This painting is described as one of lament. It portrays the extreme loneliness and sadness of van Gogh and can speak to the loneliness, loss, and sadness of our days. It is a frozen moment on a path that leads to nowhere with a black flock hovering overhead. The scene, the bright colored plants and the varied blue sky seem both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. This work seems to capture that strange moment when you realize life will never be the same.

This scene might call up feelings you have been pushing down and pushing aside. It might call your heart to consider any familiar paths that have recently become paths to nowhere; any plans and expectations that have been denied; losses of the days behind and days ahead. Have you let yourself feel the sadness, the disorientation of all that has been lost in these last weeks? Have you?

We will begin again. We will find our way to new paths through new fields with birds of many colors flying overhead but now is not then. This instead can be a time to know despair, to weep and cry out, to pray our humble goodbyes. It can be a time for lament before we move on too quickly.

In faith,
Sandy