"The Soul Exists for It's Own Joy"

acrylic on canvas, museum wrap, 24" x 30"

The idea for this painting came from a concrete wall on the expressway. As I was driving into town, I happened to look up at the wall leading out of the underpass. There growing in this beautiful tracery were the bare arms of a climbing vine. The light was just right and it turned the concrete into a canvas. Across its hard unforgiving surface were the long searching arms and fingers of this plant. It's spareness moved me with it's power and poignancy.

There wasn't a wren on the vine when I saw it, but the more I thought about the bare vine and what it meant to me, the more I knew there would be something else on the canvas. A nest or few leaves seemed trite and forced. But as always, as soon as I had entered the painting concept into my art journal, I was already being drawn to poems and quotes to go with it. There is always a back story of some sort.

As I worked on the painting, my inner questioning began. WHY is it so bare? There has to be something else there. Even though the image is about sparseness, I felt it was a backdrop for a more essential concept.
The quote that kept running through my mind and I kept thinking about as I painted the skeletal vine, was
"the soul exists for it's own joy." That was how I remembered the original line from Rumi that goes "the soul is here for it's own joy." I knew that would be the title, but I also knew there was a missing piece that would convey it.

Then, rather suddenly, I realized it would be a wren. In the bird world, the wren has a unique reputation. They are little birds with big personalities. They build their nests in all sorts of odd places--hanging baskets, baseball gloves, mailboxes, old shoes. Their home sites are very imaginative. Once they stake their claim, they take charge. They run off all interlopers with righteous indignation. Their diminutive size is no indicator of their song. It is loud and varied and constant. Their whole bodies swell up like a puff fish when they are singing. They are absolutely, completely confident of their place in the universe.

I believe the inevitable truth is that our souls do exist for their joy. We are here on this earth to live as fully from that nest as we possibly can...even when the world around us may seem as bare as a vine clinging to a concrete wall. We come into this life knowing that is our purpose, but so easily forget in the onslaught of living. There are so many long armed vines. But even when they are not leafed out, when the concrete is the coldest and the vine the most bare, a wren may alight and open it's mouth to sing. And suddenly, we remember.