 HEART by KAREN BRAILSFORD I wrote the piece "Burnished Love" for Agape International Spiritual Center's publication Inner Visions. I've been contributing every month ever since I became a licensed spiritual practitioner in 2009. When I write, I am always aware that I am ministering to my own soul. Spirit is revealing exactly what I need to hear. In this instance, Spirit spoke directly to me, addressing me - and the world at large. We are each the Beloved. We have come for such a time as this. Where there is great love there are always miracles. Willa Cather Who so loves believes the impossible. Elizabeth Barrett Browning Dear Beloved, Here we are together, love-light streaming across lifetimes and through galaxies and celestial bodies. We dip and burst, spin and bounce, unfurl and swirl. Delicately, intricately bound. Splendidly woven. Connected. I have always been with you. You are my dearest companion. I will continue to be with you – in sickness and in health, in goodness and in grace, until forever and beyond eternity. “Why is this so?” you ask.
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 On Facebook I follow the group "The Golden Age of Illustrations," along with some 148,000 others. The images are lush, gorgeous, brilliant. This one stopped me in my tracks. A naked black woman. And is that Jesus? The post explained that the illustration, by John Farleigh, appears in the 1933 book, The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God. The author? One Bernard Shaw. As in George the playwright.
It's nearly impossible to find images of black people in this feed. The men, women and children are usually pink and rosy-cheeked. I immediately clicked "Like" when I came across a cartoon by E. Simms Campbell, an African-American artist whose works were the first to appear in popular national publications, including Life magazine in 1931, and created Esquire's wide-eyed mascot, Esky. I wanted to know more. So I did what any other self-respecting arbiter of instantaneous gratification in the 21st century would do.  This painting’s genesis lies in the mystical. I was attending a retreat conducted by the abstract surrealist artist Rassouli, whom I first met in a course he taught at Agape, “Painting with Spirit,” in 2006. My participation in the class itself was the outcome of a long and hard negotiation I had the temerity to make with God.
I felt a strong call (I am being gentle here, it was actually a forceful push) to enroll in an introductory spiritual principles course at Agape. The only thing is, I didn’t want to. |
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