My Eschatology
As promised I brought back this picture that I did for a class at Seminary. Part of my healing process has been to try to understand my own theology (understanding of God) and my faith. This picture has been one of the most significant parts of that understanding! It was an exercise that I did for a class but it has become quite powerful for me. Eschatology means the understanding of life and death or end times. As I thought about how to picture this I thought about using a symbol for infinity 
. The thing was that I couldn't be totally sure of what happens after death so I used the symbol slightly off to the side to represent this uncertainty. The world that we know is in the right-hand side, life. Life which included a friend in a wheelchair, a mother taking care of her child, a man who is worshiping his image in a mirror, a man and child who are starving, and a man who has shot another man. I included in my life image trees and horses to represent nature and all of the universe.
. The thing was that I couldn't be totally sure of what happens after death so I used the symbol slightly off to the side to represent this uncertainty. The world that we know is in the right-hand side, life. Life which included a friend in a wheelchair, a mother taking care of her child, a man who is worshiping his image in a mirror, a man and child who are starving, and a man who has shot another man. I included in my life image trees and horses to represent nature and all of the universe.Jesus as the Lamb of God is victorious over death, represented by the lamb with the flag. I am Christian and so for me, Jesus' life and death, as informed by the stories of scripture, is the underlying faith story that informs my life. The left-hand side of the symbol represents heaven. The woman in the wheelchair can run and have long hair, the man and his baby have their fill of food, the horse and the tree are there, as are the stars. The head with the wings is the red head of justice which is a figure from the work of Hildegard of Bingen, an abbess from the middle ages in Germany who was and artist. I used it to show that heaven is a place of justice. Justice guards the gates of heaven.
Under the lamb, I put a spot which is purgatory, the place where people go to work on things they need to before entering heaven. Here the man with the mirror learns to embrace others, the woman who took exclusive care of her children must learn to see herself too. And the man who was shot and killed wakes to find out what he needs to learn from an angel. Just to the right of this is an area of white ice that is hell. I got this from Dante's inferno. The lowest rung of hell is ice. The guy who shot the man is turning to ice. He has access to Jesus and can repent to enter heaven, but he is unable to turn around.
The creator can be seen as the figure that holds both sides together. All through the picture there are flames and breath. This represents the Holy Spirit which enlivens everything!
This is a good way to work things out for yourself! Start with a symbol and then start adding things to it. Use things from other places that make sense of what you are trying to understand. Working this out helped me to understand my own beliefs and brought them into a more wholistic thinking. It's one of my favorite paintings!
