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Ever since becoming interested in this great work, I had known that the original had been acquired in 1766 by Catherine the Great for the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg
if I could meet Rembrandt right where he had painted father and son, God and humanity, compassion and misery, in one circle of love, I would come to know as much as I ever would about death and life.
It is a huge work in oil on canvas, eight feet high by six feet wide. It took me a while to simply be there, simply absorbing that I was truly in the presence of what I had so long hoped to see, simply enjoying the fact that I was all by myself sitting in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg looking at the Prodigal Son for as long as I wanted.
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The simple fact of being able to express an opinion, to set up an argument, to defend a position, and to clarify a vision has given me, and gives me still, a sense of control. And, generally, I feel much safer in experiencing a sense of control over an undefinable situation than in taking the risk of letting that situation control me.
all of them are ways of not getting directly involved.
Nevertheless, my intense response to the father’s embrace of his son told me that I was desperately searching for that inner place where I too could be held as safely as the young man in the painting.
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being the younger son.
came to see how I had lived a quite dutiful life.
saw my jealousy, my anger, my touchiness, doggedness and sullenness, and, most of all, my subtle self-righteousness.
community, I found great consolation in reading the tormented life of the great Dutch painter and learning more about the agonizing journey that ultimately had enabled him to paint this magnificent work.
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me about the Prodigal Son, she said, “Whether you are the younger son or the elder son, you have to realize that you are called to become the father.”
to be a father who can welcome his
children home without asking them any questions and without wanting anything from them in return.
a young man, Rembrandt had all the characteristics of the prodigal son: brash, self-confident, spendthrift, sensual, and very arrogant.
the age of thirty, he painted himself with his wife, Saskia, as the lost son in a brothel.
cannot but see there the once so self-confident and venerated artist who has come to the painful realization that all the glory he had gathered for himself proved to be vain glory.
