The Sunday Dilema

Drawing on a Sunday afternoon

As the year goes by, the pressure intensifies. It will culminate in June, and then there will be a period of relative ease. That’s the cadence of the school year, which I must live by, no matter what, while I work in a school.

At this time of the year, this intensity gets between me and my art. It’s hard to move forward in my projects and goals while so many things call for my attention. Intense days are followed by evenings in which I give in to the offer of disconnection by technology. I become a normal person within what we perceive as normality.

Which I don’t care to be.

To return to the person I aspire to be, I use drawing as a vehicle. I draw Mary Magdalene, a prayer in the invented language of the artist. A memory of a bridge to my own inside. A small step in the right direction on the last hours of a Sunday.

A Sunday, a day to meditate, rebuild, reconnect the threads that were severed by the daily inner and outer battles that guide my week. I worked yesterday, so today is not enough.

I write, I think, I pray, I disconnect and reconnect, and finally, draw. Then write. It is all I can do; time has slipped away.

At the school, I love the kids. I love the people, I love my team, I love too much.

But I wonder if, in order to love myself, I have to leave it all behind. Or if in order to love the world, I must sacrifice a few more years and put what I have learned to good use.

And I can’t help but think: “what if I die tomorrow, or soon, or in 5 years?” The answer is clear. If I had to die in 5 years, I would quit everything today. I would go on a trip. I would paint my last and best paintings.

But I am healthy and feel strong. So I keep going.

Does service to humanity matter more than one’s vocation of solitary creation? Is the act of creating in silence as worthy as other socially significant acts of service through work? And if not, what of the work of nuns and monks who dedicate entire lives to prayer?

I ask Mary Magdalene to show me the way out of this Sunday Dilema. Because sometimes only the divine can get one’s own though, grumpy, rebellious, and hard-headed ego to see the light.

Thoughts like these disappear during the week, when that other person takes over, full of discipline, full of strength and focus. Until next Sunday. Or Saturday, or holiday, or vacation. Until the time comes, or until I conquer my own time.