Art museums can be very intimidating. I’ve spent decades of my life avoiding them, with the best of intentions. I’m indebted to my mother, who marched her children through every museum, cathedral, castle, concert hall, and Roman ruin she could find, so at least I got a hint of cultural education. And it did take, Mom. Really it did! I claimed a (weak) Fine Arts minor in college, and began my own journey of art appreciation throughout my early adult years.

Upon retirement from my professional career, I knew what I wanted to do with my “spare time.” I wanted to become a Docent at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, a renowned collection established in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1933. I was accepted into the intensive training program–what I considered to be a “free” degree in Fine Arts–and embarked on my new volunteer career as a Docent in 2011.

Most of our tours during the school year engage students from second grade through high school. Schools arrange field trips to the museum according to the curriculum. The museum offers certain subsidies, such as bus service, for underserved students from a wide area in and around Kansas City. Many children have never been inside an art museum, or anything like it. Hence the “intimidating” factor. I know! I know!

My job as a Docent is to engage the students in looking and talking. Who cares about dates and names and historical references?? Well, we do, of course. But the main thing is to help the children realize that they have the right to their own thoughts, and that someone is listening as carefully as possible to what they have to say.

Meanwhile, I have subversive thoughts of my own. Once you begin to engage with art, the impact of human history can be stunning.

DOCENT

 

The art museum behind the big bronze door.
The yellow buses lining up outside.
The little children eager to explore.

 

The chirpy docent: Who’s been here before?
Please pay attention. I will be your guide.
At this museum, behind that big bronze door,

 

there’s nudity, depravity, and gore
to take your little psyches for a ride.
You children will be able to explore

 

the beauty born of fear, of faith, of war,
of ancient ritual and genocide
that cannot hide behind a brazen door.

 

Beheadings hardly happen anymore.
Most artists have avoided suicide.
You children are encouraged to explore

 

the human drama we cannot ignore,
the shape of visions and the forms of pride
collected here behind the big bronze door.

 

You’ll find despair, anxiety, and more.
Your eyes will bleed. Your skulls crack open wide.
Have fun. Enjoy yourselves as you explore
the art museum behind the big bronze door.

 

 

Barbara Loots
Road Trip

In 1946, John F. Dickinson, a resident of Ohio, purchased an island consisting of approximately one acre of rock crowned with pine trees in the middle of Blackwater Lake in Ontario, Canada. The purchase price was fifty dollars, under the Homestead Provision of the Canadian government for unclaimed public lands, with the requirement that a domicile be established on the property within eighteen months.

With the help of friendly farmers on the surrounding lakeshore, Dickinson located an abandoned cabin, deconstructed it nail by nail and board by board, transported the entirety to the island on a flatboat, and put it back together again in a cleared space at the highest point on the island.

For many years, Dickinson, his wife Hazel, and their three (then four) children traveled from Ohio to Ontario every summer during a two-week vacation period, and made improvements. A huge stone fireplace, constructed by hand with rocks collected from around the lake by the children, warms the cottage as the legacy of John Dickinson’s strength, skill, and endurance.

I first met the cottage in the summer of 2008, as the guest of Bill Dickinson, second son of John and Hazel, who subsequently became my husband. Stepping into the cottage is like walking into memory itself. Although those memories are not my own, I am embraced by them anyway.

AT THE COTTAGE

 

Sequestered by the rain, inside all gloom,
I look around to find a metaphor
to play with in this musty, cluttered room.
And there it is, covering the whole floor.
Tattered before they ever came to rest
here at the cottage, patterns vaguely Persian,
assorted carpets are the weariest
of all the stuff that made its last excursion
to this remote and water-bound retreat,
remnants of parlors they once occupied,
the sturdy weaving scruffed by countless feet,
the shreds of past prosperity and pride.
And yet, however beaten down and old,
something in them holds out against the cold.

 

Barbara Loots

Now that a certain notorious politician has claimed to be a Presbyterian, I feel more defensive than ever about my chosen denomination. Presbyterians were already thought to be stuffy, judgmental, mired in ecclesiastical bureaucracy, and slow to see the light in many areas of social justice. Who me??

I hope you’ll notice when you click on the Second Church site listed with my Interests and Activities that it looks like a much livelier place than that. In fact, my particular church family doesn’t fit any of the dour descriptions mentioned above.

Today is Tuesday. Early every Tuesday morning for decades, I’ve met with a small group of friends at the church to study the Bible. I use the word “study” rather loosely, because we aren’t really trying to parse out the theological meaning of the thing. We’re just trying to see what guidance we can gather from the sum of human experience and wisdom captured in the Book. It’s possible that the things we say would make the hair of an educated Presbyterian theologian stand on end.

We’re confident that God has an open mind.

I grew up “generic Protestant.” My mom was a PK–preacher’s kid–her father having been a pastor with the Evangelical United Brethren Church in the Midwest. My dad, as a young teen, chose to be baptized in the Baptist church near where he lived in the Northeast part of Kansas City, Missouri. During most of my childhood, my dad served in the U. S. Air Force, and we moved quite frequently. Thus, my experiences with worship and Christian education ranged from non-denominational to Dutch Reformed to Anglican to Methodist. Living in other countries, I became acquainted with many traditions: Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist. As an adult, I took up with the Presbyterians, mostly because I liked the people in the pews at that particular church. I still do.

I’ll have more to say about my theology, my faith, my doubt. But for me, the contemplation of what we conveniently call God begins and ends in mystery.

THEOLOGY

 

When silence took the shape of sound
and the first light flashed clear,
what had eyes to see it with
or ears to hear?

 

How frivolous a bird’s song is,
superfluous the sun–
the unutterable whimsy
of a dark unknown.

 

Barbara Loots
Road Trip

I’m a recovering redhead. Well, about to be. Today I had the stylist snip off most of my hair, in order to set the stage for growing out the color to what might turn out to be sophisticated silver, grand dame gray, or wisdom white. I don’t know yet.

I’ve spent several years contemplating this turning point. A close friend actually bet me that I wouldn’t stick with my decision, once the results were in–or out, as the case may be. I didn’t accept the bet. My daddy taught me never to bet except on a sure thing, and that would not include my cosmetic decisions. Nevertheless, the offered bet stands as a challenge to my resolve, and I’m looking forward to the forthcoming appearance in my mirror of someone resembling the glamorous Judi Dench.

I’ve been a redhead all my life, not counting the years from birth to age seventeen. That’s when I made the decision to become a redhead for life, and never changed my mind. The shade, yes. The idea, no. Being a redhead, not unlike being a blonde, I suppose, created a social expectation that perfectly matched my inner personality. Enthusiasm, quirkiness, sunny disposition, a certain amount of mystery–whatever character traits might be associated with redheads–I already had. Never underestimate the destiny fulfilled by hair color.

I’ll keep you posted on what happens next.