see things in their fullness.  Light is less something we see directly and more something by which we see all other things.  When Jesus Christ calls himself the "Light of the World" (John 8:12), he is not telling us to look just at him, but to look out at life with his all-merciful and non-dualistic eyes.  We see him so we can see like him - with the same infinite compassion.

When your isolated "I" turns into a connected "we", you have moved from Jesus to Christ.  We no longer have to carry the burden of being a perfect "I" because we are saved "in Christ" and as Christ.  Or, as Christians say correctly, but too quickly, at the end of our official prayers: "Through Christ, Our Lord, Amen."