Painting Revelation Blog

Napa Valley

The past three weeks I’ve been struggling with pneumonia, first in an airplane, then a week on the 41st floor of a hotel in New Orleans, finally back home in bed. Many lessons have come to mind as I’ve found myself unable to DO but rather just have to BE. I’ve uncovered some false messages from my childhood that were ingrained deep in my child soul. I’m getting a close up look at how important breath / pneuma / spirit is for our very existence. I’m on the mend.

Today I was looking through a file in my desk labeled prayer. It’s a ragtag assortment. I found a note scribbled on a 3” square of paper and thought it is still worth pondering. This is the first verse of Genesis:

In the beginning     TIME
God                     PERSONALITY
created                   ENERGY
the heavens             SPACE
and the earth         MATTER

detail from Come and Eat by Debby Topliff

When Painting Revelation was first released we threw a viewing party in our little town of Saugatuck. A few days later I ran into one of our guests, a poet/painter friend who had been widowed for many years. After exchanging the regular friendly words, she looked me hard in the face and said, “I should tell you sometime the story of what happened to me because of your DVD.”

Tell me now, I wanted to say, but waited.

“I went home after the party and dug out my Bible. I wanted to see what it said.” She smiled a little, “I don’t read it very often.”

I knew she sometimes went to the Catholic Church.

“When I opened it up to look for the book of Revelation, I found a letter—from my husband—from 1972.” Her eyes filled with tears. “It was a special letter, a very important letter. Precious to me.”

May we all find love letters when we open the Bible.

Two of my favorite readers

This past weekend our two sons and oldest grandson came for a visit at our home near Lake Michigan, one flying in from the Pacific, the other two from the Atlantic. We sat four hours in midwestern rain to watch the University of Michigan Wolverines get swamped by the Nitney Lions. Joy comes in many forms and often requires hard work and endurance. Sometimes you have to sit still and keep turning the pages to find what you’re looking for.

The November issue of American Library Association’s Booklist magazine will be on religion and spirituality. I don’t know how or why, but they chose my DVD, Painting Revelation, as one of the Top Ten Religion Videos of the year! I think it’s okay to toot my own horn since I’ve been playing quietly in obscurity for quite a long time. Perhaps this blip on the radar screen will bump my work into consciousness long enough so I can make a second video from my painting of the Book of Acts. But most important, I hope people will watch Painting Revelation and see the fearful yet full-of-hope message of the last book of the Bible. It’s not too late to strengthen your faith and build an everlasting raft of peace that will carry you safely through any storm.