At the Canvas of Infinity

When Wayne and I want to treat good friends or guests to a memorable night out in Houston, our venue of choice is the Live Oak Friends Meeting House Skyscape designed by James Turrell. I was adamant that this was one place that was not going to be neglected on my “one last time before we leave” list. It had been awhile since I’d last visited: the Meeting House is a house of worship, the skyscape is only made available for public viewing on Friday evenings at sunset when the weather cooperates. Last night it did.

I’d scheduled a babysitter, made dinner reservations, and to make my cup truly run over, I had invited my writing comrades, Mark Bertrand and Deeanne Gist, to come along with their spouses, Laurie and Greg. To make matters even better, it was to be their first visit. We’ve been reading, critiquing, recommending, inspiring, encouraging, linking, joking, scheming, sharing couch space and the occasional dessert at Taft for awhile now. It’s been a deep privilege to work with writers as devoted as they are to their craft and as generous with they are with their gifts. I owe them many thanks. We arranged to meet outside the space around 7:30. Sunset was scheduled for 8:03.

There is not really an accurate way to describe to someone what they’re coming to “see”. This Quaker Meeting House is a wholly unique space: to my mind, a perfectly designed convergence of art and worship, of the man made and the God made, a fully human structure as conduit for awe. We enter a square room. People are scattered among the pews, four-squared to the center, heads tilted skyward. 30 minutes before sunset, the roof retracts and exposes a perfect square cut into the center of the roof of the slightly arced ceiling. Over the course of the next hour or so, we will witness every subtle blend and nuance of color and cloud highlighted in that seamless aperature until we are mesmerized by its slightest shift. Though it’s the very same sky we just relinquished outside without a thought, it has now become a compelling canvas, never the same from visit to visit, or even from moment to moment. Small, dark birds pass overhead. A contrail chalks a tiny streak in the bottom right corner. A dog barks.

It takes awhile for the fidgeting, rustling and murmuring of the viewers to calm. We are not used to stillness, to waiting, to looking. To seeing. We’re conditioned to action, “What does it do?” When we begin watching the sky, it is brighter than the ceiling that frames it. Clouds slowly shift past, now darker,now lighter, than the sky they move in. As the sun lowers and the sky darkens, ever so gradually, the values of the ceiling come closer to those of the sky until the sky becomes darker than the ceiling. Suddenly we can’t tell if we are looking out or looking in, which plane, ceiling or sky, is nearer or further, which the chasm and which the surface. The sounds in the room have hushed. One tiny star flicks on and I feel the urge to clap. We’ve succumbed to the awe, our eyes going again and again to the edges where ceiling and sky meet in an Escher-like illusion. The blue is electric, vibrating, too vivid for our spectrum, and how had we ever not noticed? Infinite depth, infinite emptiness, the other side of the looking glass. Where does the sky end? It’s not even the whole big sky, it’s just a tiny a piece of it, but it’s bigger and deeper than any sky we’ve ever seen. Presented to us as a gift, a masterpiece— and ours all along, had we ever looked to see it.

And so it is this that I leave my good friends, knowing them enough to know that when they look up into the sky, they see, and will keep on seeing.