Three candles

Three Candles and My Bronze Fellow

It’s a great conversation starter. Tell me about something in your house that needs an explanation. (Family members and pets often come to mind…however, let’s reach beyond those easy pickings for this exercise). I’ll go first.

I have this bronze fellow. I first met him when my mother brought her new husband into the house shortly after my father’s death. The blacksmith statue was the only thing I liked about my stepfather. There was a lot not to like about him. He was a drunk, a racist, a convicted murderer with a hair-trigger temper. I stayed away from him. I liked this bronze fellow though. He was my teenage crush with his sinewy romance-novel-cover good looks. I liked the whole forged-by-fire feeling of it that felt like growing up. I’ve thought about selling him every once in a while when I needed some cash. He is worth about a grand to an antique dealer. Certainly more than any art I have created. My bronze fellow statue is what it is. I don’t know why my stepfather had it in his possession or what it meant to him. I didn’t care to know. After he died, the bronze fellow came to live with me. Now the statue sits near my fireplace in which there will not be a fire anytime soon because of the chimney needing repair. The bronze fellow stands naked still in his youthful prime while I am well past mine. He is still wrapped in a bronze leather apron and all my hateful memories of its former owner. I want to think I can redeem it by researching the artist or explaining its presence in my house with my good taste in art. Or making up a story that will shine in a sermon or an essay. But I can’t. I can’t explain it easily without the taint of my own capability for disgust and my own recognition of a creator’s artistry. Now it stands still poised to hammer a new shape, a new weapon into a plowshare, a new meaning forged by my ownership.

It is what it is. Complicated. Beautiful. Cold and Hot. Iron and Flesh. Forged and Forging.

My bronze fellow is one of those things in my house that needs an explanation and every time I try to explain him, I can’t completely. Neither can I let him go.

Advent has that kind of feel to it. I can’t explain it completely. It is beauty wrapped in sorrow and grief. And I can’t let it go. I can only stand near it and feel the fire of being forged.

Peace,

Deb