Zoe

From Resentment to Dangerously Content

From Resentment to Dangerously Content.  Resentment, envy and even entitlements fall within the scope of this piece. The muddy green captures the “evil eye” of envy. It differs from greed in that greed wants something similar, whereas envy wants the exact same thing. It is the only one of the seven that is really no fun at all and leads to the feeling of being sick to the stomach or fettered by what one does not possess and another one has achieved. Envy feels bitter when another has it better! Vasilieff captures this cold and yet passionate vice with a muddy green backdrop featuring chains that leave the envier tied to what they can never have and sick to the stomach with what can only be seen from afar. The remedy is acts of charity, unconditional love and neighborliness. The backdrop color for charity is pink and the carnation flower symbolizes the virtuous person’s love in action with no expectation of receiving anything in return. In fact, it thrills when another thrives.

From Isolation and Fear to Ruthless Reliance

 

I am currently working on a manuscript that features a fresh look at the 7 Deadly sins and their corresponding virtues as a remedy. It is the move from the vices we love to the virtues we live. Each week we are creating artwork by a friend of mine, Sonya Vasilieff, to feature each move. I offer them here for your viewing and my written description (read below) of what you see as a framework for interpretation and ensuing contemplative imagination.

From Isolation to Ruthless Reliance. The journey walked alone quickly becomes gray, lonely, isolated and small. The gray background symbolizes this misty fog of isolation, fear, and reductionism. It is to our diminishment when we live outside of the conversion to community into the body of Christ. When we take this conversion from individuality to a global WE, the transformation from isolation and fear emerges. This movement allows us to take seriously the crossing of the narcissistic threshold into a life that flourishes in a deeper understanding of neighborliness. This conversion is symbolized by the purple iris on the blue backdrop. During the Victorian age, flowers were symbolic of many significant life events. In this piece, Sonya Vasilieff challenges us to move from fragmented lives as independents, to lives that flourish in community. This flourishing community is reflected in the steadfastness and long-suffering of the communal WE.

From Rudeness to Endearing Kindness

I am currently working on a manuscript that features a fresh look at the 7 Deadly sins and their corresponding virtues as a remedy. It is the move from the vices we love to the virtues we live. Each week we are creating artwork by a friend of mine, Sonya Vasilieff, to feature each move. I offer them here for your viewing and my written description (read below) of what you see as a framework for interpretation and ensuing contemplative imagination.

From Rudeness to Endearing Kindness. This painting validates the choice of vice or virtue held in dramatic juxtaposition with one another. Sonya Vasilieff captures the raw emotion of the vice choosing a traditional red background to simulate the cold, capital and venial nature of this form of anger as it unleashes its painful and barbed lashing on other people without prejudice. Yet the barbed wire constrains the one who is rude by reducing not just the one who is on the receiving end of the rude word or action but the originator of the offense as well. Civility, love, etiquette and grace are gone by these ill-mannered epithets that rage unchecked like windblown dust. It is the personification of Psalm 1 in Eugene Peterson’s translation, The Message, the rude are queried as the ones who hang out at Sin Saloon, slink along Dead-End Road, and attend Smart-Mouth College which only end at Skid Row. This road lined by barbed wire is named forgetfulness. It has forgotten the tender mercy and kindness of the touch of God that allows one to emerge forth. To the right is the tender, graceful, truthful, loving and kind daisy. Its strength is declared in its simplicity and beauty. The white background represents the purity and holiness of love unconditional and tolerant, issuing itself in the open space of kindness and politeness. These virtues are not representative of the classic vices and virtues; rather, they are the pathway and the activity that begins to birth virtue unfettered. It is what it means to grow in the amniotic womb of areté again and symbolize a life that is birthed, blooms and flourishes because it drinks from the fresh clean waters in God’s garden.