John under the hand of Christ

Some pictures are like emotional cluster bombs. The one I'm thinking of is a wood sculpture of the Last Supper in a German cloister. The entire piece is unexceptional, but Christ and the apostle John are the most moving characters ever. John is asleep on what appears to be the hand of Christ. Well, his eyes are closed anyway, and you don't really know if he's asleep of just wailing. The second hand of Christ is resting on his back in the most tender gesture.

I was shopping for art postcards when I came across it and I had trouble keeping my countenance. Suddenly it hit home that Jesus knew that his crucifixion was going to break his friends' hearts and that they would never recover. There is so much love in this sculpture, it drives one nuts. The love of John, the love of Christ for John and for all his disciples. I practically never look at it these days, because it throws me off balance each time. That is to say, it throws me back into a different type of balance: Oh fuck I love you so much. And all those attempts to love Christ in his brothers, all this "getting good at it", that's what it boils down to.

So one of my friends is leaving Durham and, recently, he had expressed some concern at not being especially moved when he went to Jerusalem and visited all the places. Usually, there's always a couple of orthodox nuns just crying their eyes out at the site of the Last Supper. And he said that he thought that was appropriate, but that somehow he could not cry. He's an older, British prof who teaches at a big US divinity school. "Ah whatever", I said, "don't you know that it takes one to know one"?

I wanted him to have this postcard, but giving it to him was pretty surreal. For that is not your average greeting card. And one problem is that I really did not want him to associate it with me either. I did not want it to convey just how deep my thoughts are, and just what a sensitive person I am, I did not want to be part of the picture at all. I don't mind a bit of self-promotion and name-dropping on occasions, but an emotional bomb like this piece of art is between each Christian and their Lord, methinks. But I did want him to have it.

I asked if he had a pigeon-hole I could leave a card in before he left. He did not have one. So I said okay, I'll have to give it to you in person. "It's very moving" he said, and immediately retired to his room. As for me I'd rarely been so exposed in my life. "I thought you might like to have it" I somehow uttered in a phony voice and then retired to my own room. Fuck I hate being this exposed.