Mark, the Artist

If you want to know the truth, dying had been the last thing on my mind.  I was preparing for my wife to join me.  I had it in my head that we would get a small apartment, and I could move out of the boarding house at last.  I was thrilled and excited.  I had gone to Africa before her and set the stage; I was first a missionary and, secondly, an artist.  I studied several religions and desired to share what I learned.

But one morning, about a week before my wife was to arrive, I walked into my room at the boarding house and was shocked to see people looking through my things. I thought they were robbers. The truth is they were policemen. They had been directed to find all known foreigners—their task was to determine if I had legal permission to stay in the country. 

I didn't know what they were doing. I didn't think they were looking for my passport and wanted to see my visa. I only knew that they had broken into my room. I didn’t want them to go through my things, and I didn't want them to know that what I really wanted to do was proselytize. In my outrage, I argued with them and told them to get out.

The next thing I knew, they pulled guns.  I was in disbelief.  Guns!?  What on Earth were they planning to do with guns?  Almost before another thought entered my mind, I was shot twice—once in the head, once in the stomach.  This was like a bad movie happening right in front of my eyes.  It certainly did not seem like this was me, bleeding to death. 

The police left quickly.  Since they were just enforcing the law, they had nothing to worry about.  The fact that they shot me won them a notch in their belt.  They were proud in doing their job well in finding an illegal alien.  But they didn't bother to discover whether or not I had permission to stay in the country.  They simply shot me. It was my bad luck that they couldn't ask me questions later.  They had no idea that I did have a valid visa. 

Nobody found my body until the next day.  My wife came a few days later, and my body was buried in African soil. 

* * * * * * * *

Painting, Free-Style Me

I was in disbelief when I came here to the spirit lands.  I simply was not expecting this.  Some people on Earth made a big deal of my death, even proclaiming me a martyr because my blood spilled on foreign soil, and touted that I had wanted to "save" the nation.  They talked about me as if I was some kind of saint.  Maybe that's because I was more quiet and reserved.  But that didn't make me saint-like.  Perhaps it was because I was religious and thought a lot about God.  I was pretty uncomfortable about all the things people said about me.  I was considered a person of honor and thought of as noble; people thought that because I was a missionary, I should naturally be considered a soul-saver.  I felt angry to die just when I thought a new stage of life was about to begin for my wife and me.  They made a big deal of my commitment. 

     
But I shed my skin and old persona pretty quickly when I arrived here.  I didn't feel attached to the "person" people were discussing on Earth.  I saw my body, my "skin," had just been covering who I really was.

I visited a grotto, taken by someone who helped my transport here.  I immediately knelt to pray.  But there were no religious statues or symbols of any kind.  There was no religious affiliation at all.  Actually, the shrine had a small statue of me.  It was a woodcarving—still rather rough and unpolished.  It showed many lines and was carved to show my face with many crags.  It showed me with closed eyes in a very formal pose.  It showed me in a suit, of all things—something I didn't really like wearing.  I felt much more comfortable in cotton pants and an African shirt.  When I painted, that's what I wore; when I did missionary work, I wore the suit. 

My first impulse was to cry.  I heard the things said about me and cringed at the thought that people really believed them.  I didn’t feel comfortable, in the least, being applauded.

I certainly didn’t feel like I deserved their words and praise.  For one thing, they thought I was defending the nation and defending my right to save its souls.  I wasn't thinking about that; I was defending myself.  I didn’t want the police to find out who I really was, what I really was.  I didn’t want them to find or take my religious tracts. 

The people on Earth who were touting my greatness weren't aware that I became quite a hothead and yelled at the police, goading them on.  It was not a smart move, and it certainly wasn’t rational.  I felt the antithesis of saint-like! 

Of course, the police didn't know me or what I might do against them.  What I learned is that they thought I wasn't the person who lived in the room but was, myself, a thief!  They wanted to shoot me before I shot them.  Had I not been so insecure, I probably could have explained things, and my life might have been spared. 

So honestly, when I came to the spiritual world, I saw that people looked at the ideal of me as a missionary.  That was in my mind.  I was pretty embarrassed, actually.  I thought they had no idea what had really happened.  I tried to tell them, but nobody seemed to hear me.  (I guess I needed to tell myself, first.) 

I picked up the statue of myself and hid it in my shirt.  I simply did not want to face the picture those on Earth had of me.  I didn't feel it was true, so I tried to cover it up. 

To this day, so many people recall me as a missionary martyr.  I have fashioned a different portrait of myself.  I want to explain what I mean and then share what art and artistic expression are like here, and how this all relates to what it is like on Earth.

And I would like to start by sharing my portrait of me with you. 

Living as a part-time artist on Earth, I came here with that identity, the mind, heart, and the soul of an artist.  And that's why I joined the Round Table of the Committee*.  While part of my work as a missionary will spill forth in bringing you my portrait, it will mostly be focused on artistic expression.   

I want to explain that it will not be just my voice you hear (or read) here.  I am the last person of the Round Table individuals to visit this channel with their story, but the old things of the art world started long before humanity knew what it was.

I don't string words together well.  In fact, I was quite non-communicative when I lived on Earth.  I was in my head a lot.  I lived my life in my mind and forms of art; that's how I expressed myself. 

So to do this now—to tell the story of art—is hard.  I feel pretty embarrassed about waiting so long to come through this channel.  It’s not that I had to study or even wait for her to study certain things.  The honest reason is that I am uncomfortable talking/writing.  I wish I could paint through the channel, but even that would not get the whole story across.