A Visual Treat

The wonder of Vermeer

Today is Sunday August 6th, 2023. Kia ora!

This morning it’s still very cold. I go to church, which is being held in the Hall, where it is supposedly warmer.  I tried to get there early, seeing that I was to do the gospel reading.  But there were already lots of people there.  It’s different from the church, where there is a lectern and a microphone; in the hall, there is a lectern, but nowhere to sit, and you have to hold the microphone. I asked my co-reader to hold the microphone for me.  Then there were beanbags put out for Tamariki Time, so one had to negotiate them too!

I am always nervous before doing a reading, and I had agonised over just how much to add to my reading of the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, from Matthew 14: 13-21.  When I looked this text up, I realised that this incident came straight after King Herod’s birthday party, where the beheading of John the Baptist occurs.  The disciples take John’s body and bury it, and tell Jesus.  He goes away to a desert place, but crowds follow him, and then we have the miracle of the loaves and fishes, where a little food – perhaps enough for 10-12 people, is blessed and given by the disciples to over 5,000 men and women and children.  After this, we have another miracle, where Jesus walks on water and calms the wind and the waves.  So it’s a wonderful text, and this miracle is recounted in all four gospels.  After a tragic event (the death of John the Baptist), there is a miraculous meal, and then another miracle.  It’s understandably easy to be saddened and frustrated by tragic events, but Jesus’ power is even greater than this.

Afterwards two of the people who spoke to me had not realised that the killing of John the Baptist came immediately before the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, so I was glad that I had mentioned it.  There used to be a (fairly basic) café called Loaves and Fishes next to St Paul’s Cathedral in Molesworth Street in Thorndon.

There is so much one could say about this text, which most of us are familiar with from Sunday School; it’s a really well-known miracle, but a rather wonderful one. I was taught that feeding the crowds really meant feeding them spiritually, as well as literally.  It’s notable too that the disciples were asked to distribute the food, and that twelve handbaskets of leftovers were taken up afterwards.

We spent some time lamenting the state of the world – the ongoing war in Ukraine, violence in many places, and sickness and famine and homelessness, yet in spite of such horrors, I guess the Gospel reading tells us that God’s power and love is greater than that of King Herod, who was quite the consummate politician, it seems, rescuing his state of Judaea, and making an uneasy peace with the Roman Emperor Augustus.

It’s now Monday August 7^th.

This morning we had a heat pump installed.  We also had the builders here, and one of our sons was going to do another tip run with a trailer.  I was expecting a friend to come, but I had put her off – thankfully, because it was busy and noisy and chaotic here, and there were lots of cars and vans, one parked across the top of the driveway.

I had become used to the builders being very well behaved, and not really bothering me at all, but the heat pump guy was a different story! Actually the result is quite wonderful, but it was a bit trying getting there. 

In between all this, I walked up to the store, to get some more magnesium tablets and go to the supermarket.  I wanted to get croissants for lunch, but although they had croissants on special, all the packages were dated 5 August, or earlier; it’s the 7^th today, so I ended up buying two loose croissants. While I was there, I ran into two old friends. It seemed quiet mild when I walked up there.

In the afternoon it seemed to get much cooler, so we were really pleased to have more heating, although to be honest I would have no idea what the temperature is outside.

The weekly Covid 19 report came out today, as expected. It reads as follows: there have been 4,645 new cases of Covid-19 reported in New Zealand over the past week and 10 further deaths. Of the new cases, 2304 were reinfections.

The total number of deaths attributed to the virus in New Zealand is now 3229.

As of midnight on Sunday, there were 160 cases in hospital, with five people in intensive care. The seven-day rolling average of new cases was 659.

Last week, the Ministry of Health reported 3615 new cases over the previous week and 22 further deaths. So frustratingly the numbers are still holding steady.

It’s now Tuesday August 8^th.

Last night we watched the latest episode of Brokenwood Mysteries on TVNZ+.  It was a very Kiwi episode featuring a would-be community of nuns that wasn’t actually affiliated to the Catholic Church. Fern Sutherland i.e. Kristin Sims recalled several years of education at the hands of nuns, and rather took delight in shocking them. The detective in charge took delight in getting nuns who had supposedly taken a vow of silence to actually speak.  There were lots of puns on the word nun, and a deal of irreverence, that was not entirely inappropriate given that this wasn’t actually a community of nuns who had been ordained or had taken their vows. Their habits (old-fashionedly conventional) covered up tattoos and trousers.  There was a nun who gamed on her mobile phone, so a lot of deception going on.  It shocked me that the nuns had no personal possessions,  but then of course they did not. That’s one of the points of renouncing things.

Last night it was very cold, according to the forecast, but amazingly it’s mot that cold inside. I went to Bible Study this morning; it was really cold and wet, but afterwards it stopped raining and was briefly sunny. I got home using public transport.  The Bible Study was following on from my reading of the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, in Matthew 14, where Jesus walks on water to his disciples, who, yet again, doubt that he is really Jesus;  Peter walks on water to meet Jesus, but then becomes afraid when he looks at the wind.  Jesus reaches out and saves him, and then the stormy weather dies down.  So after the beheading of John and Baptist, there are not one, but two miracles – or three if you count Peter’s walking on water before he got scared.

After I got home we went up to the local café for lunch, where we shared one of their delicious pizzas, and enjoyed oat lattés again.

It’s now Wednesday August 8^th.

