Since I’ve taken to riding a bicycle around town, I find myself in a proximity to my surroundings impossible from the insulation of a car; and I have discovered places I had no idea existed.

One of these is a real jewel: the McRorie Community Garden in the southeast part of town, incorporating vegetables, flowers, and artwork. All of these, it seems to me, testify to the hopefulness and creativity of the human spirit, especially since the art is for the most part constructed of found objects.

Some of the artworks are made of old hubcaps and are what I would call “urban mandalas.”

Mandalas

We tend to see the mandala as belonging to the East — indeed the word comes from Sanskrit and means “circle.” However, the mandala, although we haven’t always named it that, is also part of Western art and symbolism, found in the rose window, the labyrinth, and the Celtic cross, to name a few examples. In any context, the mandala can symbolize wholeness, the universe, or the Eternal. In the Christian context, the mandala draws us toward Christ.

While it is easy to live our lives on the periphery, the mandala seeks to draw us inward, toward the center of reality. In the medieval rose window, the center typically (though not always) contains a representation of Christ.

Labyrinths in the Middle Ages, such as the one in the Cathedral of Chartres, allowed Christians to make a virtual pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or even to the heavenly Jerusalem, while the four quadrants made visible the cross of Christ.

The Celtic Cross, with its circle representing eternity and embracing the cross itself, leads our eye to the intersection of the arms of the cross, and thus symbolically to the center of the mystery.

Toward the stillness

Whether labyrinth or rose window or Celtic cross, these mandalas encourage us to long for and move toward the still point where our spinning minds and emotions can rest in the divine mystery.

And this brings us back to our hubcaps. In its myriad forms, not just in meditation using a mandala, prayer draws us from the peripheral toward the hub of the wheel, toward what is essential, toward what is real, toward that point of stillness that always exists, even as the wheel spins. (Note that a simpler form of window related to the rose window is called the “wheel window.”)

As T. S. Eliots writes:

At the still point of the turning world….
…at the still point, there the dance is…

T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets

I admit that I wasn’t thinking about wholeness or eternity or the divine when I visited the garden. I was simply delighting in the unexpected beauty of the mandalas. But happily we don’t have to be conscious of the meaning of symbols in order for them to have an effect on us.

For more urban mandalas, visit visit Unable to Grasp God’s Essence.

Lately I have been intrigued by two forms of expression less ancient than cave drawings, but far older than weblogs:

• sidewalk art (for some amazing examples, visit these sites:

Pavement Drawings
and
Sidewalk Chalk Guy

• sidewalk messages, impressed into the cement while still soft, and destined to be read by passersby every day, at least until a new sidewalk is laid. Here are some examples of messages found around Gainesville:

1. Avowals of love.
The picture below reads “Tupelo -N- Zack.”

One beside the church says “I love DIXIE,” but it is not clear whether Dixie is a girlfriend or the area of the country.

2. Recommendations
Near the church (which is also near the university), there is a solemn recommendation, “Study Philosophy.” A second advises, less solemnly, “Smoke Pot.” Beside our own house: “Peace.” Other suggestions can’t be printed here.

3. Poetry wannabes
A verse spread over two slabs of concrete: “Though Lost Love’s / woe with time’s reduced, / She rambles & stumbles / ’til again seduced.” So far, Shakespeare’s position remains unthreatened.

God’s sidewalk art

It should probably not surprise us that human beings are fond of self-expression. After all, we are made in the image and likeness of God, whose self-expression is everywhere we look. The first verse of John’s prologue, “In the beginning was the Word,” is rendered by J. B. Phillips, “At the beginning God expressed himself.”

While God’s self-expression is fulfilled in Jesus the Christ, the only Son, it is not limited to the Incarnation. The psalmist exclaims, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” And in Ephesians Paul says that “we are God’s work of art” ( 2:10, Jerusalem Bible).

As God’s creation, we are, indeed, works of art – sidewalk art and sidewalk poetry in the sense that every day for our whole lives, all who pass by see the work of God. Through us God expresses who Christ is, and therefore who God is.

And so I pray:

Loving God,
may the message which others read in my life
communicate the truth of your mercy and love,
and always be a sign of the glorious hope
promised us in Jesus Christ.