FIRST STEPS | PART 2
Back to visio divina. Van Gogh’s painting The First Steps uncovered and affirmed several trajectories of our life that were already in motion. The painting gave us language, or rather the lasting ingrained imagery, to hang our current life’s trajectory. I would like to highlight a few of our ongoing aspirations.
First, it is Springtime. The overall backdrop of pastel green with a dab of orange-colored flowers in the middle of the painting and white blossoming flowers on the tree all signify it is springtime. It is also warm enough to hang white laundry as if to highlight that the long harsh winter is gone. Rainer Maria Rilke pens, “It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”
The centerpiece of the painting is the family—the little girl who is about to take her “first step,” mom gently holding and directing her daughter into the father’s open and ready arms, and then the father who, having dropped his shovel and work, is kneeling to match the girl’s eye level, waiting for his daughter to come to him, with arms wide open. God the Father is more interested in welcoming us to come to Him than the work. For God, receiving God’s children is the work. It is not difficult to imagine that they probably all are smiling and blossoming like springtime and thrilled since this is a “first step” for everyone. Our bumbling comings to God never get old for God and God treats it as a “first step” every single time.
I see myself in the girl’s ready posture, ready to take steps, guided by the gentle mother-like Holy Spirit, taking steps to the heavenly Father who is always calling my name. I see myself as a “mother” who wants to emulate the gentle guiding and helping people to go to the Father without guilt and shame and to receive God’s unconditional love and grace. I also see myself as a “father” who is eager to provide hospitable and courageous space for people to come to and experience the Father’s unpossessive love.
The fenced-in space affirms our desire to provide safe and hospitable space for people, especially younger people who have become weary and tired from external life-sucking requirements and expectations. We envision the space to be a space where we can doubt, question, get angry at the world, and even get angry at God. God can handle all that and more. We envision the space to dream to be fully human, discover our true authentic selves, and desire God’s goodness to be experienced by all. God is generous, loving, and full of grace, all the time, nothing more or less. If God is all that, why do human structures and systems, especially religious systems, make coming to God conditional or employ quid pro quo principles? Worse still, why do we make this world to be such inhospitable space to kill and destroy and lie?
The house in the background is humble, quaint, and blends seamlessly with nature. When we pulverize the nature around us when nature has so much to teach us, we rob ourselves of one of the greatest teachers of life. Nature obeys God in ways we will never understand but if we observe long enough, we can perhaps learn. God as Love grants existential meaning to all creation and in return, nature loves back by obeying. I want to be invited into the house and witness the family in action, simply living life, no-frills, in nature.
Grace and I are planning to be in Korea this “spring” from the beginning of April until early June. The centerpiece of our time in Korea is to run and host a kind of “healing stay” like a retreat house, essentially emulating what we see in this painting. We are opening our place for weary souls to find rest and their God-given purpose. We are renting a single-story countryside house, one hour outside of Seoul (in Yang Pyeong if you want to know), where the stream flows in front, with the backdrop of the pastel green everywhere dotted with brightly bursting spring flowers. This was the vision God has given us last year and we are taking a first step of faith in action.