Input – output

On my path I picked up a broken branch. What was left after the damage is very thin and flimsy. Carefully cleaned and cut loose from the rest, it looked like a sheet on a washing line. Not yet an independent sculpture with character. By adding a twisting tree root to the back it acquired its own identity. See it as a gift given by God. The root has a thick end and a thin end. The thick end was connected to the tree or shrub and now rises above the figure. The thin offshoot is connected to the back of the figure. Man is evidently good soil for input from above. If there is input, then there is also output… (Height: 40 cm. Material: Beech, marble base)

The input can be anything. As I see it, it is words: words of God. Words can make you and break you. The words of God bring light, healing and justice. They bring inspiration and touch you in areas such as hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling, your sixth sense, etc. Looking then becomes seeing. Hearing becomes understanding. Tasting becomes drinking (and eating). Feeling becomes (coming) home. Your sixth sense makes you sensitive in relation to people and to the choices that follow from that.

A parallel with this story can be read in the Bible, Isaiah 55:

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. 2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. 3 Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David. 4 See, I have made him a witness to the peoples, a ruler and commander of the peoples. 5 Surely you will summon nations you know not, and nations you do not know will come running to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendour.
6 Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. 9 As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. 12 You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. 13 Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord’s renown, for an everlasting sign, that will endure for ever.”