Who Made This?

Once I saw a foolish very young woman who had branded herself with her current boyfriend’s name on her slender back.

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In 1922, the Nazi party began training children as young as 10 years old, compulsory membership required after 1936; their purposes included the destruction of church groups, spying on Bible studies and shifting traditional values. By the age of 14, the boys, the Hitler Jungen, were killers who had become “faithful soldiers.” Some girls were trained to become mothers of the Nazi movement.

The Hitler Jungen became part of the German armored division of Waffen SS; known for their lack of compassion, the Jungen were found guilty of war crimes. SS troopers wore black uniforms; they were heartless, vicious, their behavior at times more like animals.

Sadism and cruelty were not unique to the Nazis. My father knew one American soldier who, rather than transporting Nazi captives into the appropriate holding area, routinely killed them; one day that American soldier was responsible for moving a tall blonde SS, but he soon returned with a “sickening grin” on his face, casually explaining that the SS officer had “tried to escape.”

Another American soldier, whose name my father still remembered years later, regularly sneaked out at night, crept to enemy foxholes and slipped back, grinning from slitting the throats of enemy combatants.

My father—the watchman, the Bible scholar—was realistic about the moral failure of human behavior in times of war and more.

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We mourn how cruel humans can be until the beast emerges, that quick vicious temper and with it the natural response that strikes out at other living things.

How to explain the 96 year old man who was a Nazi guard 70 years ago; this same old man raises chickens, cares for a dog, has a carefully tended garden and shows only amity to those he does not know. How has he disassociated himself from his past behavior?

In our enlightened cultures, we wonder at the treatment of Jews in WW2. In fact, a change of public behavior toward that particular sector of humanity was carefully nurtured for many years, a result of conditioning.

Given the right circumstances—political pressure—hunger—lack of accountability but mostly the deadening of the conscience and spirit, all humans must fight the urge to descend into selfish depths where no mercy dwells.

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We played a game at a church outing: men ran a gauntlet with a bandanna in their back pockets. Women used rolled up newspaper to bat the bandannas to the ground.

Of competitive nature, I participated.

Within 90 seconds I did not recognize myself. I was whacking so hard that I bent a fingernail completely back. The pain jolted.

This was 40 years ago.

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Both as art and identity, tattoos define their wearer, sometimes even governing the direction of a life.

Ministries are dedicated to removing every trace of inked tattoos that designate affiliation with violent tribes.

The wearer’s arms, faces and bodies are refreshed, cleansed, made new, like an old painting that has been covered over, reborn from a place of beauty, not sorrow.

Those who undergo these painful procedures essentially declare, “I no longer have that flag wrapped around my heart.”

Repudiating tribal loyalty is not easy.

It requires commitment and a changed heart and a struggle between the light and the dark.

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Some artists are deliberate and precise, while others look for the painting as they cover a surface again and again with different colors, shapes, lines. Some paintings are obstinate, unwilling to reveal themselves.

Others leap immediately to the surface. Some pieces reflect artistic immaturity created with little direction, while others evolve successfully and yet have no heart, no message, no eyes looking out at the observer.

I paint on wood with colored beeswax. I have spent days on one painting, only to realize I did not like it either because it had not taken shape the way I imagined or I had totally lost control of the visual.

A wax painting can be scraped to the substrate or the edges of the old painting left as a border, completely changing both its and your message.

Some of my favorite paintings have happened this way. Nothing is lost other than the first efforts which were unsuccessful anyway.

Between the artwork and its observer is the third space—a dynamic between the onlooker and the art itself.

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Before I understood coefficient of expansion (COE), I created glass art pieces that broke in the kiln because I tried to combine different COEs. One glass fuses (melts) at 96 degrees while another fuses at 90 degrees; when they cool, they cool at different rates.

Because the types of glass are incompatible, they fracture, no matter how exquisite or expensive the art glass. They’re pretty leftovers of failed projects, completed but broken.

Some fused glass breaks days, months, years after its kiln life as the molecules continue to expand and contract.

However shiny or iridized in their original state, the glass breaks.

A wise and thrifty artist might rework those broken pieces.

Making a glass mosaic can be exhilarating because you can create a completely new work of art with broken pieces—a work of art rescued from mistakes, from failures, from projects that went wrong.

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Paul discusses the war of our two natures in Romans, the old man versus the new man: So get rid of your old self, which made you live as you used to—the old self that was being destroyed by its deceitful desires. 
 Your hearts and minds must be made completely new, and you must put on the new self, which is created in God's likeness and reveals itself in the true life that is upright and holy.

The process of allowing the Holy Spirit to sanctify a life reaches over many days, many years, many choices.

 ************** Romans 2: 9-16 ************** Baby Shower

colored pencil on paper