Tickling God's Beard

Having just returned from a meditation retreat with my favorite Buddhist teacher, writer, and scholar, Stephen Batchelor, and his wife Martine, I am happy to proclaim myself, like the Batchelors, a secular Buddhist.  At the retreat, as in his book Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, Batchelor emphasized the secular voice of Siddattha Gotama. When I heard that “on the few occasions in the Canon where Gotama explicitly addressed the question of God, he is presented as an ironic atheist,” (Confession, p. 179) refusing to engage in serious discussions about cosmology, reincarnation, or Brahma/God, I immediately thought about my own upbringing as a secular Jew.

My parents, who were not active members of the local Reform synagogue, dutifully sent me to Sunday school as child. After several unmemorable classes, my teacher told us that a man lived in the stomach of a whale for 3 days and 3 nights days and survived.  I refused to believe such nonsense and asked my parents to let me drop out. They complied with my request.  The years that followed were a struggle between me and what had been set before me as God. It was impossible for me, a child of the modern scientific world, to believe that the world was created in 7 days or that all the animals could fit on Noah’s Ark. As I grew older, the anguish increased: I refused to worship a God who would ask Abraham to sacrifice his only son, who would inflict excruciating suffering on Job just to test Job’s faith in Him, who would turn Lot's wife into a pillar of salt… and so forth.  For me, the Jewish God also represented Patriarchy, which, as an early feminist, I was fighting against.

In 1995, I started attending Buddhist meditation sessions and embraced Buddhism’s core teachings of inner awakening, compassion, and the Noble Eightfold Path. I knew that I was still a cultural Jew because of my upbringing, but for years I had not been at all interested in the religious aspects of Judaism with the ever-present Adonai, God, King of the Universe. I had just walked away from all that long ago.

But then, in 2007, during a process painting class, God started coming into my painting.  ”Oh no! I don’t want to paint God, I don’t believe in God, I refuse to paint God,” I told the teacher.  I knew the rules: In process painting classs, when you feel this strongly about what you don’t want to paint, you should paint it. 

“OK, I’ll paint God. The God of my childhood. The Old Man with the fierce eyes and long beard and the outstretched arm and the mighty hand, sitting on His throne."  I kept painting and painting, hating every moment, and then, when I had finished, the teacher asked, 'Where would you be if you were in this painting?' My first reply was "Next to the trees, in the Garden of Eden." But almost immediately afterwards, I saw myself as a child sitting right in God’s lap.  And as I painted the young girl, her small tender arm reached up and tickled God’s beard as she said "Lighten up, God." I laughed and laughed. All my resistence had melted. I had let go of my aversion to the concept of God that had caused me such anguish, and with the cessation of my resistance to what I did not like, came a sense of lightness and freedom. The old anger never returned. Thus, the act of creating my painting (and my teacher's question) had transformed me from an resentful anti-theist to a happy a-theist for whom , like Gotama, the question of God is “gently ridiculed and then put aside.” (Confession, p. 179).

Thorndike Gallery east wall

Thorndike Gallery west wall

It's hard to believe that almost two months have passed since the opening of the "MATTER GONE WILD" exhibition at the Southern Oregon University's Thorndike Gallery here in Ashland.  For all those who could not visit the exhibition, I am posting two photographs of the paintings hung in the beautiful light-filled gallery. The opening reception was very gratifying, with many people attending and staying for a long time to look carefully at the paintings.

On March 20, Carol Ferguson, Biology Professor at SOU and the person who taught me about cell biology, brought her University Seminar class to view the exhibition and to contemplate and write about what they saw. I met the students and was impressed by the thoughfulness of their questions, not to mention their enthusiasm for the painting. For this blog journal, I am going to let the students speak about the painting Cell. Be sure to click on the thumbnail of Cell below to see it enlarged.

Cell"When I think of things mysterious, certain colors come to my mind, dark colors like dark blues, purples, blacks and greens. These are colors I see in this painting. The cell is a mysterious thing to me because [even though] I have learned the function of a cell and also what makes up a cell, it blows my mind how complex something that small can be." —Valerie

"The abstract cell of the piece is reminiscent of a blurry microscope [image] which comes slowly into focus. Like a child being introduced to the majesty of the cell for the first time, we slowly recognize the mitochondria, the nucleus, the endoplasmic reticulum. Dubiner's evident love of science and aptitude for physical medium allows a truly magnificent experience to unfold before our eyes." — Josh

"Dubiner uses color, especially vivid volors, in all her pieces in a way that I have never seen another artist use. In Cell however it is unique. The colors somehow make me feel like I'm looking into a dream, while a the same time giving vibrancy and life to the cell. It seems to glow from within with life energy, and it's breathtaking. The nucleus of the cell glows like it's really alive, and this is all through the use of color. A black and white diagram of a cell could never express life the way this piece does..."—Marissa

In conclusion, I often felt that my most enthusiastic audience are and will be the high school and college students of today who have taken biology class in school. They know what the paintings refer to and are excited to see a unique interpretation of something already familiar to them. Just as the image of earthrise from the moon was the icon of the second half of the 20th century, so I believe the cell will be the iconic image of the first half of the 21st century. I cannot imagine what the image for the second half will be, but I hope it will emerge be another aspect of our beautiful living Earth.