10th May Being given your cards: “It would be in vein for you to seek beauty when you are in this state”.

 10th May Being given your cards: “It would be in vein for you to seek beauty when you are in this state”. (Plotinus ‘Ennead’ V.8.2)

After a frustrating, and none too illuminating telephone conversation with the Hospital –  which included the heart-stopping phrase: “Sorry we don’t have a record of you” – Sarah, wisely, distracted me by pointing me to the cards I had received on the sideboard. 

I had, of course, read them and been touched by the sentiments they expressed. However, rather like someone presented with an icon and ignoring the image only to fixate on the theology, I had not really noticed the pictures.

Depicted on the cards were some common pictorial tropes connected to sickness and well-being. They covered a myriad of motifs from the clichéd to the symbolically disturbing… and in one case frankly bizarre!

There was a preponderance of sun-flowers for instance. I have always been ambiguous when it comes to sun-flowers; at one moment celebrating the joyful hue, and the next unable to divorce them from the melancholia of Van Gough.  Hence, I was somewhat baffled by their constant appearance on ‘Get Well Soon’ cards. I later discovered that they are symbols of longevity and hope; so, very appropriate!

Now to the disturbing. For someone about to embark on a battle with cancer and chemotherapy, I have to wonder what is going on with cards showing an empty armchair and dragonflies (creatures that famously only live for 24-hours!). I hope and pray that, like Mark Twain, reports of my demise are ‘greatly exaggerated’.

Next, to the frankly bizarre: the sun with a sinister smile mounting a cloud that is weeping in an image that is some nightmarish juxtaposition of a prison shower scene. What on earth does that mean!?

Thankfully, there is also another category of card not yet mentioned that says something quite profound despite the surreal nature of the subject matter. The ‘card’ was produced on a second-hand piece of paper. It featured what looks like the unholy progeny of a giraffe and dinosaur and is bright blue. The legend reads: “Get Well Soon To Farther robert love Mary” (sic). This, along with another from the same artist, and one from Silas (green and blue scribble on card), brought me immeasurable joy, and got me re-thinking about the impact of art, beauty and meaning. 

In the eyes of the Stoics, concerned as they were with good proportions, these last three cards should not move me to tears, but they did. They are objects of beauty, but not within that Stoic philosophy, and yet I instinctively saw more than the simple execution of an image.

Perhaps here is what Plotinus calls Intelligible beauty. 

This concept surrounds me in my church, which is a place of such proportions it would move the most Stoic heart, but more significantly we have a sculpture by Eric Gill. Gill is the absolute personification of my late mother’s favourite saying, “Do as I say, not as I do”. 

What Gill said, after Plotinus and Aquinas, was: “The beauty of God is the cause of the being of all that is.” How ‘all’ is understood raises some interesting questions, but I imagine some things are excluded. After all, Plotinus disses pigs because of their connection to mud and dirt, but, thankfully (for our Children’s Church), makes no mention (surprise surprise) of dinosaurs!

During this time of looking for the divine amidst uncertainty, the joy of these handmade cards – with the wax of the crayon still crumbling and the felt-tip still bleeding through the paper –is that they reveal something Other. 

Picasso once said: “Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things”. These simple artistic offerings point to an unasked for (unmerited?) love and care, thus, they point to the divine, and the prospect of becoming something more than a patient. Thank you everyone who has written, and thank you Mary and Silas.