and suspense writers like P. D. James or John LeCarré. At the time, I was somewhat puzzled by my deep hunger to read. Now, I see it in the same light as Sarah’s time of recovery with favorite films. Creative receiving, like creative self-giving, is part of the healing journey.
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01.
Rekindling Hope
There are a great many obstacles in life. Illness is only one of them. Sometimes our healing is emotional. Sometimes we are battered by stress. We experience a kind of mental exhaustion, a sense that we can’t go another step. For all these, artistic expression may provide a kind of rest and refreshment, a rekindling of hope, a way of looking forward to a newer, better time. How does faith enter into the process? One way to deal with any challenge, including illness, is to choose the best of what is set before us: the most satisfying and enjoyable aspects of life. To choose life, as we read in Deuteronomy. “I have set before you life and death; blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days” (Deut. 30:19–20, NRSVUEScripture quotations marked (NRSVUE) are taken from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition, copyright © 1989, 2021 The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.). Yes, the Bible provides us with plenty of nourishment for the ailing body and soul. But how does this work out in practice, within the memory of people living today?
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02.
Transcending Illness: Pierre-Auguste Renoir
One good example of art as a focus for coping with illness is in the life of the painter Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). Many of us know Renoir’s familiar paintings of landscapes and seasides. But how many of us know the deep meaning he felt in his art? Those who were close to this remarkable painter were moved by the way his love of beauty and the created world sustained him when illness struck.
Renoir contracted rheumatoid arthritis in 1898. He was fifty-seven and had been painting all his life. His hands became distorted. His joints were often
inflamed, and the inflammation damaged both joints and extremities. The medical knowledge of the time was far less than it is today, and though he took action as well as he knew how, moving to a warmer climate in France, still the disease continued to weaken him.
But Renoir dealt with illness by continuing to work. He would not let go of the art that expressed for him the fullness of life. Even as he lost the use of his body he continued to paint, expressing his joy in the created world. The great painter wrote in his notebook:
I believe I am nearer to God by being humble before this splendor (nature); by accepting the role I have been given to play in life; by honoring this majesty without self-interest, and above all, without asking for anything, being confident that He who has created everything has forgotten nothing.Jean Renoir, Renoir, My Father, Randolph and Dorothy Weaver, trans. (New York: New York Review Book, 1962), 226.
Remembering Renoir in his later years, his son Jean wrote this in his memoir, Renoir, My Father:
His hands were terribly deformed. His rheumatism had made the joints stiff and caused the thumbs to turn inward towards the palms, and the fingers to bend toward the wrists. Visitors who were unprepared for this could not take their eyes off his deformity. Though they did not dare to mention it, their reaction would be expressed by some such phrase as “It isn’t possible! With hands like that, how can he paint those pictures? There’s some mystery somewhere.” The “mystery” was Renoir himself.Renoir, 25.
Jean Renoir says further that his amazing father was “extremely shy about his feelings and never liked to give any sign of the emotion that overpowered him when he looked at flowers, women or clouds.”Renoir.
Renoir did not lose his joy or his love of the beautiful. To the last he was able to grasp the brush, and pay homage to his Creator. He believed there was enough unpleasantness in life. The painter should not add to people’s burdens, but should heighten their joy. Over his lifetime he produced six thousand works of art, and the governing motif is expression of beauty, whether in landscapes, or in ordinary domestic scenes, in the appeal of the feminine, the wonder of the human body.
Renoir was born to a working class family in Limoges, France. His gift of drawing and sketching became obvious while he was still a child, and his father apprenticed him to a porcelain maker, where, among other duties, young Renoir painted on porcelain surfaces. Later, after moving with his family to Paris, he received formal training and in his early twenties was already showing his work.
In his early life Renoir was caught up in the movement known as Impressionism. He was friends with many other impressionist painters, Claude Monet among them. But later Renoir came to feel that Impressionism was no longer important to him. He returned to traditional values in painting. He valued the art of the past. Yet Renoir was no theorist, and discouraged others from pursuing theories. He was concerned that, through an over reliance on theories, the great painting of the past might be cast aside.
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03.
Beauty Remains, but Pain Passes
On his blog, Paulo Coelho wrote a reflection, “Matisse and Renoir Meet.”
“As a young man,” Coelho said, “the painter Henri Matisse used to pay a weekly visit to the great Renoir in his studio. When Renoir was afflicted by arthritis, Matisse began to visit him daily, taking him food, brushes, paints, but always trying to persuade the master that he was working too hard and needed to rest a little.
“One day, noticing that each brushstroke made Renoir cry out with pain, Matisse could contain himself no longer: ‘Master, you have already created a vast and important body of work, why continue torturing yourself in this way?’
