I don't remember where or
when I found the bone/skeleton which inspired this assemblage
nor do I know what creature once animated it. But its
extraordinary ressemblance to a crucifixion immediately
struck me. I inserted a thin strip of wood behind the
'crucified figure' but otherwise altered nothing.
A small palette knife painting I did a long time ago provided
a Middle Eastern kind of landscape and two small stones
plus a suitably deep frame completed the scene.
Even though I was brought
up Catholic I have never felt I fully belonged in
that tradition - there are too many things I question
and disagree with, and that goes for all religions. As
I try and usually fail to explain whenever the subject
of faith comes up, I do believe in God but I don't believe
that God is a member of any human religion.
The concepts
we are taught, whatever culture we come from, are
merely the opinions, the points of view of human
beings, shaped and solidified by repetition over thousands
of years. But faith itself is something else. It has
an independent existence which is not necessarily the
result of any kind of indoctrination. Some people are
believers because they've never questioned their tradition,
some because they've been converted to or have freely
chosen a particular tradition. But some simply 'have faith'
- it is part of them, like their name or the colour of
their eyes. It's not a crutch, not a consolation for
all the suffering life doles out, and not an explanation.
Inexplicably and illogically, it just is. That's my position.
That a crucifixion should
be the main symbol of a creed which, before becoming
institutionalised as a religion, was based on love -
love of God and of our fellow humans - seems to me very
strange. Couldn't they have made a logo for love instead
of suffering? Suffering is always unjust, unfair, tragic
- whoever it afflicts and for whatever reason
it happens. Jesus on the cross did not deserve to suffer.
No one deserves to suffer.
On this Good Friday I send
love to all who suffer, whoever and wherever
they may be, and may the God they believe in, or do not
believe in, bring them a resurrection.
