When our son died, I was struck by a phrase my wife repeated both shortly after his death and in the nearly five years since: “Where are you, Daniel?” We need to imagine a somewhere for those we love. I think, in part, that need is connected to our greatest fear—that those we love simply disappear without a trace as time passes.
What is the “fullness of the moment”? Robert Cording’s essays in Finding the World’s Fullness and Claude Wilkinson’s poems in World Without End engage the question.
Chardin has always been one of my favorite painters. Now that so many of us are sequestered in our homes because of the coronavirus, his paintings seem particularly appropriate. Why?—because their subject matter is so often the stuff that surrounds us. Look at his painting “Still Life with Teapot, Grapes, Chestnuts, and a Pear” and the viewer finds exactly what its title says will be found: a teapot, grapes, chestnuts, and a pear.
Robert Cording discusses his new book, mystery, and metaphor existing in our everyday lives.