There used to be a time when art spoke clearly with one language. The distillation of the collective unconscious was depicted in an open visual vocabulary with some paintings reading clearly from left to right.
Sometimes prayers are spoken in this deeper language still, sometimes the Stag wanders the forest of dreams and hope can be seen in his eyes...
The Stag:
The Stag (Deer) In Christian art the stag has come to typify piety and religious aspiration and longing. The Stag symbolizes solitude, prayer and purity.
"As a Deer longs for running streams, so my souls longs for you O God. 17 My soul thirsts for the living God" (Psalm 42)
According to Pliny the reason why the stag symbolizes Christ is from the superstition that it draws serpents by its breath from their holes, and then tramples them underfoot.
The stag is a symbol for Christ, Who tramples and destroys the Devil. Early bestiaries describe the stag as a relentless enemy of snakes. The stag was believed to pursue snakes into their holes or rock crevices, flushing them out by flooding the hole with the breath or water from its mouth, and devouring them.
Because the snake is a symbol of Satan, the stag's war against them made the stag a symbol of Christ and the Catholic in his battle against the evil one. The water used to flush out snakes became symbolic of Christ's wisdom and purity, the Gospel, and the water that flowed from His pierced Side on the Cross.
1 Peter 2:4-6
The Living Stone and a Chosen People
4 As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house[a] to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For in Scripture it says:“See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame.”[b]Footnotes:
- 1 Peter 2:5 Or into a temple of the Spirit
- 1 Peter 2:6 Isaiah 28:16
Colossians 2:16-23
Freedom From Human Rules
16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. 18 Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. 19 They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.20 Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: 21 “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? 22 These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. 23 Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
think about being a living stone being built along with other living stones into the spiritual house of Christ, a growing body connected with ligaments & sinews....
and then read from this blog about the cube:
The Book of Revelation ends with a fascinating image: It is a a "new heaven and a new earth," reborn after the final judgement and the expulsion of sin.
"And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."
One of the actors in this final set piece, one of seven angels who had held seven bowls which poured out seven plagues in the destruction of the "first earth," emerges from the scene, takes the prophet to the top of a mountain, and gives him a preview of the coming kingdom--the New Jerusalem. And is what is striking about the New Jerusalem is this:
It's a cube.
The near wall is 1,400 miles long (the distance between my house in Tennessee and Gallup, New Mexico, going west). It is another 1,400 miles deep (I calculated this would take me to the middle of Hudson's Bay, Canada, traveling due north). It is also 1,400 miles high (about ten times further away than the International Space Station).
So the Bible ends with a giant, gleaming cube descending to planet Earth.
this is my prayer....
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