Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-24-23

Last week’s metaphorical garden walk evoked great response. Among the characteristics of pretty and seemingly fragile flowers are, frequently, a tenacity that can inspire us to persevere against life’s onslaughts.

Perhaps the most opposite of objects to a fragile flower that we can think of in nature is a mountain. A giant rock, a monolith, an “immovable object.” Oh, yeah?

When I was a young teenager I visited Italy. I was interested, who isn’t, in Renaissance art, and I was grateful to be able to visit the legendary marble quarries of Carrara. It is an area where primeval formations during the creation of the world caused a wide swath of mountains to be composed of marble. Marble has unique properties – it is a rock (metamorphic carbonate), to be sure, hard and heavy, but at the same time malleable and in some conditions, a virginal pure white.

Michelangelo coveted the marble from Carrara and Seravezza for his planned façade of San Lorenzo in Florence. Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici and Pope Leo X indulged him, but Michelangelo knew his marble, having sculpted the supernal “David” and “Pieta” several years earlier. He was so intent on moving that marble of Carrara to that city of Florence – hundreds of miles down the Mediterranean coast, thence east into the boot, through Pisa to Florence – that he put aside painting and sculpting and architecture to oversee the “quarrying” of marble and moving gargantuan slabs down the sea and across lands. He became like Leonardo during those many months, inventing rigs and carts and boats and bridges.

Allora. Yes, to get to my point. I was fascinated, as a teenaged tourist, to learn how giant pieces of marble were secured – separated from the mountains that held them. Dynamite existed at the time, and primitive explosions might have been tried… but were not. Many workers with sledgehammers? No. Beasts of burden strapped with great ropes affixed to peaks and outcroppings? Not at all.

The giant chunks of marble were instead separated from the mountains by mere modest slivers of wood.

Wedges. It is a property of some stone, especially marble, that it can crack under pressure (hmmm… like many people do, but that is not my message!). Small cracks were found, or made, in the great marble monoliths, and Michelangelo, studying and planning properly, had narrow wooden wedges tapped into those cracks. Then water was applied to the wood, which expanded slightly from the moisture.

On the next day, after the engorged wood had, unlikely as it seems, pushed the marble monolith apart ever so slightly, other wedges were tapped in – a little larger in size, and soaked again.

This process was repeated, day after day, until (again with forethought and examination for the planned “capture” of the marble that was figured to break free) eventually the marble broke free. Making sure the chunks of rock were “caught,” not to crash down, they were lowered, then to make their serpentine way to Florence. No easy tricks themselves… but compared to the separating and securing of tons of precious marble from a massive mountain?

Now, I made reference to people cracking under pressure. Surely that is a simile if not a metaphor. But the real lesson – a valuable and quite appropriate lesson to learn – is similar to that provided by tenacious little flowers! Can you picture what I described in the quarry-process? “Moving mountains”… The power of planning, patience, and persistence… Being content with slow but steady results… Accomplishing a seemingly impossible task… and using seemingly absurd ideas and tools in order to succeed greatly.

May I suggest further: as beautiful as those snow-white chucks of a mountain were, they still were only pieces of rock. But in a master’s hand (and in the Master’s Hand) they became stunning façades of cathedrals; and lifelike statues of Moses and David; and of Mary holding her crucified Son. Living, breathing, miracles can emerge from cold stone. “The rocks cry out!”

Finally, before we forget the mountain itself: We think of Sisyphus, his impossible task being to push an impossible rock up an impossible mountain. We recall Moses smiting the rock. We remember God’s promise that with prayer and in faith we can move the metaphorical mountains that stand in our way. We remember hymns like A Mighty Fortress and Rock of Ages – that God is our refuge and strength.

But we remember too the fissures in mighty rocks and mountains. Remember how Michelangelo utilized the cracks – the “clefts” – that certainly play their own roles.

When we need it, as God assured us in His Word, those rocks can provide refuges too. He provides safe havens when we need protection from the world, even for a spell. Mountainous rocks can provide hiding places from the world’s attacks and storms, where we may regain strength and courage.

What promises! Move those mountains… and, when needed, find those safe places where God invites you to pray “Hide Thou Me.”

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Since we shared much here about Michelangelo, I would like to close with lines he wrote toward the end of his life:

Neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer to calm my soul, now turned toward that Divine love that opened His arms on the cross to take us in.

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Click: Hide Thou Me