There aren’t a lot of doctors who still make house calls. My dentist, Dr. Kenneth Chung [http://www.comfortcare.net/], makes house calls for patients in need…such as my sister who needed dental work during her time of chemo. But such doctors are rare in today’s urban world. Maybe it’s different in rural America…
I don’t often participate in ‘pop cultural events,’ but I’m doing so twice this week. In a few days we’ll use 8 of the $1 Billion worth of tickets that have been purchased for the new Star Wars movie. J.J. Abrams gets the credit, but the reality is that George Lucas expanded our minds back in the 70s and 80s, and the expansion continues.
Last night, we were part of BBC Worldwide’s first showing of a Doctor Who Christmas Special in American theaters. Big crowd. Not as many costumes as I expected, but it’s bleak and rainy here in Portland this winter. Some Tardis-light hats, some sonic screwdrivers; but no costumes that I could see, and no bow ties…
Sketch for an upcoming Doctor Who image
I’m not a Whovian; I’m merely an enthusiast. Tom Baker was my first Doctor; and I’m not even sure where I found him. Long before BBC America. Probably in one of the video stores I haunted during my Christmas vacations. I just discovered in the last week or so that I never watched any of the episodes in the rebooted First Series, with the 9th Doctor. I watched the 9th Doctor over the last weeks, and it was all new.
I’m asking myself why am I working on a Doctor Who image at this time [I have other projects to work on]; and why I watch the Doctor nearly every night, these days. The only conclusion I can come up with is my need for Hope. The Doctor is ever hopeful. The heart of the Gospel is Hope, although if one checks the media very often, it’s hard to see this. We are in a time of religious war, as well as our path of endless war. In the real world, Hope seems far away. Hope is closer in the Doctor’s worlds…
This is one of the more difficult Christmas seasons I’ve had. Christmas in America is never something I enjoy, now that my kids are grown and on their own. The fact that my Mom died on Christmas Eve probably has something to do with it; although her death was a relief from her circumstances brought on by strokes. Since I tend to think about her death on Christmas Eve each time we attend a Christmas Eve service, there’s probably a grieving that I don’t really experience consciously. People at the church we attended then were surprised that we would come to church hours after she died. Our perspective was, where else would we come, but to be with our church family at such a time?
There is so much anger in the media; many of my friends ignore it. I have trouble doing that. Something in our country is broken, and I want to fix it. Christmas in America seems to have largely become a shopping time; and I suppose a throwback to its original roots—a Solstice Celebration. Which is probably why people who have no interest in Jesus have Christmas trees in their houses. Christmas trees have nothing to do with the Jesus story. In a Doctor/Christmas episode of a few years back, there is a comment that this winter celebration is one of ‘having made it half-way through the dark…’ Religious people complain that Solstice-type celebration has overtaken the birth of the Messiah; my preference would that they be two separate events.
Writers and Illustrators, by nature tend to be asocial; not anti-social, in wanting to avoid contact with others, but asocial—not needing contact with others. In order to lock oneself in a room by oneself for days, weeks, months at a time, we don’t have much of a need for human interaction. I’ve had an ideal Illustrator’s Life for almost 18 years. My wife works and lives on day shift; I live on night shift. We interact in the evenings for a few hours, and she snuggles up next to me when I come to bed. Most of my days are my own time, even when clients ‘interrupt’.
This year has been different in that I’ve made a conscious effort to become involved in other people’s lives—part of my semi-retirement. I don’t need to work as much, now that I get ‘paid for breathing’… Being involved in other people’s lives reminds me that I can’t fix people. I am by nature a Rescuer; my deteriorating body makes rescuing people more difficult, from a physical standpoint. But I can listen. I can send email. For the most part, I’m fairly ‘normal’ sitting down at the keyboard; until it’s time to move, and then life becomes very uncomfortable for a relatively short period of time.
There are people in my life who need fixing; and I keep wanting to find the words of faith that will create some ‘spiritual magic’ in their lives. A hope that something in my life will spark curiosity and questions; and will lead them along the path that I followed in college. A cynical skeptic who encountered Grace. When people have spent decades running from the Creator, for all sorts of reasons, many of which are totally valid from their point of view, it’s hard to see a need for change. People with physical problems that have brought them up against the fact that their physical problems really aren’t the problems that bother them the most. A couple of guys who have made a mess of their family lives for decades; now when they need the comfort of family love, there’s none there; only anger. It is so easy to mess up a life; it really takes very little effort to do. That’s the problem: making very little effort is an easy thing to accomplish. Undoing the years of inattention is hard to overcome. It takes courage to change; for me, that courage could only be supplied by my Creator.
So, here I am in the first week of Christmas, according to the Roman Catholic tradition that I often admire, but don’t participate with; and I find joy and hope in a blue box called the TARDIS; and the man who has lived for a thousand years in 13 different bodies [mustn’t forget the War Doctor]. As far as I can tell the writers aren’t necessarily people of faith; and yet they write so much about Faith. I captured a recent clip with the 12th Doctor—one of the best examples of Grace that I’ve seen in secular media:
http://mjarts.com/samples/Dr%20Who.m4v
Last Thursday evening during the Christmas Eve service, watching images of stables and shepherds and mangers projected on the wall, I found myself imagining a blue box in a corner of the stable; unobtrusive because of its Perception Filter… or out in the fields with the shepherds and the Doctor keeping watch at night. In my world of faith, the Doctor would of course visit the incident upon which the Western world bases its calendar. Perhaps in walking with Jesus, the War Doctor would find healing and forgiveness…
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Tags: artist depression freelance illustration neuopathy pain persistence, Christmas, commercial, faith, freelance illustration, holidays, hope, Jesus, material poverty, Neuropathy, persistence, personal excellence, Polyneuropathy, self-employment, surviving
Chronicles in Ordinary Time 