Museum Corner

by Cheryl Eichman

MUSEUM CORNER

I sit among the life-sized dioramas. Rectangular casings, much larger than the shoe box displays I filled as a child, hold glimpses of arctic life. Each one skillfully painted, each one meticulously displayed, each one housing magnificent animals. It is quiet in my corner of the museum — no giant dinosaurs or glimmering minerals to attract attention.

Left to myself, I get lost gazing upon the wild. My favorite display holds a colony of Atlantic Puffins with their monochromatic feathers, vibrant beaks, and triangular markings around the eyes. They perch on a handmade cliff overlooking a painted sky. If I am still enough, I can almost hear them grunt to one another above the lapping of the Norwegian Sea. 

A child runs into the room, interrupting my trance. I sit for a while longer, but the spell is broken. The glass reflects my stare, and I am no longer on a sea cliff.

I walk down the stairs into an echoing atrium. It is chaotic and clamorous. Parents are ordering lunches and school groups are buzzing around. A child throws a fit begging for more graham crackers, and I find myself u-turning back to my puffin spot.

The quiet room shelters me. In my museum pew, I once again gaze upon the painted winter waves. But it is not just the quiet that woos me, there is something more. The puffins stand upright on their webbed feet. They are regal, peaceful, pristine. I envy these magnificent sea birds. If only I could join their scene. Then, as if hit with a gust of artic wind, I realize, “Nothing is messy. Nothing is hard. But nothing is alive.” My lungs sting. Is it the wonder of the wild that entices me? No, it’s the cleanliness of the curated.

In my corner, I sit among the puffin colony without smelling the stench of their scat. I scan the painted sea without feeling the chill of its spray. There is no squawking or screeching to irritate my ears. This sheltered life is an imitated life, a taxidermized version of reality. It is safe, but it is also stuffed.

Shielded. That is the life I have been striving for. So long as nothing moves, nothing will hurt me.  I work so hard to keep everything right that it’s no longer real. Like the display before me, there is nothing alive for God to engage with. What I have put in place to keep me secure is actually suffocating me.

Staring at an encased setting inside a room, inside an exhibit, inside a building, I realize how captive I have become by my own hand. On the hard wooden bench, I weep. My lament is less about God’s lack of action and more about my lone reaction. Somewhere down the line, I moved God from guide to spectator. To make the wild safe, I stuffed it. To keep freedom clean, I caged it.

I think of a canvas that hangs in my home, an array of bones painted upon a russet and amber background. My husband created it for me years prior to represent Ezekiel 37:13-14, “Then you, my people will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.’”

As I recall my husband’s brushstrokes and think about Ezekiel’s graveyard, I again look upon my feathered friends. I now have a choice. Beyond the room, the atrium, and the double doors, fresh air awaits. It is a place where life is happening in all its glorious mess. With no condemnation in his voice, God asks if I will step away from the diorama and meet him there. I have to decide, will I let go of perfection to receive God’s liberation?

If I choose to walk with the Lord, I will have to trade in my shelter for a survival kit, my role as curator for that of companion. Where God leads will be untidy, but with him everything is moving, growing, and alive. I step outside of the museum and my shoes get dirty. That’s what happens when you walk out of the grave.

by Cheryl Eichman

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