I was never a big fan of abstract art.  I was more of a realist.    I preferred an image where the meaning was clear and straightforward.   I was from the Horton School of Art Interpretation.  “Say what you mean and mean what you say.”

But over the years I have come to appreciate the ambiguous.   I have begun to pay attention to how art changes the currents within my soul.  I have come to appreciate that these human creations grow out of a human experience and evoke a human experience within me.  Staring at a piece of sculpture that came out of a Master’s Studios became a moment of encounter with myself.

After making this short journey, I was ready to make another trip into the world of ambiguity and meaning.  I began to see sculpture as Marlene and I made our walks around in search of birds.  There was no human hand or experience involved in the creation of these sculptures.  They formed in the mystery of the natural world as it moved through the process of being.  These pieces of natural art are a unity of being and meaning.  They are not contrived or crafted to  some preconceived affect within the observer.  Their being stirs meaning with us and, in turn, awakens us to being.

The image above caught my eye during a recent walk.  What attracted my eye was the symmetry of the image.  In the details of life, symmetry is very common.  Shells, leaves, and animals are, to some extent, symmetrical.  But in the litter of the forest floor, symmetry generally yields to a wonderful randomness. Yet, here are two pine twigs in near perfect symmetry.

This evoked curiosity, wonder, flights of fantasy, and finally stillness of soul.  Had I had the patience, I could have spent quite some time being with that sculpture.  Its’ being was made more wonderful because it grew of the forest simply being a forest.  It had no meaning within itself.  But it was rich in being!

Meaning has its’ place in our lives, but we have been impoverished by the daily warfare of meanings.  We cluster around people who share our meanings and exclude people who challenge them.  We declare other meanings as false and defend our own to the death.  We have become poor imitations of the life I find in the meaningless scatter of the natural world.  Perhaps  we need to step outside of our meanings and allow our souls to be bathed in the being of everyday, not so grand natural wonders that surround us.  May the being they bring to our lives enrich our soul with an awareness of connection amid the ambiguity of meaning.

Bob