I wrote the following poem about my son, Lew, when he was nine. He and his family were in the middle of a very difficult year. He had four hospitalizations for three different life-threatening conditions that year and the next year he went to live in the Pediatric Convalescent Care Center at The Home of the Innocents in Louisville, Kentucky.
Three years later I painted this painting. I had it complete except that the yellow tabletop was empty. "Why," I asked myself, "did I leave that table empty? I've created this huge focal point and I don't have a clue what goes there..." It sat empty like that for at least three months. One day I was seated in front of it and remembered this poem:
His Gifts
I have a first-born son
Who is severely disabled
But he brings great gifts to me.
He brings to my life
Sweetness.
He looks at me.
He fully accepts me as I am.
He knows what love is
And because of him
I do, too.
He brings to my life
Focus.
He points my life in new directions.
He opens doors I hadn't seen.
I cannot heal my son
But I can look where he points.
I can go through doors he opens
And I do.
He brings to my life
A new pace.
Because of him I walk more slowly.
I walk more humanly in a fallen world.
My son brings to my life
An abundance of God's grace.
He is a means of grace to me.
He makes me more aware of my blessings.
He will not let me ignore the grief of others.
All of these gifts I would gladly exchange
For a whole son
but that is not mine to choose.
I may choose to thank God
And my son
and I do.
---Cherry Winkle Moore
1990
The three gifts represent Sweetness, Focus and Pace. The Lilies represent God's grace: a family centered in and surrounded by God's grace.
His Gifts
The painting that goes with the poem
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
POEM: Set
Was I set up by God?
Did God choose me for
special pain,
special learning?
No. It rains on the just and on the unjust.
Such things can happen
in our fallen world.
It happened to me.
Was I set back by what happened to me?
Yes, in some ways.
Financially-
years I didn't work, couldn't work.
Experience I didn't get
doing the work I wanted to be doing.
Was I set apart?
It felt that way.
Old friends left.
Placed on a safe, distant pedestal by others.
But always my pain has set me forth:
Opened doors to my life's mission:
- to comfort in the pain,
- share light in the darkness,
- to see beauty where I might have missed it
and show it to others.
Yes. I am set.
Set to love.
Set to comfort .
Set to go.
--Cherry Winkle Moore
November 20, 1996
Did God choose me for
special pain,
special learning?
No. It rains on the just and on the unjust.
Such things can happen
in our fallen world.
It happened to me.
Was I set back by what happened to me?
Yes, in some ways.
Financially-
years I didn't work, couldn't work.
Experience I didn't get
doing the work I wanted to be doing.
Was I set apart?
It felt that way.
Old friends left.
Placed on a safe, distant pedestal by others.
But always my pain has set me forth:
Opened doors to my life's mission:
- to comfort in the pain,
- share light in the darkness,
- to see beauty where I might have missed it
and show it to others.
Yes. I am set.
Set to love.
Set to comfort .
Set to go.
--Cherry Winkle Moore
November 20, 1996
POEM: The Welcoming Committee
THE WELCOMING COMMITTEE
How do they know
in heaven
to gather at the gate?
How does the word
get spread:
“Prepare yourself! She’s coming!”
Watchers on this side wonder,
“Why is she waiting?
What else needs to happen?
Is there a face she longs to see –
a voice once more to hear?”
Maybe the delay is on that other side.
The word has gone out.
The committee gathers.
“Look! She’s reaching for us!
We are almost in her sight!
Is everybody here?
Yes!”
“Welcome!”
By Cherry Winkle Moore
Jan. 1, 2009
I woke up in the new year of 2009 with this poem in my head.
When a hospice patient seems close to dying but doesn’t seem able to let go, it is not unusual for hospice staff to talk with families about what might be causing the patient to linger. Sometimes it seems that there is one last piece of business waiting to be done: a grandson to arrive home from Iraq or for someone to phone. Sometimes they seem to be waiting for an anniversary or other significant date.
There were times when the family could think of nothing or no one for whom the patient might be waiting. That’s when I had the thought expressed in this poem. Maybe the people who need to be at the gate aren’t there yet. They are busy doing whatever work they do in heaven. They haven’t gotten the message yet. They haven’t gathered.
I expressed this idea to a nurse at Hospice Brazos Valley and said, “I wonder what kind of communication device we’ll have in heaven? Beepers, maybe?”
She looked shocked, “Oh, no! Not beepers! Surely they will all be in the other place!”
There must be some other celestial device summoning our loved ones to gather when we come near. I wonder how it works.
How do they know
in heaven
to gather at the gate?
How does the word
get spread:
“Prepare yourself! She’s coming!”
Watchers on this side wonder,
“Why is she waiting?
What else needs to happen?
Is there a face she longs to see –
a voice once more to hear?”
Maybe the delay is on that other side.
The word has gone out.
The committee gathers.
“Look! She’s reaching for us!
We are almost in her sight!
Is everybody here?
Yes!”
“Welcome!”
By Cherry Winkle Moore
Jan. 1, 2009
I woke up in the new year of 2009 with this poem in my head.
When a hospice patient seems close to dying but doesn’t seem able to let go, it is not unusual for hospice staff to talk with families about what might be causing the patient to linger. Sometimes it seems that there is one last piece of business waiting to be done: a grandson to arrive home from Iraq or for someone to phone. Sometimes they seem to be waiting for an anniversary or other significant date.
