Above the Starry Canopy

(Small gouache study)

"...above the starry canopy
There must dwell a loving father.
Do you fall in worship, you millions?
World, do you know your creator?
Seek Him in the heavens;
Above the stars must he dwell."

---Friedrich Schiller
(1759 - 1805)
From 'Ode to Joy"

(These were the lyrics that Beethoven set to music in his Ninth Symphony.)

If you had seen my idea for what this painting started out as, you would be amazed at the opposite direction I traveled to come up with this idea of a night scene. There is a reason for the concept of a night scene.  I had made a mistake.  A big one.  I started out painting a still life of a vase full of  bright yellow forsythia.  For the underpainting, half of this picture was ORANGE!  The other half was a light cerulean blue.  Hard to imagine now, eh?!  The more I worked on that first idea of a still life, the more downhill things went until I disgustedly acknowledged that I'd just have to throw it out.  Sometimes our best efforts come to nothing.

But wait!!  Wait a moment!  After the mess laid on my desk for a few days, I thought of a way to redeem it.  And VOILA!  This dark night sky scene emerged.  The dark blue totally covered up the bright orange and so a night landscape of Mt. Baker in the Northwest Cascades became the focus.  

Redemption is a wonderful reality for our lives.  It is what God is in the business of doing with the messiness of our choices, failures, and shortcomings.  Hope becomes a part of our daily experience when the Creator of the Universe is working away in us, empowering us to become what we should be and were meant to be.  Making us a new creation...for His glory!

I love this little poem of Emily Dickinson's:

" 'Hope' is the thing with feathers---

That perches in the soul--

And sings the tune without the words---

And never stops---at all---

And sweetest---in the Gale---is heard---

And sore must be the storm---

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm---

I've heard it in the chillest land---

And on the strangest Sea---

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb---of Me.

Live bravely and beautifully!