Artful Advent 2: Rooting Ourselves in Peace
Peace is connection, it is rooting ourselves in something that holds us firm
This four-week Advent series explores how parents of little children can nourish themselves in a busy season by looking at their lives like art.
Hello friend,
The second week of Advent invites us to reflect on peace. What is peace to the parent of a small child? It is not a static, rigid calm. It is not unshakeable tranquility in the face of surprise spit ups and midnight wake-ups.
Peace is connection.
Peace is rooting ourselves in something deeper that holds us firm as we do our work, as tempers flare and bodily fluids flow and childcare falls through and injustice knocks at our neighbor’s door.
How do we root ourselves in this well of courage and hope?
Personally, I’ve been getting still.
In museum education, there’s a concept called slow looking, which is just what it sounds like. You take your sweet time looking at an artwork (rather than the eight seconds people spend on average looking at art on display). Here, you ease into an artwork.
“It's about you and the artwork, allowing yourself time to make your own discoveries and form a more personal connection with it.”
- Tate's A Guide to Slow Looking
Magical things can happen when you give yourself a moment to just look deeply at something.
I once spent an hour with Vermeer’s A Maid Asleep in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I put my nose in the painting, I gazed at it from the far end of the gallery, I sat on the bench in front of it. Time stood still, the other visitors disappeared, and I entered this woman’s world. The painting came alive through our time together and we fellowshipped.
Slow looking is a practice that you can apply to your daily life. Just look closely at what’s around you: your child asleep in bed (the pinnacle of child gazing), the view from your pillow when you first open your eyes in the morning, the messiest room in your home, clouds floating across the sky, the fruit display at the grocery store.
Take a moment and let it sink in.
You don’t actually have to do anything. Just take a beat to look at your daily life, giving it a little space to show you something new.
This process is about surrendering control of our experience and opening ourselves to an encounter with something outside of us. Richard Rohr describes this open stance as beholding, which “happens when we stop trying to ‘hold’ and allow ourselves to ‘be held’ by the other.”
Behold, be held.
By giving our full attention to what is in front of us, we encounter an aliveness that is not visible when we race through the paintings in a museum or the thoughts in our head. It is an anchor to keep us tethered to the present. It doesn’t cancel out discomfort and pain, but it doesn’t let discomfort and pain have the only word.
When we look closely at the sunlight hitting a wall, snowflakes dancing in the wind, the texture of a tablecloth, our kid’s face and, yes, even a painting, we are met there.
This week, I invite you to practice some slow looking in your daily life.
I had an experience last month that made me wonder about the role of our bodies in slow looking.
It was in Death Is Elsewhere, a video installation by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, filmed in the midnight sun of an Icelandic summer solstice. I entered a dark room filled with a circle of seven large screens, like a glowing Stonehenge. Inside the circle, each screen showed a view of a lush Icelandic landscape, immersing me in a panorama. Two couples slowly made their way around the circle on opposite sides, singing a simple song and strumming guitars. They'd walk off the edge of one screen and appear a moment later on the next.
Without thinking, I started walking around the circle with one of the couples. Around and around we went, the man strumming, the woman singing and looking around, sometimes picking grass from the ground.
“Death is elsewhere,” they sang, over and over.
I walked that circle for half an hour, and I was overwhelmed by a sense of wonder and connectedness. Death is elsewhere. It felt like a kinetic prayer for peace. I was looking closely at the details of the fields and the musicians, but I was also engaging my whole body to enter the moment.
Our work as parents is deeply embodied and circular. We use our bodies to care for our children's bodies. And that work is filled with repetition: performing the same bedtime routine night after night, endless trips to the diaper changing table, walking in literal circles as we try to calm a crying baby.
What could be found by entering fully into these repetitions? By paying attention to, and with, our whole bodies?
Peace can be found in stillness, by soaking into the moment and being held.
But peace can also be found in motion, by attuning ourselves to the sensations of our bodies engaging in care.
As parents, tapping into peace can sometimes look like walking circles in the land of the midnight sun and declaring that death is elsewhere.
I want to thank those of you who wrote me after the first Advent email to share your stories of paying attention to the light around you. You adapted the practice to do with your children, you made art, you looked for the light as you dealt with really hard things. Wherever you are this December, you’re not the only one feeling that way. Take courage.
Let me know if you try this practice! The idea of full-bodied slow looking is new to me, so I'd be curious to hear your experience with it. Just hit reply to this email.
You can follow along on Instagram at @marinagrosshoy or by using the hashtag #LookingAtLifeLikeArt.
And friend, if peace feels far away, it is not because you are doing anything wrong. You are human. You are worthy of gentleness and connection. Hold on tight.
May moments of stillness and attention root you ever deeper into a sustaining peace.
Wishing you peace,
