Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart was recommended to me - I got it off of Hoopla. It's deep but I've been getting much out of it. This isn't a review but more a commentary on a couple of quotations.
Author Russ Ramsey writes one chapter on van Gogh, the famous artist who cut off his own ear in a moment of misery, and how a gift shop connected to a van Gogh exhibition carried a number of "kitschy" items about him. One in particular was a thermal coffee mug with this attached note: "When you pour in a hot beverage, Vincent's ear magically vanishes before your very eyes. Easy van come - easy van Gogh." Ramsey commented, "It broke my heart. It still does."
And here are the quotations from Ramsey that caused me to think:
"That gift shop grieved me in the same way as when I read in Scripture about Simon the leper, the woman caught in adultery, or the doubly vexed Zacchaeus, the diminutive tax collector - people identified by the worst things about them."
Next paragraph: "What if what happened to Vincent's ear isn't really all that funny? What happened there--undoubtedly one of the lowest points in an already tortured soul's life--helps us see not just his shame but also the hope that surrounds it. It shows us that, in the end, we are not our worst moments or our biggest failures. It teaches us the sacred work of stewarding another's pain. And it bids us, 'Be gentle. This is a hard world.'"
I've known people who are quick to point out the negative - sometimes failures that are decades old, in other people's lives. I've been guilty of it myself. This quotation puts that kind of comment into perfect perspective, and warns why we should not be that way, in a better way than I could ever have stated it.