“ ‘Very simple,’ Renoir replied. ‘Beauty remains, but pain passes’ ”http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2010/11/21/matisse-and-renoir-meet/ (accessed 10 January 2023).
Jean Renoir tells of a moment late in his father’s life when a doctor tried to encourage him to walk. Discovering how much effort it took, Renoir made a firm choice. “If I have to choose between walking and painting, I’d much rather paint.”
According to Jean Renoir, his father
“sat down and never got up again.” From the moment he made this important decision, Renoir’s life was a display of fireworks to the end. Although his palette became more and more austere, the most dazzling colors, the most daring contrasts issued from it. It was as if all Renoir’s love of the beauty of this life, which he could no longer enjoy physically, had gushed out of his whole, tortured being. He was radiant, in the true sense of the word, by which I meant that we felt there were rays emanating from his brush, as it caressed the canvas. He was freed from all theories, from all fears.Renoir, 421.
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04.
The Grace to Resist Self-Pity
When I reflect on the work of Renoir, afflicted by rheumatoid arthritis, I think about the value of self-expression, making the gift of one’s own joyful spirit to others, as a way of transcending self-pity and pain. Renoir expressed his choice in terms of beauty. Perhaps that is the best philosophical language. Perhaps it was the only philosophical language he knew in which to frame his personal commitment to continue painting.
I feel a connection with Renoir. Like that remarkable artist, I myself contracted rheumatoid arthritis in my late fifties. I remember the day, not the date, when I was suddenly enclosed in an envelope of pain. My hands, wrists, ankles and feet (and probably other joints) were engulfed by it. I had no idea what was happening, but was able to telephone the doctor. I managed to get from my studio office to my car, and drive (in spite of discomfort) to the doctor’s office. The doctor knew it was arthritis, though he was unable to say what kind. A shot of cortisone enabled me to get through the first attack.
Eventually, through a series of such attacks, and under the care of a rheumatologist, I learned what my illness was, and how I might be treated for it. Instinctively, through the ensuing years, I have continued to pursue the work I love (writing and speaking) and my own expression of Christian faith.
For me, work becomes a creative solution to the obstacle of illness. Physically, I am hemmed in. But spiritually, a depth remains within such confines. Moreover that depth is enhanced, becomes deeper, to the extent that I practice the creative life.
Rheumatoid arthritis has been a challenge. However, I am grateful now to have good, ongoing medical care, and the freedom to continue my work as a writer, editor and speaker.
At the end of this article is a poem I wrote to describe my illness and how it feels. It is my own discipline of creative self-giving and creative receiving on the healing journey. I also wanted to suggest that transcending illness is not just a matter of wanting, or wishing, but instead a response to God’s grace.
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05.
Giving and Receiving: The Healing Journey of Artistic Expression.
In Carmel, Indiana, a fourteen-year-old musician named Kate Gittelson tried to explain the way she felt about the harp. One of the young performers on “From the Top,” she was asked by radio host Christopher O’Reilly to describe her relationship to music.
For her, the harp is a way of caring. She goes as a volunteer to assisted living communities, homes for the elderly and disabled, and lets the music flow.
Does the blessing of this beautiful gesture flow back onto her? Absolutely.
“For me, the harp is a refuge,” she explained.
When I heard the word “refuge” I began to take notice. It seemed that in this one fragment of reflection Kate Gittelson had offered me a clue to all the questions I was grappling with: a clue to the healing power of art.
As I heard her play the harp strings I felt in touch with some timeless wisdom. Young David playing to quiet the madness of Saul. The psalmist inviting us to praise God with music and song.
The healing journey of art, of creative expression, is wide and deep. Jesus gives us a simple but clear understanding of this, not only by what he teaches but also by the way he lives. In his teaching he outlines principles for living, both blessings and woes. In his living and dying he pours himself out for us and for the world. Yet there are times when Jesus is also receiving. He retreats from the crowd to soak up the blessings of silence and solitude. He spends time in close friendships, sharing meals, enjoying conversation and the simple beauty of presence. “What you have received, freely give,”Matthew 10:8, paraphrase. he tells his closest friends. It is a fine summation.
The artist or performer takes refuge in the beauty of God’s world while pouring beauty out as a free gift to others. For the one who receives the beauty of creative expression, the beauty of created things shines bright and clear. The one who gives, receives. The one who receives, gives. This truth shapes all the arts, including not only music, painting and storytelling, but also such simple and demanding arts as meal preparation, table setting, choosing and arranging fruit or vegetables, flower arranging, gardening and pruning, dozens of familiar tasks. All these are forms of creative and spiritual expression. And Jesus shows us how even in sorrow or need—by the way we respond to life challenges—we continue to receive and pour out the beauty of God’s love.