There were times when the family could think of nothing or no one for whom the patient might be waiting. That’s when I had the thought expressed in this poem. Maybe the people who need to be at the gate aren’t there yet. They are busy doing whatever work they do in heaven. They haven’t gotten the message yet. They haven’t gathered.
I expressed this idea to a nurse at Hospice Brazos Valley and said, “I wonder what kind of communication device we’ll have in heaven? Beepers, maybe?”
She looked shocked, “Oh, no! Not beepers! Surely they will all be in the other place!”
There must be some other celestial device summoning our loved ones to gather when we come near. I wonder how it works.
POEM: Life Plan - 1972
LIFE PLAN:1972
“Mary Cassett had one Great Romance
in her life – her art.”
This would not have been said
about a male artist
Or if it had one could answer with
Rubens
Rembrandt
Bonnard
Chagall
Picasso
Women are supposed to be
so dedicated to their spouse
they couldn’t possibly make art, too.
Artist have always been people
who don’t let the way things are
supposed to be
get them down.
I shall have many Great Romances in
my life –
with Christ and the Church
with my beloved husband
and with the responsible use of my gifts.
__________________________
I wrote this poem in 1972 when I had been married for one year. When I was ordained to the Christian ministry in March of 2000, I placed this poem was on the back of the bulletin. Today in 2009, after thirty-seven years of marriage, it continues to be my life plan.
From this point in time I might change one word. Where I say “spouse”, I might now say “family”. “Women are supposed to be so dedicated to their family they couldn’t possibly make art, too. “ I have been – and am -- dedicated to my family, but the family I have has always encouraged me to find time for myself and for my art. Even during the ten years our son, Lew, lived at home and required total care, there was always a space dedicated to art production somewhere in the house. Often there was even time. ..and often there wasn’t.
Arturo Sandoval, a wise artist friend, gave me some great advice that I have often returned to. “When you can, do it.” He gave me this advice several years before Lew was born, when I thought I really needed it. I was Artist-In-Residence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Lexington, Kentucky. I was supposed to set up an art program and be an example of an artist at work in that place. The first several months were physically exhausting as I supervised inmates in moving tons of stuff from the future art studio to another location. I was feeling great pressure – both internal and external – to be producing art but the conditions were not at all conducive. For one thing there wasn’t a space at first. I left the prison every day brain-fried and physically exhausted. Arturo had had a similar time in his own life and knew the stress would not continue at the same level forever. He was right.
Whatever gifts God has given to you, make the use of them part of your life plan and “when you can,
do it.” When you can’t, stop but don’t quit. Be good to yourself. Let God love you and when you can, do it.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Good Friday 2009
Artists in Bryan/College Station, Texas were invited to share art at the 7:00 p.m. Good Friday service of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Historic Downtown Bryan, Texas. Rev. Sean Cox asked for art - of any media - that had to do with the themes of suffering or betrayal or any "Good Friday" theme. Here in my first blog I will attempt to upload images of the two paintings I showed at this event. That night there was a poet, a writer, another artist and me.
The paintings are 40 inch square acrylic-on-canvas paintings based on drawings I did in 1998-99 in the year following the death of my first-born son, Lew Jessen Moore. After initial showings these paintings have taken up space in the back of a closet until Father Sean called them out of their tomb. In the Good Friday setting I saw things in them I hadn't noticed before.
The first I call "Caregiver Stress." It represents life as I often felt it in the ten years Lew lived at home with his family. Lew lived to be sixteen but the last six years he lived in a pediatric nursing home in Louisville, Kentucky. Life was small and often exhausting. That's me (or my husband, Bob, or our other son, Judson) weighed down with stress. We loved Lew but his care became more and more demanding as his life became more and more challenging. Viewing this on Good Friday I saw that it could be Jesus holding you or me. THERE was Caregiver Stress but he continued to care and say "yes" to holding us and our burdens.
The second I call "Dissolving into a Heap of Tears." The original drawing was me and expressed how I often felt in the early months after Lew died in 1998. I showed the drawing to a friend who was also the mother of a child who had severe multiple disabilities and she said, "This woman is crying not just from her eyes but from every cell of her body." When I was dusting this painting off to take it to St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, my beloved Bob said, "I know it's not what you intended, but in this context this could be a woman crying at the foot of the cross." Indeed.
The paintings are 40 inch square acrylic-on-canvas paintings based on drawings I did in 1998-99 in the year following the death of my first-born son, Lew Jessen Moore. After initial showings these paintings have taken up space in the back of a closet until Father Sean called them out of their tomb. In the Good Friday setting I saw things in them I hadn't noticed before.
The first I call "Caregiver Stress." It represents life as I often felt it in the ten years Lew lived at home with his family. Lew lived to be sixteen but the last six years he lived in a pediatric nursing home in Louisville, Kentucky. Life was small and often exhausting. That's me (or my husband, Bob, or our other son, Judson) weighed down with stress. We loved Lew but his care became more and more demanding as his life became more and more challenging. Viewing this on Good Friday I saw that it could be Jesus holding you or me. THERE was Caregiver Stress but he continued to care and say "yes" to holding us and our burdens.
The second I call "Dissolving into a Heap of Tears." The original drawing was me and expressed how I often felt in the early months after Lew died in 1998. I showed the drawing to a friend who was also the mother of a child who had severe multiple disabilities and she said, "This woman is crying not just from her eyes but from every cell of her body." When I was dusting this painting off to take it to St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, my beloved Bob said, "I know it's not what you intended, but in this context this could be a woman crying at the foot of the cross." Indeed.
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