The Past Is History

Before the hills in order stood, or earth received her frame, from everlasting, thou art God, to endless years the same. ~Isaac Watts

I’m drawn to the Old World.  My newer world is still young and forgetful. We pull up history by its roots.

Our rhetoric can be naive, as if the answer lies in the next amazing new thing. As if a heavy foot on the accelerator will take us where we long to be.

Don’t look back! Don’t look inward! Heaven can be purchased at a pre-season sale. Constant innovation and restless self-reinvention will restore our joy.

No wonder we are so tired.

The Dust of History

I’ve come to Alet-les-Bains to paint beside the ancient river Aude. From the snow-melting Pyrenees, the river flows swiftly on its relentless, timeless journey to the Mediterranean Sea.

I breathe in the damp air where once the son of Julius Caesar came to bathe in thermal waters and drink from the natural springs.

I watch a woman fill a bucketful of that same water from a faucet in the town square. Shuttered windows silently watch, as they have through numberless years.

History is alive in the stones of the hotel, once a Bishop’s palace standing in the shadow of a Benedictine Abbey and Cathedral, later humbly reformed into a henhouse by unforgiving Revolutionaries.

Now her ancient doorways welcome tourists with mushroom omelets and glasses of the region’s fine wine.

I’m conscious of the dust of history underfoot as I paint the 17th century arched bridge, my progress noted by a curious French hen.

 The river flows, the ancient stones crumble, a fellow pilgrim quietly sips a cafe au lait under

wizened trees and gazes at the roses in full scarlet bloom.

I feel the backward pull of the past, while life’s demands draw me forward.

For a moment, paint-brush in hand, I’m free of the future’s uncertainty and the weight of history. I am content to be present, because I remember: While time is slippery, and the ages of humankind converge and diverge like the ebb and flow of tides, I am held by history’s Author. I stand on dependable ground.

O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come; be thou our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home. ~Isaac Watts