What the Soul Yearns For

Last weekend I ran away from home.  This was calling to my heart: 

Agony in the Garden by Frans Schwartz

BYU MOA was hosting an exhibit featuring works by Carl Bloch, Frans Schwartz, and Heinrich Hofmann.  These are paintings loaned from the churches where they reside and have done so for many, many years.  This exhibit will not be happening again.  When I read about it in the BYU magazine a couple of months ago, there was a tugging on my soul.  I had to go.

And so, I left Dan and the kids for the longest time I've ever been away from them.  I talked a friend into leaving her husband and kiddos, and we went on an adventure together.

In real life, the paintings are immense.   In the same way that seeing a play pulls you in to the story better than a movie ever can, seeing the actual paintings brings to life the stories playing out in two dimensions.  The pieces in our church buildings are cropped and leave out details.  What details are available, are shrunken and aren't as visible.  My soul was on fire.  I wanted to touch the paint and to be there.  In the paintings, in the scenes.  It was that real.

There is only one way that a person can paint like that.  Carl Bloch, Frans Schwartz, and Heinrich Hofmann loved the Lord.  They knew the intimate stories of the New Testament.  They knew the symbolism.  They loved Him and painted Him with their souls. 

I don't generally like pictures of the Savior on the cross.  I don't want to remember Him that way.  Looking at the very large painting affected me, though.  I looked at the Marys at the bottom of the cross, overcome with exhaustion.  Have you cried that much before?  Has your heart broken in two?  Have you ever collapsed and not known if life was ever going to be the same again?  That's there.  In their faces.  The apostles approaching the cross, ladder and cloths in hand, somber, solemn in their task.  It is John in the background that draws my eyes.  Hunched forward.  Exhausted as the women from the emotional taxation of the day.  Broken inside. 

My only complaint about the exhibit was that there were not tissue boxes placed strategically around the rooms.  I wasn't the only one who needed them.