This morning I got up early to go to hymn singing, while watching my phone to see if it had been cancelled. It was very cold – frosty, too, and my phone told me it was about 2°C outside. But I was toasty warm, thankfully, so I didn’t have trouble getting up. It was lovely, of course.  There is one more session before our organist is scheduled to have his surgery, and we discussed options of keeping in touch with his progress.

Afterwards I came home using public transport. Although it was so cold to start with, after singing it was fine and sunny, of not still pretty cold. But it was fine to sit in a bus shelter, since it wasn’t windy or raining.  There was disruption to the trains this morning, on account of ice on the overhead wires. But the buses were working fine, although I was caught out by Metlink’s online tracking facility, when the #24 bus turned up on time!

I spent the rest of the day quietly at home, since tomorrow is likely to be a busy day.

It’s now Thursday August 10^th.

Last night it was very cold, and this morning too, and it’s not fine, it’s wet and windy too. But thanks to the new heat pump, it was actually warmer in the master bedroom and the hallway outside than in the main living room. Usually it’s the other way round.

Today I had a specialist appointment at Wellington Hospital, but I had planned to go to an EOS (Exhibition on Screen) movie about the Dutch painter Vermeer at the Penthouse Cinema at 11 am. It’s on this Thursday morning and next Thursday morning and one evening, so there aren’t many viewing times. I’d excused myself from other activities, and to tell the truth, I’m fighting off some cold symptoms, but I tested negative for Covid 19, and I’m not coughing and sneezing lots, so although I didn’t feel great, I went to the movie. JD chose not to come, but he dropped me off, thankfully. The film was 90 minutes long, and I’m so pleased that I saw it, although it was pretty cold in the theatre.

Some of the EOS films have lots of annoying dialogue; this did not, although it focused on a recent Rijksmuseum exhibition of Vermeer’s work. I didn’t agree with all their interpretations, and the gallery seemed very dark: I have to agree with JD that some coloured backgrounds (for example, dark brown!) don’t work for me and don’t enhance the paintings, in my view.

Vermeer, a 17th century painter, lived in Delft, a small but beautiful city, and died young, at 43. Little is know about him, but there was a drawing school near where he lived, and he has a small oeuvre – 38 or 45 paintings, depending on whom you listen to. He was brought up Protestant, but his wife was a catholic, and they had 11 children, 8 daughters and 3 sons. 

I had seen an exhibition of Vermeer’s work at the Washington National Gallery in 2006, but it did not include all these works, especially not his early works. They’re all wonderful, of course.  He was influenced by Caravaggio and other Italian painters.  There was an early painting of Christ with Martha and her sister Mary; also a painting of Diana with her nymphs, but no portraits, self-portraits or otherwise, and few groups – the only one we saw, The Procurer, features four people, one of whom may be Vermeer.  There is a splendid oriental rug in the background. Vermeer did wonderful things with light and colour – the Master of Light, he’s called. An authority commented that he wasn’t concerned with perspective, but his keen use of perspective was one of the first things that I noticed in is paintings, remembering my perspective lessons. 

But what wonderful paintings! It seems there are two main subjects, but none of his women (or girls, some look very young) look oppressed or unhappy.  The setting is usually similar – a somewhat plain corner of a room, with black and white tiles on the floor, a simple desk, or keyboard, and, most importantly, an opened window, through which light comes. Letters often feature – being read, or written, so his heroines must have been literate, and one remembers how important letters were as a means of communication, in these days well before mobile phones, email and other forms of direct messaging anywhere at any time.

Within this simple setting there are interesting backgrounds, mostly of maps, but sometimes of scenes from myth, such as a naked cherub!

And he really likes pearls: often the heroine is wearing a string of pearls around her neck, and a pearl earring; there are jewellery boxes with pearls; and in the later paintings the lady wears a dress trimmed with ermine fur. In one painting the lady seems to have papers in her hair to produce ringlets! I remember my mother trying to produce Saturday night ringlets in my (and my sisters’) straight hair. In one painting the lady looks at the artist, with a light smile on her face, and through the window, each time, Vermeer does wonderful things with the light, shining perhaps on the earring; the dots of light in his early paintings become more sophisticated blobs of white. But there are no brush strokes.

Afterwards, JD said he was on his way, so I had an oat milk latté while I waited. The café was extremely busy; when JD arrived, we had something to eat, and discussed Vermeer’s work.  Then JD drove me to Wellington Hospital, to the Grace Neill Block, where I’d had four of my babies. But this was an emergency exit, and we had to find another entrance.  I was early, and so had to wait for a bit. There was no one else in the waiting room, which I found a little odd. Thankfully no one quizzed me about my cold symptoms. Actually I wasn’t coldie while I was there.

The upshot of the appointment is that I should have another blood test and a scan.

Afterwards, I found my way to the Wishbone coffee bar, not a great place. I ordered a coconut latté – which I couldn’t drink, it’s not nearly as nice as an oat milk latté.  Then JD picked me up, and thankfully there’s a pick up area at the main entrance, with plenty of places to sit down.

In the US, Trump continues to threaten the people who would hold him accountable, such as Jack Smith, Fani Willis, and Alvin Bragg. Meanwhile he continues to rise in the polls.

I’d better stop now. In Ukraine, brutality continues, and it remains difficult to know what is happening.  Slava Ukraini!  Ngā mihi nui.