The other day while walking through the woods, I came to a clearing and looked up into a little patch of sky just overhead. And there, in the blue between clouds, was a baby dinosaur playing the piano! He (or she) was leaning slightly forward, back straight, arms relaxed and extended as if over a keyboard. I think I laughed out loud!
Since childhood, I’ve loved seeing faces and other images in the clouds, but after seeing the little dinosaur, I began to pay attention to the shapes between clouds. The following day, to my delight, I saw a rabbit in a crouch position like a cat about to spring. Then later, Popeye with a Pinocchio nose. I would not have seen the piano-playing dinosaur, the cat-like rabbit, or naughty Popeye if I’d been looking only at the clouds themselves, or at the trees. Instead, what I saw was the result of paying attention to negative space.
To the artist, negative space enhances the “positive” elements of a design—gives them room to breathe, sets them in perspective, highlights them. In our Western culture, most of us (other than artists—painters, designers, photographers) are not accustomed to seeing negative space as any thing but emptiness, space where nothing is happening. But I’ve been told that in Asian culture, what we call negative space is seen as full—that is, full of potential, especially the potential relationships that can occur in that space.
So how does all this translate into an “actionable item”—or a gift? I’m not suggesting you go outside and try to see something between the clouds, although that might not be a bad idea! Instead, I’m saying that if we begin looking in places we don’t normally look, we might find unexpected gifts.
But that raises another question: If I’m ignoring something, I may not be doing it intentionally—I simply don’t see it! So how can I begin to see what I haven’t seen? How can I know where to look? One way is to do it visually, as I did with the between-clouds view. For example, really look at the photo accompanying this post. Better yet, look at “Rubin’s vase” in this Wikipedia article on negative space. But going beyond that, maybe we can take a closer look at some things in our lives that we might normally try to avoid: irritating people, problematic issues, unpleasant realities. Are there ways we can see those people, issues, or realities from a new perspective? Maybe there’s some “negative space” that we’re now ready to see, and maybe that new vision will give us a very positive gift!
Let me give you a current example from my life.
In mid-March, as we all know, life for many of us came to a shuddering halt because of a novel virus: Covid-19! It was, supposedly, a new strain: thus, novel. In addition to the fear of the many unknowns we suddenly were facing, we had another novel problem: we couldn’t get out and do so many things that normally were life-giving, things we might have taken for granted. For extraverts (and yes, I’m raising my hand) this was a shock to the system. Perhaps a welcome relief for a while, as we realized we could now get some rest from our overbooked lives without having to feel guilty or make excuses, but nevertheless a shock. After a couple of weeks—or months—we may have wanted to say, “Okay, that’s enough. I’m rested now. Let’s get back to normal.” And in fact, many people have done just that (in addition to the many who have had to continue with their jobs and obligations), and we’ve seen spikes in coronavirus cases each time we’ve had a reopening, a holiday, or, most recently, back-to-school time. We begin to wonder when life will return to normal—if ever! What’s a person to do? Not to mention an extrovert!
And yet, during these last six months, I’ve come to appreciate some “negative spaces,” opportunities that had been hidden between and behind the many activities I’d been busy with up till then. The biggest thing has been the extra time with my husband, an introvert whose at-home lifestyle had been less than appealing to me. Now I spend much more time cooking—and less time shopping, because I now plan what to buy, so I go to the store less frequently—and we almost always eat three meals a day together, not the one or two that had become our norm. We’ve spent more time just visiting with each other and working together in the yard (which he’d most often done alone before). Plus, I’ve read more books in these last six months than I had in the couple of years previous. And I’ve explored some new forms of prayer, including the Welcoming Prayer and Practice.
These months certainly haven’t been all easy—far from it. I’ve missed the close contact with family and friends, have had some down-time emotionally. But this time has forced me to pay attention to some unseen realities in my life: too many activities and too much self-imposed responsibility.
So now I’m coming to realize that not only is “testing negative” a positive blessing, but also negative space is as the artist sees it: a blessing, a gift, an enhancer of the positive. What have I not been seeing that I can now begin to see? What will God show me if only I will look up, truly wanting to see? It might just be His Face!
