This week I turn 73 years old. Truth be told, I feel like I’ve aged a decade in the last year. My eyesight and hearing are worse, my skin is even more thin and sensitive to flying insects and poisonous plants, and I am moving about in farmland and elsewhere with less speed and more care. In her essay, “Building the House,” from her book of essays, Upstream, Mary Oliver refers to this phase of personal aging as “the beginning of descent.” That is the perfect description for how I feel about this birthday.
I was going to boo-hoo my way through the week by posting sad poems and journal excerpts, but then I saw the above painting which sits outside my small poetry room. “I wonder how the late artist, Ann St. John Hawley, coped with the beginning of her descent,” I thought.
I own 14 paintings by Ann St. John Hawley and the one directly above is the first painting I purchased in March 1996 — 30 years ago. Ann was 75, just two years older than me when she painted it. She first started to paint 20 years earlier when she was 55 years old.
Three years later in October 1999, I purchased the painting directly above. Shortly after, I received a hand-written note from Ann: Dear Sharon, No words can express the happiness I feel in knowing that you wish to live with my paintings. Thank you for this honor. Sincerely, Ann. Two years later, In December 2001, I purchased the painting below:
After buying this painting, Ann mailed me another short note: Please come to see me if you ever come to Taos. We’ll have coffee or tea and a little visit. I look forward to this. Sincerely, Ann.
Five years later and several Hawley-painting-purchases later, I would visit Ann in her studio where we would have tea and a wonderful conversation that I recorded. Here’s one excerpt, other excerpts will be published here this week.
SHARON: I often have trouble hearing my own voice, even when I’m writing.
SAINT: Well, who doesn’t? What do we expect of ourselves? We aren’t totally in touch with God all the time, although we’re with him all the time. Sometimes we get closer than at other times. Just pray.
SHARON: How do you pray?
SAINT: I don’t know how to pray except to live my life as beautifully as I can.
9 responses to “My Inspiring Saint”
My late beloved, Gwendolyn, was with me when I purchased my first Ann St. John Hawley painting from the New Directions Gallery in Taos. We had driven there from Ghost Ranch (about 75 miles) where we were in the middle of a month-long Natalie Goldberg writing retreat (ostensibly a silent retreat, but . . . ). I was immediately taken by “Female Nude with Blue Arm” and couldn’t articulate why. Gwendolyn said, “A lot of your writing sounds like that painting. You should buy it.”
I guess that explains the first few paintings I purchased by Hawley. Later purchases would , in the aggregate, tell a different story.
By the way, my beloved, Charlotte, helped finance that March 1996 Writing Retreat, and 30 years later, I am still so very grateful.
“The Body in Mysterious Ceremony,” inspired something powerful in me when I first saw it (the gallery owner sent me a photograph; I never saw it in person before buying it), and still does. It hangs in my living room. When I first hung it there I asked Charlotte if it was “inappropriate” to hang such images in my living room. She replied, “Not in your living room.”❤️
Hi, I cannot imagine that was my response then. Gosh I apologize. Now I would say, “hang it anywhere that feels right to you.” However I am glad that you went to the gallery while on the writing retreat. You sure got a big plus for your soul.
Here is a guideline from Cynthia Bourgeault about Conscious Aging. “Honestly accept the journey into physical diminishment as the new learning curve in your life and embrace it with curiosity and beginner’s mind.” What a challenge! I am still working on that.
No, Charlotte, I wasn’t the least bit offended by your response 30 years ago. On the contrary, I was affirmed! It was like you blessed me for precisely who I was . . . and still am!❤️❤️🥰
Also, Charlotte — “a new learning curve” . . . that’s certainly a more positive way of looking at this time in my life with curiosity and beginner’s mind. Is “Conscious Aging” by Bourgeault a book? On Amazon, there are at least a dozen books with “conscious aging” in the title. Must be an epidemic.
Here is the full quote about “the beginning of descent” from the Oliver essay mentioned in the first paragraph of this post:
“There is something you can tell people over and over, and with feeling and eloquence, and still never say it well enough for it to be more than news from abroad
— people have no readiness for it, no empathy. It is the news of personal aging — of climbing, and knowing it, to some unrepeatable pitch and coming forth on the other side, which is pleasant still but which is, unarguably, different — which is the beginning of descent. It is the news that no one is singular, that no argument will change the course, that one’s time is more gone than not, and what is left waits to be spent gracefully and attentively, if not quite so actively.”
ALERT ‼️
I accidentally hit the “publish now” button after working on tomorrow’s post. If you opened the notification email, you probably got the “Oops” message or “Sharon will NEVER understand technology,” message, etc. I rescheduled the post to be published tomorrow morning.😬 Thank you for your forbearance.
Thank you for another meaningfully reflective piece, and for introducing me/us to some fascinating paintings. Pensive women all, who seem rather bent-in on themselves. Perhaps that’s the story of many (all?) of us in our later years, poised much of the time in a reflective stance, pondering, often in our aloneness, who we have been, who we now are, who we are still becoming. Will we ever find the answers to these questions, or is Rilke’s simply “living the questions” what it’s all about?
Gosh, Carol, I’ll never look at those paintings the same way again. Thank you for returning the meaningful reflection.🙏❤️