And what about my daughter Sarah in New Orleans? How did her reading and film viewing work as remedies in her healing journey? By the time we saw her in New Orleans, she seemed completely recovered. She had planned a pizza party for our arrival. Hospitality is one of the ways that Sarah expresses herself creatively, and I was bound to suspect that the simple delight of setting the table, putting out her best-looking glasses, chilled bottles of coke and ale, having some good New Orleans music playing with a foot tapping beat, all these things suggested the pleasure of living deeply and well. One special surprise was that we were all together, even our daughter Lucy who lives in Shreveport but had business in New Orleans that day. Our grandchildren were still in Shreveport but they were much on our minds and part of our conversation. There were other sounds of celebration: doorbells ringing, our son Henry and his wife Larisa arriving, affectionate hugs and hellos, even a sleepy Labrador rousing himself to greet the new arrivals. In all this I saw and felt the intimate connection of joy and sorrow, hunger and fulfillment. Not a word was said about theology or philosophy. Instead, our conversation turned on simple practical things, like Sarah’s birthday, which we would celebrate the following day. Everyone was delighted that Bill, my husband, had made not one but two recent drives to New Orleans, a four-hour journey that sometimes stretches to five when we have severe rain and lightning storms. It was good to hear what Troy had been reading, his plans about writing. Henry and Larisa were talking about the end of the academic year and their plans for summer travel. In all this I could see the beauty of God’s design, constantly renewed and renewing, flooding the world with healing insight and transformation.
I asked Sarah how she was feeling. “Oh, I’m fine,” she said, her voice bright and strong. It seemed she had almost forgotten her sickness of some days before. When we gave her a DVD of The King’s Speech, she was surprised, glad that we had remembered the film’s importance to her. She talked cheerfully on about her painting class, her students, how things were going. I thought about Renoir. Over the few days we were together I felt the joy and delight of her creativity. I kept thinking of Sarah’s paintings, the ones I love and the ones she has yet to paint. I did not focus on loss, sadness, or physical decline. Instead, I held on to the grace of God, dwelling in the beauty of the present moment and God’s promise of an unlimited future. I wanted that mind to be in me which was also in Christ Jesus. I thought about the gifts and talents God has given us. I thanked God for all of it. I thought about the beauty of God’s world.
The pain is unpredictable.
It comes in a flash,
Without warning
Pouring it seems like quicksilver
From some unknown sky-place
Into my brain.
It is a shooting pain
Sharp as an ice cream headache
And it roots me to the spot.
It makes me say,
On the middle step,
When I am dressed for the occasion
And expected somewhere,
“Bill, if you don’t mind,
You go ahead without me.
They’ll be waiting for you.
Phone me when you get there.
I’ll just rest here,
Quietly, in the dark.”
It makes you want to
draw the blinds
Against the harsh
Light of things
And, to be completely frank,
It makes you question
The way God has
Arranged things
Things like
Life and death.
Sickness and health
And rheumatoid arthritis.
But in an instant,
Quick as the pain itself
You remember Eden
Green and glowing
And just beyond it
Paradise
With every holy creature
Joyful and at peace.
That is what you may call
(If you like to give
Names to things)
A spirituality of rheumatoid arthritis.
It is the human spirit
Fueled by grace
And rising up joyfully
From the chair
To say,
Oh yes, I did have a headache,
I was a bit unwell today
But I am well
In the grace of God
Well enough to withstand
Whatever the universe
Is dishing up today
And well enough to ask
Hard questions
Not to mention
Well enough to hold my
Bible in my lap
Until the day of Resurrection.
Emile Griffin
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06.
Reflection Questions
- What is the connection between art and healing?
- Why is it so easy to observe, to describe the healing influence of art, but so often hard to pin the meaning down?
- Sometimes our healing is a kind of receiving. is it better to receive, or to give? is art just a form of enjoyment, or is it a way of getting better? or both?
- What about the experience and teaching of Jesus? what can we learn from him?
- The author deals at length with rheumatoid arthritis, an ailment she tries to transcend through her faith in God, and by various other stratagems. She also writes about artists who focused on beauty rather than pain. What can we learn from this? Does a positive attitude help us to live better? can we link stories of healing and recovery to the mystery of suffering, and the experience of Jesus Christ?
- Consider practicing some creative receiving of your own—in poetry, in painting, in dance or even in taking in beauty in books or movies. Interact with your experience by journaling. how did you see God’s actions through art as healing?
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07.
Prayer
Lord, please make me grateful for good health, and grateful, even when I am sick, for the gifts, talents and energy that remain. Help me to enjoy creative expression in all its forms, to concentrate on recovery and to live with vitality within your boundaries.